According to MyDrivers, Intel has notified its partners that the company is discontinuing its last-gen chipsets
For now, this is just a rumor because Intel’s own product notification website reports no changes for these products. Yet, MyDrivers citing their sources claim that Intel has just issued a notice to motherboard makers that they will replace Z690 and B660 chipsets with next-gen chips, some of which have only just been released.
This marks a year since the last-gen 600 series chipset was launched, as the Z690 appeared in October 2021 and B660 was released in January last year. With the introduction of the 13th Gen Core non-K series, Intel also launched its new mid-range B760 chipset.
The differences between the 600 and 700 series are cosmetic, focusing mainly on PCIe lanes and USB support. For its Z790 chipset, Intel has increased the number of available Gen4 lanes to 20 at a cost of Gen3 lanes being reduced from 16 to 8. For the vast majority of users, this will not make a huge difference.
Intel Z790 vs. Z690, Source: Intel/Igor’sLAB
It is worth noting that Intel has no plans to phase out its entry-level H610 chipset just yet. In fact, there hasn’t really been a good reason to, not to mention the lack of any competition from AMD, who are very sluggish to launch their A620 AM5 chipset.
Source: MyDrivers
