Come Cebit next week we'll get the first sneak peeks of what should be the final motherboard designs based on Intel's upcoming 7-series chipsets for Ivy Bridge, but details of ASRock's upcoming motherboards have made their ways online via a range of different sources, including pictures and specs of some of the models we can expect at the show. The pictures are of a pair of Fatal1ty branded models as well as of an Extreme board which all are the high-end modesl in ASRock's new line-up.First of all, our Chinese language sister site has dug up the product names of ASRock's upcoming models. As such we can expect to see the H77M, H77 Pro4/MVP, Z77 Pro4, Z77 Pro4-M, Z77 Extreme4, Z77 Extreme6, Fatal1ty Z77 Professional and Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-M. The last three of those models have made appearances on various websites and the Z77 Extreme6 has been extensively detailed as you can see below.The Z77 Extreme6 is at least for now ASRock's highest-end non-Fatal1ty branded board. Although it's not a direct replacement for the Z68 Extreme7 Gen3, as it seem to slot in just below it in terms of features, nor would it be a straight replacement for the P67 Extreme6 based solely on features. That said, ASRock has managed to squeeze in a fair amount of features on the Z77 Extreme6.
For starters it has three x16 PCI Express ready slots, of which the first two are PCI Express 3.0 slots that will operate in dual x8 mode when both slots are in use. It's not clear as to what the third slot is, but presumably we're looking at a x4 slot here. The board also has a PCI Express x1 slot, two PCI slots and a mini card PCI Express slot – which might support mSATA – located below the first x16 slot. Besides the standard two Intel SATA 6Gbps ports and four SATA 3Gbps ports, ASRock has also added two additional SATA 6Gbps ports via an ASMedia ASM1061 controller, although interestingly ASRock has shared the second port from the ASMedia controller with the eSATA port, so you only get one or the other.Other on board features include headers for two front USB 3.0 ports (via the Intel chipset), what appears to be three headers for six USB 2.0 ports, a header for a FireWire port, power and rest buttons, a POST80 debug LED, a floppy drive connector, a serial port header and of course four DIMM slots. The rear I/O is comprised of a PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports – of which two are via an Etron EJ168 host controller – the aforementioned shared eSATA port, a FireWire port, a Gigabit Ethernet port – connected to a Broadcom controller – 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out, a DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI and D-sub connector and finally a clear CMOS button.For the Z77 Extreme6 ASRock went with an 8+4 PWM design that's cooled by a pair of heatsinks connected via a heatpipe. The board will also come with a copy of LucidLogix's Virtu MVP software and it does of course support all the new Intel features like Smart Connect and Rapid Start that will come with Ivy Bridge and the new 7-series chipsets.

We know far less about the Fatal1ty boards, but judging from the fairly low resolution pictures, the Fatal1ty Z77 Professional has a very similar slot layout to the Z77 Extreme6, but ditches the mini card PCI Express slot in favour of a x1 PCI Express slot. The board has also gained what we're guessing is two additional SATA 6Gbps ports and we're also spotting a PLX bridge chip hiding by the chipset heatsink. The PWM also appears to have extra power phases and there's no DVI or D-sub connector in sight here, but as for the rest of the rear ports, we're not entirely sure, but it appears to be a pair of Ethernet ports at least.
The Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-M is ASRock's first mATX Fatal1ty branded board and it looks like ASRock wants to try and steal some customers from Asus here. The board has three x16 slots of which we presume two are sharing bandwidth and are of the PCI Express 3.0 compatible type. There's also a single x1 PCI Express on the board, but this is likely to be mostly useless. Here we're looking at a full set of display connectivity options as far as we can tell with an HDMI and D-sub connecter present, but we can't see if the board has a DisplayPort or HDMI connector. We're also down to a single Ethernet port and a more basic PWM design. Both of the Fatal1ty branded boards should also ship with Virtu MVP. More on this once we hit Cebit next week, unless there are some additional leaks ahead of the show.