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riviera74
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Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Tue Jun 21, 2011 3:05 pm

If I were building a Sandy Bridge desktop, it would have an Asus P8P67 series motherboard because it has UEFI and all the features I want. I would go with AMD Radeon graphics rather than integrated. One question: Why buy a Z68 version if it costs more and has relatively few new features?
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bluepiranha
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Tue Jun 21, 2011 9:09 pm

Because Z68 is basically what P67 should have been in the first place. If you're looking to save the odd dollar, or if you already have an existing P67 B3 motherboard, then P67 would be fine. However I've heard from the guys at the MaximumPC podcast that there's not much incentive these days to go with P67 over Z68 if you're shopping for parts on a new build.

Sometimes the Z68 boards work out to be even cheaper than P67 mobos. The one I'm eyeing for my project, an Asrock Z68 Extreme4, is selling for as much as PhP2000 (roughly US$40) less than, say, an MSI P67A-GD65 or an Asus P8P67 Pro, but is even better-equipped than either of them...well, its feature set is a better fit for me at least.

Besides, in the event that your graphics card gives up the ghost, the HD2000/HD3000 onboard GPU is a nice enough backup.

Just my two cents
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Tue Jun 21, 2011 9:16 pm

The ASRock Z68 Pro3-M is much cheaper than the Z68 Extreme4.
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Tue Jun 21, 2011 9:29 pm

Because I intend to use those extra display outputs!
 
riviera74
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Tue Jun 21, 2011 9:30 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
The ASRock Z68 Pro3-M is much cheaper than the Z68 Extreme4.


Yes it is, but the Z68 Extreme 4 has more SATA and eSATA ports than the Z68 Pro3-M. Debug feature is also nice. I would rather get this one or this one.
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bluepiranha
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Tue Jun 21, 2011 10:08 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
The ASRock Z68 Pro3-M is much cheaper than the Z68 Extreme4.

...which in turn is much cheaper than the P67 boards I mentioned, I presume? :)
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Fri Aug 05, 2011 7:44 am

bluepiranha wrote:
The one I'm eyeing for my project, an Asrock Z68 Extreme4, is selling for as much as PhP2000 (roughly US$40) less than, say, an MSI P67A-GD65 or an Asus P8P67 Pro, but is even better-equipped than either of them...well, its feature set is a better fit for me at least.


FYI, the Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 Gen3 is now out. I just got mine installed. Adds PCIe 3.0 support for future Sandy Bridge processors, and has a nice new black/gold scheme. All of the original Extreme 4 (gen 2) goodness is still there, and it's only $10 more.
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EV42TMAN
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Fri Aug 05, 2011 8:10 am

JustAnEngineer wrote:
The ASRock Z68 Pro3-M is much cheaper than the Z68 Extreme4.


remember you get what you pay for. also the Z68 chipset supports SSD caching which is a nice feature once its configured
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Sun Jan 08, 2012 5:08 am

But let's be honest here, who actually uses the SSD-caching instead of keeping everything important on the SSD? And who has actually configured his system to use Quicksync as well as a dedicated videocard, and actually uses it?

I'm not convinced that Z68 is what P67 should have been, because it still needs a kludge (Lucid) to expose Quicksync in combination with a proper videocard. And what does Quicksync do that a dedicated videocard is not capable of? I'm not up to date on the current state of hardware assisted video encoding, and the last thing I saw was CUDA being soundly beaten in the quality department by Quicksync, but that's mainly a question of proper software support I guess.

I'm not saying that for the same money you shouldn't get the chipset that ticks more boxes, but sometimes I think ticking the boxes is all we're supposed to care about.
 
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Sun Jan 08, 2012 10:26 am

I picked up a cheap 64GB drive a little while back and used it for the SSD caching. It's a significant boost to my 5400RPM 2TB drive I was using for storage/apps. It's a great feature and you get some of the benefits of a SSD for alot more storage. I still have a SSD for OS and a few apps but I will continue to use this tech as long as they put it in motherboards.
 
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:17 am

Pettytheft wrote:
I picked up a cheap 64GB drive a little while back and used it for the SSD caching. It's a significant boost to my 5400RPM 2TB drive I was using for storage/apps. It's a great feature and you get some of the benefits of a SSD for alot more storage. I still have a SSD for OS and a few apps but I will continue to use this tech as long as they put it in motherboards.

Ah right, I didn't think of using it to just accelerate your storage drive, while keeping a dedicated SSD for system files.
 
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Sun Jan 08, 2012 3:39 pm

Pettytheft wrote:
I picked up a cheap 64GB drive a little while back and used it for the SSD caching. It's a significant boost to my 5400RPM 2TB drive I was using for storage/apps. It's a great feature and you get some of the benefits of a SSD for alot more storage. I still have a SSD for OS and a few apps but I will continue to use this tech as long as they put it in motherboards.

Which motherboard?
 
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Sun Jan 15, 2012 11:17 pm

i went with a Z68 board in my HTPC because i was going to use a SSD as the boot drive. My HTPC boots up in 20 secs (OCZ Solid 3 60 GB) and its running a i3-2100 with 8 gb of ram. As someone else posted, the SSD caching is the main reason along with the TRIM feature. Im sure someone can better explain to you what exactly the TRIM feature is. I wish i had waited a few months for Sandy Bridge when i upgraded my desktop to an i7-950 and an X58 board. The SSD (Corsair Force 3 90 GB) is nowhere near as fast on that machine as its on the HTPC. The SSD controller is much faster on the Z68 board than the Marvell junk on the X58 board. the Z68 board in my HTPC is infact the ASRock Z68 Pro3-M and it does have the UEFI bios. UEFI is great stuff.
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:34 am

specifications are good, and in cost wise it is cheap.
 
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Mon Jan 23, 2012 8:25 am

As a Linux user who boots from an SSD I see no benefit from the Z68, the extra features don't even work on Linux. My next machine may have that chipset simply because a lot of the P67 boards seem to be being discontinued.
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Re: Why go with a Z68 mobo?

Mon Jan 23, 2012 8:55 am

^^ The bit about P67 boards being discontinued is what I came here to say. I hopped on board the Sandy Bridge train recently and couldn't find a P67 board that was significantly cheaper than a comparable Z68 board, and selection was pretty darn limited. I paid $130 for a GA-Z68A-D3H, and the GA-P67X-UD3 I was originally considering is actually more on Newegg. It's only $5, sure, but to save $5 I also got a backup graphics solution (so if my card dies, I can use the onboard graphics). Are there cheaper P67 boards? Sure, and there are cheaper Z68 boards for that matter. But I've been very happy with Gigabyte in the past.
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