are P67 owners enticed and have switched to z68?

[SuPrEIVIE]

I am curious if p67 owners on here have replaced their p67 for a Z68? Having a hard time deciding if I want to make the switch or not. I know that Z68 brings utilization of the graphic portion of the cpu and then the most compelling feature is the ssd cache for speeding up old HDs, which from what i have gathered seems to work rather well.

Im not sure if the yeild in OC will be the same or better on Z68 than p67. From what i have read on boards etc it sounds less in potential. I currently get 4.6GHZ max 1.328V out of the 25ook with P8P67 regular rev 3.0 1305 bios.

I was expecting to stick with p67 but considering z68 boards are not that much more expensive and you get all the features all sandy bridge owners are suppose to get I guess i could easily sell off the p8p67 and get the z68.

However the pains that can come with having to build from the ground up and then setup of system to the point of satisfaction is a concern of mine if I realize the advantages werent worth the trouble. Also considering i plan to stick with my sandy setup as a main rig for 5 years or maybe more, once im done setting it up I will be hassle free ( i hope) for a long time as assembling and preparing computers have become more of a chore than something to enjoy anymore lol.

 

[e-drood]

my understanding is this:

if P67 + sata3 (boot/os) ssd + sata3 (mech) hdd, than Zed68 w/small cache ssd of no user benefit

Zed68 + small cache ssd leverages use of present mech hdd's, while providing (some?) system build economies...

re: max o.c.'g of specific mb, p67 OR zed68, depends entirely on whether mb chipset AND cpu dice came out of wafer "sweet spot" or 1st band...

 

[Kenmitch]

I've got no itch to switch.

 

[stahlhart]

Me neither.

 

[LagunaX]

No point if you have a SSD as your primary OS drive.
Functions pretty much as a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive but a little faster.

Ideal P67 setup would be a primary SSD and a 1.5 or 2 terabyte secondary green drive.

 

[Bryf50]

I've got no reason to switch. I'd buy a newer and bigger SSD before a new motherboard.

 

[manderson]

Okay, straighten me out... I went with the ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe because it seemed like the best available upgrade from my Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P w/P45. Don't care too much about OC; I wanted the i7 processor and native support for USB 3.0. From a quick review, I thought the Z68 was the only Intel chipset that provides true native USB 3.0 hardware/firmware support. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but if I am correct, for me it was worth going with the Z68 for this alone. Also, I tried installing OS and apps on a Crucial SSD C300 and after expanding all of the installation files I received an error telling me the ASUS BIOS did not support it as a primary system drive. I have since upgraded the BIOS to the newest beta version, but haven't tried to reinstall OS and apps on the SSD yet.

Just a few comments. Nothing here to justify upgrading from P67 to Z68, unless I'm right about USB 3.0 support and you really need or want it.

 

[paperwastage]

i still have a pre-B3 board, planning to RMA for a B3 one when I have time to tear down the build, which means I could get a Z68 board to replace it during the teardown

but I don't see any reason to do it...

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Just a few comments. Nothing here to justify upgrading from P67 to Z68, unless I'm right about USB 3.0 support and you really need or want it.

Z68 doesn't have native USB 3.0. The P8Z68 Deluxe has an NEC controller for it. Don't know why native USB 3.0 is so important to you, nice to have but really a non-issue.

I think the most compelling feature of Z68 is the SSD cache. Instead of spending $200+ for a 128GB SSD and manually managing your space you could spend $100 or less for a 64GB cache drive and not have to manage anything while still greatly increasing your system's overall responsiveness.

 

[manderson]

Z68 doesn't have native USB 3.0. The P8Z68 Deluxe has an NEC controller for it. Don't know why native USB 3.0 is so important to you, nice to have but really a non-issue.

I think the most compelling feature of Z68 is the SSD cache. Instead of spending $200+ for a 128GB SSD and manually managing your space you could spend $100 or less for a 64GB cache drive and not have to manage anything while still greatly increasing your system's overall responsiveness.

Thanks for the comments. Good info for me to follow up. All of the internet rumors about native USB 3.0 support on Z68 were confusing, but I am still happy with the board. Another stupid mistake I made was thinking the Intel RST would include the Marvell Controller. Common sense should have told me otherwise. My computer is mostly intended as a Digital Audio Workstation, and my intent was to dedicate the 128GB SSD for all of the project wave files for faster processing. From all of the good things I read here about the SSD caching, I am thinking possibly setting up the SSD as a cache drive will give me the same performance improvement for these projects. I will try partitioning the 128GB SSD into two partitions and use one partition for cache.

 

[smakme7757]

I'm really happy with my current P67 motherboard. No need to goto Z68, no need at all!

 

[PClark99]

P67 does everything I need it to do. I could say the same about the x58 board I migrated from though too.

 

[BTA]

No reason to upgrade from P67 unless you needed internal GPU for some reason. The hybrid SSD thing would seem pointless since you could just put the $$ towards a bigger SSD instead of an all new board.