I'm putting together a new rig and have a shortlist consisting of a single P67 board (the ASUS P8P67 Pro) and a sole Z68 m/b (ASRock's Z68 Extreme4). The eventual choice will carry an i5-2500K, which I plan to overclock as fully as possible.
The Z68 board is ~US$8 pricier but will take my nice LGA775 heatsink. It also comes with a front USB3.0 panel (as opposed to the ASUS' slot panel approach), four 3-pin fan headers (as opposed to two for the ASUS), and on-board power/reset/CLR_CMOS buttons.
However, the ASUS has a 3 year warranty (as opposed to the ASRock's 2), comes with coax digital audio out (both boards do optical), and seems(?) to have a better LAN controller - an Intel WG82579V PHY (the ASRock uses a Broadcom BCM57781 PCIe).
On this last point THG states (in a P67 board roundup) that "Intel’s 82579 gigabit Ethernet PHY accesses the chipset’s port directly for improved performance, also freeing up one PCIe port." I don't really know how much weight to assign this difference between the boards - e.g. would it translate into lower pings? (I presume the transfer speeds would be the same!)
Also, the ASUS has a 'MemOK' button. The AT review of the Pro states "The MemOK button is a physical override for overclocked memory – by holding it down until the red light comes on, at next boot, the UEFI will override the memory settings to something more suitable." I'm not sure what use this would be. At the moment, if I try and push my board _too_ far, machine won't boot and I'm forced to clear the CMOS data (losing my saved profiles in the process - _big_ hassle). If mem settings are to blame, perhaps the MemOK button would save me from something as painful as this(?)
Finally, there's the bottom (third) PCIe x16 slot. I haven't found anything written about the ASRock's (the P8P67 seems to have been reviewed far more widely [unsurprising I guess given its age!]), but the following statements appear on THG and AT in relation to the ASUS':
"The black PCIe x16 slot is wired up as an x4 slot (as it shares bandwidth with the x1 slots, two USB 3.0 ports and the eSATA ports), and with a dual slot card in there, will cover most of the board USB headers."
"We wouldn’t normally use the four-lane x16-length PCIe slot for a third graphics card. Those that do will find that the card’s cooler pushes tightly against the ends of several front-panel cables, with full card insertion typically requiring enough force to smash the cable ends flat. We’d likely use this slot for a different task."
I'm currently waiting on 2 HD5830s, but the option of adding a third is kind of appealing. All I know about the ASRock's bottom slot is that is doesn't seem to share bandwidth with the x1 slots. Does it seem reasonable to infer that the ASRock would be a better option should I wish to use a 3rd video card?
The Z68 board is ~US$8 pricier but will take my nice LGA775 heatsink. It also comes with a front USB3.0 panel (as opposed to the ASUS' slot panel approach), four 3-pin fan headers (as opposed to two for the ASUS), and on-board power/reset/CLR_CMOS buttons.
However, the ASUS has a 3 year warranty (as opposed to the ASRock's 2), comes with coax digital audio out (both boards do optical), and seems(?) to have a better LAN controller - an Intel WG82579V PHY (the ASRock uses a Broadcom BCM57781 PCIe).
On this last point THG states (in a P67 board roundup) that "Intel’s 82579 gigabit Ethernet PHY accesses the chipset’s port directly for improved performance, also freeing up one PCIe port." I don't really know how much weight to assign this difference between the boards - e.g. would it translate into lower pings? (I presume the transfer speeds would be the same!)
Also, the ASUS has a 'MemOK' button. The AT review of the Pro states "The MemOK button is a physical override for overclocked memory – by holding it down until the red light comes on, at next boot, the UEFI will override the memory settings to something more suitable." I'm not sure what use this would be. At the moment, if I try and push my board _too_ far, machine won't boot and I'm forced to clear the CMOS data (losing my saved profiles in the process - _big_ hassle). If mem settings are to blame, perhaps the MemOK button would save me from something as painful as this(?)
Finally, there's the bottom (third) PCIe x16 slot. I haven't found anything written about the ASRock's (the P8P67 seems to have been reviewed far more widely [unsurprising I guess given its age!]), but the following statements appear on THG and AT in relation to the ASUS':
"The black PCIe x16 slot is wired up as an x4 slot (as it shares bandwidth with the x1 slots, two USB 3.0 ports and the eSATA ports), and with a dual slot card in there, will cover most of the board USB headers."
"We wouldn’t normally use the four-lane x16-length PCIe slot for a third graphics card. Those that do will find that the card’s cooler pushes tightly against the ends of several front-panel cables, with full card insertion typically requiring enough force to smash the cable ends flat. We’d likely use this slot for a different task."
I'm currently waiting on 2 HD5830s, but the option of adding a third is kind of appealing. All I know about the ASRock's bottom slot is that is doesn't seem to share bandwidth with the x1 slots. Does it seem reasonable to infer that the ASRock would be a better option should I wish to use a 3rd video card?
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