Of these Z68 boards...which one?

[jcniest5]

1. Asus P8Z68 Deluxe (whatever the actually name is)
2. Asrock Z68 Extreme4
3. Asrock Z68 Extreme6
4. Asrock Z68 Professional (if/when it comes out)
4. Gigabyte Z68 UD4
5. Gigabyte Z68 UD5
6. MSI Z68 GD80

Which one is the better one overall (OCing, Stability, Features)?

 

[Chaoticlusts]

Kind of impossible to tell without knowing more of what your looking for...

Personally out of all of them with my price point I'm likely going the Asrock Z68 Extreme 4, if you have no budget and just want features...go with the most expensive

but really need to know what matters to you..would you use the bluetooth on the Asus boards? do you have any use for dual ethernet? Going to be using more than 6 sata ports?

Personally I'd write off the Gigabyte boards cause I like the idea of UEFI

 

[kami]

The gigabyte boards may not have UEFI but you can change the bios settings within Windows.

 

[lupi]

None of those giga boards allow use of the igp. Toms did a comparison of the asus deluxe and asrock extreme4 along with an unlisted giga board and gave a slight nod to the asrock over the asus.

 

[jcniest5]

None of those giga boards allow use of the igp. Toms did a comparison of the asus deluxe and asrock extreme4 along with an unlisted giga board and gave a slight nod to the asrock over the asus.

I read that article, but the Asus board was just the V Pro, not the Deluxe.

 

[CraigRT]

I read that about the Gigabytes too. That being said, unless you actually need the IGP, I would go with the UD4 if it were me. I have a P67A-UD4-B3 and its awesome.

 

[=Wendy=]

I have the Asrock Z68 Extreme 4, and its a great board.
Excellent features, stable, and a good overclocker.

As well as having DVI, VGA, and HDMI outputs, it also has a "displayport" output.

If you're into encoding/transcoding video, you will certainly want quick sync, as it's easily faster than CUDA or ATi Stream, and gives better quality, IMO.

The Extreme 4 is bundled with fully licensed version of Lucid Virtu, and a trial version of Cyberlink Media Espresso to get you started.

 

[jcniest5]

GD80 is off the list, there are less than 10 feedbacks (at Newegg) and two have DVI issue. Not a good sign...

The Asrock Extreme4 has a mixed feeling...from reading the Tom's Hardware review. I will wait for Asus' Deluxe board.

 

[Minjin]

Ironically, while the Gigabytes don't seem like a good choice due to the video issues, they are the only ones that are putting a decent heatpiped heatsink on the chipset this generation. I can tell you that the chipset heatsink on my Asus is getting hot as blazes. Who knows if that will be a problem. I have a fan blowing directly on it right now but I shouldn't need to do that.

 

[Cykoth]

I just recently (this weekend) put together a build centered on the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P-B3. I'm still in the process of setting it up (formatting a 2TB HDD as I'm typing this), but so far everything has gone thru seemlessly. I could see no real benefit, other than paying more money, for the UD4 or 5. I've got nice heat piping, Nice passive cooling on the Z68 chip, tons of SATA II and III ports (although only 2 of the SATA III).

Plus I'm an old school builder from the days of the 386 processor, so I actually like the BIOS the way it is....and really....how much time do you SPEND with BIOS anyways? At least compared to actually being inside the OS.

Just sayin...

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Liking the Z68 UD4 myself mainly because it has DDL onboard, but also has heatpiped heatsinks, the PCI layout works well for me, lots of back connectors & sata ports, and looks cool . No need for IGP. The bios is great because I'm already familiar with it from my UD3R. And Cykoth makes a great point about actual time spent in the bios, which is very, very little. And their bios is easy to navigate.

Anyway, picking a board is really about what features are important to you. Differences in overclocking, performance & stability are likely to be negligible between these boards.

 

[lupi]

if giga wasn't so retarded with igp on their z68's I'd probably own one already. almost makes me not want to buy anything of the brand for awhile in protest.

 

[Chaoticlusts]

Plus I'm an old school builder from the days of the 386 processor, so I actually like the BIOS the way it is....and really....how much time do you SPEND with BIOS anyways? At least compared to actually being inside the OS.

Just sayin...

Yeah I'm quite familiar with traditional BIOS's too but from what I understood (granted I maybe misinformed) one of the perks of UEFI was reduced post times so faster cold startup...so in theory combined with an SSD OS disk you get extremely fast cold boot times which should translate to less reason not to turn your computer off so more power savings (like I said I could well be misinformed)

I've always liked ASUS as a brand...had tons of their MB's over the years and no issues...other reasons to avoid Giga have been stated above going Z68 without quicksync when you could get it for a small amount extra so it'll be there if you decide to use it (also as others have pointed out the onboard GPU gives you a safety net if your discreet GPU fails while you replace it) there's not much price difference between the boards with DVI ports and without so I'm going with ^_^ my only reason against the ASUS ones is price... not sure about in the US atm but in Aus the difference in price between the equivalent asrock board to the asus is way more than the extra features are worth.. ($50 between the extreme 4 and v-pro)

 

[Ross Ridge]

Yeah I'm quite familiar with traditional BIOS's too but from what I understood (granted I maybe misinformed) one of the perks of UEFI was reduced post times so faster cold startup...

As far I can tell Gigabyte's Z68 boards are all using (U)EFI and should benefit from that perk as well as any other EFI BIOS. Their BIOSes don't seem to implement a graphical UI, but that doesn't mean it's not EFI. (And I have a couple of motherboard's with graphical UIs that predate EFI.)

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Like Ross said, Gigabyte does use UEFI, but they didn't implement mouse support or make it pretty like other vendors have chosen to do. I've also played with ASUS's UEFI bios and wasn't impressed. While neat, I didn't find it any easier to navigate or more user-friendly than a traditional bios.

 

[Chaoticlusts]

ahh ok my mistake thanx for the clarification ^_^

*edit* btw in that case obviously I retract the objection to Gigabyte though I still say fork out the little extra to make sure you get one that supports quicksync ^_^ (there are gigabyte ones that do this)

oh one other thing to note about ASUS as far as I'm aware they're the only ones that use the intel LAN chip for some bloody reason (I know the Asrock doesn't and none of the Gigabytes do not sure about MSI) the plus of using it is less CPU (I think the benchmarks I saw put the intel chip at about 1.5% usage and the realtek one at about 3.5%) probably won't make much difference but it is a little added bonus of forking out that little extra for ASUS

 

[Majic 7]

According to this article http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20941 the Gigabyte 6 series boards tack on a EFI bootloader to an Award bios so they boot from a larger than 2.2TB hard drive. The article is short and not very detailed about any other benifits from doing this. Does this give shorter boot times like a UEFI does? I take from the article that everything else stays the same. Need some clarification from someone who owns one.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

oh one other thing to note about ASUS as far as I'm aware they're the only ones that use the intel LAN chip for some bloody reason (I know the Asrock doesn't and none of the Gigabytes do not sure about MSI) the plus of using it is less CPU (I think the benchmarks I saw put the intel chip at about 1.5% usage and the realtek one at about 3.5%) probably won't make much difference but it is a little added bonus of forking out that little extra for ASUS

This should clear things up. Z68 shouldn't be any different.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4323/p67-190-part-2-msi-asrock-and-ecs/12

 

[sticks435]

This article here says that Giga is going to be adding HDMI to the UD7. Possible it might trickle down to the UD5 and 4?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20911/5

I'm kind of in the same boat as the OP, but I have a $185 credit at Microcenter, and they don't sell Asrock, so it's down to MSI, Asus or Giga for me.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

I love that Gigabyte supports DDL on their boards (course it's realtek so maybe it's not so great), but the lack of IGP is very stupid. They should have at least put an HDMI port on all their boards. And the *Touch BIOS*? Seriously? How many people buying these boards are going to be using touch displays? Honestly, who the f**k is in charge over there.

I suggest avoiding them entirely if possible so maybe they'll wise up.

 

[jcniest5]

I actually bought a Gigabyte Z68M D2H to play for the time being until Micro Center has Asus Deluxe available. I miss all the lights on the higher end models...the one I bought doesn't have any light whatsover...makes it like mobos of fifteen years ago. And it doesn't allow vcore of 1.5000V+, which limits the OCing. The offset setting doesn't seem to work properly either.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

there's no Extreme6 yet for AsRock. I believe they may release one soon though. Let's see @ computex

 

[lupi]

I read that article, but the Asus board was just the V Pro, not the Deluxe.

Ah, didn't realize you were talking about an upcoming one.

From the limited z68 release so far, get the feeling they are trying to sell down p67 stock first or use previous stock to the maximum extent possible and just tossing the new chip into it. Can't believe how many places aren't even carrying them.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, as I have been saying in previous threads, looks like the Asrock Z68 Professional may be the motherboard I purchase as it seems to be the first to meet my requirements. Just waiting on the release date (assuming MSI, Gigabyte, or Asus do not have a similar board up their sleeve and ready to pop on the market before the Asrock board...but if that was the case, it too would probably have been leaked).

 

[Makubex GB]

I went with the Asus P8Z68-V Pro myself. So far, I'm loving it. The layout is great, excellent overclocker, runs pretty cool with stock heatsink and the UEFI BIOS is very nice. The Asus AI Suite II software is pretty nice too, but I don't use it much.

PS. I really like being able to have a discrete graphics card and use QuickSync.