P67 or Z68 and which for 2500k?

[skipsneeky2]

Building a new system in less then a week.

Will be purchasing the parts at frys and i am torn between the p67 and the z68.

Far as i know the z68 has official support for ivy bridge while p67 does not?

System won't be oced to the sky just the auto oc would be fine and i prefer asus as brand of choice and i am thinking of grabbing the le version of either chipset.

First choice was a p67 pro but i wanna attempt to put a ssd into my build and i can either drop the gtx570 for a gtx560 ti or pick another motherboard.

So what am i missing between this board the p67 pro
http://www.frys.com/product/6552883?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG
and this board the p67 le
http://www.frys.com/product/6552813?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

P67 is $10 cheaper for the Le versus the Z68 but if Z68 has official Ivy Bridge support and the P67 doesn't i will go that route but its a strict gaming rig and curious between the le and the pro versions of each chipset.

Thanks for any input to this matter

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Building a new system in less then a week.

Will be purchasing the parts at frys and i am torn between the p67 and the z68.

Far as i know the z68 has official support for ivy bridge while p67 does not?

System won't be oced to the sky just the auto oc would be fine and i prefer asus as brand of choice and i am thinking of grabbing the le version of either chipset.

First choice was a p67 pro but i wanna attempt to put a ssd into my build and i can either drop the gtx570 for a gtx560 ti or pick another motherboard.

So what am i missing between this board the p67 pro
http://www.frys.com/product/6552883?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG
and this board the p67 le
http://www.frys.com/product/6552813?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

P67 is $10 cheaper for the Le versus the Z68 but if Z68 has official Ivy Bridge support and the P67 doesn't i will go that route but its a strict gaming rig and curious between the le and the pro versions of each chipset.

Thanks for any input to this matter

The advice of all the enthusiast magazine reviews like Maximum PC, et al, is as follows: Don't bother upgrading to Z68 if you already have P67, but if it's a choice between a new P67 motherboard or a Z68 motherboard-- the Z68 wins hands down.

It wins hands down for the ISRT feature of SSD-caching/HDD acceleration. It wins hands down for the integrated "Lucid Virtu" graphics tapping both the Intel built-in graphics processor and the dGPU -- a conventional PCI-E graphics card.

It had a mature BIOS from the start, since it was a hybrid between the P67 and H67 chipsets. Three or four BIOS revisions since release in May have pretty much addressed any shortcomings, and the second BIOS revision of June pretty much nailed much of it.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I'd suggest the Z68 board and not the P67 one even if it costs a bit more the extra features should be worth it down the road.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Z68 does offer all the functionality of the sandy bridge arch so mind as well

Now the asus le or the pro?

Reading up i guess the le has limited oc headroom but for me 4.3ghz on a auto oc will be more then plenty heck i might settle for stock.

Not finding much more documentation on the difference between the le and the pro but the physical layout looks identical minus the vrms are passive cooled on the le.

Anything else i am missing?

 

[Smoblikat]

The advice of all the enthusiast magazine reviews like Maximum PC, et al, is as follows: Don't bother upgrading to Z68 if you already have P67, but if it's a choice between a new P67 motherboard or a Z68 motherboard-- the Z68 wins hands down.

It wins hands down for the ISRT feature of SSD-caching/HDD acceleration. It wins hands down for the integrated "Lucid Virtu" graphics tapping both the Intel built-in graphics processor and the dGPU -- a conventional PCI-E graphics card.

It had a mature BIOS from the start, since it was a hybrid between the P67 and H67 chipsets. Three or four BIOS revisions since release in May have pretty much addressed any shortcomings, and the second BIOS revision of June pretty much nailed much of it.

SSD caching is stupid. Ive used it and all it does is decrease the lifespan of an SSD by writing to it. It isnt as useful as doing the stuff yourself like a real man...........you LOSE performance with it. Z68 isnt anything other than P67 with support for onboard graphics, so it isnt worth it.

 

[QueBert]

SSD caching is stupid. Ive used it and all it does is decrease the lifespan of an SSD by writing to it. It isnt as useful as doing the stuff yourself like a real man...........you LOSE performance with it. Z68 isnt anything other than P67 with support for onboard graphics, so it isnt worth it.

What about support for upcoming CPU's + PCIe 3.0? I'd say future proof would be a reason to go with z68, not to mention the boards aren't that far apart in price. I'm looking at the ASRock z68 Extreme myself OP.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Is ssd caching something you can simply disable in the bios?

I'm putting a ssd into my build and if that's the case with the decreasing lifespan of ssd's i don't know.

If it can't be disabled perhaps P67 is more for me...don't want any ssd drives giving me issues.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Is ssd caching something you can simply disable in the bios?

I'm putting a ssd into my build and if that's the case with the decreasing lifespan of ssd's i don't know.

If it can't be disabled perhaps P67 is more for me...don't want any ssd drives giving me issues.

There aren't any complications of a "default SSD-caching" arrangement in BIOS. If you want to do the caching, you would download the latest Intel Rapid Storage Technology program/driver. Then -- hook up the SSD with all disks on the motherboard controller configured as "RAID" rather than ACHI or IDE-mode. Rebooting, you'd then install the software and with a few mouse-clicks -- enable caching.

There's been a lot said on this feature -- pro and con. The issue about SSD lifespan seems to be an exaggeration. Even MLC SSDs are supposed to last ten years. Since a lot of the OS remains in the cache anyway, and other programs you use frequently, the amount of writes to the cache as opposed to writes on a standalone SSD might not be all that excessive.

SSD caching is stupid. Ive used it and all it does is decrease the lifespan of an SSD by writing to it. It isnt as useful as doing the stuff yourself like a real man...........you LOSE performance with it. Z68 isnt anything other than P67 with support for onboard graphics, so it isnt worth it.

I've had this Patriot Pyro 60GB SSD configured for caching since around July. Before that, I was using an oversized 120GB Intel Elm Crest -- attempting to use the remaining available space on the disk for conventional storage. Maybe once a week, I'd begin to see signs of corruption, showing themselves in hesitation when you'd expect speed. Replacing that drive with an appropriately sized unit like the Pyro seems to have eliminated that problem, as well as a BIOS update.

ISRT -- "smart response technology" -- apparently isn't going to go away. Somewhere I think I saw a review of an X79 motherboard that imposes no limit on the SSD size or space used for caching. And if you can get the stability (such as I've found) with a three or fourfold improvement in standalone HDD speed, I would judge it more cost effective than spending hundreds more to capture a 20% improvement over the caching. The only clear advantage under current price scenarios for standalone SSD usage would appear in RAID0 configurations where you might see throughput as high as 900 MB/s -- maybe even more. But if an ISRT accelerated disk configuration eliminates your "hourglass moments," you'd notice the money still in your wallet before cursing at any "hourglass moments" for the ISRT performance.

My system has been problem-free since the SSD replacement, no hesitation, no loss of initial performance. It works (great) for me . . . And the difference is stark, when unhinging the SSD-cache temporariliy, to see how the HDD boots and performs by itself. All standalone hard disks, including the pricey VelociRaptor SATA-III -- are slugs by comparison.