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What's z68 going to get me?

A

abast

Member
I'm starting to get the upgrading jones and very tempted by the Asus P67 (probably sabertooth) boards with 2500K. But of course I'm starting to hear talk of z68.

Is it worth waiting for? What's it going to get me if I wait? What's the extra co$t of waiting?

Running q6600 now and starting to find my games and video coding getting slow.
And it's just been a while since I upgraded.
I just picked up an AMD6950 a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks for any advise or insight.
 
abast said:
Is it worth waiting for? What's it going to get me if I wait? What's the extra co$t of waiting?

Running q6600 now and starting to find my games and video coding getting slow.
Click to expand...

The wait is two days, so not much cost, really. Unless you need to upgrade now! (darn it)

What it gets you is:

  • Ability to use Built-in Graphics (on boards that expose it, some don't). Useful if your 6950 dies and you have no other video card to swap in while it's being replaced or fixed. Or you know for lots of monitors (built-in graphics supports 2 monitors).
  • Quick Sync video encoding hardware enabled by having access to built-in graphics. See this AnandTech article for an intro.
  • Intel SSD Caching (Rapid Storage Technology). Boost your HD speed by caching data on an SSD automatically. See this Tom's Hardware article for a preview. (Also contains more Quick Sync info.)
  • And if none of the above does it for you, Z68 could possibly bring cheaper prices on P67 boards, as the Z68s are supposed to come in at close to P67 price levels.
Good luck and join us on the Z68 early variants: Gigabyte UD4 vs. D2H (or the "awaiting Z68 release" thread) thread if you do decide to wait with us. 🙂
 
I'm sure z68 will be more expensive than P68; so take that into consideration as well.

I know the IGP versions will allow ocing of the IGP, but what about the CPU? I would have gone H67, but doesn't allow it. I use my SB for NAS and distributed computing, thats it; I do not need dedicated graphics on this system right now.
 
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Infrnl said:
I'm sure z68 will be more expensive than P68; so take that into consideration as well.

I know the IGP versions will allow ocing of the IGP, but what about the CPU? I would have gone H67, but doesn't allow it. I use my SB for NAS and distributed computing, thats it; I do not need dedicated graphics on this system right now.
Click to expand...

I'd imagine the boards that expose the IGP wouldn't therefore disable all the OCing benefits of the chipset, as it's being touted as an OC enthusiast board. In other words my best hypothesis is yes you can OC the CPU, I see no reason to suspect otherwise.
 
Infrnl said:
I'm sure z68 will be more expensive than P68; so take that into consideration as well.

I know the IGP versions will allow ocing of the IGP, but what about the CPU? I would have gone H67, but doesn't allow it. I use my SB for NAS and distributed computing, thats it; I do not need dedicated graphics on this system right now.
Click to expand...

Cost per 1000 Z68 chips vs P67 $6 per chip..... Cost isn't going to be a factor.
 
So what's happening tomorrow? Is that the first day companies can show what they have to offer? How soon should I expect to be able to order one and have it in hand?

Thanks all for the info.
 
Having read Anand's reviews today, I'm feeling pretty underwhelmed by Z68 given my particular motherboard needs. I just bought a P67 board + 2500K a few weeks ago and was worried that I would kick myself after Z68 came out. Now it seems like I made a fine choice.
 
I'm gonna pass SD altogether and wait for Ivy Bridge next year. I don't game anymore, so no need to hurry for an upgrade.
 
Again, as was said before, if you already bought a P67, the Z68 probably isn't for you unless you do a lot of video transcoding. But if you are upgrading now from an old platform to Sandy Bridge, the Z68 IS the motherboard for you.
 
SSD caching is the killer thing for me - not for the boot drive (I can afford a 120GB SSD for that) but for my games drive. Being able to add a cheap SSD to my cheap 1TB disk and have it run like a rocket and make all my games load very fast sounds great.
 
birthdaymonkey said:
Having read Anand's reviews today, I'm feeling pretty underwhelmed by Z68
Click to expand...

Me too. I was hoping for more power savings by using the IGP, but guess we'll have to wait for Nvidia's desktop version of Optimus (Synergy?) to see if it offers up greater power savings.

Dribble said:
SSD caching is the killer thing for me - not for the boot drive (I can afford a 120GB SSD for that) but for my games drive. Being able to add a cheap SSD to my cheap 1TB disk and have it run like a rocket and make all my games load very fast sounds great.
Click to expand...

This does sound good. Interesting that it seems to be a purely software solution, yet is only "unlocked" for use on Z68 at this time. This is as bad as Intel G1 SSD owners not being able to flash to otherwise seemingly identical G2 firmware to get Trim.

So, since there's no power savings and I don't transcode/encode, and I have all my games already on SSDs (okay, just the few I have installed), I think I'll pass on Z68 and stick with my P67.
 
birthdaymonkey said:
Having read Anand's reviews today, I'm feeling pretty underwhelmed by Z68 given my particular motherboard needs. I just bought a P67 board + 2500K a few weeks ago and was worried that I would kick myself after Z68 came out. Now it seems like I made a fine choice.
Click to expand...

You pretty much made the right choice unless you feel the overwhelming need to use QS or SSD caching
 
Pneumothorax said:
What's the point of so many Gigabyte Z68 boards without IGP support? Doesn't that negate the advantages of the z68 vs the P67?
Click to expand...

was thinking the same thing while looking through them. last board i bought was a giga and it's been one of my favorite to ever use, but now that i'm shopping for a z68 because of odd feature choices they seem to be out of the running.
 
TMPGENC can use the cpu to accelerate transcoding and use the GPU to accelerate it more. and use the QOSMIO (crystal?) to accelerate it even more.

so you get 10:1 (10 seconds of transcode to 1 second of real time) from the combinaton of GPU and sandy bridge.
 
Pneumothorax said:
What's the point of so many Gigabyte Z68 boards without IGP support? Doesn't that negate the advantages of the z68 vs the P67?
Click to expand...

PreferLinux said:
Easy. Virtu.
Click to expand...

Most Gigabyte Z68 motherboards don't seem to support Virtu (i.e. no iGPU video ports - no Virtu). Only the models listed here seem to do so:

  • Z68X-UD3H-B3
  • Z68A-D3H-B3
  • Z68MX-UD2H-B3
  • Z68MA-D2H-B3
And those all have video out.

The only Z68 motherboard I know of (and I don't know them all) that has no iGPU video ports but seems to have Virtu is the ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe.
 
Ahh crap. I totally missed that and its too late to cancel my UD4. Why the hell won't they include a feature that is one of the main reasons to get the motherboard?
 
aphelion02 said:
Ahh crap. I totally missed that and its too late to cancel my UD4. Why the hell won't they include a feature that is one of the main reasons to get the motherboard?
Click to expand...

That's the biggest question of the day. And preferlinux is wrong and blueknight is right, you NEED an IGP output port for virtu to work, (that's also why the new imacs are SOL with QS despite their use of Z68). I was all set to start buying a build for my brother, but now it's on hold trying to figure out which mobo to buy. Gigabyte is being extremely lazy by just dropping in the Z68 chipset in P67 mobos and just changing the name to save some cash. Seems cheezy to me.
 
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