Z68 MB advices

[Woolala]

Hi,

My first post here, but i have a hard time choosing a Z68 motherboard...

Where i live there's a great deal on a MSI Z68a-GD65 motherboard. You can get free ram 2x2 (4GB) G.SKILL Ripjaws X 12800 CAS8 for no price increase. (I live in europe, so the price is 169e for the MB+ the free rams)

But i wonder what i should do:

-1/ Jump on this deal despite not knowing what this card worths? I didn't find any review online minus one review that says that this card is merely a P67a-GD65 MB with a Z68 chipset put in it. So i wonder if it's really bad compared to the GD80 version...?

2/ Go for a P8Z68-V (NOT the pro version) instead (145-150e) ? but i'll have to pay for rams. The "pro version" is that much better?

3/Wait a few months and get a P8 pro, or Asrock Extreme 4, or MSI GD80?

Also... is 4GB of ram enough these days (gaming and stuffs)? (Sorry for the dumb question but my current pc is VERY old by today standard so I'm not that well informed...

Can't spend an enormous amount of money on a new rig, so for now, i really have a hard time choosing a GD65 or P8Z68-V OR waiting for a price drop concerning the more expensive motherboards...

Thanks in advance if you can help me a bit.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Hi,

My first post here, but i have a hard time choosing a Z68 motherboard...

Where i live there's a great deal on a MSI Z68a-GD65 motherboard. You can get free ram 2x2 (4GB) G.SKILL Ripjaws X 12800 CAS8 for no price increase. (I live in europe, so the price is 169e for the MB+ the free rams)

But i wonder what i should do:

-1/ Jump on this deal despite not knowing what this card worths? I didn't find any review online minus one review that says that this card is merely a P67a-GD65 MB with a Z68 chipset put in it. So i wonder if it's really bad compared to the GD80 version...?

2/ Go for a P8Z68-V (NOT the pro version) instead (145-150e) ? but i'll have to pay for rams. The "pro version" is that much better?

3/Wait a few months and get a P8 pro, or Asrock Extreme 4, or MSI GD80?

Also... is 4GB of ram enough these days (gaming and stuffs)? (Sorry for the dumb question but my current pc is VERY old by today standard so I'm not that well informed...

Can't spend an enormous amount of money on a new rig, so for now, i really have a hard time choosing a GD65 or P8Z68-V OR waiting for a price drop concerning the more expensive motherboards...

Thanks in advance if you can help me a bit.

I see your dilemma. I have heard from others here at the forums that they think the MSI board is a good one.

Always in this business, the buyer takes a gamble with newer technology. The cautious would wait to see other consumers act as guinea-pigs, and then make a purchase based on the outcomes -- BIOS revision history, limits to over-clocking, etc. But here, the Z68 is a hybridized successor to the P67 and H67 chipsets. Already, one BIOS revision for the ASUS board (only because I observe this firsthand) has been posted as a download.

ASUS has produced good boards along with boards whose limitations posed some frustrations. It's a competitive business. A bad year with models that grow less popular can always be succeeded by another generation of products for a new generation of processors, memory etc.

There were too many good reviews for the P8Z68-V-Pro from on-line sites with solid testing laboratories, and I decided to take my chances with it. It seems to have been a good gamble.

It also turns out that the P8Z68-V has all the features of the "Pro" board except the extra Marvel SATA-III controller -- two SATA-III plugs in addition to the two provided for the Intel ICH controller. I also produced an analysis here on the forums to show how the "Deluxe" version of the P8Z68 offers some extras that can be had easily in additional purchases adding up to the the difference, but that the Deluxe does not have VGA/DVI plugs for the Sandy Bridge onboard iGPU. A matter of addition and subtraction explains the price differential.

I admit my bias, but it is based on the information I had before I bought the board (V-Pro) and the personal experience (information) I had since I got it running.

You won't really lose much in getting the P8Z68-V -- the Marvel controller has some criticisms coming from users who say it really doesn't perform to SATA-III expectations, anyway. That is, it works -- but some benchmarks show it lagging behind the INtel onboard controller.

EDIT: Also, given the prices right now on RAM, I'd go for the 2x4GB 8GB kit (did you say the RipJaws DDR3-1600's?). The "GBRL" RipJaws of any speed are quite compatible with the ASUS board, and are rated "XMP" -- requiring only 1.5V in their voltage spec.

 

[Woolala]

You won't really lose much in getting the P8Z68-V -- the Marvel controller has some criticisms coming from users who say it really doesn't perform to SATA-III expectations, anyway. That is, it works -- but some benchmarks show it lagging behind the INtel onboard controller.

EDIT: Also, given the prices right now on RAM, I'd go for the 2x4GB 8GB kit (did you say the RipJaws DDR3-1600's?). The "GBRL" RipJaws of any speed are quite compatible with the ASUS board, and are rated "XMP" -- requiring only 1.5V in their voltage spec.

Thanks a lot for the fast reply. I suppose i'll go for the non pro version if i choose an an asus board.

As for the ram, here where i live in Europe, the Rams are not as cheap as what americans can buy on newegg (sadly, and they don't ship in Europe), so what the store who sell the Msi GD65 offers for free if you buy it are these rams : tp://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=350

If i have to buy the same separately, it costs me around 40-50e shipped. While the 8GB version of the same rams costs around 90e. That's a 40e difference.

While i guess 8GB will be the standards in coming years, saving 40 euros would help a lot, so that's why i was interested in the GD65 deal.

But as you see, there's NO professional reviews for the GD65 so i'm not really sure about a blind buy on this product. Yet this deal will expire soon, so i'll have to choose.

Thanks again for the help and advices

 

[GCC]

I'm in the same boat as you and was looking at the same offer. I'd like to see some reviews comparing the MSI Z68A-GD65 to the ASUS P8Z68-V (or pro). If I can find out whether or not the MSI offers the same performance as the ASUS I will snatch it up. There's only like 4 reviews (all 5 star) on newegg about the MSI. If someone could point either of us in the right direction on these you'd knock out two birds with one stone so to speak. Good luck on your decision Woolala.

 

[Harvey]

Newegg shows four reviews with five eggs for the MSI Z68a-GD65. I generally trust user reviews on Newegg because they allow negative opinions, their reviewers tend to be more experienced than those on (for example) Amazon, and my personal experience with the MSI's products and tech support has been extremely positive.

 

[you2]

4GB is plenty on a windows system (use windows 64 to get the full 64 gb). I favor asrock over msi; not because msi is a bad board but the board won't help you if anything goes wrong (bad ram timing; bad setting for cpu; ...). I have the p67-gd65 and have zero issues with it.

Btw all the boards have glitches so be prepare for a few oddities (like bdos on suspend).
-
Last but least is the price on the baord with the free ram decent; or are they effectivily charging you for the ram by inflating the price of the board ?
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btw i would not wait for the asus or msi gd80 boards; i would wait either for price to drop or maybe for the asrock board. If the gd65 has everything you need then the gd80 is just gonna add more stuff you don't need (and a higher price point). Also waiting allows a few more rounds of bios fixes.
-
On the gd65 (p67). I had zero issue building this system; my comment is based on other folks frustration (i.e, boot loops).
The biostar and asrock boards have diagnosis led; not sure how the asus handle these things (bad ram or cpu configuration)

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Newegg shows four reviews with five eggs for the MSI Z68a-GD65. I generally trust user reviews on Newegg because they allow negative opinions, their reviewers tend to be more experienced than those on (for example) Amazon, and my personal experience with the MSI's products and tech support has been extremely positive.

I've made a casual study of reviews, advertising and customer behavior since I began building computers with greater frequency.

Here, "frequency" is also an important word for another reason. Customer reviews at a place like NewEgg provide the most reliable information as a cumulative descriptive statistic: the total number of reviews, suggesting a product's popularity based on diffuse sources of information.

When we evaluate the "5-star" and 4-star versus 0, 1 or 2 star ratings, there will be a bias. People most frustrated with ANY product are more likely to express their frustration about it, especially if they had to go online with Newegg and make an RMA request. While there, they will vent that frustration in reviews. So there will be a bias in the percentage of low versus high ratings. For people whose product works, who are satisfied with their purchase, there won't be such an intense incentive to hype the product in a customer review.

On early motherboards on the high end loaded with features with facilitation for over-clocking, I see a lot of frequency counts showing only 40 to 60% 5-star ratings. But there may be reasons for this deriving from the customer, rather than the product.

Turns out that the comparison review that influenced my own choice DOES INDEED INCLUDE the MSI board and the Gigabyte entry. Somewhere else, there was an ASUS versus ASRock comparison.

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


Tech Report doesn't infect its judgments with any bias, and they do serious testing, apparently with serious testing-lab facilities.

You can find other sources of information that have a bias. I submit that there is such a thing as "implicit advertising payola." It may be difficult to prove, but it could be done by tracking comparison reviews of several types of product over a few years and running frequency counts of expensive advertising displays, weighting them for their appearance in the issue that includes the review article. I may have noticed this about Maximum PC Magazine -- for instance, when they gave a comparison review of some 8 heatpipe coolers, gave a "KickAss 9" score to a certain manufacture and model, then posted the two page ad paid for by the manufacturer and hyping that particular model on the page after the review. Anandtech had in the meantime compared some 20 or 30 heatpipe coolers, with the top-rated based on rigorous scientific lab tests trumping the 2nd-place and lower entries reviewed by the Max PC Magazine review by a stunning differential of performance. You could rate the "KickASS 9" against the winner of the Anandtech review with simple axiomatic logic, and find it lacking. for instance, the old transitivity axiom, or "A>B, B>C, therefore A>C." In other words, Max PC chose its selection -- possibly to hype the Kickass 9 product, for which they in turn were paid handsomely for a two page ad.

Even so, the recent MaX PC Magazine features a "Kickass 9" for the ASUS P8Z68-V-Pro in a review, followed by the last page full-feature plug for the board. I couldn't find any big ASUS advertisements, but check again. If there were, then the Tech Report, Tom's Hardware and Bjorn 3D reviews say a lot more.