Z68 vs P67 - What's the advantage?

[dma0991]

That statement is incorrect. Still a lot of people believe that, for some reason, but the literature (and now my experience since I actually have it) is clear that its not the case.

A P67 does NOT take advantage of the Sandybridge processor built-in GPU features. The Z68 does. So does the H67, and that is the one that can't be overclocked (not the P67, which can be overclocked but can't use the built-in GPU.... Z68 can do both).

The limited view that so many seem to have is, "WTF... built-in GPU? But I have a discrete so duh". And yeah, back in the day that's right. Why would you care about a built-in GPU if you have a discrete? And back in the day, you wouldn't... because "built-in GPU" meant "I can't afford a discrete so I use the crappy built-in one". But this isn't "back in the day" anymore Intel's built-in GPU isn't meant to be your primary video source (although it can be, but it is worse than a discrete) but rather a COMPLEMENT to your discrete card, provided you have Lucid, which pretty much all Z68 do (they'd be retarded if they didn't). The primary feature of the built-in Intel HD2000/3000 system is the "Quick Sync" which let's you convert video from one format to another (for example, rip a DVD to MKV/MP4) with blistering fast speeds.

Of course I know all of that you said above. I just didn't see the need to elaborate that much to spoon feed every little detail. Besides, I didn't support the statement that P67 is a better choice. I did recommend getting a Z68 motherboard at the very end.

Thanks for your replies. It's good to see that chart and hear what the actual experience is. As I understand it, the Ivy Bridge chipset release is due this Friday, but the CPU chip itself is well over a year away. I could wait for the boards, but it looks like minimal gain and it's likely to take months to work out the kinks and for prices to settle down.

The Z68 Ext 4 Gen 3 looks attractive, except of the 94 reviewers at NewEgg only 44 (46%) gave it a 5, while 29% rated it 1 to 3. The other comparable Z68 boards are getting similar ratings, and often with a lot more 1's, i.e., really bad hardware and customer service experiences. Compare that with 70% 5's and 17% lower ratings for the ASRock P67 Ext 4 Gen 3, which is currently running a lot less $$. NewEgg reviews aren't a scientific sample, but close enough, and the comments are typically a good guide.

dma, all the parts you mention except the memory and cooler are already in place in my AMD set up. The memory, still unwrapped, came on sale for the same price as the DDR3-1600, and the cooler is awaiting the choice of mobo. The NewEgg reviews say there's plenty of room for a cooler on the ASRock P67 board. The CM 430 case, which is similar to mine except for the see-through, is only 0.3" more in the key dimension for a cooler (7.5 vs. 7.2").

Sometimes getting the hardware you want is a leap of faith, especially for early adopters who only decide upon the scarce availability of reviews during initial launch. I doubt you could go very wrong with Asus, Gigabyte, MSI or ASRock. The price you paid could tell a little bit about the quality of the board itself. A slightly more expensive board might have similar features compared to a cheaper board but the extra costs could be from better QA to minimize the possibility of you getting a lemon.

IB chipset will due pretty soon and IB should be available by the end of the month, not a year from now. Generally most ATX boards would not have clearance issues with heatsinks as they have sufficient space to work with. It is RAMs with tall heatsink that causes most of the headaches with air coolers. 0.3" is plenty when you're dealing with fans that are sometimes larger than the heatsink itself, plus you get the top perforation for extra exhaust fans. It is only a suggestion, don't mind about it if you already have some of the parts that you've mentioned earlier.

 

[s_mack]

Sorry you are having issues with converting files with quick sync, I think you need to realise however that your experience is not the norm (unless I am missing the thousands of people complaining about this online).

Perhaps you could look into fixing the issue rather than announcing that it just doesn't work.

Dude... if only you knew

I don't have time right now to detail the efforts I made... I was bloody well bent on getting it work right. Amazingly enough, there aren't thousands of people complaining, but you also won't find thousand of people that have tried it and are singing its praises! Shockingly, even still, there isn't really much going on with Quick Sync. Very few apps even support it, and the ones that do only barely do. Intel's own support forum only has a few unanswered questions. MOST people don't seem to understand it - they like the way they currently do it and couldn't care less to try. So most of what you'll find out there is conjecture and speculation, tossed in with a few unqualified bits of misinformation like the post I responded to above.

It does what its hailed to do... it is extremely fast. But judging by the applications that support it, its intention is to convert to portable formats... you ipod, etc... things that are smaller than a TV. And maybe its fine for that. But nothing states up front that is a limitation of its abilities! For a TV... the output is really quite poor. And that's after a couple of weeks of tweaking and trying every application out there.

You may have your preconceptions for some reason... but I'm not an idiot. I know what I know and I learn what I don't know before I just spout out rhetoric. The quality is not up to snuff. It is not well enough supported. Its not worth paying extra for.

- Steven

 

[s_mack]

Thanks for your replies. It's good to see that chart and hear what the actual experience is. As I understand it, the Ivy Bridge chipset release is due this Friday, but the CPU chip itself is well over a year away. I could wait for the boards, but it looks like minimal gain and it's likely to take months to work out the kinks and for prices to settle down.

The Z68 Ext 4 Gen 3 looks attractive, except of the 94 reviewers at NewEgg only 44 (46%) gave it a 5, while 29% rated it 1 to 3. The other comparable Z68 boards are getting similar ratings, and often with a lot more 1's, i.e., really bad hardware and customer service experiences. Compare that with 70% 5's and 17% lower ratings for the ASRock P67 Ext 4 Gen 3, which is currently running a lot less $$. NewEgg reviews aren't a scientific sample, but close enough, and the comments are typically a good guide.

dma, all the parts you mention except the memory and cooler are already in place in my AMD set up. The memory, still unwrapped, came on sale for the same price as the DDR3-1600, and the cooler is awaiting the choice of mobo. The NewEgg reviews say there's plenty of room for a cooler on the ASRock P67 board. The CM 430 case, which is similar to mine except for the see-through, is only 0.3" more in the key dimension for a cooler (7.5 vs. 7.2").

Don't rely so much on shopping site reviews... seriously. I make that same mistake all the time. I ended up with a shyte load of baby stuff that's absolute crap because of it lol.

Amazon, in particular, has LOADS of false-positive reviews. Spend enough time and you'll see the paranoids aren't paranoid... there are professional "reviewers" that pump up specific products.

Newegg... well, they just have a lot of morons posting So many (SO MANY!) times I'll see a stupid review of 1 star because someone says "its too expensive" or "its ugly" or something else and they clearly don't own it. I've seen products "coming soon" with 100+ reviews by people that couldn't possibly have any way of reviewing it yet! (case in point - the Asus Transformer Prime). Trust the "professional" reviews on hardware sites - not shopping reviews.

- Steven

 

[genegold]

It seems I misunderstood about the Ivy Bridge. The idea was to use the need to pull the mobo to put in a cooler as an opportunity to make the switch to Intel, but the latter can wait a bit to see what shakes out. Btw, one of the linked articles talked about video card makers needing time to come up with their versions of QuickSync, and Sapphire (HD7750) has done just that, from what I read.

While any purchase is a gamble, I do put stock in overall ratings, with some caveats of course. Independent (website) reviewers typically only get a sample of one, apply their expertise and then don't pay much attention to what's being reported by purchasers in the months or years afterward. That's the good news - and the bad. OTOH. on a site like NewEgg, and sometimes Amazon (major caveats), the samples are often relatively large. Take the current real case of a Z68 motherboard, highly regarded by indie reviewers, that's gotten a very disproportionate number of NewEgg reviews claiming bent pins and lousy customer service experience dealing with it. Those experiences have helped lead to a lower overal rating distribution. Should we automtically pass them off as cranks and incompetents? Before doing so, I think it's necessary to ask what makes them any different than the purchasers of boards that give much higher ratings. That's why I take see the difference between getting 70-75+% '5' ratings (or 80-95% 4-5 combined) and getting 40-55% 5's as very likely a real story, whatever it happens to be. That's where the comments come in - and intelligent reading, of course.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Intel® Quick Sync isn't the answer for everyone but it can help out in some applications. If you have a system that can tap into the Intel Quick Sync you will get better performance with it then what you would get from any video card on applications that can take advantage of it.

For me maybe the biggest advantage that Z68 boards have is that they have support for the IGP (Integrated Graphics on Processor) which means when I am troubleshooting a system the first thing I can do is remove the video card to cut out one possible trouble spot.

In the end the Z68 has some additional features that add value to my build. I have never used an S/PDIF or mSATA but they are things that I believe I might use in the future so I will look for them on my future boards.

 

[genegold]

For me maybe the biggest advantage that Z68 boards have is that they have support for the IGP (Integrated Graphics on Processor) which means when I am troubleshooting a system the first thing I can do is remove the video card to cut out one possible trouble spot.

That's what I was thinking too afterward, for both video card and monitor.

 

[s_mack]

The people with bent pins are just fools that screwed up their mobo and are looking to blame someone. There's just no way that any significant number of mobos are leaving the factory with bent pins. Intel isn't going to let that happen and neither are the manufacturers. There'd be a big recall that we all heard of if that was the case.

When I got my Asrock z68 "Fatal1ty" Gen 3 (which I am not recommending, btw) I have to admit it I was nervous putting in the chip because the latch mechanism works a little different than previous generations I've used. But I was careful and I read before assuming... and everything was fine. But with the pressure required to insert... yes, absolutely if you have something wrong you're going to bend the pins - no doubt about it. My board has plenty of bad reviews relating to this issue... and its b/s. The packaging was superb. There's just no bloody way the pins could be damaged prior to customer opening.

But hey, shop how you want to shop. That's your call. My opinion is that Newegg reviews are absolutely worthless and no suplement (or even a complement) to sound research.

- Steven

ps. No offense meant at all, but I'm going to unsubscribe from this thread so don't look for any more responses from me. I don't have the time but I have an OCD need to respond if I see