What's z68 going to get me?

[evident]

wow, that's a load of crap. it seems like the MB situation for SB is still FUBAR.

 

[aphelion02]

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.

No, there's no technical reason you do need it, however you do need the Lucid license for Virtu, and that seems to not be bundled with the UD4 and higher boards (coincidentally those without a iGPU output. I'm really pissed off about this situation because it amounts to Gigabyte refusing to pay the $10-15 license on their higher end boards. There is also a complete the lack of clear info about this. I just cancelled my UD4 order, and may be forced to move to the Asus Pro or Asrock Extreme4 version. It seems the highest board that supports the iGPU is UD3H, I may decide to settle for that if it comes to it (the black PCB is sweet...).

 

[Viper GTS]

I've been holding off replacing my launch Gigabyte P67A-UD5 in hopes that Z68 boards would be out in a reasonable timeframe. I had planned to get a UD7 equivalent Z68 board but since Gigabyte seems to have lost their way I ordered a ASRock Extreme4 yesterday.

The best part is I'll end up +$100 after returning the P67 board to Frys.

I needed the onboard video because I'm tired of switching in and out of SLI to run my three monitors. The third video output will be extremely handy. SSD caching is essentially a non-event for me as I already have a dedicated OS drive.

Viper GTS

 

[soundasleep]

OK, this may be a dumb question, but here goes. I'm configuring a new system build and I'm CONSIDERING going without a dedicated video card and getting a 2500k, with an H67 or a Z68. The question...does using the built-in GPU of the 2500k require the use of the main system RAM, since there's no dedicated RAM? I assume it does, can't see how else it would work.

 

[Zap]

The question...does using the built-in GPU of the 2500k require the use of the main system RAM, since there's no dedicated RAM?

Probably. Shouldn't impact you much unless you are doing single channel RAM or only going for 1GB or something silly like that.

With that being said, it might be beneficial to go for faster RAM if it isn't cost prohibitive, since the IGP will eat up some of the memory bandwidth.

 

[soundasleep]

Yeah, hmmm...not liking that. I'll have 8GB of RAM but I'll potentially need it for the multitrack audio/plug-in processing I'll be doing. I was thinking it might be nice to go without a video card, cut down on cost & noise - since I'm primarily doing audio stuff. But I don't want to risk it.

Sorry for the semi-threadjack...

 

[Hogan773]

Yeah, hmmm...not liking that. I'll have 8GB of RAM but I'll potentially need it for the multitrack audio/plug-in processing I'll be doing. I was thinking it might be nice to go without a video card, cut down on cost & noise - since I'm primarily doing audio stuff. But I don't want to risk it.

Sorry for the semi-threadjack...

For $50 you can get a decent video card that will be way more powerful than your Intel Graphics.......if you're worried about the system diverting resources for graphics, this is a relatively small cost in the overall scheme of a CPU/mobo/etc purchase.

 

[sticks435]

Hmmm what to do. I picked up the 2500K and AsusP8P67 Pro microcenter combo about 3 weeks ago, but have been sitting on it disputing the price of the mobo with them and waiting for Z68. I have a dedicated 120 Intel 510, so SSD caching doesn't really float my boat and I don't currently transcode, but if I wanted to upgrade to Z68 or an IB CPU later, I'd be SOL trying to sell a P67 board I think.

 

[SeanFL]

Building a new machine in the next couple days for audio & video editing. Nothing taxing on a video card, so I was contemplating a similar setup soundasleep was mentioning. i7-2600k and use onboard video.

Trying to decide between Gigabyte and Asus for a micro atx motherboard. Since the boards are really new and there is not much review info, would either be a fine choice for this build? Any thoughts on who builds a better board over the past year or so?

Sean

 

[RobDickinson]

P67 boards will take IB cpus from what Intel have said.