In the world of building gaming PCs, this year has all been about Intel's spectacular Sandy Bridge CPU systems. Featured with the release of the sandy bridge systems was Intel's chipsets, P67 and H67 (along wit H61, a cheap version of the H67). P67 stood to be the fans chipset, providing overclocking capabilities and the best baselines of anything else around.
The second half of the present year brought us Intel's Z68 chipset. This proved to be the capstone on a brilliant release of patron level performance hardware. The Z68 motherboard took the very best of the p67 and the h67 to combine into a tour de force of hardware capacity. But because the z68 motherboard offerings are the apex of value available for sandy bridge CPUs, that doesn't mean that everyone desires to get a z68 motherboard.
The Z68 chipset mixed the overclocking capacities of the P67 with the on board video of H67. PC Gaming fans among you would question - why will I need on board video? That's a good question - for the main part you don't, and in the past youw ouldnt even use it . The on board video with Z68 however comes with a third party program called Virtu, which actively switches between the discrete video card and the on board video depending on which is better for the program you are using. When it comes to PC gaming nevertheless it isn't utilised and has no effect on performance.
The second feature of the z68 motherboard is SSD caching. This is a pretty unique and fascinating feature, especially considering where the z68 motherboard sits vis budget level. SSD's are a brilliant step forward for storage systems - they may soon replace the old high density disk drives as primary storage and for running systems, as they provide much higher transfer rates. The one issue is that they're rather pricey. SSD caching stood to bridge the gap for folks who wanted HDD costs (or already had HDDs they needed to use) but still wanted SSD speed. In this example, you obtain a cheaper SSD and use it as a cache for RAM acces from the HDD.
Overall these 2 features are unique and wonderful , but for the PC gamer they mean very little. The on board video switching will only be helpful to those game players who enjoy other activities like video encoding (where it is terribly handy). The SSD caching feature is truly for anyone that wants SSD speed at lower costs. SSD speed is useful for gamers who play games which feature lots of level loading and so on - such as world of warcraft, or RTS games like starcraft. Folks who play games like Crysis will find the SSD speed improvement doesn't affect gaming performance much in any way.
At the end, the Z68 represents a brilliant fusion of technologies to supply a feature rich motherboard offering for those of budget mind. One can definitely procure better performance than what the z68 offers by going with a P67 motherboard, a massive SSD and higher quality graphics cards - but then you'll be in a situation where you are spending 2x as much.
The second half of the present year brought us Intel's Z68 chipset. This proved to be the capstone on a brilliant release of patron level performance hardware. The Z68 motherboard took the very best of the p67 and the h67 to combine into a tour de force of hardware capacity. But because the z68 motherboard offerings are the apex of value available for sandy bridge CPUs, that doesn't mean that everyone desires to get a z68 motherboard.
The Z68 chipset mixed the overclocking capacities of the P67 with the on board video of H67. PC Gaming fans among you would question - why will I need on board video? That's a good question - for the main part you don't, and in the past youw ouldnt even use it . The on board video with Z68 however comes with a third party program called Virtu, which actively switches between the discrete video card and the on board video depending on which is better for the program you are using. When it comes to PC gaming nevertheless it isn't utilised and has no effect on performance.
The second feature of the z68 motherboard is SSD caching. This is a pretty unique and fascinating feature, especially considering where the z68 motherboard sits vis budget level. SSD's are a brilliant step forward for storage systems - they may soon replace the old high density disk drives as primary storage and for running systems, as they provide much higher transfer rates. The one issue is that they're rather pricey. SSD caching stood to bridge the gap for folks who wanted HDD costs (or already had HDDs they needed to use) but still wanted SSD speed. In this example, you obtain a cheaper SSD and use it as a cache for RAM acces from the HDD.
Overall these 2 features are unique and wonderful , but for the PC gamer they mean very little. The on board video switching will only be helpful to those game players who enjoy other activities like video encoding (where it is terribly handy). The SSD caching feature is truly for anyone that wants SSD speed at lower costs. SSD speed is useful for gamers who play games which feature lots of level loading and so on - such as world of warcraft, or RTS games like starcraft. Folks who play games like Crysis will find the SSD speed improvement doesn't affect gaming performance much in any way.
At the end, the Z68 represents a brilliant fusion of technologies to supply a feature rich motherboard offering for those of budget mind. One can definitely procure better performance than what the z68 offers by going with a P67 motherboard, a massive SSD and higher quality graphics cards - but then you'll be in a situation where you are spending 2x as much.
About the Author:
For 10 years, Joseph Robertson has been building computers and helping folks learn the way to build computers including topics like the Z68 Motherboard. Check out his blog to get more info on the Z68 Motherboard.
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