67 Motherboard

[clintonkeenan]

Hey guys

With my new build plan finally in sight, I have been overwhelmed with Mobo choices. At first, I was looking at the Asus P8P67 board, but then I saw the PRO model for $20 more, so why not? Then, I saw the Sabertooth P67, and I was quite appealed by that, but I saw no performance gains for the $60 extra. Then the Z68 boards come out, and I see the SSD caching, that I am not too sure of the performance gains in terms of speed. Can someone explain?

Here are my intentions:
i5 2500k CPU
Raid 0 Caviar Black
Small boot SSD (possible)
1 GPU Mid-high end

What board would you guys recommend? Please keep it Asus as my PC store only has Asus and Gigabyte, and I want UEFI.

Thanks

 

[Emperus]

A Z68 chipset board brings the best features from the previous two LGA 1155 chipsets namely quick sync (still requires a supported board) and overclocking (of course requires a k suffix CPU). SSD caching is an extra feature. So surely grab yourself a Z68 chipset board. I'll recommend the Asus Z68 V-Pro for the board. It is somewhat pricey though. But well worth it.

 

[clintonkeenan]

A Z68 chipset board brings the best features from the previous two LGA 1155 chipsets namely quick sync (still requires a supported board) and overclocking (of course requires a k suffix CPU). SSD caching is an extra feature. So surely grab yourself a Z68 chipset board. I'll recommend the Asus Z68 V-Pro for the board. It is somewhat pricey though. But well worth it.

Thanks.
It is only $50 NZD more, but will the SSD caching be worth it over spending the extra towards a normal SSD? And for a gamer, the proposition of having integrated graphics outputs instead of extra USB ports isn't to appealing. Quick sync looks good, though.

 

[fullofzen]

In my opinion, the SSD caching will probably never be worth it. If it were me, I'd save that extra cash for your next video card upgrade. You'll definitely notice improvement in graphics performance but hard drives are so fast already that it won't make a material difference in your gaming to have the game load in 20 seconds instead of 30 seconds.

I would just go for the P8P67 standard version. The only real things you get with the Pro is the ability to do SLI and the Intel network chip (rather than realtek).

 

[clintonkeenan]

I see. I would rather wait the extra 10 seconds for stuff to load than spend an extra $150 on all the stuff needed to do SSD caching. Plus, (I know it's kinda shallow, but) I really don't like having an RGB input on the back of my high end PC, if you know what I mean. Is there any advantage to the Intel network chip?

 

[fullofzen]

I see. I would rather wait the extra 10 seconds for stuff to load than spend an extra $150 on all the stuff needed to do SSD caching. Plus, (I know it's kinda shallow, but) I really don't like having an RGB input on the back of my high end PC, if you know what I mean. Is there any advantage to the Intel network chip?

Linux supports Intel network chips better than the do Realtek network chips. So that's a plus for the Pro.

Asus claims that the Intel chip has lower latency. I've used Intel network chips and I'm currently using a realtek chip and either way, I get a ping of 56ms to the BF2 server I use...

I would caution you against looking down your nose at the RGB/DVI input that's in the back of Z68 boards -- the HD2000/HD3000 graphics you get as part of the Sandy Bridge architecture is not too bad for everyday tasks. If you were to decide to hand your computer down, you could hang on to the graphics card and allow a family member or whatever to use the HD graphics.

The HD graphics could also serve as a backup to a video card failure.

Food for thought.

 

[Emperus]

Thanks.
It is only $50 NZD more, but will the SSD caching be worth it over spending the extra towards a normal SSD? And for a gamer, the proposition of having integrated graphics outputs instead of extra USB ports isn't to appealing. Quick sync looks good, though.

Am not too fond of the SSD caching feature. It is quick sync and the overclocking ability that is exciting with a Z68 board. And for 50 extra bucks, it is surely worth it.

 

[fullofzen]

Am not too fond of the SSD caching feature. It is quick sync and the overclocking ability that is exciting with a Z68 board. And for 50 extra bucks, it is surely worth it.

Just as a note, the only overclocking ability that Z68 offers that P67 does not is the ability to overclock the HD3000/HD2000 onboard graphics. If you're not using quicksync or the onboard graphics, there is no difference in overclocking ability between P67 and Z68.