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The Intel Z68 Express Review: A Real Enthusiast Chipset

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Test Setup

Test Hardware
ProcessorIntel Core i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge), 3.3 GHz, LGA 1155, 6 MB Shared L3
MotherboardASRock Z68 Extreme4
MemoryKingston Hyper-X 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1333 @ DDR3-1333, 1.5 V
Hard DriveSeagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
SSD CachingIntel X25-V 40 GB SSDSA2MP040G2R5Intel SSD 311 20 GB (Larsen Creek) SSDSA2VP020G201Crucial m4 256 GB CT256M4SSD2
GraphicsPalit GeForce GTX 460 1 GB
Power SupplySeasonic 760 W, 80 PLUS
System Software and Drivers
Operating SystemWindows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
DirectXDirectX 11
DriverGraphics: Nvidia 270.61 RST: 10.5.0.1022Virtu: 1.1.101
Benchmarks
PCMark VantageVersion: 1.0.1.0
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2Ultra High Settings, 4xAA / No AF, 1680x1050, Second Sun, 45 second sequence, FRAPS
Adobe Photoshop CS5Version: 11 Filtering a 16 MB TIF (15000x7266) Filters: Radial Blur (Amount: 10; Method: zoom; Quality: good) Shape Blur (Radius: 46 px; custom shape: Trademark symbol) Median (Radius: 1px) Polar Coordinates (Rectangular to Polar)
WinRAR 4.00 x64Custom Tom's Hardware Workload ~343 MB
Norton Internet Security 2011Deep File Scan, C: Drive
Crysis 2A Walk In The Park, High Quality settings, vsync off, 1680x1050, Fraps
World of Warcraft: CataclysmUltra Quality Settings, 8x AA / 16x AF, From Crushblow to The Krazzworks, 1680x1050 , Fraps, DirectX 9 Rendering
105 Comments Comment from the forums
  • LuckyDucky7 11 May 2011 14:41
    The Intel 311 might be one of the weirdest products I've seen for a while.

    It doesn't have an impact on games and apps which are too large to be cached and 60 GB drives that blow the 311 out of the water can be had for 20 bucks more.

    And as far as getting QuickSync, it's about time. Should have been done in P67 (along with USB 3.0 support and 6 x SATA III ports) is all I can say.
    Reply
  • acku 11 May 2011 14:51
    In an ideal world, that's what we should have seen, but Lucidlogix's Virtu really makes Z68 worth it.
    Reply
  • hmp_goose 11 May 2011 15:11
    What is this "QuickSync"? My people do not have this word …
    Reply
  • ghnader hsmithot 11 May 2011 15:12
    Sir and madam working at intel.You make us customers look retarded.Thank you.
    Reply
  • Olle P 11 May 2011 15:18
    mayankleoboy1is this realy the platform for enthusiasts? with almost daily news of lga2011 ... its a little bit hard to get too happy with thisYes it is!
    I am going to buy myself a Z68 mobo and a Core i5-2500K within a few weeks.

    If you buy yourself an LGA2011 based platform we can get together a month from now and compare the results!
    ... or rather not, since it will take at least half a year for the 2011 to become available.

    Let's face it. For at least a full month from now the Z68 will be the enthusiast platform.
    Then AMD's competition will arrive, and we'll see how much of an option that is.
    Reply
  • acku 11 May 2011 15:34
    hmp_gooseWhat is this "QuickSync"? My people do not have this word …
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833-4.html
    Reply
  • ta152h 11 May 2011 16:01
    A good comparison would have been striping hard disks to compare against caching with EEPROMs. You'd have more capacity, a lot more, and wouldn't have a technology that dies after a certain amount of writes, which is dubious to use for something that's being used as a cache, and written on rather consistently.

    Performance of Raid 0 would be higher than a single disk, and you'd be increasing performance without a loss in capacity (per dollar). Or, if you wanted the same capacity. you could get higher performance disks, and compare them that way.

    If I want to spend an extra $100 to make my computer faster, will it? Duh, of course. That's all this article is saying. Is it the best way to spend that $100? Well, that much isn't clear at all. It wasn't compared with much of anything else. Two high capacity disks striped, and two higher performance disks (but lower capacity) striped, versus one disk and EEPROMs. All should be the same cost. It's more useful information. You'd have three fundamental choices - huge capacity, high "Winchester" performance, and low capacity with EEPROM caching. You could do a search on the capacity trade-offs pretty easily, but the performance difference between this caching and a high performance magnetic disk in RAID 0 is much less clear. Obviously, the hard disks would win a lot of tests, and could be a better buy for a lot of people.

    It is worth looking at.
    Reply
  • Olle P 11 May 2011 17:33
    Another little detail:
    Larsen Creek was the work name for Intel's SSD.
    The final name now in use is Larson Creek, as can be easily read in the picture.
    Reply
  • flong 11 May 2011 17:43
    Hey, did I read this right, the theoretical maximum of the 2600K and 2500k chips is 5.7 ghtz???? Has anyone ever got a cpu that high? The most Ive read about is 5.0 ghtz and that was with water cooling. So does 5.7 ghtz exist?
    Reply
  • 11 May 2011 17:50
    My GoD!

    Intels output is capped at 1920x1200? Below my native res! I've been forced to put my buy on hold...

    What were they thinking?
    Reply