ASUS P8Z68-V Pro

Introduction

The Sandy Bridge launch has been a bumpy road for Intel. While the processor performance is great and it is extremely power efficient, the Cougar Town (6 series) chipset recall made a dent in the sales of the new platform. The truth is the 6 series chipset defect has been slightly blown out of proportion, and that it is less severe than has been portrayed. For one, the chipset probably will not fail, and even if it does, the symptoms won't show for 3-5 years.

The bigger issue with new 6 series chipsets, P67 and H67, from Intel is rather that it halved the market along a very rough line: enthusiasts (for whom the P67 was intended) and mainstream/budget users (for whom the H67 was intended). This allows enthusiasts to overclock the processor, however, the P67 requires a discrete graphics card, and will not let users tap into the Sandy Bridge's on-die graphics or reap the benefits of one of Sandy Bridge's best features--the Intel Quick Sync.

Quick Sync is probably one of the biggest selling points of the Sandy Bridge architecture. Yes, Sandy Bridge is extremely fast, and it rivals even the Core i7 980X in some applications. It is also very power efficient and overclocks easily. But Quick Sync stands out among these improvements simply because it outsrips any other means of video transcoding in terms of performance and image quality.

Unfortunately, for enthusiasts that chose P67 boards, this feature was not accessible to them as the integrated graphics is disabled on the chipset. Users who choose H67 chipset gets the benefit of the QuickSync, but unfortunately, they are limited by the overclocking potential as the Turbo Ratio has been locked.

Today’s launch of the Z68 Express chipset is aimed to merge the P67 and H67 chipsets together, offering enthusiasts the ability tap into the Quick Sync Video, and allowing mainstream users greater overclocking potential in everything (including BCLK, Turbo Ratio and iGPU).

Intel Z68 Express Chipset

The Z68 Express is the prodigal son of the marriage between the P67 and H67 Express chipsets. It brings the best of the both P67 and the H67 together. Among the new features include:

• Switchable graphics: the Sandy Bridge integrated graphics can be used in conjunction with a dedicated graphics.
• Intel Smart Response Technology: which is Intel’s name for SSD caching--adding an SSD to a mechanical hard drive to boost the system performance.
• Intel Identity Protection Technology: A dynamic code generated within the PC allowing sites to authenticate a trusted PC. For home-users, this is probably less important, but it will be crucial and useful in a corporate environment.

Of course, by marrying P67 and H67 and allowing users to tap into the integrated graphics, Intel brings greater overclocking potential with the Z68. Now, everything inside the processor can be overclocked--the graphics and the processor. Paired with the K series processor, users would be able to overclock with the multiplier like on the P67 boards, but at the same time, overclock the processor by raising its frequency.

Other than these two new added features, the Z68 is essentially the same as the P67, sportin 20 PCI Express 2.0 lanes, of which 16 are dedicated for the graphic cards. The system still is only capable of supporting SLI in dual x8 configuration. Tests have shown that dual x8 configuration does not have any impact on the graphics performance, so the fact that the x16 is being split into the dual x8 should not be an issue.

The remaining 8 PCI Express 2.0 lanes are shared by the other ports such as SATA 6Gbps, network, and USB ports. There is still no native USB 3.0 support and motherboard vendors still have to rely on third party chip makers for that, and obviously we do not see Thunderbolt. For these two features, we would probably have to wait until the next generation of chipsets from Intel. The 8 PCI Express 2.0 lanes are starting to get slightly congested with so many things being attached to them.

There are two 6Gbps SATA ports, four 3Gbps SATA ports and 12 USB 2.0 ports. For displays, the chipset supports HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, including eDPI, with lossless digital audio support. This is the same support as is on the H67 Express chipset.