ASUS P8Z68 V PRO Intel Z68 review

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Finals Words and conclusion

 

Finals Words and conclusion

Okay so we need to breakup this conclusion into two segments, the chipset and the actual ASUS mother board review. Let's start off with the chipset. The Intel Z68 chipset takes the best of both worlds in the series 6 chipset, monitor IO wise the H67 connectivity and IGP support and the power performance and tweaking features of the P67 chipset. Combined they make a strong duo and as such I welcome the Z67 chipset very much. It's especially the H67 end-users that can life with the IGP that would like to overclock a little. It's a much missed feature for them and the Z68 closes that gap. Bare in mind though you will need a K model Sandy Bridge processor in order to overclock.

The new Intel Smart Response Technology is something interesting but we feel will be very limited to a small group of enthusiast users that understand and know what they need to do before getting it setup properly. The idea is simple, use an SSD to cache the most used data of the operating system HDD. The downside here is a fairly complicated setup and an investment of an SSD. And though we feel once you purchase an SSD you will not want to compromise with the HDD injected into that core data, it might end up as a sound solution. The performance increases are impressive none the less and combined with a small cheap SSD, this might be an excellent alternative for the budget minded that dream of SSD performance.

Though not a specific Intel feature, pretty much all Z68 will come with graphics switching technology, whether that comes from NVIDIA (Optimus) or Lucid Virtu will be dependant on the ODM (Original Device Manufacturer), but with Intel having a sizable share in Lucid, we think most Z68 motherboards will see the light of Virtu, allowing your motherboard to quickly switch in-between the Sandy bridge IGP and the dedicated graphics card. Admittedly, the current control software is a joke to look at and it isn't stable either. None the less, you do get to choose from the best of both worlds, nothing is faster then transcoding a movie with MediaShow Espressso over say a Core i7 2600K processor with the now enabled benefit of Quick Sync being active. Normally when a dedicated graphics card is installed, these feature would be lost. And that's where Virtu will help out, you assign your IGP to that transcoding job whereas for gaming the dedicated graphics card kicks in. We like the idea, the implementation itself needs to get a  whole lot better though. But it is a decent enough start.

The ASUS P8Z68-V-PRO motherboard itself then, yeah we like it. It's that typical ASUS design that again is striking and offering a truckload of features. ASUS takes that Z68 chipset and then adds, adds, and adds. The end result is a motherboard with massive overclockability, great baseline performance and the industry's best EFI BIOS implementation. Seriously, the ASUS EFI (GUI based) BIOS rocks hard man, it's a great GUI and easy to navigate in environment. This motherboard is based of the new 14-phase Digi+ VRM to power the CPU plus anther two for the memory. The board is loaded with features including two additional SATA 6G ports (Marvel), USB 3.0, BlueTooth, the card features four DIMM sockets, two PCI Express x1 slots, two legacy PCI slots, as well as three PCI Express x16 slots, but don't expect surprises for multi-GPU support, since the Z68 chipset is identical to the P67 in this respect - just a pair of discrete graphics cards are supported in the x8/x8 configuration.

All in all the component usage is top notch again and the baseline performance even a hint faster then P67. The board layout is excellent, everything is well placed, you'll have plenty of FAN headers and will see the now expected as normal micro buttons for reset/power but also micro switches for EPU, TPU and MemOK.guru3d-recommended_150px.jpg

Yes, the ASUS P8 series are sound and rock solid and as such they are hard to beat. The combination of this motherboard with Intel's Z68 and Lucid Virtu mode is interesting. Really, we feel that Z68 is what should have been H67 and P67 these two chipsets stirred up a lot of confusion. We do know for sure that hardware wise this board is a winner. Tweaking wise you'll achieve the same results as on P67, you can clock a K series Sandy Bridge processor quite quickly to roughly 4.5 to 5.0 GHz. At the moment of writing this article  the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO is listed for roughly 175~185, and though not cheap, that seems to be a fair price. As such we can very much recommend the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO.

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