We already photographed it at CeBIT this year but new pictures of the MSI Z68A-GD80 surfaed, a motherboard with Intel's Z68 chipset. This motherboard is expected to be released within a few weeks.

The Z68A-GD80 should be one of MSI's top of the range models, although it's possible that we'll see a Big Bang Z68 board from MSI and we'd expect at least two or three models below it. There isn't much missing on the Z68A-GD80, but strangely enough it's not as feature packed as the P67A-GD80 which seems like a step backwards.

The slot layout is identical of the two boards with three x16 PCI Express slots in a x16/dual x8 and x4 configuration, two x1 PCI Express slots and two PCI slots. However, MSI has dropped both of the USB 3.0 hubs of the P67A-GD80 and as such we're left with two rear and two front USB 3.0 ports, compared to six rear and four front for the P67A-GD80. On a more positive note MSI has moved one of the eSATA ports internally so there are now seven SATA ports and only one eSATA port which makes a lot more sense.