Intel Sandy Bridge 4-Way Motherboard Roundup - PAGE 1

The initial release of the Sandy Bridge platform brought two new Intel chipsets to the market; the H67 and P67 Express. Both featured exceptional performance due to their support for the new core architecture, but the rub was that only the H67 chipset had the on-board hardware to support video output from IGP built into all the Sandy Bridge processors. This effectively meant anyone without a discrete graphics card, or users wanting to utilize Quick-Sync, had to roll with the H67 Express chipset which not only caps the memory at 1333MHz, but also has all the overclocking functions locked, thus preventing the user from increasing the frequencies in the BIOS.

The third iteration in the Sandy Bridge chipset series is the Z68 Express chipset, which is essentially a combination of the H67 and P67 chipsets with some extra functions thrown it for good measure. Of the two previous generation chipsets, the Z68 has more in common with the P67 chipset. The reason being that it of course supports all the current generation Sandy Bridge processors as well as overclocking, dual PCIe x16 slots, USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s. However, where the new chipset differs is that it is able to utilize the HD G3000 IGP, unlike the P67.

(Diagram of the Z68 Expres Chipset)

Beyond just being able to support video output, the Z68 chipset is also equipped with Lucid Virtu software that allows both a discrete graphics card and Sandy Bridge IGP to be used in conjunction with each other. This is done via the Virtu program sending the command stream to either the GPU or IGP depending on the workload. When gaming, the stream will be sent to the graphics card which will yield the best gaming results. When running video editing programs or playing back HD content, the data stream will instead be sent to the on-die HD G300 graphics processor, which supports Intel's Quick Sync, InTru 3D and Insider technologies. One potential upside of this is that when the IGP is active, the system will not be using as much power as it would if the GPU was all doing the work.

Additionally, the Z68 chipset adds a new feature dubbed Intel Smart Response Technology. This implements storage I/O caching to provide users with faster response times for things like system boot and application start-up. In other words a user can combine a standard HDD and SDD in one system. The SSD will store small bits of data (cache) of frequently used applications , which can be quickly accessed by the system. The main HDD then can be used to store data, but won't slow down the system due to long response times thanks to the SSD.

In this roundup Neoseeker has four motherboards on the chopping block. All of them will be put through the same testing processes and judged accordingly. Running through the gauntlet today is a single motherboard from ASUS, two from Gigabyte and one from Sapphire. Most of the motherboards utilize the Z68 chipset detailed above, while the ASUS motherboard uses the P67 chipset.