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From £90 To £130: Five Z68-Based Boards, Compared

From £90 To £130: Five Z68-Based Boards, Compared
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Value-oriented system builders celebrate new-found performance and features as Intel continues pushing its mainstream platform towards the high-end. Today, we draw a line in the sand and consider five motherboards priced between £90 and £130.

Intel’s Z68 Express chipset represents the pinnacle of mainstream performance, with Quick Sync video transcoding times unmatched by any general-purpose graphics processor at the high-end.

Unfortunately, the contradiction of a mainstream platform capable of the fastest available performance divides some motherboard designers over how this market should really be divided up. In fact, there's one popular board vendor that doesn't even have a mid-ranged Z68-based offering; everything is intended for more enthusiast-oriented environments.

Z68's issue centres on value. The benefit of Quick Sync means you either have to use Intel's anaemic integrated graphics core or Lucidlogix's Virtu software. And obviously, if there's a drop of power user blood running through your veins, you'd build a Z68-based machine using integrated graphics and Virtu. Otherwise, you'd simply go the H67 Express route. One of our engineering friends even gave us a specific price of $20 [Ed note: this translates to roughly £12.50 but here in the UK, we don't have any friends to offer us money], off the record of course, to upgrade the chipset from P67 to Z68 and add the Virtu license. That money could be put towards a couple of extra controllers (USB 3.0 or SATA 6Gb/s) and a beefier voltage regulator on a P67-based model, undercutting a manufacturer’s ability to present Z68 as a more attractive implementation

On the other hand, Z68 Express sports a second unique feature that targets buyers who can’t justify the expense of a large solid-state drive. SSD caching allows small flash-based devices to act as nonvolatile cache for a larger hard disk, giving buyers on a budget a performance tease, as reads get accelerated over time, while writes aren't helped much at all.

What this means for Tom’s Hardware is that a market accustomed to sub-£100 P67-based motherboards must be asked to consider spending about a tenner more in order to retain the same on-board components, upgrade to the Z68 chipset, and gain access to a Virtu license. With that set as our target limit, all but one of the boards submitted for today’s comparison was completely qualified.

Editor's note: According to our brothers across the pond, MSI had to do some price finagling to ensure its board met the $160 price limit required to make this round-up. You should also know we couldn't find this board on any of our favourite UK shopping sites (even Amazon came up empty), though that could change any time.

Z68 Motherboard Features
 ASRock
Z68 Pro3
(~£100)
Biostar
TZ68A+
(~£92)
Gigabyte
Z68XP-UD3
(~£130)
Intel
DZ68DB
(~£112)
MSI
Z68A-GD55
(UK pricing not available -- around €133 according to Heise)
PCB Revision1.036.01.0Initial4.0
ChipsetIntel Z68 ExpressIntel Z68 ExpressIntel Z68 ExpressIntel Z68 ExpressIntel Z68 Express
Voltage RegulatorFive PhasesFive PhasesSeven PhasesFive PhasesEight Phases
BIOSP1.30 (05/19/2011)F510 (05/10/2011)F1 (05/19/2011)0014 (04/13/2011)M3 (06/10/2011)
100.0 MHz BCLK99.8 (-0.2%)99.8 (-0.2%)99.8 (-0.2%)99.8 (-0.2%)99.8 (-0.2%)
Clock GeneratorZ68 IntegratedZ68 IntegratedZ68 IntegratedZ68 IntegratedZ68 Integrated
Internal Interfaces
PCIe x1612 (x16/x4)2 (x16/x0 or x8/x8)12 (x16/x0 or x8/x8)
PCIe x1/x43/01/03/02/03/0
Legacy PCI22232
USB 2.02 (4-ports)3 (6-ports)3 (6-ports)4 (8-ports)3 (6-ports)
USB 3.0NoneNone1 (2-ports)None1 (2-ports)
IEEE-1394NoneNone11None
Serial Port111None1
Parallel PortNone1NoneNoneNone
FloppyNoneNoneNoneNoneNone
Ultra-ATA 133NoneNoneNoneNoneNone
SATA 3.0 Gb/s44434
SATA 6.0 Gb/s22422
4-Pin Fan21232
3-Pin Fan422None3
FP-AudioYesYesYesYesYes
CD-AudioNoneNoneNoneNoneNone
S/PDIF I/OOutput OnlyOutput OnlyOutput OnlyNoneOutput Only
Power ButtonNoneYesNoneNoneYes
Reset ButtonNoneYesNoneNoneYes
CLR_CMOS ButtonJumper OnlyJumper OnlyJumper OnlyNoneJumper Only
Diagnostics PanelNonePass/Fail LEDsPass/Fail LEDsNoneNone
I/O Panel Connectors
P/S 2111None1
USB 2.042864
USB 3.022222
IEEE-1394NoneNone11None
NetworkSingleSingleSingleSingleSingle
eSATANoneNoneNone1None
CLR_CMOS ButtonNoneNoneNoneNoneYes
Digital Audio OutOptical OnlyNoneOptical OnlyOptical OnlyOptical + Coaxial
Digital Audio InNoneNoneNoneNoneNone
Analogue Audio53656
Video OutDVI-D, HDMI, VGADVI-I, HDMI, VGAHDMIDVI-I, HDMI,
DisplayPort
DVI-D, HDMI, VGA
Other DevicesNoneNoneNoneNoneNone
Mass Storage Controllers
Chipset SATA2 x SATA 6Gb/s
4 x SATA 3Gb/s
2 x SATA 6Gb/s
4 x SATA 3Gb/s
2 x SATA 6Gb/s
4 x SATA 3Gb/s
2 x SATA 6Gb/s
3 x SATA 3Gb/s
1 x eSATA 3Gb/s
2 x SATA 6Gb/s
4 x SATA 3Gb/s
Chipset RAID Modes0, 1, 5, 100, 1, 5, 100, 1, 5, 100, 1, 5, 100, 1, 5, 10
Add-In SATANoneNone88SE9172 PCIe
2 x SATA 6Gb/s
NoneNone
Add-In Ultra ATANoneNoneNoneNoneNone
USB 3.0Etron EJ168A PCIeASM1042 PCIe2 x Etron EJ168A PCIeD720200F1 PCIe2 x D720200F1 PCIe
2 x VLI VL810 Hub
IEEE-1394NoneNoneVT6308P PCI
2 x 400 Mb/s
VT6315N PCIe
2 x 400 Mb/s
None
Gigabit Ethernet
Primary LANRTL8111E PCIeRTL8111E PCIeRTL8111E PCIeWG82579V PHYRTL8111E PCIe
Secondary LANNoneNoneNoneNoneNone
Audio
HD Audio CodecALC892ALC892ALC889ALC892ALC892
DDL/DTS ConnectNoneNoneNoneNoneNone
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  • 0 Hide
    doive1231 , 12 July 2011 04:02
    £90 is more than I ever spend on a mobo. I can get most features that I want around £70 after a while.
  • 1 Hide
    AlexIsAlex , 12 July 2011 15:40
    What I'd really like to see on mobo review articles is a measure of cold-boot time (time from power on to windows loading logo). The new UFEI bioses should be able to do the power on, POST, USB and SATA initialisation etc. very quickly, but it seems most manufacturers have only used UFEI for pointless graphics.
  • 0 Hide
    Silmarunya , 20 July 2011 04:16
    AlexIsAlexWhat I'd really like to see on mobo review articles is a measure of cold-boot time (time from power on to windows loading logo). The new UFEI bioses should be able to do the power on, POST, USB and SATA initialisation etc. very quickly, but it seems most manufacturers have only used UFEI for pointless graphics.


    New technology that promises efficiency gains but ends being used only for fancy graphical effects. Isn't that a brief summary of the modern software industry?
  • 0 Hide
    Anonymous , 26 December 2011 08:19
    Asrock mobo has highest Temp Above Ambient, which means that all the fans would be overworking and that means higher RPMs for all the fans in the box. And it is surprising that Asrock has least power consumtion. And this comes in as a factor to reject a mobo, as high RPM fans means more noise. In that case Gigabyte yet again has a good reason as a prefered board.

    Anyhow curious to know hoe could this board with such high temp diff can consume so less energy, as ultimately heat is also energy and higher difference means higher wastage. Any clues??