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Hardware Discussion Thread
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moolers2000 wrote: »There is also a 5% discount code for memoryc.ie in the Bargain Alerts thread on the top of this forum.
I know, because I posted it there
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Having done a bit of reading into the two main LGA 1155 Motherboards P67 and Z68. It seems as though Z68 is just a slight advancement of P67. So what I was just hoping for is a small discussion of the two boards and which is the better one to get for the "average" user, based on the cost/feature difference of the two. After all this is a Hardware Discussion Thread
So for a few details, both the P67 and Z68 boards are for use with Intels LGA 1155 socket.
They are both great for overclocking the unlocked series processors.
The main difference between these boards is, the Z68 has Smart Response Technology(SRT) and has the ability to use the Integrated Graphics chip of the CPU.
SRT really for any kind of gaming or high end build has no use, since a 64GB SSD is more than enough to keep a Windows 7 install along with all applications and maybe a game or two. And with that, in a low/mid/budget build the cost of a 32GB/40GB drive is probably over budget, so even though it's a very cool technology for a average user it has no use, so I'm going to ignore SRT in my evaluation of the two boards.
The ability to use the Integrated Graphics Chip of the CPU along with your Discrete Graphics Card through the use of Lucid Virtu software. What Lucid Virtu trys to achieve is, it will set the CPU's integrated GPU as the default GPU for your system and once there is a need for the discrete GPU(i.e. you start a game) it will switch all graphics rendering to the discrete card. If this worked correctly it would be great as things like video encoding will be done on the CPU's integrated GPU which is very good for that type of work and the discrete GPU will do all the gaming stuff.
Assuming it's a perfect world and Lucid Virtu does it's job perfectly this technology won't benefit the average user much since not many people encode videos very often so just using the discrete graphics card will be perfectly fine for most people. Now I have read in a few different places that Lucid Virtu isn't exactly perfect yet(although they are improving it) and for some applications/games it will reduce performance.
So I'm thinking for the extra cost of a Z68 board it's not really worth buying. And now for a disclaimer
None of this is concrete, I could be very easily be wrong about most of what I just said, so I was hoping for input/opinions from the experts on what they think about the two.
Sorry for the long post.0 -
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You mention about the Integrated graphics being used as the primary, presumably that would mean a lower power usage when not playing games/ hd videos?
I found it strange that when the z68 boards were first released there was only 1 or 2 asus and a whole raft of gigabyte boards, yet none of the gigabyte boards had any video outs
Kind of pointless paying for a board when one of its main selling points is not useable. 0 -
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are you using the SSD as boot or SRT ocean?
Nope, as cache; I'm caching a single hard disk on which both my C (boot) partition and my games partition are on.
If anyone is curious, here's my machine booting up, then launching various programs I've put into startup like Windows Live Mail, Skype, Tweetdeck, and (I think) one or two others:
P.0 -
It seems Z68 doesn't need to actually provide the two new technologies, so those boards probably don't even support Lucid Virtu.You mention about the Integrated graphics being used as the primary, presumably that would mean a lower power usage when not playing games/ hd videos?
I found it strange that when the z68 boards were first released there was only 1 or 2 asus and a whole raft of gigabyte boards, yet none of the gigabyte boards had any video outs
Kind of pointless paying for a board when one of its main selling points is not useable.
And doing a bit more reading, it doesn't even seem to cut power consumption for certain things, like on idle Lucid seems to increase power draw. (based on this article). Although there might be improvements in the software since that article making Lucid a little better.
I kind of have dismissed SRT as not being any use to me personally as I have no issue keeping my computer clean. But I guess for less tech wise people SRT would be a handy thing to have as they will get impressive speeds without the problem of keeping things organised but using an SSD as the boot drive does have slightly better speeds.I have to say, for the extra €20
...I think it's worth it.P.0 -
I typed a long reply to the SRT thing a few days ago but my phone browser decided to delete everything instead of post it when I went to post reply. I was so annoyed I didn't bother retyping. if you have a large SSD (ahem in the future or if your loaded can do it now) but adding to futureproofness all the same, you could use a workaround that some guys came up with, to use a small portion of the SSD as a cache for your HDD while maintaining a majority for a boot drive. win win situation really. only problem was that the SSD had to be tricked into a RAID config so it lost its TRIM support, something that should get remedied in the future with either good garbage disposal at FW level or TRIM support for RAID config.
in other news, and the reason I'm postings now, Gigabyte just updated their p67 and z68 BIOS to support 22nm architecture. good reason to get one of their boards then instead of a competitors. personally, I didn't get 1 because I think they did a half arsed job with their 'touch BIOS' but if you can look passed that, future proofed to take ivy bridge lines is a nice bonus and something I hope other guys are able to do, particularly Asrock
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http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2964-7.html This might be helpful for anyone looking for comparative cards, and who got confused by ati's latest naming
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i used to get sata cables from them and other bits for next to nothingAlot of negative feedback in the threads regarding that item from dealextreme
They have a pretty cool website though takes ages to deliver so you cant be in a rush to receive them occasionally id forget that i even ordered stuff when it arrived in the post it took so long. appears that they have a UK based warehouse now though.
all the reviews looked good though, aside from the thing having poor range (4ft) which kinda sucks, but not the end of the world.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olu2NMTnaw0
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