Before we get into this new motherboard from Intel, let’s first have a look at the new chipset that it uses. This chipset offers support for Intel’s new 2011 socket processors and it offers a whole host of new or improved features over Intel’s previous chipsets.
This new chipset does not feature Intel’s popular Smart Response Technology. This is unfortunate but many vendors will likely introduce their own version of this technology onto their boards. It does however feature native support for SATA 3.0. This chipset also lacks native USB 3.0 support though. This is something that you would think would have been resolved by now. This isn’t a huge deal because most of the 3rd party USB 3.0 controllers are fairly good.
This has been a greatly anticipated upgrade from Intel’s previous flagship chipset, the X58 that supported their 1366 socket processors. One of the most impressive features of this new chipset is something that is immediately noticeable when you take one of these boards out of the box for the first time. I’m talking about support for quad channel memory up to a whopping 64 gigs, with speeds up to 2400 MHz with overclocking. This new feature alters the way these boards are set up because you will now have four ram slots on either side of the CPU socket. There is a foreseeable problem with this. With the way these boards are laid out now some CPU heat sinks are going to have clearance issues. This will be particularly true if you plan to use tall ram sticks in conjunction with a large CPU heat sink.
Another impressive feature of this chipset is that it uses a single Platform Controller Hub that provides all of the processor to interface communications. This isn’t really new; it just means that Intel is continuing to use a single chip to run communications between the processor and the various interfaces. Intel has led the way in this regard. AMD still uses a north bridge and a south bridge to relay information between the processor and the motherboard interfaces. This single solution has the potential of reducing overall power consumption and heat generation. Intel’s new chipset supports up to 40 PCI express 2.0 lanes for video card expansion as well as 8 additional lanes for PCI express 3.0. This will provide a tremendous amount of expansion and bandwidth for video cards and other peripherals that use these expansion slots.
You’ll also notice how different this socket looks from all of Intel’s previous sockets. This is Intel’s new 2011 socket that we installed the new 3960X, 6 core processor into. This is Intel’s latest flagship processor that has produced some of the most amazing scores that we’ve seen so far for a consumer level processor. It’s going to be very interesting to see what the price point for these units is going to be and how well it will compare to Intel’s previous processors.
This board features a very aggressive looking thermal design and uses Intel’s Skull logo on the chipset heat sink. Overall this is one of Intel’s best looking and most flushed out boards that we’ve seen. It even has onboard power and reset switches and a post debug LED to troubleshoot boot errors. Intel has obviously put a lot of thought and effort into this board and it shows. There will be those that won’t care for the color scheme but it isn’t bad. The dark blue and black will go with most hardware and chassis that are on the market. Of course there are bound to be much more flashy designs that will be offered by the other vendors. Some of these boards will also have more features that will be geared towards different segments of the market.
Now that we’ve gone over some of the main features let’s have a look at this specific board. One of the first things that stands out is how flushed out this board is. There are three PCI express x16 slots, 2 PCI express x2 slots and a legacy PCI slot for expansion cards.
Here’s where we really get down to the heart of the matter. Is this new platform worth your hard-earned money? Well as far as pricing goes-. So these boards when you pair it with Intel’s latest i7 processor you’re looking at a fairly substantial amount of money. For this amount of money you have to expect enthusiast level performance.
We tested this system against Intel’s previous enthusiast level platform which was the X58 chipset. We ran all of our benchmarks with the latest Window’s and driver updates and we pitted this board against our Gigabyte G1 Assassin motherboard with 6 gigs of DDR3 1600 MHz ram and an Intel i7 980x processor at stock settings. For graphics we used an XFX HD 6950 with 1 gig of memory. We used a wide array of testes to put this system through as much overall stress as possible. Our results were nothing short of impressive. This new platform has proven to be a significant upgrade from the previous X58 platform that it replaces. This is particularly true with multi-threaded applications as was shown in the Cinebench score.
Overall this new platform is an improvement over the X58 but the cost versus performance is going to be the real factor. Of course there are going to be those that will go right out and purchase these new products without really paying any attention to the reviews. For most of us though we would rather wait a little while for all of the hype to settle before we make up our minds. Intel’s Z68 platform is still relatively new and their 1155 socket processors are still more than adequate for the enthusiast level market. My advice to those that are on the fence about this new platform is that they should wait for the proverbial dust to settle before buying into it. Given that there are still really good options out there for much lower prices this new platform still needs to be proven. I’m not even going to talk about AMD because they don’t even compete on the same level as Intel right now and haven’t for quite some time.
http://www.motherboards.org
