Motherboards

The Z68 is another in Intel’s range of motherboard chipsets that support its much-acclaimed Sandy Bridge Core-i chips, and it offers a number of benefits over lower-end chipsets. Aside from the option of running onboard graphics and unlocked overclocking — possibilities with a limited overlap of appeal, we suspect — the other marquee feature of the Z68 chipset is Smart Response Technology (SRT).

Compared to the somewhat unusual features of the two other Z68 motherboards we tested here, it’s a little more difficult to pick out a defining feature of MSI's Z68A-GD65-B3. If anything, this board is remarkable for how solidly unassuming it is. For the mid-range price of $230, you get all the usual gamer/enthusiast goodies, including x8/x8 Crossfire/SLI support, eight SATA and USB ports, plus decent media chops with both coaxial and optical S/PDIF audio out thrown into the bundle. Basically, everything you’d want to play games fast or pump out high-quality media. Nice.

ASUS deserves full points for the amount of enthusiast-friendly features it’s crammed on its P8Z68-V PRO motherboard. It offers snappy performance, CrossFire/SLI support at x8/x8 and spades of storage, including eight SATA and USB ports apiece, split between the old 3Gbps/2.0 and 6Gbps/3.0 standards, respectively. But where we really think this one has potential is as a lounge room PC.

With its new GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard, Gigabyte has taken the SRT idea and run hard, integrating a 20GB SSD that’s specifically dedicated to Intel’s caching technology. And you know what? It actually works. We enabled SRT and ran some typically time-consuming tasks, like booting Windows and loading Crysis, so that the system could ‘learn’ which files to cache. After a few runs of each, we were rewarded with boot and level load times slashed by roughly 50%.

We've only seen one AMD Llano APU so far — the A8-3850 — but unfortunately its performance was a bit disappointing, despite it being the fastest model available (at the time of writing). That's unfortunate, because the associated motherboards that we've seen are pretty great, especially those based around the higher-end A75 chipset. With the A75 offering support for six SATA 6Gbps and four USB 3.0 ports as standard, it’s hard to fault AMD for generosity and forward thinking with this motherboard generation.

If you really want to see what AMD’s plans for CPU/GPU integration have to offer, Gigabyte's GA-A75-UD4H is a great place to look. While the performance of AMD's A8-3850 Llano APU isn't much to write home about, the capabilities of the A75 chipset are. As well as the six SATA 6Gbps and four USB 3.0 ports standard with the chipset, and Gigabyte has gone all out to add further appeal to this particular board, too.

How's this for value: for A$109, MSI's A75MA-G55 offers six SATA 6Gbps ports inside and a couple of USB 3.0 ports outside for fast storage, solid build quality and ample expansion options with PCI-E x1, PCI and another four USB 2.0 ports thrown in as well. Sound and vision are pretty well catered for, too, with VGA, DVI-D and HDMI video output and Realtek ALC887 audio offering acceptable eight-channel sound. There's even x16/x4 CrossFire though, frankly, that’s a bit pointless. Still, for just over a hundred bucks, that’s pretty impressive, covering all the features most

MSI’s Sandy Bridge offerings have tended to offer a great mix of features, performance and price. For the most part, this microATX Z68 board is no different. Regardless, there’s still a lot here to like, with the MSI Z68MA-ED55 offering ample high-end features. Storage consists of six SATA ports (four SATA 3Gbps and two 6Gbps), USB 3.0, FireWire and optical S/PDIF out. Multi-GPU support is also present, albeit only in as a stunted x16/x4 CrossFireX option, and MSI throws in its OC Genie overclocking hardware/software.

Given that Intel's Z68 motherboard chipset is supposed to be the upmarket Sandy Bridge platform, you might think we’d be a little circumspect about recommending this decidedly budget motherboard. With only one graphics slot, no DisplayPort output and a distinct lack of FireWire and eSATA ports, the ASRock Z68 Pro3 doesn’t exactly exude luxury. (Maybe some diamantes would help?) But while some more expensive Z68 boards may offer richer feature sets, this $140 board strikes us as an excellent, inexpensive choice for modular upgraders.

Gigabyte recently introduced an X range of boards, to sell alongside its current Sandy Bridge offerings, with an exhaustive list of inclusions familiar to owners of their generously spec’d previous-generation gear. The Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 is the first of these motherboards that we’ve seen and, as promised, it’s a welcome return to the company's old ‘more is more’ strategy.  Which is to say this lower-mid-range board is exceptionally well stocked with bells and whistles, given its price.