should i. go for Z77 or go Z68?

[M1kkelZR]

I know its a stupid-ish question, but as I want to build in may/june and a few Z77 boards are available here, I thought to ask anyway. As I saw a nice Asus z77 board that has all the nice stuff like quad sli and quad Xfire but I'm not sure if I should invest in Z77 or just settle as it would be for z68

 

[MineIQ1701]

The only thing Z77 offers is USB 3.0 on the chipset, but other than that it feels more like maintainence than anything big, I would feel comfortable skipping this chipset.

 

[Laquer Head]

I know its a stupid-ish question, but as I want to build in may/june and a few Z77 boards are available here, I thought to ask anyway. As I saw a nice Asus z77 board that has all the nice stuff like quad sli and quad Xfire but I'm not sure if I should invest in Z77 or just settle as it would be for z68

depends on you budget..etc..

But Z68 isn't settling, its a great setup! I'd assume Z77 is going to have the 'new' price premium attached to it also.

Also, with a BIOS update you can do 22nm Ivy Bridge with the Z68's

 

[M1kkelZR]

yeah i was first looking at the Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z which is a uATX board, priced at 165 euros. then i saw the Z77 Asus Starts-With-A-P-And-Ends-With-Pro board (i cba to look for it now ) and that was priced at 187 euro's. and the Z77 has 3 pci-e slots and maximus IV has 2. I want atleast 3 so i can go SLI and have a physx card just for fun lol. there is a Gigabyte Z77 board thats priced at a 132 euros, which has 3 pci-e slots and all dat stuff.

 

[Mishkin]

Where are you guys finding these Z77 boards?

 

[Laquer Head]

I think they officially launch next week.. 7th or 8th of April I believe.

 

[Mishkin]

I think they officially launch next week.. 7th or 8th of April I believe.

Thanks.

 

[spirit]

Z68 is still a brilliant chipset. It does support Quad-SLI and Quad-CrossfireX. The ASUS P8Z68-V PRO GEN3 is a fantastic board and that particular board also has PCI Express 3.0 on it as well as USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s. Although the current generation Sandy-Bridge CPUs don't support PCI Express 3.0 (but the slots on the board are backward-compatible), the Ivy-Bridge CPUs will and with a BIOS update this board will be able to support the Ivy-Bridge CPUs. There are also a number of other Z68 GEN3 boards which have PCI Express 3.0 on them as well.

 

[M1kkelZR]

Where are you guys finding these Z77 boards?

I'm seeing the ones i can get on alternate.nl a dutch pc site thing

Z68 is still a brilliant chipset. It does support Quad-SLI and Quad-CrossfireX. The ASUS P8Z68-V PRO GEN3 is a fantastic board and that particular board also has PCI Express 3.0 on it as well as USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s. Although the current generation Sandy-Bridge CPUs don't support PCI Express 3.0 (but the slots on the board are backward-compatible), the Ivy-Bridge CPUs will and with a BIOS update this board will be able to support the Ivy-Bridge CPUs. There are also a number of other Z68 GEN3 boards which have PCI Express 3.0 on them as well.

yeah i might just go for that board you mentioned. i dont really care about chipsets too much, just wanted to know what benefits i'd get and seeing this i dont get a whole lot more

 

[Mishkin]

I'm seeing the ones i can get on alternate.nl a dutch pc site thing

Thanks.

 

[M1kkelZR]

oh and on azerty.nl there are a few msi boards available but thats not too important now lol

 

[spirit]

i dont really care about chipsets too much, just wanted to know what benefits i'd get and seeing this i dont get a whole lot more

A P67 board will do you just fine. They're a bit cheaper than the Z68 boards and most support SLI and CrossFireX. They're a tad slower though, but you probably wouldn't notice it. Doesn't look like Z77 is going to offer a whole lot more over Z68.

 

[M1kkelZR]

A P67 board will do you just fine. They're a bit cheaper than the Z68 boards and most support SLI and CrossFireX. They're a tad slower though, but you probably wouldn't notice it. Doesn't look like Z77 is going to offer a whole lot more over Z68.

Yeah I might just go for a z68 board. As long as I can go 2way SLI and PhysX card then I'm fine. but the Z77 boards ive seen have 3 PCI-E x16 slots instead of 2 X16 and 1 x8

 

[spirit]

As long as I can go 2way SLI and PhysX card then I'm fine

Yep 2-way SLI will work just fine with a Z68 board. Why'd you want a PhysX card?? Pretty much every NVIDIA card since the days of the 9800 have had PhysX on them, eliminating the need for a PhysX card. NVIDIA bought Ageia, who were the guys who made the PhysX cards, and then NVIDIA put the PhysX technology on their GPUs. You can have a dedicated PhysX card if you want (throw in another NVIDIA card in your system and set it to render PhysX in the NVIDIA control panel) but with two high-end cards in SLI you probably won't need one.

but the Z77 boards ive seen have 3 PCI-E x16 slots instead of 2 X16 and 1 x8

Yep most do - but 2-way SLI will still work. With a Z68 board you can use 2-way SLI and Tri-SLI, and you can also use Quad-SLI with two dual-GPU graphics card (such as the GTX 590) and the same goes for CrossFire.