ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Motherboard Review

A Closer look at the Intel Z68 Chipset

The Intel Z68 chipset has one huge advantage over both of the previous Intel 6 series chipsets. When choosing an H67 motherboard there was no shortage of options. There was what I would like to call a flaw in the design with H67. There wasn’t any way to overclock your processor! The only way to overclock your processor was to toss it into a P67 motherboard. If you wanted features like Intel Quick Sync Video and the ability to overclock your K series processor, you were up the creek without a paddle!

In steps the Z68 chipset! Now you can have the both of best worlds. The ability to run all of the features that come with the Intel integrated graphics, as well as the ability to blow up, I mean overclock, your processor!

Above we can see the basic layout of the Intel Z68 chipset. Much like (ok identical to) the Intel P67 chipset, the Z68 chipset supports 16 PCI Express lanes in a pair of configurations. The first configuration available is for a single graphics card in which all lanes are available there. The second configuration splits the 16 lanes into two sets of 8 lanes each. It is possible the most notable difference between the Intel Z68 chipset and the P67 chipset is that the Z68 has the integrated graphics available to use. I know that you’re probably saying, integrated graphics? Who cares! I’m gonna run the latest discrete card so I can play my solitaire really fast! Well, that’s fine and dandy, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of the features that Intel’s integrated graphics offer.