P67 or Z68 for 2500K

Hi all,

I’m in the middle of choosing the upgrade to my old Q6750 :)

I have decided that I will go with 2500k as I want to overclock but just a bit no extremes.

I would like to ask for some advice with two things:

1. P67 or Z68? I have read quite a bit on the differences and new stuff which come with Z68 but is it really worth extra £? As far as I know it is only SSD caching and switching between on board GPU and dedicated? Is there anything else important which might push me to buy Z68?
2. Asus? Gigabyte or maybe ASRock? I think ASRock is the only one with the PCIe 3.0? Any point of investing into that now?

Any advice and comments are welcome :)

1) You've covered the main differences, so you're the only one who can answer if those things are worth it to you. If you did a lot of transcoding to the point of buying third party software to take advantage of quicksync I'd say go for the Z68, otherwise the p67 is better value for money.

2) Go for whichever has the features you like the most. Gigabyte have a UK centre which might mean problems are easier to sort out, but Asus have a nice graphical BIOS. PCI-E 3.0 isn't supported by the 2500K, so ignore that feature unless you're planning on upgrading to an Ivy Bridge CPU down the line. I don't think x16 PCI-E 2.0 is going to be limiting any time soon.

Thanks for quick response :)

I know but it’s hard to decide with the new stuff... I don’t think i will encode any videos so that quite easy but I can’t find any real answer saying that switching between onboard GPU and dedicated will save energy and therefore money...

I hope that buying this P67 or Z68 will allow me in future to upgrade for Ivy without need for new motherboard so it might be good to have PCIe 3.0 straight away, but I’m a bit worry that this first 3.0 port will be bugged as nobody test it yet... :)

Asrock P67 Extreme4 Gen3 stands out as a product that doesn't have many faults and Z68 just seems like a bloated version of P67 with some stuff added that is likely more trouble than it's worth. I could be wrong but I'm not willing to spend the extra money on Z68.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ed^chigliak

Asrock P67 Extreme4 Gen3 stands out as a product that doesn't have many faults and Z68 just seems like a bloated version of P67 with some stuff added that is likely more trouble than it's worth. I could be wrong but I'm not willing to spend the extra money on Z68.

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I have similar felling for Z68 but wanted to make sure I'm not missing something.

I still can't decide between Asus or Asrock though... :P

The main advantage of having a default IGP (in Z68) I find is that in case of any issues with your graphics card at any time.. you have an option to go back and use IGP. Have helped me a number of times in the past.

Bochin did you decide? Some people use the IGP in these CPUs for accelerated transcoding of video formats, which looks great in practice, but apparently can lead to loss of video quality. So not worth the time saving.

The z68 + virtu was the best way to do this, but now its off the table (for me at least) I am happy with my mid range P67 and think you should go by best value and what expansion slots you need (and speeds)

seeing has you can get a Z68 based M/B for the same price or less than the P67, i would go with the Z68 and you also get the Gen 3 option for future use.