Which Z68 mATX board?

freestyla

ASUS Maximus IV GENEZ-Z or MSI Z68MA-ED55 (B3)?

Please help to choose.. apparently this MSI has those Hi-C caps which can take heat up to million ish celcius thus superb for overclocking but Asus has very good reputation too.

What about IvyBridge - these both support it?

af_thefragile

I just ordered the maximus gene cuz asus has good reputation of making goid quality boards and it looks sweet!

I dont think you could go wrong with either though the maximus also has a nice audio chipset...

freestyla

Main reason I'm changing from present Asrock is that I can't pass 4.3GHz :P and I believe either of this two will do closer to 5ghz.

What about PCI-E gen 3 then? if it's coming soon and worth wait? Maybe PCI-E 2.0 is already old technology in a year?

af_thefragile

You'll probably be waiting a few more months before pci-e 3 will come to the mATX mobos.
The z68 mobos were released fairly recently and I don't see them updating them anytime soon. The p67 mobos might get updated in a few months maybe.

MSI does have a few mobos with pcie3 though you can't really buy them anywhere. I'ld say it'll probably be towards the later part of this year when we'll see the updated mobos with pcie3.

If you can't wait till them, both those mobos are really good. I read about people who OCd the Asus board to over 4.5ghz without any trouble.

Here's the forum for the Asus board if you wanna check it out: http://www.asusrog.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?116-Maximus-Series-Motherboards&


Also yeah, the z68 mobos support Ivy Bridge. Well, the Asus ones do I know that.

deconduo

freestyla wrote: »

Main reason I'm changing from present Asrock is that I can't pass 4.3GHz :P and I believe either of this two will do closer to 5ghz.

What about PCI-E gen 3 then? if it's coming soon and worth wait? Maybe PCI-E 2.0 is already old technology in a year?

What cooler do you have and what sort of temperatures are you getting? What voltage are you at to get 4.3GHz and how much have you tried to get higher? The limiting factor might not be the motherboard.

freestyla

af_thefragile wrote: »

You'll probably be waiting a few more months before pci-e 3 will come....

Ok, and PCIE 3 mobo will need PCIE 3 support at gfx card anyway right? if you want to use all that 32x speed?

I'm not that hard core gamer anyway so I think should go for either of these two now and enjoy the best Sandy Bridge could offer.

Also some mobo like Gene-z + PCIE 3 port will cost at least 200eur which is simply too much for me.

MSI does have a few mobos with pcie3 though you can't really buy them anywhere. I'ld say it'll probably be towards the later part of this year when we'll see the updated mobos with pcie3.

[FONT=verdana,geneva]it's MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3)[/FONT] and just read Guru3D couldn't spot any performance difference because of gfx card not supporting PCIE3.

If you can't wait till them, both those mobos are really good. I read about people who OCd the Asus board to over 4.5ghz without any trouble.

Here's the forum for the Asus board if you wanna check it out: http://www.asusrog.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?116-Maximus-Series-Motherboards&

Also yeah, the z68 mobos support Ivy Bridge. Well, the Asus ones do I know that.

Thanks for link, that's sooo dedicated site for Republic of gamers.. makes you wanna join the club

deconduo wrote: »

What cooler do you have and what sort of temperatures are you getting? What voltage are you at to get 4.3GHz and how much have you tried to get higher? The limiting factor might not be the motherboard.

Cooler is Noctua NH-U9B SE2 and right now with 1 fan. I enjoy silence
Case has 2x12cm and 1x14cm fans.
@ 4.3GHz:
CPU temp at idle is 32C, at Prime95 load 68C.
CPU voltages is AUTO. RAM voltage fixed at 1.65 as per XMP.
Tried to lock CPU voltage at 1.2 but couldn't load the Windows, so left it at AUTO.

Should I add another Noctua CPU fan to produce push-pull effect?
Well there are two case fans around CPU which are pulling air out so doubt extra CPU fan would be much more efficient and I would rather not produce much more noise.

But also I guess limiting factor is my OC knowledge. I used to OC successfully with AMD Socket A and Intel 775 but SB has so more things to take in concern. Also I find it pretty hard to find correct information probably due terminology in BIOS (UEFI) + all little abbreviations differences people use on forums.. for example when talking about voltages.. so confusing seriously, what is the most correct way of OC Asrock Z68 Pro3

deconduo

Yeah its the CPU voltage thats limiting you I would guess. Try starting at 1.3V and seeing at what speeds its stable at. Then slowly bump up the voltage .01V at a time and do a P95 test to check stability and temperatures. You want temps under 75C and don't exceed 1.35V

freestyla

Moved this to OC forum.

I think will choose Asus board but will read more reviews about MSI if it performs at close to 5ghz too, it's a bit cheaper than Asus.

af_thefragile

Here's another thread at overclockers.net for the asus board if you wanna read through it:
http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherboards/1004219-asus-maximus-iv-gene-z-owners.html

BaconZombie

Just a note that the PCI 3.0 controller is built into the Ivy Bridge CPU so you the board may have PCI 3.0 slots but they will not work as 3.0 untill you install a Ivy Bridge.

Even if they install a control on the board you will not get the full speed due to the overhead and other bottlenecks.

freestyla

BaconZombie wrote: »

Just a note that the PCI 3.0 controller is built into the Ivy Bridge CPU so you the board may have PCI 3.0 slots but they will not work as 3.0 untill you install a Ivy Bridge.

Even if they install a control on the board you will not get the full speed due to the overhead and other bottlenecks.

Allright.. so for the PCIE 3.0 to work full 32x speed we need all of these with that support?
- graphic card
- mobo PCIE 3.0 port
- CPU

Aah too fast progress in this area :mad:

Fluffy88

Just like hard drives using SATA3, there will be graphics cards coming out in the next few months with PCIe3.0 support as a big selling point for them when in fact it will make no difference to their performance. At the moment a single graphics card can't make full use of the bandwidth of a PCIe2.0 lane so there is no point in increasing the bandwidth of the lane until something needs that extra bandwidth. Not sure how this holds for SLI/Crossfire if PCIe3.0 can do x16/x16 then that might give some dual GPU's a bit of a boost.

Having said that, there has been some efficencies introduced with PCIe3.0 so even though your 6970 doesn't use the full bandwidth of PCIe2.0 there will be less lag between your GPU and your CPU on PCIe3.0. So there will actually be a small performance increase to be had when using it. But again like the zombie made from pigs said until you have an Ivy Bridge CPU you won't get any benefits from PCIe3.0