Hardware What is the Intel Z68 chipset?

Does smart response need to be used for your boot drive, or can it be paired with a secondary drive?

E.g I have an 80gb ssd as my boot drive. It has windows, office and a few other applications on it but there certainly isn't space for my steam directory.

My steam directory sits on a 1tb samsung spinpoint f3. Would I be able to use smRtboost to speed this up?

 

As mentioned in the article, Smart Response should work on any disk(s) you set up in the correct way, not just the boot drive. As we pointed out, you could indeed use it for a games-only drive.

 

Anyone else kinda tired of seeing new Intel chipsets released every few months without any REAL need and improvement? Sure you don't have to buy it but whatever their complete dicking around just makes me even more glad to be on AMD.

 

Great, then this does sound like a worthwhile feature to me.

 

For us Intel users the best thing to do is only consider upgrading every 6th chipset release (so that means once every 12 months). Basically ignore all the in-between releases since they will only bring a few new features no one needs.

 

Can't you just take that 40GB SSD and define it as the swap space in your system, without going through all this SRT bull?

And don't modern GPU's already spin down the 3D rendering portion of their chip when running simple desktop apps? Or am I missing something here?

 

What is i-mode and d-mode? I'm out of the loop here. The idea of using the discreet gpu does appeal to me for 2d work and video playback etc.
Is there any way to use the hydra software as it was first intended; to combine the power of two dissimilar gpu's for a speed boost in major 3d tasks (games)? That could be an attractive proposition, especially if you can oc the intel 3000 gpu on the k chips.

The ssd caching looks like a waste of time on this level of the market. I hope future Z68 laptops feature this though.

 

stupid n900 re post

 

stupid n900 re post

 

stupid n900 re post

 

Not impressed.

 

@instagib
Use the delete button its on the forums (reported your posts anyway)

feature's it brings seems better for lower end motherboards

 

Is it just me or does Smart Response sound exactly like the Silverstone SSDBoost I've been using for almost 2 years? I tried HDDBoost on one computer and later added it to another. I'm using HDDBoost, a Kingston 64GB V-series SSD and a 1TB WD Caviar Black HDD. The combo's work just fine with no user input after install.
It's worth buying if you can't afford a large SSD to use as "C" drive and offload as much as possible to an HDD. My latest build is waiting on a Crucial M4 256 GB to be delivered (no SSDBoost, of course) that I found for only $420. It also has 2 WD RE-4's as non-raided "D" and "E" drives.
I seem to recall Lucid as always being qualified with the word "disappointing". I see it also applies to the new Z68 chipset. I'm not the least bit surprised, though I would've preferred the review been done with a reliable motherboard brand such as an ASUS. I would, at most, line a cat box with a Gagabyte mobo! A lesson learned from far too many attempts (2) trying to find a decent Gigabyte mobo. There just ain't no such thang!

 

Bloody ell, what a carry on.

 

Well I didn't want to link to it directly but eh...okay.

In all "Virtu" tests before Z68, your statement is correct. But it seems things have changed.

Using the discrete card to connect (called D-Mode someplaces) over the Internal card (I-Mode someplace, you use PG-Mode) does seem to work for Tom and Anandtech and frankly I expected a similar test from you guys.

Ah, yes, I'm not a native speaker so a little misinterpretation there

However, for instance the ASUS P8P67 Pro and ASUS P8Z68-V PRO are only about 10-20 euro's apart.
That's not a lot for Quicksync, HDMI-out and the possibility of SSD-Caching now, is it?

 

Wouldn't work quite the same - swap space is where the RAM dumps when it needs more space in what the OS considers 'active' - although that isn't a bad idea, and doesn't require much mucking about (and certainly doesn't require what will be Intel's 'premium' chipset for the next, what, 6 months?)

What I didn't see clearly laid out in the article (although I may have missed it, I was sanding down aluminum tube) is that SRT can use up to 64GB. If you were so inclined, you could partition out 64GB of a 256GB SSD and designate it the SRT space. Intel likely made the 311 only 20GB to keep costs down. The other thing I didn't see mentioned is that the 311 drive uses SLC NAND, increasing performance and cost. The performance is fairly impressive given the small size of the drive.

All that said, I don't think I'm the only one that finds all this a little disappointing. The overclocking test done on Anandtech wasn't that impressive given what P67 can already do with just the multiplier. SSD caching is all right, while the Virtu is not...maybe later, once it's had a chance to mature, maybe. What I would dig is if AMD borrows the concept and figures out how to make it happen in BD with Radeon...and actually has it work well. I've always liked the idea of Optimus, it's too bad Lucid's desktop take on it sucks, comparatively.

Lastly, I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed with this article, as well. Anand covered a lot more ground in the write-up they posted yesterday...but maybe bit is waiting to cover more once motherboard reviews start going up?

 

Who says you have to use SSD caching for your main drive? I'm an enthusiast and gamer and I use SSD caching for my storage drive which I store my games on and use my bigger SSD for 100% OS and some apps such as office and photoshop.

Also if you do any video encoding Intels Quick Sync out performs Cuda and Stream by quite a way.

Z68 is now similar pricing to P67 and for those features I would definitely choose it over P67 as it makes no sense to go P67.