P67 vs Z68 Mboards

[Dunc]

I am looking at building a new system to replace a slowly going downhill one. Pretty certain cpu will be a i7-2600K (given the small price gap between it and its 2600 cousin) although I don't plan initially to overclock. The system will not be used for gaming; instead, image editing will be the main focus.

I am interested in the mboard differences. The retail stores push the Z68 boards - latest and best: ie, more expensive? It seems the differences are SSD caching & "LucidLogix® Virtu GPU virtualization". At least initially, I am not going the SSD route. Should the Lucid whatever be a make-or-break in my decision? What exactly does it accomplish? What enhanced multimedia effects are provided and why would I want them?

Otoh is the Z68 price premium a small price to pay to delay obsolescence?

[Arinoth]

Essentially the Z series gives you the benefit of being able to overclock your unlocked K series processors from the P series motherboards, with the ability to use the built in graphics processing unit on the processors that H series motherboards offers.

[Eldonko]

If you dont plan on using SSD caching I wouldnt worry about Z68. P67 is definitely still relevant today. If you dont plan on ocing I would buy a cheaper board and spend the extra cash on memory and video card. ASUS P8P67 LE or perhaps a Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3. $115 to $130 range.

[Optix]

I've had the chance to take disk caching for a rip and it does work well but not in all instances so it's a bit of a catch 22 technology based on the work being done. What I didn't have a chance to run was Quick Sync because the Z68 Gigabyte board I was using (UD4 I think) didn't support it! Grrr!

That, in my opinion, is the make or tech on this board if a lot of video processing is going to be done. It allows users the ability to encode video faster than any GPU based solution out there. Twice or three times as fast if I recall correctly. Plus, there's no degradation of quality.

If this is the reason for going with a Z68 board, keep in mind that not all of them support it. Do your homework first.

[BootlegUsher]

Could you please tell me what encoding video means, I googled it but still don't really get it.

[Eldonko]

For production and video editing mainly. Converting video to different formats and so on.

[ZZLEE]

A little off topic /


Nividia cards support grafics use on them better than ATI

so think f a SLI board also.

If your going to do large renders like Revit or big photoshop files think " Nvidia Quadro "
these are not the best fore gaming though ?

[LarkStarr]

The caching in most cases works well indeed, but not all cases.. the material needs to actually be cached first! the SSDs can be small (and thus cheap) But I believe it will help greatly with photoshop editing especially.

you're not rendering anything it seems (or very lightly / few and far between) so you don't need a Quadro card

[lilb0ibastard]

i personally prefer the Z68 for a different reason. since i tend to download/upload alot during the night as i sleep, i leave my computer on. i also run two HD4870X2's which guzzles energy, so i would rip them out and use the onboard from my 2600k+z68 as i sleep to save energy lol