Following ASRock's early revelation of its Q77 motherboard, Gigabyte has decided to reveal its own Q77 motherboard in the shape of the GA-Q77M-D2H. For those not familiar with Gigabyte model names this is a micro ATX board with Ultra Durable 4 Classic and a wide range of display interfaces.
We evaluate two new flagship Z77 motherboards targeting different price points - ASUS's P8Z77-V Premium billed as a feature packed, four-way GPU capable workhorse while MSI opted for a more understated approach with their Z77A-GD80. Both of them feature a debuting Intel 'Cactus Ridge' Thunderbolt controller, which we will cover quite extensively in this piece.
Google's Android OS has so far ended up in just about every device imaginable, but apparently one market has so far been ignored, the humble desktop. Taiwanese VIA Technologies spotted this omission though and has developed the APC – or Android PC – which actually is more of a motherboard than a complete solution.
Thanks to one of our forum members we can show you an early picture of an AMD socket FM2 motherboard from MSI. Admittedly the forum post doesn't mention the fact that it's from MSI, but the product model number gives it away.
Intel's Q77 chipset isn't expected to launch for another week and a half or so, but that hasn't stopped ASRock from launching its first product based on the chipset, the Q77M vPro motherboard. As the name inclines, this is a motherboard for business users and as such it comes with Intel's Small Business Advantage in the box.
It's easy to forget that the LGA-1155 platform is also home to Intel's E3-series of Xeon processors and Intel recently updated its entire E3-series of Xeon's to Ivy Bridge. To go along with the new CPUs Intel also released a new chipset, the C216 and Asus has produced a new motherboard based on this chipset called the P8C WS where WS stands for Workstation.
A little bit earlier than we anticipated, Asus has unveiled not one, but two Thunderbolt equipped motherboards, the previously seen P8Z77-V Premium as well as the P8Z77-V Pro/Thunderbolt. The latter of the two is quite similar to the P8Z77-V Pro, although with some minor differences and of course a price tag that should be a fair bit higher.
We have to say that Intel's first Thunderbolt equipped motherboard is something of an anti-climax, as the DZ77RE-75K is nigh on identical to the DZ77GA-70K, although we spotted at least one change beyond the Thunderbolt port. On top of that, it's also quite an expensive motherboard, more so than MSI's Z77A-GD80.
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The first of the super-premium Z77 motherboards has arrived, ASRock's Z77 Extreme9 and it comes with a price to match. As loaded with features as this motherboard is, it looks like ASRock missed out on one must have feature for this segment – or at least so it appears – namely Thunderbolt.
We've been covering the GTX 680 since day one with our reviews of several different cards. Today we're doing something a little different. We're going to have a look at the competitive scene benchmarking performance of the GTX 680 using a cascade cooled Ivy Bridge i7-3770K on an ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe. Zotac have kindly provided a sample for our benchmarking.
If you remember, when Intel initially revealed the X79 chipset it was said to feature additional SAS ports which over time were meant to be additional SATA ports, but in the end the chipset arrived with no extra storage interfaces at all. Even though Intel was expected to remedy this with a later chipset revision, this doesn't appear to be the case anymore, but Intel has decided to issue a revised version of its DX79SI motherboard with additional connectivity in a couple of areas.
Mini-ITX motherboards are stripped down variants of their full sized counterparts, doing away with non-essential expansion options and using "good enough" components. In recent times ASUS has dabbled in small form factor systems with great success - their Republic of Gamers GENE series of mATX motherboards has a cult following of enthusiast builders. The P8Z77-I Deluxe, paired with the latest Ivy Bridge processors, represents the motherboard giant's latest salvo for the mindshare of performance ITX system buyers.
Cynically speaking, Z77 motherboards are just refined versions of their P67/Z68 predecessors, giving motherboard vendors a chance to build on on existing innovations and eradicate notorious design flaws, particularly in the UEFI BIOS firmware and electrical engineering department. Today we review a refined and feature packed offering in ASUS's P8Z77-V Deluxe, and run benchmarks with an Ivy Bridge i7-3770K processor at 4.8GHz against two other contenders.
If you like many others have found Asus' range of P8Z77-V motherboards a bit on the expensive side, then the new P8Z77-V LK and P8Z77-V LX models might be what you've been waiting for, as both of these just announced models will end up just below the P8Z77-V LE in Asus' range of Z77 motherboards. We've seen LX and LE boards in the past from Asus, but the LK is a new budget model we haven't seen in previous generations.
Remember that new Asus Z77 motherboard we reported about the other day? It appears that the P8Z77-V Premium is almost ready for launch, as now a collection of much more detailed pictures have made an appearance online, courtesy of a subsidiary Asus website, although since then the pictures have been pulled.
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