Z68 vs P67 Motherboards, Should I get one?

[Bryan]

Wow, Newegg is great! I placed the order at midnight last night and 9 hours later I get the email with the tracking number!! The toys are on the way

[Mike029]

Let me know how you make out with the on board for monitor vs crunching with the reference gpu without a monitor attached.

[Bryan]

Okay the build is now fully up and running.

First of all with regards to the I7 2600k .... the sucker is a SCREAMER I had it clocked at 4.8G and ran the Prime95 stress test for 6 hours without a failure and the temp never hit 70! When I added the 5970 and GTX 570 I had to drop to 4.4G to stay below 70C and that's with no air conditioning.

So on to the buiild:

I7 2600k
ASUS P8Z68-V Pro MB
Zalman CNPS11X cooler
8GB PC2000 DDR3 (wasted money ... see note)
1 kW PSU
1 5970
1 GTX 570
HAF 932 case

With regards to running the internal processor GPU and crunching with the PCIe cards .... it works like a champ! It isn't totally isolated because the desktop will "extend" onto 1 of the PCIe GPUs BUT that extention will have no changing graphics on it so it is virtually free.

When a PCIe GPU is installed the boot display will automatically switch to the PCIe card and turn off the iGPU. The following is the method I used to get things working with BOINC and then I turned the iGPU back on.

1. Install the ATI card first (5970 in my case). I installed the full blown CAT 11.5 package.
2. Get BOINC crunching on that card.
3. Install the GTX 570 without a dummy plug or monitor attached. I installed ONLY the card driver.
4. Reboot and launch BOINC and it should pick up the Nvidia card. Get it crunching as well.
5. Now restart and go into the MB BIOS to: Advanced - System Agent Configuration - Initiate Graphics Adapter ... set it to iGPU. This sets the "boot" graphics adapter to the CPU's GPU.
6. When you exit/save/reboot put a monitor on the iGPU output and a dummy plug on the ATI. Once the system boots it will automatically "extend" the desktop onto the ATI card but it is an extension and has no changing graphics. If you don't use a dummy plug the CAT driver will say "No AMD devices active".

That's all there is to it ... works great!

NOTE: The P8Z68 board does NOT support PC2000 memory devices. So if you buy those you are wasting your money (like I did). It DOES support 1866 and 2133 so either save a little money going with the 1866 or spend more bucks with the 2133. It also supports the slower memories.

NOTE 2: There is an issue with SATA 6 drives and the Marvel disc controller (and some others). When I tried to install both Vista and Win7 it said there were no HDD. Checking the web there are bunches of people having that problem and the vendors Marvel/MB mfg/disc mfg are all pointing fingers saying "it's not my problem". I'm going to return the HDD and get an old reliable SATA 3 drive

[DrPop]

Oh my...that is an amazing machine. I am drooling! I really wish AMD would get Bulldozer right soon so I can compare it to Sandy Bridge and see what the next build should be!

[Fire$torm]

Super SWEET!!! And thanks for the great info on configuring IGU with GPUs. I'm sure this will help anyone wanting to upgrade to Sandy Bridge. Sorry to hear that the SATA industry can't get their collective arses together.

[Mike029]

Nice job and thanks for the info. I'll give this a try on my z68 this weekend. How was the install with that heatsink? It looked huge.

[Bryan]

The heatsink was a piece of cake! It has a spreader that accepts screws (from the top of the MB) and it is held in place with double sided tape (on the bottom of the MB). So once that is in place you only work from the top side of the MB. Put the heatsink in place, drop the screws in the holes, and then using a long allen wrench they supply tighten them up. Much, much, easier than the Artic Cooler I did on an I7 950 build last month. On that one you have to hold the heatsink in place while trying to put nuts on from the bottom. That one would be better if you had 3 hands