14 DAY TRIAL // Even though they weren't supposed to be out for another day, as per rumors, Z68 mainboards appear to have already been unleashed, at least as far as ASRock is concerned, whose website has now been updated.
One might say that the Z68 chipset, along with pretty much everything one can expect from a motherboard based on it, has already been revealed in reports and rumors.
Also, though no official word was ever really given, the general idea of all the leaks so far is that the launch of such motherboards will start tomorrow, May 11, 2011.
Whether true or not, ASRock definitely jumped the gun, so to speak, and delivered its platforms a bit early.
They are three in number, their names being Z68 Pro3-M, Z68 Pro3 and Z68 Extreme4, respectively.
The folks over at VR-Zone say they managed to find some prices which, although a bit too similar to be final, still give some idea of what users can expect on the financial side.
The Z68 Pro3-M sells for £125 (S$252), the Z68 Pro3 for £135 (S$273) and the Z68 Extreme4 is listed for £145 ($293).
All three of them have support for K-Series CPUs and the LucidLogix Virtu technology, which automatically switches between the integrated graphics and, if present, a video card.
The only real issue one could find with them is that the total PCI Express bandwidth is of 500 MB/s, although, in truth, the blame mostly lies with the Intel platform itself for not having enough of it.
ASRock did try to make up for it by putting in the PLX PEX8608 PCI Express switch which uses one PCI Express lane to divide between the two x1 slots, at least on the Z68 Xtreme4.
A final perk some may find useful is the fact that the CyberLink's MediaEspresso 6.5, albeit just a trial version of 30 days, is bundled with them.