14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past weekend, a series of websites have posted a rumor which claimed that Gigabyte allegedly planned to cancel the production of its P67-based motherboards in favor of the company's upcoming Z68 solutions. In response, Gigabyte has stated that the rumor is unfounded and that the P67 board production will continue until the end of 2011.
“The industry reports about Gigbayte canceling all P67 projects and moving 100% to next gen Intel 6 series chipset models are misleading and unfounded,” reads a post on the Gigabyte Tech Daily blog.
“Gigbayte will continue producing some P67 chipset motherboard models until the end of 2011, and the H67 models are expected to be available well into 2012.”
The Intel Z68 comes as a hybrid between the current P67 and H67 chipsets, and, after its official introduction, will become Intel's most advanced LGA 1155 chipset to date.
Compared to its predecessors, the Z68 features both overclocking support and the FDI interface required for using the Sandy Bridge integrated graphics as well as support for a new SSD caching technology dubbed Smart Response by Intel.
While the rumors regarding the production of the P67 motherboards aren't true, Gigabyte is indeed preparing a full range of motherboards that will be based on the Z68 chipset and that will target the enthusiast, power user and mainstream market segments.
These are expected to gradually push the P67 motherboard models down in the company's lineup and will eventually take their place on the market, but this will happen naturally, as time goes by.
The first Gigabyte motherboards built using the Z68 chipset were already spotted online earlier this week (the Z68X-UD3P-B3 and the Z68X-UD7) and these are expected to become official on May 22, together with Intel's launch of its next-gen 6-series PCH.