14 DAY TRIAL // With just a few more weeks to go until the Intel Z68 Express chipset becomes official, a Taiwanese website managed to get its hand on the second Gigabyte Z68 motherboard to be spotted this week, the so-called Z68X-UD3P-B3.
The first Gigabyte Intel Z68 solution to make its appearance was the Z68X-UD7, which we reported about yesterday.
The Z68X-UD3P is one of the most unusual Z68 motherboards to be spotted until now, as Gigabyte has decided to drop the support for the Sandy Bridge integrated graphics, making this just a P67 with Smart Response technology.
Why Gigabyte decided to go this route when designing the Z68X-UD3P is anyone's guess, but rumors seem to suggest that the Taiwanese company plans to retire a large number of P67 motherboards from the market and replace them with Z68 models.
Moving back to the Z68X-UD3P, the board includes dual PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, which drop to x8 when they are both populated and are Nvidia SLI and AMD CrossFireX compatible, as well as three PCI Express x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots.
Storage is handled by four SATA 6Gbps connectors, two driven by the Z68 PCH while the other two are powered by a Marvell controller, and four internal SATA 3 Gbps, but sadly, we don't get any eSATA ports.
The CPU power is delivered by a 14-phase VRM that uses driver-MOSFETs, which are cooled by two separate low-profile heatsinks.
On the back of the board, we find a slew of USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports (other two are available via a on-board header), one Gigabit Ethernet connector, a FireWire port, and 7.1 channel audio.
No details regarding pricing are available at this time, but the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P is expected to become official on May 8. (via TechPowerUp)