14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has been pretty quiet on the motherboard front since the launch of its Sandy Bridge processors, but the Santa Clara chip has now finally ended this silence with the introduction of two new LGA 1155 motherboards based on the Intel Z68 chipset.
Intel's latest creations are dubbed the DZ68BC and DZ68ZV, and both of these were added just recently to the company's Website.
Starting with the DZ68ZV, this is a rather peculiar Z68 motherboard as it comes without any of the video outputs that are characteristic to Intel's latest chipset as well as support for the Quick Sync technology.
The explanation for this is quite simple, as Intel has taken the PCB of the previous DP67BG motherboard based on the P67 PCH and swapped this for the Z68 in order to keep R&D costs to a minimum.
Moving to the second LGA 1155 solution Intel introduced today, the DZ68BC, this is part of the company's Extreme range of motherboards and it brings a pair of PCI Express x16 slots, four 6Gbps SATA ports and a rear mounted clear CMOS button.
The rest of the expansion options include two x1 PCI Express slots and three 32-bit legacy PCI slots as well as four SATA 3Gbps ports.
The rear I/O consists of six USB 2.0 ports, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA connector, a FireWire port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out and various video outputs, including DisplayPort, DVI and HDMI.
Two more USB 3.0 ports are available through an on-board pin-header, and the DZ68BC is also bundled with an USB Wi-Fi and Bluetooth dongle and a copy of the LucidLogix Virtu software.
Intel hasn't provided us with any information regarding the price of these two new Z68 boards. However, judging by their feature set, these are expected to retail for less than what Asus, Gigabyte or MSI asks for their own similar motherboard designs. (via VR-Zone)
