14 DAY TRIAL // Besides more renowned Intel motherboard manufacturers, Sapphire has also showcased at the CeBIT 2011 fair, which takes place right now in Hannover, Germany, an Intel Z68 based motherboard that is scheduled to be released sometime in the May/June timeframe.
Judging by the pictures provided, the board seems to use a 10-phase PWM design for powering the CPU with three additional phases used for running the four available DIMM sockets.
These are accompanied by three PCI Express x16 slots and by three regular PCI slots, a total of eight SATA ports, four SATA 3Gbps and four 6Gbps, as well as by on-board power, reset and Clear CMOS buttons.
Of the three PCI Express x16 slots available, only the first has 16 PCI-E lanes routed to it, the second one functioning in x8 mode while the third works in x4 mode.
Moving to the rear I/O panel, we find all the regular connectors and ports, such as USB 3.0, PS/2 and Ethernet as well as D-Sub, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs and Bluetooth connectivity.
The Z68 chipset comes as a hybrid between the P67 and the H67 and was designed as to allow for overclocking Sandy Bridge CPUs and the system's memory while using the processor's integrated graphics.
Presently, this isn't supported by the P67 or H67 chipsets as the first one lacks the flexible display interface (FDI) that is required in order to use the on-die GPU while the latter doesn't allow for CPU multiplier adjustment.
In addition, the Z68 enables motherboard makers to split the 16 PCI Express lanes available from the CPU in two x8 PCIe slots, and implements SSD caching.
This function, however, won't become available right from the start as manufacturers have to wait for Intel to release the 10.5 version of the Rapid Storage Technology driver.
Besides Sapphire, ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI have also showcased Intel Z68 motherboards at CeBIT 2011. (via HardwareLuxx)
