ASUS P8Z68-V PRO Review: Our First Z68 Motherboard

95 Comments

View All Comments

• Irakusa - Thursday, September 29, 2011 - link

  Not really, you're just limiting your thinking a bit. The whole reason I fill datacenters with blade servers and then oversubscribe every resource I can is exactly the same as what NeBlackCat is applying in smaller scale with this line of inquiry.
  
  Servers big enough to run hundreds of VMs on demand, but also able to dynamically adjust power, cooling, cost, and wear and tear on components. It's a good thing.
  
  What do you think Intuit does at tax time, build a few thousand new web servers (hoping they have enough) and then leave them sitting around afterward waiting for next year's tax season? No, the reallocate resources where they're needed.

• HaryHr - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link

  Thinking like this you could also say no point in overclocking, just buy Extreme Edition CPU... but that's just not the same.

• L. - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link

  No.
  
  Overclocking = more power for the same mullah
  Downclocking = less power for the same mullah
  Downclocking = less power/watts
  Buying another chip = less mullah, less power, less watts
  
  Basically downclocking is a practice that should disappear shortly as the spectrum of power consumption on available chips has become wide enough, along with low power chips being more than enough for everyone's tasks excluding gaming and extremely rare computational tasks.

• shawngmc - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link

  Absolutely untrue. I repurpose my hardware - though I buy a new core (CPU/MB/RAM) yearly, I reuse my parts, cycling them through my desktop, HTPC, server, and project PCs or for family members.
  
  When I move parts from one usage to another, my demands change. My HTPC should have decent performance but be cool and quiet. My server needs good CPU performance (I run services in VMs) but I prefer energy efficiency there as well. Only my main desktop should be a power-hungry monster.
  
  I'm about to move my i7-930 to my home server. Even with the copious VMs, I probably don't need full clock speed from it. So, since it'll be on 24/7, I want it to be energy efficient. Underclocking? Say, not a bad idea!

• NeBlackCat - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link

  In your opinion. I thought it was supposed to be a general review of the board. This isn't a teenage gamer site - plenty of people are interested in Sandy Bridge/Z68 as a powerful, yet power efficient, platform. And, for many of them, it's useful to know how much you can undervolt while maintaining stock clock, and so on. Some of us like our HTPCs to run as cool and quietly as possible most of the time, for example. It doesn't hurt to cover both sides - a couple of paras covering this is all that's needed.

• L. - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link

  HTPC Sandy Bridge ?
  
  Seriously, if you don't understand hardware and it's use, please just avoid spreading your convictions.
  
  There is no reason for an HTPC to sport anything even remotely as powerful as 1/4th of a Sandy Bridge chip.
  
  We have reached a level in IT equipment where the chip in your mobile phone can almost cater for all of your HTPC / NAS needs so just face it, spend $300 less and get what you need instead of a 99.999999% idle overpowered CPU. Save the planet, green stuff, whatever !

• NeBlackCat - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link

  Perhaps you don't understand that an HTPC is a 3W Sigma/Realtec media streamer to some, an occasional media encoding powerhouse (as well) to others, and something close to both for an increasing number of people.
  
  Vendors increasingly provide idle frugality but performance on tap - in the OS/BIOS, in the chipset (eg. simultaneous clock override/IGP) , in the CPU (eg. turbo boost), in the graphics susbsystem (eg. Virtu, Optimus, etc) and so on.
  
  And these features ARE there in Z68/Sandy Bridge. The question is why they ARE NOT all there in reviews.
  
  PS - that phone able to do HTPC/NAS duties (HD high profile H264, simultaneous transcoding/streaming/recording/multichannel, etc) for $300 less than an entry level Sandy Bridge sounds extremely interesting.
  
  Can you tell me where to by one? Because the tiny TrimSlice Tegra 2 box I've had sitting here for a week (at a cost of $330, which is not $300 short of Sandy Bridge territory) doesn't even get close. Not that I expected it to.

• shawngmc - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link

  Exactly. I should be able to play games on my HTPC on occasion! Hell, Lucid Vertu theoretically sounds like a great solution - stick a decent GPU in and play modern games - Crysis 2, Portal 2, etc - on my 55" screen? Yes, please.
  
  Hell, I'll get some use out of my 3DTV with Nvidia 3DTV Play, now that it's FINALLY available.

• xinaes - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link

  "This segment is made to get the maximum out of your rig and not vice versa."
  
  In Soviet Russia, your rig gets the most out of you.
  
  Sorry, couldn't resist.
  
  Glad to see so many other people on the side of not wantonly burning power and still considering the idea of having a reasonably powerful machine.

• NeBlackCat - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link

  I want to get the maximum performance at the maximum power saving out of my rig. ;-)