An early study Ivy Bridge motherboards: or, the side order without the most

Ssshh. Ivy Bridge is officially still a mystery, remember- Nevertheless, through some quirk of chronology, the accompanying Z77 chipset for motherboards has already been announced. If there is a reason behind this early entrance, it's probably because Z77 is backwards compatible with Sandy Bridge, because of this the newest crop of motherboards from Asus, Gigabyte, Intel and MSI may be considered fully-fledged products of their own right. Well, variety of, anyway. Actually, probably the most key selling points of Z77 won't get activated until you clamp on Ivy Bridge silicon -- including PCIe 3.0 support (hitherto only found on X79 big-momma-boards), so the true testing can't begin in earnest until the recent kid arrives. With that caveat out of how, read on for a fast review round-up.

As we'd expect, the consensus is that these boards perform similarly to Z68 Express, such that there is no point upgrading if you are aspiring to hold onto your current processor. HotHardware couldn't even find anything significant to distinguish between the various boards on offer -- all of them have built-in USB 3.0 support, are Thunderbolt ready (with an added controller) and deliver other features in step with their price points, which range from to $189 to $279. ExtremeTech, meanwhile, only checked out the in-house Intel board -- the DZ77GA-70K -- and located it to be "unready for high time" thanks to some "clearly unfinished" BIOS issues. Tom's Hardware noted that USB 3.0 integration and improved Lucidlogix Virtu GPU switching are the 2 biggest reasons to upgrade, and suggested that new system builders would have "nothing to lose and some small things to realize" by picking out Z77 at this stage. The Tech Report also praised the performance of Intel's SuperSpeed USB controller, saying it beat auxiliary controllers. That site also made a sound point: while the early launch of this chipset may appear anti-climactic, not less than it's better than the wrong way round -- imagine buying an Ivy Bridge processor before tailored motherboards became available. Unconscionable!

From WhatNewsToday.net

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