Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD Comes with Intel 311 Series SSD Bundled

[btarunr]

Gigabyte has been working on the idea of shipping socket LGA1155 motherboards based on Intel Z68 chipset with mSATA slots, to accommodate Intel 311 Series "Larson Creek" cache SSDs that come in mSATA form-factor. The company did release a number of its latest boards with the slot, including GA-Z68XP-UD3, GA-Z68XP-D3, GA-Z68AP-D3 and GA-Z68P-DS3. Now Gigabyte took the idea to its next logical step, bundling an Intel 311 Series 20 GB SSD with the motherboard (since consumers might find mSATA SSDs at little hard to find in the market). The small SSD serves as a high-speed cache which comes into use when Intel Smart Response acceleration is enabled.

The GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD is a variant of the GA-Z68XP-UD3, with the "-iSSD" suffix denoting the bundled SSD. The board comes with the 20 GB mSATA SSD pre-installed into its slot. That aside, the GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD is a fairly straightforward Z68 implementation, with 7-phase CPU VRM, dual-channel DDR3-2133 MHz memory support by overclocking, two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (x8/x8 with both populated) supporting SLI and CrossFireX; four SATA 6 Gb/s, four 3 Gb/s ports; HDMI 1.4a display output, Lucid Virtu support, 8-channel HD audio, four USB 3.0 ports, and FireWire.



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[Th3pwn3r]

Price will make or break the sales on this thing that's for sure. I don't know how much use the SSD will make as a high speed cache BUT here's to hope it's effective.

 

[link2009]

Price will make or break the sales on this thing that's for sure. I don't know how much use the SSD will make as a high speed cache BUT here's to hope it's effective.

I agree with you here, the price is the only important factor in determining this motherboard's success.

Lucid Virtu seems like a useful feature to throw on there...for most people that have a discrete GPU it'll just be a useless add on that costs $$$.

 

[btarunr]

Price will make or break the sales on this thing that's for sure. I don't know how much use the SSD will make as a high speed cache BUT here's to hope it's effective.

It could be $260~$300. A good bargain, in that range. The SSD costs $110.

 

[Cold Storm]

If it's going to be under the $300 even if it's $320, I think I'd pick this bundle up.

 

[DanishDevil]

Might be a great option for one of the shop's higher-end prebuilts.

 

[alucasa]

Really needs 40gb at least though, but that the price would be too high.

 

[dlpatague]

The SSD size isn't as important it is only used for caching. Apparently that 311 drive is very good for this and the reason why it was made in the first place. The random read/writes IOPS with this drive are fantastic which is important.

Check out the review of Intel SRT with this drive at Legit Reviews.

 

[Wile E]

Hmmmm, this would be a great slot to add for home server use too. Run the OS off of the mSATA (if possible), freeing all sata ports for storage.

 

[R_1]

Why Gigabyte keeps using only a single HDMI port at best on it's Z68 boards? It is plain stupid to buy Z68 board , without display connector or to use HDMI port with your expensive professional LCD monitor. Maybe it's not a Z68 board at all, but some hacked P67 one.

 

[btarunr]

Why Gigabyte keeps using only a single HDMI port at best on it's Z68 boards? It is plain stupid to buy Z68 board , without display connector or to use HDMI port with your expensive professional LCD monitor. Maybe it's not a Z68 board at all, but some hacked P67 one.

A "hacked P67 one" won't even give you HDMI. The reason it skimps on display connectivity is because nobody cares about the onboard video. They just want the Smart Response tech.

 

[R_1]

When connected to integrated GPU, Quick Sync enables media converting via SB IGP, while running another application that requires discrete GPU. Also on-die GPU is more power efficient under non-3D gaming loads than any high end discrete GPU, so BluRay/GPGPU video decoding is possible at 5-10 Watts, not 45-65.

 

[GSquadron]

Is the ssd going to be faster than a same putted in pci-express?