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Gigabyte has made its last P67 mainboard and cancelled all future production – that's the stunning news that has just filtered into KitGuru's newsroom. Shocking stuff, but is it real and, if so, what does it mean. KitGuru heads for the underground carparks to find out, deepthroat style.
Having shown off a very early board at the start of March 2011, at CeBIT in Hannover – it was known that Gigabyte was far down the line with its research into the new technology. The huge upheaval caused by the total recall of initial Sandy Bridge products seems to have helped the mainboard maker make a decision about its future direction.
Straight to Z68, do not pass go and do not order any more of those P67 chip things.
Full details are still not available and if you read the early spec list for Z68, you would be forgiven for thinking that it's nearly identical to the P67.
So far, the most persistent rumour seems to be ‘better for overclocking'. Which is saying something, because everyone seems to be able to get the 2500k stable at 4.6GHz and the 2600k stable at 4.8GHz with Zardon peaking his nuts off at 5.1GHz.
What will it mean to sales and the market?
Well, for one, it will see Asus get a nice little kick. The Gigabyte P67 boards that are already in the channel – are the last that were ever made. No new stocks of P67 have been ordered by Gigabyte and none are in production. So companies wishing to order P67 in any kind of bulk, may well switch to Asus or MSI or Asrock or someone else.
On the other hand, you enthusiasts are a fickle bunch who get drawn to the new/shiny stuff nice and early – so maybe Gigabyte is doing the right thing by pushing all of its enthusiast class mainboard products to a new chipset ahead of the competition.
Here's an early shot of the board.
KitGuru says: Gigabyte brought 2oz of copper to market first and they're leading the charge again with the Intel Z68 chipset mainboard market. More power to them!
Comment below or in the KitGuru forum.
UPDATE: Apologies for earlier typo. Z68X became X68. The story is correct with Z68.
Eh? Isnt z68 the ultra high end?
Word is that Z68 is an improvement on P67, but Gigabyte thinks it can offer the new product at a similar price to the older chip. If you don’t want overclocking then you have the H chipsets. If you do want overclocking, then a few bucks here or there won’t be important if the result is better.