X58 vs P67 vs Z68 vs X68

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McBane505

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Jan 27, 2011
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I was all set to buy a P67 setup before the recall, yet now as the new motherboards are becoming available again I am having second thoughts. I read recently that a multiple monitor setup does not perform well on a P67 system. I currently have a 1920x1080 display, yet would like to get another at some point. My question is which chip to get or wait for? Should I go back a generation and get the X58? I am well aware that the P67 is a better processer, yet I am wary of the recall and the issues people seem to be having with the boards even after the recall. Will the Z68 be a better option, or should I just wait it out until the X68 becomes available at the end of the year? I am looking to build a high end rig with whatever processer and board I start with; most likely looking at the HAF X, 16/12 gig ram, 120 gig SSD, 1TB HD, Blu Ray Burner, 850 PSU, and GTX 580. Usage will be Gaming, Adobe CS5, Microsoft Office, Web. Thanks for all of the help in advance. I have seen a lot of questions surrounding this issue, yet no thread that concerns all of the chips. So feel free to hijack the thread if you have a similar question.
 
Why do you think a multiple monitor setup doesn't work with the P67? The P67 doesn't have anything to do with graphics as it doesn't have onboard graphics. This is also true with the X58. The monitor setup would be entirely driven by what video card you have, and most modern video cards can support at least two monitors with a single card.

What the Z68 chipset is bringing to the table is a combination of the H67 and P67 features. The H67 chipset would allow a user to use the integrated graphics of the Sandy Bridge CPUs, but not the overclocking available to the "K" series. The P67 would allow overclocking, but doesn't support the integrated graphics. The Z68 allows both overclocking and integrated graphics (basically just Quick Sync, as anyone buying the Z68 is likely to have a discrete GPU) support on the same board.

I would like to point out that the Z68 isn't going to be out for another couple of months, so unless you can wait until then, there is no point in considering the Z68. There is absolutely no reason to consider an LGA1366 CPU at all. The highest end CPUs available on it (the i7-980X and 990X, both around $1,000+) are easily outclassed by the only LGA1155 CPUs available, even at stock.

As for the X68, it's impossible to say if you should wait. It's too early to get previews of what the new CPUs will offer in terms of performance or what they'll cost. If you need a new machine now (or relatively soon), there's no point in thinking about waiting for a product that may or may not be released.

As for the rest of your build, I see some issues with the basic setup. The largest of them is that you've only detailed the least important part of the build (the case), but I'll just treat the other parts as if you've picked high quality/high performance parts.

First, there is no reason to get a $180 case, much less the HAF X. You get the same features with the HAF 932 for $120. If you just wanted a high-end case, there are better options, like anything from Lian Li, Silverstone's Fortress series, Silverstone's Raven series, or anything from Antec (I consider the 1200 and P183 high end).

Second, BluRay has no practical use for PCs right now, much less burning them. Drop that out and get a regular DVD burner. You can add a BR drive later when either the prices become reasonable or a PC specific use shows up.
 
Where did you read this? It seems unusual it would be related to the P67 motherboard since it doesnt do video output. More likely a video card issue, wouldn't you think?
Are you getting your 'issues people seem to be having with the boards even after the recall' from the same source? What was that source?
 
Thanks for all of the great information.

I am well aware that the multiple monitors deal with the graphics card that is why I was so confused. I actually read that information on a tom’s thread, but I can not find it now….., but apparently this is not an issue. I just wanted to check to make sure before I went with a P67 build.

About the motherboard issues, it seems to me that a lot of posters are having issues booting with the bios, I am looking at the P8P67 Pro. If you google “site:tomshardware.com boot issues p8p67 pro” there are many, many threads dedicated to the boot issues. Do the revised boards come with the most recent bios updated? Or are the just updating the faulty parts?

About the case, I like the HAF X. It has a lot of space to build, front USB 3.0 integrated, and substantial cooling. Also, this will be my first build, so the extra space is a factor to make the build easier.

About the Blu Ray, I have a substantial Blu Ray collection already and would like the ability to watch them on my PC. The burners are only around $50 more then a standard drive so I thought I would look to the future.

 
All builds can have boot issues, especially newer builders using new tech that isn't as well documented online. It's a non-issue.

You'll have plenty of extra space in any of the other cases I mentioned. Most of them are absolutely massive. As for the USB 3 port on the front of the case, it's also not really a feature. There's still a large gap in it being useful. The majority of boards don't have USB 3 headers (because the majority of cases don't either), and the majority of USB devices don't use USB 3 either. It's a long way from being useful too, and not only because most tech doesn't support it. Most tech also doesn't need the added speed. Until they start throwing SSDs into USB devices, you won't need USB 3 speeds. I'd guess it's a good 3-4 years before it's actually useful. Is it really worth $60 for that? It wouldn't be for me.
 
Thanks for the insight on the USB 3.0. You mentioned that the x68 is still several months away. I have heard maybe even Q1 2012 at this point. Is late this year like Q3/Q4 more likely or is Q1 2012 the most likely option due to the SB motherboard recall?
 
I would choose the P67 over the Z68. The Z68s do not offer any functionality that I would use over the P67s. My main question at this point is whether to wait for the X68. I could be wrong, but it is the true successor to the X58 making it geared to performance. I think that this would last longer than the P67 due to the X68s inclusion of PCIE 3.0. I would assume that Nvidia and AMD will gear their high end cards to this spec once it is available.
 


Please show me the benchmarks where a Sandy Bridge CPU can compete with the 990X at stock, because the ones at Toms Hardware disagree with you.

The 990X might be significanly less cost-effective than a 2600K, but it's at least 20% faster in both single-threaded and multi-threaded apps due to being clocked higher and having 2 more cores which offer 4 more threads. Please know what you're talking about before giving out advice.
 
I was debating about X58 or P67 for my first build myself. But the truth is that X58 is dead and SB is the future. I haven't encountered any major issues with this build so far (fingers crossed) and everything has worked as it should...
 
WR2 thanks for the insight. I am still undecided. I would like the peace of mind that the new hardware brings and I do not mind waiting, but at the same time $2000 is about my limit and the price at release of the x68 may eclipse this.
 
-1 for content and -2 for attitude.

Comparing $1000 CPU with $220 CPU
ss087.jpg

 


Here you go: Tom's 990X review. All Tom's reviews are done at stock. It only uses the i7-2600K, but that's a Sandy Bridge CPU.

Here's the score from Tom's, for those of you who can't be bothered to actually do research (Ten98, that's you):

PCMark Vantage: Big win
3DMark11: win, though only narrowly
SiSoftware Sandra: wash (wins two, loses two)
Content Creation: wash (loses 3DS render, Photoshop, and Preimer, but wins After Effects, Blender and Cinebench)
Productivity: loss (wins Lame and WinZip, loses ABBYY FineReader, WinRAR, and Win7)
Media Encoding: narrow loss (wins iTunes, loses Main Concept by 5 seconds and Handbrake by 7 seconds)
Gaming: wash (1-2 FPS ahead or behind in all benchmarks, which is not a significant result)

Here's the score from AnAndTech against the 980X (which is essentially the same as the 990X):

General Performance: Big win
Video Encoding: wash (3 wins, 3 losses)
3D Rendering: win (3 wins, 2 loses)
File compression/decompression: win (3 wins, 1 loss)
Video Creation: loss, but a respectable showing on times
Gaming: win (7 wins, 3 losses)
Power Consumption: BIG win

If you tally those up, the i7-2600K has 7 wins, 3 losses, 4 ties (79% win or tie percentage), resulting in 700 big reasons why you shouldn't touch the 990X or 980X. The i5-2500K is behind the i7-2600K of course, but it's close enough in performance that the 990X is still not worth it.

So Ten98, I think YOU should do some research before offering advice. More cores, more threads, and higher clock speeds don't necessarily mean better performance. What matters most is how the CPU is engineered, and the Sandy Bridge CPUs are engineering masterpieces.
 
^You are entirely welcome.

I should also point out that with the amzing overclocking ability of the Sandy Bridge CPUs is phenomenal. You can get a lot more speed with very little effort. AnAndTech did an overclocking test and put a 1 GHz overclock on the i7 and i5, which doesn't even get near the maximum that they can go (I've heard 5.0 GHz on air is possible), and got another 25-30% in the benchmarks. The 990X and 980X, which both produce a lot more heat and use a lot more power, can't overclock as well, so they fall even further behind if you compare all the CPUs at their maximum stable overclock.
 
What the benchmarks don't show is the future upgrade path of the socket 1155 motherboard taking the next gen Ivy Bridge CPUs with and extra 20% - 30% performance boost.

And just about anyone that cares to try can get 4.2Ghz on the i5-2500K on stock voltage and the 2600K does better. Both SB CPUs surrender no ground to the X990 overclocking.
 
Good point about the upgrade path to Ivy Bridge. What are your feelings on PCIE 3.0. Worth waiting for or like USB 3.0, will not be relevant for a few years?
 
Thanks for the insight Mad. That was one of the points I was thinking about when considering waiting for X68. At this point there does not seem like any relevant reasons to wait for X68 and instead I should go with the P67.
 
I should clarify on the PCIe 3.0 comments a little bit. To clarify, what I meant to say is that USB 3 itself is not useless, but USB 3.0 headers are. First, the benefit of having a USB header is that you can quickly swap devices through it. However, there aren't a lot of devices (think not only external HDDs, but also mp3 players, phones, USB sticks, etc.) that actually use USB 3. Besides HDDs, there aren't likely to be many for a few years, as the companies that make the other devices will want a customer base before offering a USB 3 product.

Second, the benfit of USB 3 is the faster speeds is only really useful in some cases. Such as you're in the habit of copying a lot of large files at once. If this is the case, you'd have a reason to have a USB 3 external HDD, but it's unlikely you would be needing to swap it quickly. In this case, you'd need USB 3, but not necessarily on a header.

Finally, if you do copy large files regularly, there are better ways to do it than USB devices. You'd prbably want to be using eSATA or firewire instead. These will be faster, though less common on consumer external devices. These ports as headers are much more common than USB 3 headers.

So basically, in my opinion, until they start making 1 TB iPods and iPads, having USB 3 headers isn't going to be that useful.

On to some additions about PCIe 3.0...

Since PCIe 3.0 is backwards compatible (3.0 cards will work in 2.0 slots and vice versa) and I don't believe the PCIe 2.0 (or 2.1) slots are bottlenecking current GPUs and you will have the option of adding a secone card in SLI, you won't need PCIe 3.0's features for many years.

Also, you said you were looking at the GTX 580, which will be sufficiently powerful to do the vast majority of tasks for several years (I usually say 3-4 years). You would then have the option to add a second one later when the single card begins to struggle. That will add another 2-3 years to the life of the build. In that 5-7 year timeframe, you will not have needed PCIe 3.0's benefits. Therefore, if that is the only feature you'd want from the X68 chipset, there is no point in waiting for it.
 
Thanks for the insight Mad. I see your point about the USB 3.0 headers. And other than the PCIE 3.0, I did not see anything that seemed really relevant in the x68 for my usage. So it looks like I will be going P67 and be waiting like everyone else for all of the boards to become available again.
 
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