Z68 VS Z77 ?

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There's no particular reason that'll always fit, because not all z77 motherboards will have the same features, and neither will all z68's. The minimum you'll always get with a z77 are a bit higher than with a z68 though - for example, all z77 boards will at least support memory up to 1600 MHz, while z68 guarantees only up to 1333 MHz. But the z68 board you linked supports way up to 2133 MHz, so obviously that's not really a factor in this case. The same goes with USB 3.0 - z68 boards aren't guaranteed to have it, but it's not like there's a law against supporting it, so high-end z68 boards usually have USB 3.0...

There's no particular reason that'll always fit, because not all z77 motherboards will have the same features, and neither will all z68's. The minimum you'll always get with a z77 are a bit higher than with a z68 though - for example, all z77 boards will at least support memory up to 1600 MHz, while z68 guarantees only up to 1333 MHz. But the z68 board you linked supports way up to 2133 MHz, so obviously that's not really a factor in this case. The same goes with USB 3.0 - z68 boards aren't guaranteed to have it, but it's not like there's a law against supporting it, so high-end z68 boards usually have USB 3.0 too.

At the end of the day there's going to be a much bigger difference between z68 boards at different price levels than between high-end z68 and z77 boards.
 
Solution



Oooh ok... That's a tricky question. If you're planning on buying (or maybe already have) an Ivy Bridge processor, definitely go with the Z77. If you have a sandy bridge processor, the Z77 won't be any different than the Z68, other than if you eventually want to upgrade to Ivy.

I would say buy a Z77, you really can't go wrong having some extra features (even though you might not be able to use them yet) for virtually the same price. It will future-proof your computer a little bit more, and when you decide to go Ivy you can throw a PCIe 3.0 card, or some new memory, in there and it will have everything be natively supported instead of having controller workarounds.

Hope this answered the question :)
 



Oooh ok... That's a tricky question. If you're planning on buying (or maybe already have) an Ivy Bridge processor, definitely go with the Z77. If you have a sandy bridge processor, the Z77 won't be any different than the Z68, other than if you eventually want to upgrade to Ivy.

I would say buy a Z77, you really can't go wrong having some extra features (even though you might not be able to use them yet) for virtually the same price. It will future-proof your computer a little bit more, and when you decide to go Ivy you can throw a PCIe 3.0 card, or some new memory, in there and it will have everything be natively supported instead of having controller workarounds.

Hope this answered the question :)
 
Okay... for some reason posting is giving me problems. I copy pasted what I wrote earlier, but it appears the post was deleted/not posted? Anyway, here.




Oooh ok... That's a tricky question. If you're planning on buying (or maybe already have) an Ivy Bridge processor, definitely go with the Z77. If you have a sandy bridge processor, the Z77 won't be any different than the Z68, other than if you eventually want to upgrade to Ivy.

I would say buy a Z77, you really can't go wrong having some extra features (even though you might not be able to use them yet) for virtually the same price. It will future-proof your computer a little bit more, and when you decide to go Ivy you can throw a PCIe 3.0 card, or some new memory, in there and it will have everything be natively supported instead of having controller workarounds.

Hope this answered the question :)
 
I do agree that he should have done some of his own research, but then again this forum WAS created to answer questions like this. Go easy on him, maybe one day you'll want to have a similar question answered, and not know how to summarize that massive amount of Google search result information.


Don't get me wrong I'm all for helping people out but it got ridiculous about halfway down the thread. I just almosted wanted to say "buy an alienware" and call it a day. I had the same question 4 months ago when I was planning on building this z77 rig I have now. The deciding factor for me was just going with the newer tech. Coming from a q6600 it was worth every penny for me even though the price difference between the z68 and z77 was small.
 
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