Virtu
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MSI unveils Z68A-GD80 (G3) PCI Express 3.0 motherboard
The long-awaited debut of PCI Express 3.0 is finally here, and it's come aboard MSI's Z68A-GD80 (G3) motherboard. Rocking Intel's latest design standard, this board's packing two PCIe 3.0 -- one x16 and one x8 -- and three PCIe 2.0 slots, two USB 3.0 ports, and four DIMM slots. What's more, the board offers Click BIOS II, for a consistent interface whether you're tweaking at boot time or boosting clock speeds in Windows, and Virtu's switchable graphics. Unfortunately, for you mother lovers, there's still no word on pricing or availability for the Z68A-GD80 (G3). Full PR after the break.
Gigabyte bolts an SSD to a motherboard (so you don't have to)
Gigabyte has decided to simplify matters for those who want the power of an SSD in their desktop, but don't want to deal with the hassle of buying and connecting one. The company's new Z68XP-UD3-iSSD (catchy, no?) motherboard comes with a 20GB Intel SSD 311 mounted right on it. It's not clear if you can simply dump files on it like a normal drive -- what it can do, however, is use Intel's Smart Response tech to cache frequently accessed data, like your OS, to improve performance. Essentially, it turns any hard disk you connect to the system into a hybrid drive with a much larger reserve of flash storage, which should sound somewhat familiar. The board also features the ability to switch between discrete and built-in graphics thanks to Lucid Logix's Virtu. The rest of the features are pretty standard fare: USB 3.0, a pair of 16x PCI-E slots, and 6GB SATA connections. The latest Z68 board from Gigabyte will go on sale early in June and, while we don't have a price, we've done a little (PR) embedding of our own after the break.
LucidLogix Virtu in action, discrete graphics and Sandy Bridge together at last
At CES, LucidLogix's Virtu software solution promised to get discrete and Sandy Bridge GPUs together in graphical harmony -- giving you both Sandy Bridge's greased-lightning video transcoding and the horsepower of an NVIDIA or ATI rig. The code also lets you watch content from Intel's forthcoming Insider movie service while running a discrete GPU. Now that Chipzilla's 2nd-gen Core i5 and i7 CPUs are getting to market en masse, the gang at Hot Hardware put an RC of Virtu through its paces to see what it can do. As expected, the software waxes chumps and smokes fools when encoding HD video, but gaming performance suffered slightly (in FPS and 3DMark 11 tests) with the technology enabled. The other nit to pick was that Virtu renders the control panel of your discrete card unavailable, so any graphics adjustments must be made in-game whenever the software is running. Time will tell if the final release has similar shortcomings. Hit up the source link for the full rundown.
