When thinking about a motherboard for building a gaming pc, it is P67 vs Z68. These are the gaming chipsets to go with. P67 was introduced at the beginning of the year, while z68 was introduced this summer. Z68 takes the best of p67 and h67 to create the ‘ultimate ‘ fan motherboard.

Now, a PC gaming enthusiast would naturally lean in the direction of the P67, as the P67 motherboards are necessary for overclocking the k series sandy bridge processors. With the i5-2500k being the best CPU for gaming on the market now, it is clear that one would go with a P67 chipset motherboard.

The H67 motherboard cannot be used for overclocking, so it is usually overlooked. H67 does have on board video, while the P67 doesn't, which lends it to budget or media PCs. A good combo for a budget system is an H67 motherboard combined with an i3-2100 cpu.

The Z68 motherboard takes the fan power of the P67 and adds the application capacities of the H67. So you can overclock and it has an on board video card. Now, most people would think that if they're getting a discrete video card (a card you install in the system, like a nVidia or an AMD video card) then they don't need on board video. The majority of the time this is right but that leads us into the first of the key variations in the competition of Z68 vs P67.

The Z68 chipset includes a third party program called Virtu – this program uses both the on board video and the discrete video card, transferring different video processes to the on board video if the on board video is better at that sort of process. Video trans-coding is one of the key processes that milk this. The advantages being quicker processing and lower power use. This is because the discrete video cards are geared more toward 3d video processing than trans-coding activities.

The second of the 2 major elements of Z68 is SSD caching. This is something which neither P67 nor H67 had. SSD caching is the facility to utilize a little sized SSD as a cache for programs. This is similar to RAM. Instead of loading programs off a slow hard drive, the ssd caching will first load the programs to the SSD in order that they can be quicker accessed by the RAM.

To summarise the P67 vs Z68 debate: P67 is perfect for fan pc game-players who (naturally) have a good discrete video card. Z68 is also wonderful for P.C gameplayers, but mostly for those who want some SSD capabilities at a smaller price – if you already have an SSD, then there is no advantage to going with the Z68 over the P67.

Joseph Robertson has been building computers for 10 years and for lots of that time has been helping folks discover the best methods to build a gaming pc. Check out his blog for full information on the P67 vs Z68 debate.