Asus Announces First Batch of Ivy Bridge Boards

Intel's Ivy Bridge platform isn't on the market yet, but that hasn't stopped top tier motherboard makers from jumping the gun and announcing next-generation silicon promising support for the upcoming CPUs, as well as PCI Express 3.0 compliance. Now you can add Asus' name to the mix after it went and unveiled three Z68-based boards with PCI-E 3.0 connectivity.

Starting at the top end and working our way down, the new boards include the P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3, P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3, and P8Z68-V/Gen3. All three socket LGA1155 motherboards support up to 32GB of DDR3-2200 memory and are built using a 16-phase power design (12-phase for the CPU, 4-phase for the GPU). The top-end Deluxe variant comes with dual-GbE LAN ports, 8-channel HD audio with DTS, four SATA 6Gbps ports, four SATA 3Gpbs ports, a pair of eSATA ports, four USB 3.0 ports, up to 12 USB 2.0 ports, and dual Firewire ports. More specs below:


As these are next generation boards, all three come with a fancy UEFI BIOS with Asus' proprietary EZ mode. You can drag and drop items in the BIOS to change the boot order and boot from partitions larger than 2.2TB.


All three are scheduled to ship in October. The Deluxe board will sell for €229 (around $310 USD), the Pro for €185 (~$250 USD), and the P8Z68-V/Gen3 for €159 (~$215 USD).