MSI Announces CrossFireX / SLI Capable Z68 Motherboard

Posted 05/12/2011 at 6:47am | by Paul Lilly

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And off we go! Now that Intel has officially outed its Z68 Express chipset, the announcements from hardware vendors pitching new products are rolling in. One of those is from MSI who just unveiled a couple of Z68 motherboards (socket 1155), one of which features support for both CrossFireX and SLI.

Let's start with the basics. The Z68A-GD80 supports up to DDR3-2133 memory (when overclocked), up to 32GB of RAM in four DIMM slots, three PCI-Express x16 slots, two PCI-Express x1 slots, two PCI slots, three SATA III ports, four SATA II ports, RAID 0/1/5/10, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, FireWire, and HDMI and DVI connectors.

The Z68MA-ED55 is a more subdued offering that differs in the following ways: two PCI-Express x16 slots, two PCI-Express x1 slots, two SATA III ports, no eSATA, and no SLI.

Both mainboards boast military class components (things like a Super Ferrite Choke and all solid capacitors), Lucid Virtu technology for switching between the integrated graphics and a discrete graphics card, UEFI BIOS, a "Super Charger" USB port that charges mobile devices even when your PC is turned off, and THX TruStudio PRO sound.

Image Credit: MSI