14 DAY TRIAL // The PCI Express 3.0 specification has now made its way into actual products and it appears that ASRock is especially inclined to support it, seeing as how it already has some siblings for the Fatal1ty Professional Gen 3.
Motherboards usually show up in the news automatically, especially now that tablets have been stealing some of the spotlight of the rest of the IT segment.
Still, there are some features that can allow a mainboard to stand out a bit more than usual, like a certain implementation of the PCI Express standard.
The PCI Express 2.0 x16 technology is the one used by pretty much every desktop graphics card of today.
Now, however, the next-generation implementation of that asset has begun to settle in motherboards, like the Fatal1ty Professional Gen 3.
That product was released last week but has already been followed by four more desktop platforms, dubbed P67 Extreme4 Gen3, Z68 Extreme7 Gen3, Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 and Z68 Extreme3 Gen3.
As one may have been able to guess, they all can house Intel central processing units made for the socket LGA 1155.
Then again, an Ivy Bridge CPU is practically required for the full bandwidth of the PCI Express 3.0 to be used effectively, as Sandy Bridge units will just have them work in 2.0 mode.
All the newcomers have two of these slots, except for the Z68 Extreme7 Gen3, which makes do with just one. Either way, PCI Express 2.0 x16 sots exist as well.
Finally, all the motherboards have USB 3.0 (up to 6 ports) and eSATA, 7.1 channel audio, four DDR3-2133 memory slots, SATA 6.0 Gbps and SATA 4.0 Gbps and, of course, Gigabit Ethernet.
Users that are interested in some variety before deciding on what to look forward to can take a look at a similar motherboard form Micro-Star Inetrnational (MSI), dubbed MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3).
