GIGABYTE Z68 motherboards with "integrated" SSD
GIGABYTE has announced the Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard, which will be placed on store shelves with a 20GB Intel SSD 311 unit on board.
In the Z68 PCH, Intel has brought to life a service called Intel Smart Response. This will make our hard drive, and thus our system, much faster and smoother in the following way. To activate the feature, we need an SSD with a capacity of at least 20 GB, a read speed of about 200 MB / s and a write speed of 150 MB / s, which will serve as a cache for the hard disk. The only stipulation about the HDD is that it connects to the motherboard via SATA and runs on a Windows 7 operating system. The two drives must be merged into one RAID array, and then Intel Smart Response must be activated. The system then monitors the most frequently used files, applications (including startup files) and moves them to the SSD. As a result, you will get near SSD-level speed and response time when booting and shutting down, and when starting and using a frequently used program, as the relevant files are loaded from it.
This can be of any size in terms of SSD built into the system, GIGABYTE therefore thought about it further and put a special unit with an mSATA connector in the package in the person of the Intel 311 SSD. It is an SLC-based solution with a capacity of 20 GB without a cover, which must be inserted into a special socket integrated on the motherboard, after which Intel Smart Response can be configured for the SATA hard drive, if Windows 7 is running on our system. The result after the "monitoring period" is astonishing, our system comes to new life using the SSD installed as a cache.
A GIGABYTE Z68XP-UD3-iSSD The edition marked in the box comes with the SSD, and the following models are ready to receive the Intel 311 SSD with the mSATA interface:
No information is yet available on expected prices.
Source: GIGABYTE feed
