- Overcloking

The Foxconn designed the Z68A-S for "advanced gamers and overclocking fans". The reality is that we had hard times getting the system stable under overclocking.

Although we set the proper Vcore voltages through the BIOS, the system did not apply them and under the VCore remained unchanged under Windows.

In addition and after many re-tries, when the system was reaching the desired core speed (for example 42x X 100), somehow the multiplier was automatically decreased again.

The "auto" settings won't get you above 35X for an Intel i5-2500K processor. In some cases we managed to set the multiplier high and the CPU reached the 4.5GHz. However, this was not stable at all since any manually set Vcore voltages through the BIOS were not properly applied.

We hope that Foxconn will improve this behavior and offer some decent overclocking margins with its Z68 motherboard.

- Intel HD 3000 Graphics

The new Sandy-Bridge processors from Intel feature an improved integrated graphics chip, the Intel HD Graphics 3000. Do not expect a performance comparable to a discrete graphics solution - these graphics are just enough for office and some basic gaming.

Alike the actual cores of the CPU, the integrated HD Graphics 3000 can dynamically adjust its clock rate upon increased load (Turbo Boost). The Intel HD Graphics 3000 has 12 Execution Units (comparable to pipelines). Despite the same number than in the GMA HD, they have been improved and are now clearly faster than in the predecessor.

The default clock speed for both HD 3000 on the desktop is 850MHz; however, the GPU can turbo up to 1100MHz.

Furthermore, the HD Graphics 3000 got a unit dedicated to decoding and encoding of HD videos. In addition it supports DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 5.0 and HDMI 1.4 (support of 3D displays).

Windows update will automatically download the latest driver for the Intel HD 3000 graphics .The e GPU-Z utility provides some information about the HD HD Graphics 3000:

The Intel HD Graphics driver offers several options and settings to play with:

Below you see the performance of Intel's HD 3000 graphics during casual gaming, using low quality settings in most of the games:

It is obvious that the Intel HD 3000 is offering casual mainstream gaming capabilities at performance levels of an entry-level discrete graphics card.

- Lucid Virtu GPU Virtualization

The Foxconn designed the Z68A-S motherboard has been designed to dynamically switch between built-in processor graphics and an installed discrete graphics card. This operation is powered by the Lucid Virtu GPU Virtualization technology. Virtu analyzes your system usage and automatically switches to your discrete graphics card when playing 3D or demanding games and then back to onboard graphics for less demanding applications. In order to take advantage of the feature you should use any of the following graphics cards: Nvidia 2xxx, 4xxx, 5xxx and ATI 4xxx, 5xxx and 6xxx series.

Unfortunately, the Lucid Virtu graphics driver kept refusing to install when we tried to use the feature with an Nvidia GT 430 and a GTX 560Ti graphics cards.