With the impending release of AMD's 'Bulldozer' processor a lot of people will be holding back on their PC upgrades until that 8-core chip officially drops. The 'carrot on the stick' approach is the cornerstone of the computer industry, though savvy PC users will realize you often miss out on pretty fantastic technology that's available today in the pursuit of what's not available.

Today, the newest chipset for Intel processors is the Z68 Express and motherboards like the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 which are built around it offer up a mainstream suite of capabilities and a kitchen sink full o'features. The board supports 2nd Generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7 2xxx-series socket LGA1155 processors - these CPUs are based on the Intel 'SandyBridge' architecture which includes an integrated graphics core on the CPU die.

The GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard has four 1.5v DDR-3 memory slots which will accommodate up to 32GB of dual channel DDR3-1066/1333/1600/1866/2133 memory, 4GB for 32-bit operating systems. Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) compliant enthusiast memory is supported.

On the all important videocard front there are two options - integrated graphics via the board's HDMI/Display Port/DVI-D/Analog video outputs, or PCI Express based discrete graphics cards. In terms of videocards, the GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard will handle one PCI Express 2.0 x16 videocard in x16 mode or a pair of nVidia Geforce / ATI Radeon videocards in SLI or Crossfire, in x8/x8 mode. Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU supplies x16 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth for the graphics cards, the Intel Z68 chipset a further eight PCIe lanes for system devices.

Care of the Intel Z68 Express chipset, the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 serves up the full compliment of integrated graphics options; HDMI (1920x1200), DisplayPort (2560x1600), DVI-D (1920x1200) and Analog VGA. Intel IGP graphics are okay for everyday work and this board can handle dual digital displays which is especially nice.

IGP graphics are key if you plan to leverage Intel's QuickSync for media transcoding, so it's good that Lucid's VIRTU driver ships with this motherboard. With VIRTU there's no penalty if you go the discrete graphics card route, and with support for Crossfire/SLI you really ought to, as VIRTU enables seamless switching between the two. Further peripheral expansion comes via three PCI Express x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots. Gigabyte's GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard retails for around $165 at Canada Computers , NCIX and Newegg.

Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 Motherboard INCLUDES: User's Manual, Driver DVD, (4) SATA cables, 2-way SLI bridge, I/O Shield. Chipsets: Intel Z68 Express CPU Support: Intel Socket 1155 Memory Type: Dual Channel DDR3 Videocard Support: (2) PCI Express x16 2.0 (x16 or x8/x8) Integrated Graphics Video Port: HDMI, Display Port, VGA, DVI Average Price at time of review: $164

On the storage front you get three 3Gb/s SATA II and two 6Gb/s SATA III devices via the Intel Z68 chipset (RAID 0/1/5/10), with one eSATA II port at the rear I/O. This is hardly enough SATA III ports though, so Gigabyte tacks on a Marvell controller for two more 6Gb/s SATA III ports (RAID 0/1).

In addition to the main features PCSTATS has already run through, the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 aslo gives you four USB3.0 ports, 3x USB power boost, +3TB hard drive support, Precision OverVolting control, Dual BIOS's Hybrid-EFI TouchBIOS, On/Off Charge for recharging devices like the iPhone and access to Intel Smart Response Technology .

Motherboard Rear I/O Ports