Intel Z68 chipset rumours start

A lot of questions arise if this will be an actual product launch. One of the main theories on why Intel would limit the overclocking capabilities on Sandy Bridge is so it could take over control on the enthusiast market and push the end-user OC group towards the more expensive, but fully adjustable X58 and X68 platform. If this chipset would air, however, that strategy would no longer be effective. Any ideas?

Amidst concerns that Intel's Sandy Bridge processors will lack much in the way of overclocking it seems like Intel might've come up with a solution that will appease the masses. We'll take this with a grain or two of salt for now, as the leaked slide covering what is set to be a new performance chipset from Intel doesn't quite look like an Intel slide, but that doesn't mean we won't entertain the thought of such a chipset being launched.

The slide posted over at Chiphell presents the Intel Z68 Express chipset, a model we haven't heard about to date and it seems a little late in the game for Intel to add another chipset to the LGA-1155 platform considering we're less than two months away from the launch of Sandy Bridge. Then again, it's no fun if you don't have something else to follow up with later in the year, right?

As far as the overclocking features we can only speculate that Intel either didn't include the clock gen in the chipset and as such will allow the motherboard manufacturers to pick their own solution, or that they added a solution that allows for base clock overclocking, albeit possibly only up to a certain limit. This would make the Z68 chipset an ideal companion with Intel's K series processors for the ultimate in unlocked processor overclocking. On the other hand, the Z68 chipset would also be suitable for the multiplier locked Sandy Bridge processors which won't overclock much at all using Intel's other chipsets for the platform. It will be interesting to see what Intel’s price premium will be for the new chipset though, as apparently it should cost a lot of extra to be allowed to overclock your system, at least going by Intel’s X-series of CPUs.