It’s no secret that Intel’s decision to hamstring the overclocking abilities of the H67 chipset has proved to be a big disappointment to enthusiasts. For most system builders, it means choosing between having on board video support with the H67 chipset or foregoing video for overclocking support with the P67-based boards. For ITX system builders, we have no choice. We are limited to boards with H67 chipsets and have no hope of serious overclocking. That is, unless Gigabyte makes true on their promise.
A few readers have pointed us to a report out of CES 2011 from techreport.com that claims Gigabyte is intending to bring to market two Sandy Bridge mini-ITX motherboards.
The one we know of is the GA-H67N-USB3 that we previewed last month. An H67 based board that we had hoped would support the same overclocking abilities as its H55 predecessor, but will most likely suffer from the same overclocking restrictions as its other H67 mini-ITX counterparts.
The good news is the second mini-ITX board, rumored to be P67-based. Details are scarce but assuming Gigabyte intends to bring a new ITX board to the market that is a true successor to the H55N-USB3 by offering real overclocking abilities, they may have no choice to use the P67 chipset.
We’ll keep you updated as details on this P67 board become available.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!