Digital Home Thoughts: It's Time to Cross that Sandy Bridge - Review of the ASRock P67 Extreme4

"As you would expect, the new socket 1155 processors are incompatible with socket 1156 motherboards. The new motherboards will come in H and P varieties, with the H series taking advantage of the graphics on the processor die, whereas the P series will utilize discrete graphics only. At launch, both P67 and H67 chipsets will be available, with the H61 chipset released during Q1 2011."

Sandy Bridge is out in a big way and you will probably find millions of manufacturers now touting their Sandy Bridge products. What surprises me is that there are Sandy Bridge set ups that allow for discrete graphics only. There must be some sort of tangible cost difference between the two as from what I have seen in the benchmarks so far, the Sandy Bridge Integrated Graphics is not too shabby; it does not compete against mid to high range discrete graphics in any fashion, but it holds it own against other IGPs and even low-end discrete competitors. If there is a minimal cost difference, why not include it? 2011 is off to a great start!