Gigabyte has stated that it is not 100 per cent halting production of its Intel Sandy Bridge P67 motherboards, but is removing it from the company's high-end, enthusiast strategy.
On Saturday morning components site KitGuru announced that, according to its sources, Gigabyte is going to completely stop any future production of its current P67 motherboards.
Such a cull sounded a little extreme, even for such an issue-ridden chipset like the P67.But a little digging uncovered a wee blog purporting to be "a group of motherboard enthusiasts working for Gigabyte."
This morning it printed an unattributed official statement claiming the report that it was stopping P67 production was "misleading and unfounded."
Both right
Determined to get to the bottom of all this we spoke to the UK marketing arm of Gigabyte, and wouldn't you know, the real story is a little bit from Box A and a little from Box B.
With the imminent launch of the upcoming Z68 chipset from Intel Gigabyte is making a change to its current P67 lineup, but that does not mean it's made its last ever P67 motherboard.
With the chipset pricing difference between the Z68 and P67 platforms being relatively small Gigabyte has decided to focus its high-end, enthusiast-class motherboards on the Z68 platform leaving the lower-end boards to the P67 chipset.
That means anything up to its GA-P67-UD3P motherboard will remain on the P67 platform with the higher-end, and more expensive, boards switching over to Z68 when they launch.
While a wholesale slaughter of it P67 lineup would've been rather over-zealous to say the least, this more-focused approach makes a lot of sense.
After all, you wouldn't pay through the nose for a high-end P67 board when similarly-priced, more feature-rich, Z68 mobos would make a more fitting home for your Core i7 2600K.
Would you?
There's not a lot out in the wild about this new Intel platform, but it's looking like a combination of the best bits of the H67 and P67 chipsets, with some nice new tricks thrown in for good measure.
Rest assured we'll keep you posted as soon as we're allowed to give you the full lowdown.
And it will be soon…
