Apple Gains Early Access to Intel's Z68 Chipset for New iMacs

095114 intel z68

As noted by tonymacx86 (via 9 to 5 Mac), iFixit's teardown of the new iMac released earlier this week reveals that the machine utilizes Intel's BD82Z68 platform controller. The inclusion is notable in part because the Z68 chipset is reportedly not set for public introduction until next week.

Apple use of the Z68 chipset marks yet another exclusive for the company, which has occasionally been granted early access to forthcoming chip components ahead of public unveilings and competitors' offerings.

The Z68 chipset is also notable because it supports SSD caching, a system that marries conventional hard drives to small solid-state drives (SSDs) to provide a seamless user experience with increased performance as the most frequently-accessed files are placed on the speedy SSD.

Apple of course offers SSD options in its iMacs, either as a replacement for or in addition to the traditional hard drive included as standard. The iMac's SSD, however, is a full 256 GB drive rather than the much smaller-capacity drives envisioned for SSD caching. And while Apple doesn't seem to be supporting true SSD caching in the new iMacs, the company achieves a similar but less seamless effect by installing the operating system and applications on the SSD while leaving the traditional hard drive for media on systems configured with both types of drives.

Intel is reportedly preparing to launch its own "Larsen Creek" line of SSDs with capacities around 20 GB and specifically designed to support seamless SSD caching when paired with a traditional hard drive and a compatible chipset such as the Z68. It is unclear if Apple will be looking to incorporate such systems in future hardware, but the company is clearly interested in pursing SSD technology for its performance benefits.

Related Roundup: iMac
Buyer's Guide: iMac (Buy Now)
Related Forum: iMac

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 13 New Features

Wednesday April 23, 2025 8:31 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
iphone 17 dummies sonny dickson

iPhone 17 Air Almost as Thin as Its Buttons, New Images Show

Thursday April 24, 2025 2:14 am PDT by
If you missed the video showing dummy models of Apple's all-new super thin iPhone 17 Air that's expected later this year, Sonny Dickson this morning shared some further images of the device in close alignment with the other dummy models in the iPhone 17 lineup, indicating just how thin it is likely to be in comparison. The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be around 5.5mm thick – with a thicker ...
iPhone 17 Air Pastel Feature

iPhone 17 Air Launching Later This Year With These 16 New Features

Thursday April 24, 2025 8:24 am PDT by
While the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" is not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the ultra-thin device. Overall, the iPhone 17 Air sounds like a mixed bag. While the device is expected to have an impressively thin and light design, rumors indicate it will have some compromises compared to iPhone 17 Pro models, including only a single rear camera, a...
apple watch ultra yellow

What's Next for the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch SE 3

Friday April 25, 2025 2:44 pm PDT by
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch, which launched on April 24, 2015. Yesterday, we recapped features rumored for the Apple Watch Series 11, but since 2015, the Apple Watch has also branched out into the Apple Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch SE, so we thought we'd take a look at what's next for those product lines, too. 2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3 Apple didn't update the...
Global Close Your Rings Day Pin

Apple Stores Giving Away a Limited-Edition Pin For Free Today

Thursday April 24, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Starting today, April 24, Apple Stores around the world are giving away a special pin for free to customers who request one, while supplies last. Photo Credit: Filip Chudzinski The enamel pin's design is inspired by the Global Close Your Rings Day award in the Activity app, which Apple Watch users can receive by closing all three Activity rings today. The limited-edition pin is the physical...
AirPods Pro 3 Mock Feature

AirPods Pro 3 Just Months Away – Here's What We Know

Friday April 18, 2025 5:16 am PDT by
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
Apple Logo Spotlight Blue

White House Hits Back at Apple's Massive EU Fine

Thursday April 24, 2025 5:57 am PDT by
Apple's $570 million fine from the EU has triggered a sharp rebuke from the White House, which called the fine a form of economic extortion, Reuters reports. The fine was announced on Wednesday by the European Commission, following a formal investigation into Apple's compliance with the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a landmark piece of legislation aimed at curbing the market dominance of ...
ipad air magic keyboard feature

iPadOS 19 Rumored to Show Mac-Like Menu Bar When Connected to Magic Keyboard

Thursday April 24, 2025 12:09 pm PDT by
When an iPad running iPadOS 19 is connected to a Magic Keyboard, a macOS-like menu bar will appear on the screen, according to the leaker Majin Bu. This change would further blur the lines between the iPad and the Mac. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously claimed that iPadOS 19 will be "more like macOS," with unspecified improvements to productivity, multitasking, and app window management,...

Top Rated Comments

alvindarkness Avatar
182 months ago
The Z68 does something far more important than just SSD Caching. It lets you use QuickSync. Basically letting you use the onboard intel HD GPU to accelerate tasks such as encoding while still relying on your dedicated GPU for normal graphics tasks.

Some Z68 motherboard manufacturers have decided to ignore this entirely, such as Gigabyte who dont supply power to the VAXG pin of the CPU - which means the Intel HD GPU is never powered.

I'd love to know what Apple have done. Does their implementation of the chipset/cpu allow OpenCL access to the HD2000/HD3000 on the iMacs?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BTGeekboy Avatar
182 months ago
More than just SSD Caching...

The Z68 chipset has more functionality than just SSD caching. Check out the writeup from Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68-express-lucidlogix-virtu-ssd-caching,2888.html

A few things I learned from the article:
1. SSD Caching is not the best; it's far faster to use the SSD on its own. It does add a small speed bump when it's "primed" but, when I first read about it, it seemed like a lot of work for little gain, which I could already do better with existing chipsets.

2. The other big benefit, and I think this is even bigger than the SSD angle, is it allows you to access the excellent video transcoding capabilities that are included in the video chip built into the processor while making use of the add-in discrete graphics card to run the display. If they can combine that with Grand Central, that's a whole lot more performance out of the same chip than with a P67.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Al Coholic Avatar
182 months ago
The big news here to me is Apple's continued quick access to components from intel that are barely out of the mold. Bodes well for future updates on their entire computer line.

Is it just me or has Apple been more aggressive with this in the last 12 months or so?
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Lesser Evets Avatar
182 months ago
I'm still waiting for an inexpensive and functioning PCI-e SSD for my tower. The tech is oddly behind for such things, on Mac. I'd love to have a 128gb SSD starter in a PCI-e slot... yeah, I'm slightly off topic.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
wacomme Avatar
182 months ago
It lets you use a cheap hdd to get speeds similar to an expensive large ssd.

Does this imply that with the arrival of TB supported drives, a cheap HD can be paired with a small SSD for speeds on par with a large SSD? Does TB access the Z68 chipset, assuming TB can be used as a boot drive?
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Hellhammer Avatar
182 months ago
That's the thing. We don't know how Apple has the display implemented in the iMac. They've implemented seamless display support allowing the use of both the IGP and a discrete GPU in the MacBook Pros so they can certainly implement something similar to allow the IGP to be active for QuickSync. As for Virtu, Apple would have to implement something similar themselves due to the different windowing/graphics system from Windows. It'll be interesting to see whether they've done so, perhaps in Lion. Certainly the performance of QuickSync over OpenCL for video encoding makes it worthwhile. Particularly, because all subsequent Intel processor generations look to keep and expand QuickSync support so adding support now will have long-term benefits and its something they will probably have to do eventually anyways.

And I've read the latest version of Virtu virtualizes the IGP rather than virtualizing the discrete GPU as before. Perhaps that also means that the display can be connected to the discrete GPU.

Hopefully Apple has since QS is definitely awesome. However, this could have been achieved with H67 as well since it supports the IGP as well so the main point of using Z68 still seems to be the SRT.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)