With mainstream boards based on Intel's P67 Express chipset now priced well beyond $150, we reached into the $200-250 range to see what kinds of enhancements high-end buyers could expect just ahead of the anticipated Z68 Express launch.

The prices we expect to pay for PCs don't change much. An entry-level machine is around $500, and has hovered around there for a while. A potent gaming system is completely doable for $1000, and that's a largely static figure, too. But our expectations of what you should get out of PCs at either of those price points is higher than ever.

An ever-increasing number of next-gen interfaces and add-on controllers continue pushing so-called mainstream motherboards well into what most enthusiasts used to consider high-end territory, shoving the cost of a real high-end board beyond $200, even for models that employ what the industry collectively considers mainstream chipsets, like Intel's P67 Express.

Today’s $200 P67-based motherboards are anything but extreme, even lacking Nvidia's NF200 controller, which enhances SLI and CrossFire graphics support. For that, one must go farther into the $250+ market (check out GeForce And Radeon On Intel's P67: PCIe Scaling Explored for more on what NF200 can do for graphics performance).

Yet, these same boards do have a few so-called extreme features, such as improved voltage regulators for increased overclocking capability. All of them also support three graphics cards (though in the least-favorable x8/x8/x4 PCIe configuration we can think of), dual gigabit Ethernet ports, and additional USB 3.0 or SATA 6Gb/s ports compared to mainstream versions.