Intel H61 Chipset Review: (Almost) All the Features for Less

3DMark Vantage

Overall, H67 is the better performer in this benchmark.

PC Mark Vantage-HDD Suite

The HDD Suite in PC Mark Vantage focuses on hard drive performance, and here H67 performs better than its lower-end sibling, the H61.

File Copy Test

Apparently, this is one area where H61 really lags behind its fellow series 6 chipsets. The H67 leads over the H61 by quite a large margin.

Power Consumption

Both H67 and H61 consume the same amount of power, according to this test.

Conclusions

Based on our test results, the H61 appears to be just as fast as the H67 in almost every kind of software, except in scenarios where performance is determined by storage transfer speed. The lack of AHCI and RAID support severely affects H61’s performance in such scenario, but in most other cases, the H67 and H61 are just about equal.
So, is H61 worth the purchase? Some manufacturers are already selling their H67 motherboards at very low price points (well below Rp 1 millon, or less than US$ 100). There’s a good chance that H61 boards will be sold at an even lower price point. It’s worth noting that H61’s weaknesses will not be too apparent if you’re using a hard disk as the main storage. An SSD will reveal a different story, though. Therefore, the H61 might be an interesting alternative for those who want to experience the new features (and remarkable processing speed) of a Sandy Bridge processor while keeping the cost down to a minimum.