While we haven’t made any contact or review of any gigabyte motherboards in the past month or so, but inthe mind of every launch of a new Intel platform also includes a slew of motherboards from various manufacturers including the Tier-1 manufacturers like GIGABYTE. GIGABYTE has manufactured motherboards, cases, and other computer related hardware for many years. Today, GIGABYTE is launching their newest lineup of motherboards based upon the P55 Express chipset and the motherboard on the test station today is the GIGABYTE P55-UD5.
he GIGBAYTE P55-UD5 motherboard is based upon Intel’s new P55 Express chipset. This chipset has done away with the Northbridge and Southbridge which is replaced by the P55 Platform Controller Hub. The P55 Express chipset has support for up to six SATA 3 Gb/second ports, 14 USB 2.0 ports and 8 PCI Express lanes. The interesting thing about the P55 chipset is that the CPU has 16 PCI Express 2.0 lanes on the CPU die instead of needing a Northbridge.
Starting with the color of the board, GIGABYTE has stayed true to their roots with a purple colored PCB with racing stripes. That’s right, racing stripes on a mainstream motherboard! The CPU Socket (LGA-1156) can take all CPUs on the new interface including the Core i7 860 and Core i5 750 that was released this week. Note that you cannot use LGA-1366 CPUs on this or any other P55 Express motherboard. There is plenty of room for after-market CPU coolers on this board as the CPU area is basically clear of obstacles with low-profile Solid Capacitors surrounding the CPU Socket.
The Rear I/O of the board has gotten rid of one of the PS/2 connections and instead has provided a combo port that can be used for either a PS/2 mouse or keyboard. A Optical and a coaxial S/PDIF Out port, 2 Firewire ports, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2 external SATA/ Combo ports, two LAN jacks for the Gigabit LAN, and six audio jacks for the onboard audio comprise the I/O. The eSATA/USB combo ports allow you to install a SATA or a USB device in them.
GIGABYTE has gone the extra mile with this board. The board performed well in the default settings against the other P55 boards. The board overclocked to over 3.5GHz on air cooling which is not insignificant when using the 2.66GHz Core i5 750. The features of the board include 2OZ Copper in the Power and Ground layers of the board. It is available online for around $200 at this moment, making it in the middle ground of the P55 boards on the market today. As usual, with an Intel chipset launch, GIGABYTE has launched several P55 boards this week. Gigabyte has a Hot Product with this new i5 motherboard.