MSI, in a slide circulated to distributors detailed its first wave of motherboards based on the Intel P55 chipset, supporting socket LGA-1156 Intel processors. Like ASRock and Gigabyte which recently circulated their presentations, the slide from MSI lists out the features and specifications of four models, one of which is micro-ATX. The lineup starts with the all-exclusive P55-GD80 that supports as many as three graphics cards in multi-GPU configurations. This is probably the first motherboard to sport an all-DrMOS (driver MOSFET) design. DrMOS chips have been usually confined to the CPU VRM areas on some MSI motherboards. Next up, is the P55-GD65, that offers nearly the same feature-set, except that it only support 2-way multi-GPU graphics. Below it is the P55-CD53, which supports only one PCI-E x16 graphics card, and forms the entry-level ATX P55 motherboard from MSI. Finally, there's the micro-ATX P55M-GD45, that crams every feature it can in 245x235 mm, including support for 2-way multi-GPU.

What MSI chose to leave in the dark are whether any of these motherboards support NVIDIA SLI, and about where is the coveted G9P55-DC, which packs an NVIDIA nForce 200 bridge chip for high-bandwidth 3-way SLI. Perhaps the board makes it much later. Also sourced are their tentative pricing. The P55-GD80 could be priced at 190 Euro, with P55-GD65 at 140 Euro, and the P55-CD53 at 106 Euro. There's no word on that of the P55M-GD45. Much more on the slide.