Monday, January 25th 2010
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7 Final Design Candidate Pictured
Gigabyte's top of the line socket LGA-1156 motherboard, GA-P55A-UD7 just got a face-lift before release to the market. The GA-P55A-UD7 was pictured in its production form as early as in November, 2009. The retail model has notable changes from the production version. To begin with, GA-P55A series motherboard are characterized with SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 support. The new GA-P55A-UD7 has four PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots instead of three on the production one. The four slots are connected to an NVIDIA nForce 200 PCI-E bridge chip, which is connected to the processor. The two x16 links from this chip can be split into four x8 links for each slot. A PLX-made bridge chip provides additional PCI-Express 2.0 lanes (probably connected to the P55 PCH), to drive the USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s controllers.
The area south of the CPU socket (typically where you expect a northbridge to be located in older generation motherboards), has the nForce 200 and PLX bridge chips. This is cooled by a fusion heatsink which can be connected to a water-cooling loop. It can also offload heat from the CPU VRM and PCH heatsinks. Of the ten internal SATA ports, six are 3 Gb/s ports provided by the P55 PCH, two 3 Gb/s ports from a Gigabyte GSATA2 controller (which also gives out an IDE connector), and two 6 Gb/s ports from a Marvell-made controller. Other features include two color-coded blue USB 3.0 ports, several USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, and 8-channel HD Audio with optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs.
The area south of the CPU socket (typically where you expect a northbridge to be located in older generation motherboards), has the nForce 200 and PLX bridge chips. This is cooled by a fusion heatsink which can be connected to a water-cooling loop. It can also offload heat from the CPU VRM and PCH heatsinks. Of the ten internal SATA ports, six are 3 Gb/s ports provided by the P55 PCH, two 3 Gb/s ports from a Gigabyte GSATA2 controller (which also gives out an IDE connector), and two 6 Gb/s ports from a Marvell-made controller. Other features include two color-coded blue USB 3.0 ports, several USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, and 8-channel HD Audio with optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs.
29 Comments on Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7 Final Design Candidate Pictured
Most people, like me for example, already shelled out for an i5 cpu and dont want to, nor could be bothered by, an i7 920. Or simply, like me, got an i5 in a nice combo deal. Unless eVGA counters this with a better Classy i bet this will remain the top board for a while.
On the flip side im sad to see this board dosent have 6 ram slots like its smaller brother the UD6.
Any idea on price and availability?
*EDIT* sorry PP didnt see it at the bottom of your post;)
To all those who doubt why to get this, I will gladly give my GF the UD6 and set this UD7 in my rig;) 16 X 16 with 280's versus my 8 X 8. Upgrades to the SATA and USB, and I may even add that NB into the loop I had planned for my CPU on the UD6
My question is why not? Especially if you are already committed to the P55 boards.
@PP I wonder if I would be able to run my 2400mhz with the loss of the "highspeed" white slots of my UD6. Im sure we will see a review or two soon enough.
Those white slots are high speed? I thought they where there just to run moar ramz :laugh:
i5 has an tdp of 95 watt that's batter dan 120+ from i7 your temps would be lower and your system will be quiet, and it does have good performans, also overclocking is really good
i would go for core I5 with 3way sli fermi
:)
@ SK1 lmmfao Im replacing an Asus with a similarly fugly heatsink on meh LE, but mine is even more plain than that;)
:D
I amazed at what this UD6 can do with a set of Tridents, I really hope there isnt a loss for some new options. I dropped a line in another forum to ask their GB guys if they knew anything that we should know;)
It does look to be a great board, hell, with the set up like that.. I might be a GB boy!
Rather get a UD7 X58 though and i can imagine around the same price.
Not only that but triple channel cost your more when you get around the 2000mhz range.