Pictures of P55 motherboards

[runn3R]

Have a look below:

GA-P55-UD5






GA-P55-UD4P

[simonw]

I thought P55 chipset does not have a northbridge.  So the heatsink in the NB position, I'm guessing there is no chip underneath there?  And it's just used to help dissipate the heat, is that right?

[Whitehot]

check the Revision number on the 4th picture down Rev 0.1!!  I guess that's a really early sample!

[Beekeeper]

@ simonw

P55 is a single chip solution, we should forget about the word "chipset" as it's no longer the set of any chips. the heatsink in the previous NB position must cover some other chips.
every heatsink is used to dissipate the heat, no other function i have heard of ...  

[oggmonster]

Oefft, looks rather tasty! 

[runn3R]

More nice photos appeared at CPU3D.com:
http://www.cpu3d.com/review/7955-1/exclusive-gigabyte-ga-p55-ud5-motherboard/introduction.html

[Badbonji]

I thought chipset was talking about the NB/SB chips or something...

[Whitehot]

when do these come out?

[runn3R]

products will be ready in August

[runn3R]

and here it is the next sample - GA-P55M-UD4 in microATX form factor

[mark rumsey]

Is that a set of headers for a serial and LPT port I see on the GA-P55-UD4P? You would be amazed how hard it is these days to find serial ports, and its even harder to get parallel ports. And you would be amazed how many people actually want these ports on the motherboards. Serial ports are still one of the main methods of connectivity to discreet controllers and motherboard parallel ports are essential if you need to run old software with a dongle. Well done Gigabyte for still producing boards with them.

[runn3R]

Is that a set of headers for a serial and LPT port I see on the GA-P55-UD4P? (...)

Yes, correct.

[runn3R]

More pictures and information about GA-P55-UD5 appeared at bit-tech:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2009/07/14/first-look-gigabyte-ga-p55-ud5-motherboard/1

[Elemental_Dragon]

Very nice - might have this board in my LAN rig

~Bex

[mark rumsey]

Daft question of the month time.

If there's no north bridge, are the duties it would normally do loaded onto the south bridge or the CPU? Whichever way it is, isn't this likely to blunt the performance compared to the traditional NB/SB setup where each bridge could be doing things independently of each other, especially if its been shifted into the CPU? Or have they combined the bridges into a single 'super bridge' chip that is as powerful as the traditional NB/SB setup? Finally, if the bridges are combined does this limit what can be done with the board in terms of additional hardware? For example, will it still be possible to produce budget board with minimal features (a couple of SATA ports, single PCIex1 slot etc) and fully loaded top end board (dual PCIe, lots of SATA with dual RAID capabilities, silly numbers of USB ports etc), or are we stuck with limited configurations?

I'm only curios really, just wondering if the possible lack of flexibility is a sign that Intel are aiming the Core i5 at the domestic/office end of the market where you get waht you're given with a minimal ability to customise the configuration leaving the Core i7 as the only viable option for those with specialist requirements. Like I said, daft questions of the month time.