New Intel P55 motherboards - early Computex coverage

[runn3R]

We have some early Computex coverage from Australian media, Tweaktown:

GIGABYTE already has SATA 6 Gbit/s on its mobos:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/12281/gigabyte_already_has_sata_6_gbit_s_on_its_mobos/index.html

Early look at GIGABYTE P55-UD5 and UD4P mobo:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/12282/early_look_at_gigabyte_p55_ud5_and_ud4p_mobos/index.html

Overview specs on GIGABYTE’s P55 motherboards:

1. GIGABYTE is introducing 24 phase power on new motherboards
2. GIGABYTE is introducing SATA-3 6Gb/s on new motherboards – total of 12x SATA ports due to additional Marvell chip (4 x SATA 3; 6 x SATA 2; 2 x eSATA)
3. GIGABYTE is introducing Smart TPM that activates secret files when you are in mobile phone Bluetooth range of your PC
4. New GIGABYTE motherboards will have power over eSATA ports in the I/O panel
5. GIGABYTE will display a range of P55 chipset motherboards at Computex

[RuiPereira]

The new Intel P55 is looking good, packed with good specs.
Its going to start to get confusing though, now that Intel will have 3 processor architectures
1x LGA775 or 1x LGA1366 (aka i7) and now LGA1136/1156 (not really sure at this stage) (aka i5)

The P55 chipset will support:
SATA-III @ 6 Gbit/s, that is some HUGE speed performance
24 phase power for the CPU, plenty power to push your new socket

More information will be released soon @ Computex.
So if you going to Computex '09, why not visit the GIGABYTE stand! 

later...

[Badbonji]

Is this only for core i5?
So when is USB 3.0 and Sata 3 coming to 1366? And do any of you know about lucid hydra being implemented, or if it will ever be?

[RuiPereira]

Is this only for core i5?
So when is USB 3.0 and Sata 3 coming to 1366? And do any of you know about lucid hydra being implemented, or if it will ever be?

Hello Badbonji,

Unfortunately Intel is keeping the P55 spec’s very tight but more will be revealed during Computex.
We will find out more details soon, I hope… hmmm, or maybe I will read it somewhere first   
In fact, I don’t think we will introduce USB 3 on the P55, I can’t remember the reason for this

About Lucid Hydra, I think this is something to do with SLI&CrossFire platform   
Again, I am not sure if the P55 will support this, like the new Intel X58 does, but I really, really hope so.
I never did like this CrossFire or SLI only option, I feel this limit’s the user’s experience, but that is another topic
I’m not sure how nVidia and ATI will react to this.

Please keep coming back to this Forum and we will update this post

[Badbonji]

Oh, ok.
Yeah lucid hydra allows mix and match gpu's, as long as you have drivers for them (So you can link for example a 7600gt with 3 9800gx2's, and a GTX295 all together if supported by the same driver for almost perfect scaling in games). It has great potential, and intel wants the technology for it's upcoming Larabee gpu.
If multiple drivers can be installed, then you can link ATi with Nvidia which is cool.

[RuiPereira]

P55 is starting to look good…. Very good actually.
Unfortunately we can not give out any performance test result until the NDA is finished.   

However, I can share some the following:
There will be two types of P55, a i5 and i7 both LGA 1156
The i5 will support 4core, while the i7 edition will support 4Core with 8 threads and Intel HT processing power.
PCI-Express2.0: 1x16X or 2x 8X supporting CrossFire or SLI – not on all models!!!

The P55 will be Dual-Channel DDR3 only solution.

Regarding the performance of P55… well I guess you will have to wait and see.
Trust me, it will be worth the wait.   
We will have online review companies like CPU3D, Bit-tech, Hexus among others doing reviews soon, so the performance results will be real and plentiful.

Soon, we will create a section on this Forum especially for P55 with more specific details.
This should be activated by next month.

So I will not share too much for now.

ETA on P55 is around Mid-Aug (we hope)

Gigabyte is talking the P55 very seriously as we feel it will affect the current P45/P43 models and even possibly the entry-level X58 models