The Verdict
There honestly doesn't seem to be a P55 motherboard out there that sucks (thus far). So all tested motherboards to date are at the very least good, and some a little better or even exceptional. The Gigabyte P565 UD5 falls in the exceptional category but believe it or not, there is an even higher end model called UD6. There's a lot .. seriously a lot to say for this motherboards as it entails the P55 chipset, and then way more. You get to have a lot of extra's, complex tweakable BIOS for overclockers with wide variety changes -- then the hardware feature set like two Gigabit connectors, optical TOSLINK, the MASSIVE amount of SATA connectors, the quality components used making the board last longer, 2OZ copper, the list just goes on and on. Of course NVIDIA has "allowed" SLI to be licensed on P55 boards, Gigabyte makes that option available here along with CrossFireX so there's some additional value to be found as well.
Overall yeah, great motherboard, great performance, and heaps of features for any purpose really. Now I expected the price of this motherboard to be over 200 USD/EUR but that's not the case as we spotted it for 165 EUR here in the stores already, and we feel that is a fair price for a motherboard in this class.
So yeah, for 165 EUR you can pick it up, pop a Lynnfield processor in there and have the experience of a lifetime. This board is designed for the hardcore enthusiast but is also overclocker friendly to the novice that just wants a little more performance without a lot of hassle, overclocking in the BIOS or alternatively through Gigabyte's software suite is fairly easy thing to do.
Design wise, you either like or dislike the color scheme I guess, No oranges, greens, or pinks here... just blue and white. Clean, and simple really.
When we strip everything away and look purely at baseline performance, well .. this motherboard is winning over all the p55 motherboards we tested thus far.
Now granted, all other P55 boards where early review samples, and we now arrive at a stage where manufacturers have had some more time to tweak the BIOS. And that shows very much with the ASUS P55D DeLuxe we tested last week, and now also this Gigabyte P55 UD5 as even at default Gigabyte will tweak your system a tiny bit. Why ? Because the P55 chipset allows it, and Gigabyte takes advantage of that. It shows leading numbers in both memory and processor performance, so obviously that helps everything in the PC ecosystem as well.
As such we like to end the review, the Gigabyte P55 UD5 will be a perfectly fine choice if you decide to go for this platform. High quality, great feature set and it oozes with sugar sweet performance and a BIOS to die for.
Aaah, don't you just love the smell of new hardware in the morning ? Me likey ! Definitely a recommended product.
You can pick up the P55 UD5 for $209.99
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