Gigabyte P55 motherboard preview (P55-UD4P)

A meet and greet with Gigabyte's P55 UD4P

So here we have the P55 UD4P, it's a fairly impressive looking motherboard alright. Though pricing on P55 motherboards still need to be announced we expect it to be in the 150~199 USD price range. The board has Gigabyte's classic design with the blue themed color scheme and the always blue PCB. But look at the connectivity on that baby, dang. Let's zoom in a little and focus on the back-panel connectors.

Check that out, from left to right that's a combined PS2 keyboard/mouse connector. Then I count a total of ten USB 2.0 ports, 2x firewire, 2x eSATA, 2x Gigabit Ethernet. Digital audio in the form of coaxial and optical TOSLINK connectors, and then all the way to the right the analog audio connectors. Well, that certainly is a good start, that back panel is stuffed full to the last square inch.

Audio is managed by Realtek's HD audio chipset (ALC888).

When we flip the board around we stumble into the processor area. We spot the 8-pin CPU power header, ferrite core chokes and obviously the all new Socket 1156.

The board incorporates the latest Ultra durable philosophy that Gigabyte lately applies to all their motherboards. Meaning the board has all solid capacitor design with high quality parts from Japan. Also lower RDS MOSFETs, ferrite core chokes and lower ESR solid capacitors are used here. Ultra Durable 3 takes it up a notch and by using even better Japanese capacitors, said to last for 50,000 hours (almost 6 years of continuous use).

The biggest selling point about UD3 and UD4 (Ultra durable revision 3 and 4) is actually the fact that they now use two ounce copper layers in the PCB. This should lower temperatures inside the PCB, and that boils down to better lifespan, stability and overclocking. But enough on UD3, let's check out the motherboard a little more up-close and personal.