Gigabyte preps GA-P55A-UD7

Gigabyte is working on their all new top dog P55 motherboard labeles GA-P55A-UD7.

The GA-P55A-UD7 is will have embedded USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s at this LGA-1156 platform. Included as well is a NF200 switch chip from NVIDIA to add additional PCIE lanes. The LGA-1156 socket is powered by a 24+3 phase circuit. It connects to four DDR3 DIMM slots for dual-channel memory.

Its PCI-Express 2.0 x16 link is wired to an NVIDIA nForce 200 chip, which gives out 32 PCI-Express 2.0 lanes to ensure support for 3-way NVIDIA SLI, ATI CrossFireX is naturally supported. There are three PCI-Express x16 slots (which arrange into x16, x16, NC; or x16, x8, x8, depending on how they're populated).

A PLX-made PCI-Express bridge chip (probably connected to the PCH) ensures full-bandwidth PCI-Express 2.0 x1 connections to the NEC two port USB 3.0 controller, and the two port SATA 6 Gb/s controller made by Marvell. Apart from the six (color-coded blue) SATA 3 Gb/s ports the PCH provides, the two color-coded white ports on the south are SATA 6 Gb/s, while the two on the north are connected to a Gigabyte GSATA2 SATA 3 Gb/s controller, which also gives out an IDE connector [via techpowerup]

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