M
Mike D.
Guest

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7 LGA 1156 Motherboard Review
Manufacturer's Part Number: GA-P55A-UD7 (rev 1.0)
Price: Approximately $320 CDN | Price Comparison
Manufacturer's Product Page: GA-P55A-UD7 (rev. 1.0) - GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Overview
Warranty: 3 year limited warranty
Buy from: NCIX | DirectCanada | BestDirect
With all of the focus on bang for the buck these days, it’s often easy to lose sight of the finer things in life. After all, in the age of “fast enough”, hard core enthusiasts can’t help but feel just a little left out. What is the world coming to when you can buy a quad core processor for $100 and a decently outfitted motherboard for even less? Well, today we’re throwing our frugality hat out the window and we’re going to take a look at a motherboard on the complete opposite end of the spectrum – the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7.
Although you may be thinking to yourself that high end and P55 are somewhat contradictory terms – and you’d normally be right – the P55A-UD7 is so far from your average P55 board that about the only thing it has in common with lesser boards is the fact that it supports LGA 1156 based processors. The X58 and LGA 1366 is certainly Intel’s idea of high end at the moment but there is a lot of potential in LGA 1156 and a wide variety of processors at all different price points.
Make no mistake; the P55A-UD7 is absolutely packed to the gills with features. Not only does it support USB 3.0 thanks to the popular NEC USB controller, Gigabyte has also provided SATA 6Gbps connectivity – both features not natively supported by any of Intel’s chipsets at the present time. And if a pair of SATA 6Gbps ports weren’t enough for you, there are no fewer than three additional storage controllers onboard providing more SATA ports than you can shake a stick at. Aside from robust storage potential, Gigabyte also provides a much more flexible PCI-E configuration on the P55A-UD7 thanks to the integration of both the Nvidia NF200 and PEX 8608 PCI-E bridge controllers. This means that the P55A-UD7 is not limited by the platform’s PCI-E configuration and supports not only SLI and Crossfire, but Tri-SLI and 3-Way Crossfire-X – features not normally supported on the socket 1156 platform.
The P55A-UD7 has quite literally to many features to summarize, but Gigabyte has outfitted it’s new socket 1156 flagship board with a large suite of innovative software titles to provide overclocking functionality, power savings and even limited system control with a Bluetooth enabled phone. On the hardware side of the fence, the P55A-UD7 is outfitted with an extremely heavy-duty 24-phase power delivery system that we’ve seen in both the X58A-UD7 and the P55-UD6 and boasts a very elaborate cooling solution to match.
Without further ado, let’s take a close look at the Cadillac of P55 boards – the P55A-UD7!

Last edited by a moderator: