P55A-UD4 is on Newegg

[Interitus]

Didn't see anyone post this, but I just noticed it was there. Been waiting for this board, I'll be ordering this weekend.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128409

 

[lothar]

$15 premium.

 

[Fear No Evil]

Whats the difference between the UD4 board and the UD4P board? The P board is like $20 more but I can't figure out why.

 

[Akino]

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[Akino]

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[Fear No Evil]

Smart ass. To make things even more confusing there is a P55A-UD4, a P55-UD4, a P55A-UD4P and a P55-UD4P..

 

[Akino]

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[Interitus]

Well for people like me who don't plan to SLI at all, a 5850 or 5870 on this board and SATA/USB 3.0 sounds good. I'm not gonna lose any sleep over a small fraction of lost theoretical bandwidth due to an external chip instead of a built-in chipset solution.

It also uses a LOTES socket to avoid the Foxconn socket woes.

 

[Akino]

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[n7]

Hmm, nice.

 

[lothar]

Well for people like me who don't plan to SLI at all, a 5850 or 5870 on this board and SATA/USB 3.0 sounds good. I'm not gonna lose any sleep over a small fraction of lost theoretical bandwidth due to an external chip instead of a built-in chipset solution.

It also uses a LOTES socket to avoid the Foxconn socket woes.

This.

When is ASUS's(that doesn't sound right) updated ones supposed to come out?
I have one eye open on the P55A-UD3R. I just hope it's not more than $150.

 

[Akino]

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[TheRealMrGrey]

Er, so why are the UD4 and UD6 boards out in the US, but not A-UD3? A-UD3 is out in Australia.

 

[Interitus]

I'm sure the Asus boards should be here anytime. I've been watching for the A series like a hawk because I wanted one pretty bad.

From what I understand, the difference in UD4 vs. UD4P is the amount of PCIe VGA slots. I always thought UD4 was x16 or x8,x8.. while the UD4P was x16 or x8,x8,x4.

And as far as SATA 6Gbps, I don't really care that a mechanical drive is a tad slower. If I decide to go SSD soon, the Raid 0 possibilities are there. I'm sure there will be some updates that will improve the SATA 3.0 speeds, but for the most part I just want the USB 3. Paying $20 more for those 2 items is more than fair. At $180'ish bucks, the UD4P is an awesome deal.

Only thing that might keep me off of it is if the X58 refresh happens fast and the USB 3/SATA 3 X58 boards come in at a reasonable price.


I really want this board though, it's just an amazing board for the price. It reminds me feature set-wise of my IP35-Pro when it came out.

Hmmm P55A and an i7 860 or X58 refreshed and an i7 930 in a few months... decisions to be made.


-edit-

One notable difference between the UD3's and the UD4's..

UD3's you don't get SATA ports facing 90 degrees from the board. That was a big factor for me in my proposed build.

 

[Samwise]

So which gigabyte motherboards use foxconn and which use lotes? What does the X58 refresh entail? Is it just adding USB 3 and SATA 3? Any ideas about price and when they will be available?

 

[willow2]

delete

 

[willow2]

So which gigabyte motherboards use foxconn and which use lotes? What does the X58 refresh entail? Is it just adding USB 3 and SATA 3? Any ideas about price and when they will be available?

All 1st generation Gigabyte boards, GA-P55-***, use Foxconn.
Their 2nd generation, GA-P55A-***, use Lotes.

 

[lothar]

I'm sure the Asus boards should be here anytime. I've been watching for the A series like a hawk because I wanted one pretty bad.

And as far as SATA 6Gbps, I don't really care that a mechanical drive is a tad slower. If I decide to go SSD soon, the Raid 0 possibilities are there. I'm sure there will be some updates that will improve the SATA 3.0 speeds, but for the most part I just want the USB 3. Paying $20 more for those 2 items is more than fair. At $180'ish bucks, the UD4P is an awesome deal.

Only thing that might keep me off of it is if the X58 refresh happens fast and the USB 3/SATA 3 X58 boards come in at a reasonable price.

Hmmm P55A and an i7 860 or X58 refreshed and an i7 930 in a few months... decisions to be made.

ASUS USB3/SATA3 board implementation will cost $250+. Not worth it.
They say the P7P55 line will have the option for an add-on card(which you have to pay for of course).
No idea how much the add-on card will cost but I expect it to be much more than the $15 price premium you pay to get a Gigabyte P55A mobo over the regular P55 line.

ASUS advertises that theirs uses a bridge chip which gives the full bandwith and is therefore not crippled like Gigabytes solution.

Will it make a difference? Who knows.
With Intel not implementing that on their motherboards till 2011, we may not know for the next 1-2 years, and USB3/SATA3 products won't flood the marketplace until about a year or 2 after Intel's implementation.

By then you're already considering Ivybridge or Haswell which would require a new motherboard anyways.

When is X58 refresh supposed to come out? I haven't heard a thing about it.
Can it be assumed that Gigabytes implementation of SATA3 and USB3 won't be crippled this time since there's more than enough lanes on the X58?

Also, enabling SATA3/USB3 on Gigabytes P55A drops your primary x16 graphics to 8x mode.
Is that the same with ASUS's implementation?

 

[Interitus]

I haven't heard any dates for the X58 refresh, but I have seen tons of pictures of the Gigabyte board. The only thing I don't like about it is the watercooled chip sink. I don't run water so it's kind of a pointless buy for me. The Asus X58 was announced and I saw retail box pictures (which is usually a good sign it's coming soon) but I haven't heard anything else in awhile.

Asus' P55 solution should be here soon, it's model number is P7P55D-E Premium. There's a few sites that have the P7P55D Premium listed as the -E version, so beware of that. Its retail pictures have been around awhile now.

While I really don't think I'll care about losing the x16 VGA on P55, it would be nice if the X58 USB3/SATA3 boards weren't too expensive, and I imagine even if they lose some PCIe lanes, the X58 chipset would still have plenty left for SLI. That would be my major reason for going X58, but I don't plan on it as of right now since I have no need for SLI.

I'm still in a toss up on a VGA card though. Would really like a 5850 but I don't have time to camp out retailers for one. Leaning toward the Gigabyte Super OC GTX 260 since it's about GTX275 performance for $50 less.

 

[lothar]

I haven't heard any dates for the X58 refresh, but I have seen tons of pictures of the Gigabyte board. The only thing I don't like about it is the watercooled chip sink. I don't run water so it's kind of a pointless buy for me. The Asus X58 was announced and I saw retail box pictures (which is usually a good sign it's coming soon) but I haven't heard anything else in awhile.

Asus' P55 solution should be here soon, it's model number is P7P55D-E Premium. There's a few sites that have the P7P55D Premium listed as the -E version, so beware of that. Its retail pictures have been around awhile now.

While I really don't think I'll care about losing the x16 VGA on P55, it would be nice if the X58 USB3/SATA3 boards weren't too expensive, and I imagine even if they lose some PCIe lanes, the X58 chipset would still have plenty left for SLI. That would be my major reason for going X58, but I don't plan on it as of right now since I have no need for SLI.

I'm still in a toss up on a VGA card though. Would really like a 5850 but I don't have time to camp out retailers for one. Leaning toward the Gigabyte Super OC GTX 260 since it's about GTX275 performance for $50 less.

Which has a price tag of $250.
I have never paid more than $200 for a motherboard, and I never will.

I don't care about crossfire and SLI, however I DO care about losing 16x mode for my single graphic card.
5850 is a tad over my reach. I'd rather spend $135 on a Radeon 4870 and use that difference to get an Intel SSD. If the 5850 was $200 however, I definitely would have gotten it, no question.

 

[Samwise]

I didn't know the Gigabyte motherboards were going to go down to 8x. Is that true for all of them? That throws a wrench in my plans. Are there going to be any motherboards (P55 or X58) with USB 3 and SATA 3 that still have 16x and priced between $100-200?

 

[Interitus]

There's an article floating around about how little of a performance hit x8 vs. x16 is on even the newer 5xxx series. It was somewhere around 1-2% reduction at x8 and around 5% at x4 (Gen 2, not 1).

I'll try to dig it up later. Cliff's notes: It doesn't make as big of a difference as you'd think.


--EDIT--

Here I found it - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/7.html

 

[Samwise]

Thanks for that reply Interitus. That helps a lot for my decision. Although I probably won't use crossfire anyway, does that mean the gigabyte P55 boards won't be much of a performance hit in crossfire?

 

[cbn]

Didn't see anyone post this, but I just noticed it was there. Been waiting for this board, I'll be ordering this weekend.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128409

$15 extra....not bad.

So when will SSDs become available to stress this extra bandwidth?

 

[cbn]

I didn't know the Gigabyte motherboards were going to go down to 8x. Is that true for all of them? That throws a wrench in my plans.

Oh so basically it turns a PCI-E 2.0 slot into an (effective) PCI-E 16 lane 1.0 slot?

Hmmmm....this won't be an issue for the time being considering HD5870 works well with 8 lanes of PCI-E 2.0.

I guess it just depends on what the person can make better use of? SSD @ 6Gbps/USB3 or future video cards?