P55A-UD4 is on Newegg

[Interitus]

If you are tight for funds, why waste money on Intel?
s1156/s1366 isn't exactly something i'd be looking at if bang for buck if your primary concern.

AMD has terrific pricing on their motherboards & nice cheap overclockable quads.

As for all the board vendors staying quiet, that's no surprise.

In the all the years i've been into hardware, it's become pretty obvious motherboard manufacturers are entirely about that last penny, & will do everything & anything to get it.
Shady practises, terrible support, marketing BS to cover up reality, they all do it.
There isn't a single mobo manufacturer out there i really trust; they're all pretty dirty.

I guess I worded that a little misleading. I won't be broke when I buy the stuff I want (tax refund, Christmas money, etc.) I just won't have money in the middle of the year to replace anything that breaks. So I'm not really budget constrained when I buy, just afterwards, lol.

And I agree with you about the board manufacturers. I just don't understand why they would shy away from at least leaking a cause for the faulty sockets. I would imagine I'm not the only one who has been trigger shy with my online cart finger thanks to these events. I would think it would help them with sales. But hey, I'm no business guru, I've found it typically true that the obvious is usually wrong in that field lol.

 

[Interitus]

Some discouraging news for me today.

The Asus X58 refresh board is on Newegg for $309, but has no eSATA so that's out.

The Gigabyte UD7 also popped up on Zipzoomfly for $369.. blah.

Thinking I'm just gonna go with one of the cheaper EVGA X58 boards, maybe the Tri-SLI non-Classy and just worry about SATA/USB 3 later.

 

[aamsel]

Back on-topic, sort of:

I have purchased an i7 860, so I need a P55 board,
and the P55A's (including the UD4) are of interest to me.

I will never use more than one video card, but would like to
get a board of the highest overall quality, one which is most
likely to take an 860 to the highest speeds at the lowest voltage.

Reading reviews, that distinction would seem to go to the P7P55D Deluxe,
but there may be several Gigabytes that will do just as well. The Gigabytes
seem to be overall less money. My only reservation as to Gigabyte in general
is that they have not ever paid me for a P45 $20 rebate that they still show as
valid. No idea as to the reason for non-payment, but it is not worth my time to
follow up. If Gigabyte has the best P55 boards then I would buy another anyhow.

Again, I would just like the most solid P55 overclocker, don't care that much if
it is $140 or $250, whichever one makes the most of less voltage?

 

[Interitus]

I've heard lots of good things about the EVGA P55 boards. I know I read quite a few OC reviews of the FTW series, and most of those boards seemed to yield good OC results. The EVGA's wouldn't have SATA 3.0/USB 3.0 though.

In addition to the P55A UD4, I was looking at the EVGA P55 SLI and FTW SLI. I really like all three of these boards. Only bad thing I've seen about any of them (sans the PCIe lanes) is that large air coolers like the TRUE cover up the first RAM slot which causes clearance issues with RAM sticks that have tall heatsinks, but after some research this seems to plague a lot of P55 boards. This was a big con for me since I planned on using a TRUE with 8GB of RAM, which I'd like to have a RAM cooler for since the RAM sticks would sit tight together. Even without a RAM cooler, I'd personally prefer RAM with upgraded cooling. Maybe not necessary for most people, but just something to consider.

If you're only using 4GB of RAM it shouldn't be an issue.

Some people have complained about the "double boot" of the EVGA boards, but there's a rumored upcoming BIOS change for that. Not sure if those rumors hold any truth, but it's worth considering.

 

[aamsel]

ttt

 

[aamsel]

I am assuming that Gigabyte is referring to SATA 6.0 as SATA 3?
I have read other threads suggesting that the overall bandwidth available in the PCIe
bus for socket 1156 and possibly 1366 boards is not sufficient enough to support
much use of SATA 6.0 and/or USB 3.0, and that the bus could be maxed out quite
quickly using them. Any comments?

 

[zimdea]

Wow! I did not know that Gigabyte did not tell us about the impact on PCe x16 slot by SATA 3 and USB 3.0. That sucks... This means that you can run a video card on 1 PCIe x16 at only x8 mode when you are using SATA 3 and USB 3.0.

They are using SATA 3 and USB 3.0 as marketing hype to sell their motherboards without telling us its negative side.
What about ASUS P7P55D Premium? ASUS did mentioned about the add-on card like the PLX PEX card which would enable USB 3.0 and SATA 3 and avoiding the bottleneck by PCIe x1 1st generation's speed (250mb/s). Would that prevent the PCIe X16 slot's bandwidth from being bottleneck to x8 mode???

Would an add-on PLX PEX card also work on an ordinary P55 motherboard that does not support SATA 3 and USB 3.0????

 

[lothar]

Wow! I did not know that Gigabyte did not tell us about the impact on PCe x16 slot by SATA 3 and USB 3.0. That sucks... This means that you can run a video card on 1 PCIe x16 at only x8 mode when you are using SATA 3 and USB 3.0.

They are using SATA 3 and USB 3.0 as marketing hype to sell their motherboards without telling us its negative side.
What about ASUS P7P55D Premium? ASUS did mentioned about the add-on card like the PLX PEX card which would enable USB 3.0 and SATA 3 and avoiding the bottleneck by PCIe x1 1st generation's speed (250mb/s). Would that prevent the PCIe X16 slot's bandwidth from being bottleneck to x8 mode???

Would an add-on PLX PEX card also work on an ordinary P55 motherboard that does not support SATA 3 and USB 3.0????

They told you.
It's you that didn't read properly.

I'm sure I posted this somewhere here before but if you get the P55A-UD4P and above, it shouldn't drop to 8x.
Only if you get the P55A-UD3/UD3R and below.

 

[TestSpecimen]

They told you.
It's you that didn't read properly.

I'm sure I posted this somewhere here before but if you get the P55A-UD4P and above, it shouldn't drop to 8x.
Only if you get the P55A-UD3/UD3R and below.

Where did you see this? If this is true, this is probably going to seal the deal on a P55A-UD4P purchase for me (even though it has that ungainly extra cooler right below the socket).

 

[SpacemanSpiffVT]

wow i am so confused
i am getting an i5 but what board to get?
no idea

 

[lothar]

Where did you see this? If this is true, this is probably going to seal the deal on a P55A-UD4P purchase for me (even though it has that ungainly extra cooler right below the socket).

Gigabyte's website.
The extra cooler below the socket is nothing to be worried about.

 

[TestSpecimen]

Gigabyte's website.
The extra cooler below the socket is nothing to be worried about.

I think you're right, I was poking around their website today and on all the UD3 series stuff, this is included in the Notes section:

* When SATA3 / USB 3.0 (Marvell 9128 /NEC USB 3.0 Controllers) work at turbo mode, 1st PCIE x16 will work at x8 speed.

whereas in the UD4 series stuff it states:

* When dual graphics cards are used in 1st and 2nd PCIex16 slots, SATA3 / USB 3.0 (Marvell 9128 /NEC USB 3.0 Controllers) will work at normal mode.

I'm guessing that since they didn't include the note from the UD3 mobos verbatim, that means that it's not a problem with the UD4 stuff? I'm only using a single graphics card, so I'm assuming this means I'd be getting the full x16 speed even if I use the SATA 3.0 ports. As for the extra cooler, I know it's nothing to worry about, it's just that I'm not overclocking and it seems like needless overkill. It kind of reminds me of a North Bridge, and what's the point of having that on a P55 board?

 

[IamShakes]

i believe with the UD4 you can use single graphics card and still run at x16. However if you crossfire / SLI, i interrupt "normal" mode to be SATA 3gb/s and USB 2.0.

The Asus version P7P55D-E Pro doesn't say anything along those lines and looks like they fully support crossfire / SLI while using Sata 6gb/s and USB 3.0. Not to mention supports the new i3 sockets coming out if you wanted to go that direction.

 

[SpacemanSpiffVT]

so i guess the board to get is the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro right... seems to have full usb 3.0 / sata 6 GB support and not crippled at all..

costs 190 on the egg right now

 

[TestSpecimen]

so i guess the board to get is the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro right... seems to have full usb 3.0 / sata 6 GB support and not crippled at all..

costs 190 on the egg right now

Hmm, I didn't consider this one. I can get it PM'd to $198 too. Thanks for the tip.

Edit: Saw this link over at Tech Report, says "On its motherboards, Asus said the PEX8613 chip gets plumbed into a x4 PCI-E in order to offer enough bandwidth for today’s drives. Running the Marvell chip directly into a PCI-E x1 would effectively cap any devices at 250MB/s."

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/exclusive_first_usb_30_and_sata_60_expansion_card_will_sell_30

 

[IamShakes]

I've found this on the topic.

ASUS has a bridge chip to enable support for SATA 6 Gb/second and USB 3.0. The use of a bridge chip allows the system to run in SLI/Crossfire mode with full performance of SATA 6 Gb/second. The board overclocked almost 1GHz with solid stability. Great features, excellent performance and solid overclocking garner this new version of ASUS flag ship motherboard is an Editor’s Choice product that anyone looking for quality in their motherboard will enjoy.

http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1974_16.html

 

[TestSpecimen]

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=807

So it's not at the full speed but it's still better than what Gigabyte's using. I think that it should be fine with an Intel 80 GB G2, which is what I'll be running on it.

 

[nipplefish]

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=807

So it's not at the full speed but it's still better than what Gigabyte's using. I think that it should be fine with an Intel 80 GB G2, which is what I'll be running on it.

Well, the Gigabyte solution is full-speed, is it not? Or is it this single-lane PCIe chip? That seems illogical if it drops your x16 to x8 on the UD3. I'm so confused. Basically, if the UD4 can support full-speed SATA3 and USB3 as well as a single x16 graphics bus it's as good as sold for me. I couldn't care less about dual-GPU.

 

[TestSpecimen]

Well, the Gigabyte solution is full-speed, is it not? Or is it this single-lane PCIe chip? That seems illogical if it drops your x16 to x8 on the UD3. I'm so confused. Basically, if the UD4 can support full-speed SATA3 and USB3 as well as a single x16 graphics bus it's as good as sold for me. I couldn't care less about dual-GPU.

From what I understand so far, the UD4 series doesn't have it's x16 slot dropped to x8 if you use SATA 3.0 or USB 3.0, but those speeds are still capped at 250 MB/s because it's still using that PCIe 1.0 x1 lane. Apparently the Asus boards don't reach the rated SATA 3 speed of 600 MB/s either but they come in much closer at 500 MB/s.

 

[SpacemanSpiffVT]

i think I am just going to skip the usb 3.0. sata 6 GB thing on the mobo I am going to get... perhaps it will be better to get a add in card in a year or two when I can actually use this tech.

In that case, which mobo would you guys recommend (taking into account the Foxconn socket issue), any mobo is fine with me that has good overclocking and has a firewire port.