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GIGABYTE P55-UD6 Motherboard Review

The P55-UD6 is easily one of the most feature rich boards motherboards on the market today. Added to its recipe for success is the first 24-phase power implementation we've ever seen combined with a robust, but un-daunting BIOS to propel the GA-P55-UD6 and the LGA1156 processor of your choice to new heights.

Introduction

Gigabyte is a name most enthusiasts are well acquainted with. Gigabyte produces a wide variety of motherboards at a staggering array of price points.

While Gigabyte undoubtedly sells more boards in the lower dollar price points it is most well known for its higher end motherboards in enthusiast boards. These flagship products are largely where its reputation is at stake and where it is earned. Over the last two years or so, Gigabyte has really stepped up to the challenge of competing with ASUS and other board makers. In fact, if you would have told me five years ago that Gigabyte would be a leader in the enthusiast motherboard market, we would have had some solid reasons as to why that would likely not be true. Things are very different today though.

The Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 is another among the new breed of Intel P55 Express chipset based boards designed for use with Intel's LGA1156 socket compatible processors. Currently the GA-P55-UD6 supports Intel's Core i5 and Core i7 800 series processors. The board is certainly what I'd call "feature rich." It boasts an impressive array of features, not limited to 10 SATA ports, 2 eSATA ports, 14 USB ports, along with SLI and Crossfire X support. The technology that went into this board is equally impressive. Like all boards carrying the "Ultra Durable 3" branding on the box the GA-P55-UD6 features a 2oz copper PCB, all Japanese capacitors, lower RDS MOSFETs, ferrite core chokes, and…wait for it.................................24 phase power.

Not simply content with a solid 6 or 8 phase design Gigabyte refused to be outdone going up to or past 16 phase power; setting the bar a little higher. It has cranked things up a notch until the board's CPU socket area was littered with chokes for a total of 24+2 power phases. Gigabyte didn't stop there. There are even more phases for the memory and chipset as well. All in all I counted 34 chokes on the board's surface. They are seemingly everywhere. According to the specifications and literature this allows for even distribution of heat over all 24 phases as well as unparalleled overclocking ability with the lowest temperatures. (Their words, not mine.) I'll cover that last claim in some detail later, but suffice it to say there is some validity to Gigabyte’s claims.

On the surface it looks like Gigabyte didn't just throw down 24 phases, it gave the GA-P55-UD6 24 "good" phases that are well implemented here. The 2oz copper PCB is supposed to allow for better efficiency and a cooler running board. They also claim 50,000 hours of MTBF on the board's capacitors. Once you start to separate the marketing speak (which is plastered all over the box) from the facts we have what makes for an impressive motherboard. Well at least, on paper that's how it reads to me. Precision over-voltage is back as well as some other features like Gigabyte's Dynamic Energy Saver 2. The board of course also retains Gigabyte's Dual BIOS feature as well. While originally this type of technology was intended to keep you from trashing your board thanks to a bad BIOS flash, it has a secondary purpose which is recovery after a failed overclock. This virtually eliminates annoying CMOS clearing during overclocking sessions. Something guys like us at HardOCP find quite valuable in the long run.

There is a new feature as well that I hadn't seen or worked with before. (Editor’s Note: MSI P55-GD80 has a very similar feature as well.) This is Gigabyte's Smart TPM feature. This allows you to prevent access to data stored on the system by requiring a 2048bit key to access it. The key can be stored on a USB flash drive or a cell phone! The latter uses Bluetooth technology but requires a third party Bluetooth receiver as one is not packaged with the board itself. This feature is optional by region but evidently we get this feature here in the U.S.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

The packaging is pretty much the same for all higher end boards made today. In this case however Gigabyte took its normal packaging design and rotated it so that it was wider than it was tall. I actually like the change though it serves no real purpose outside of being what I would consider more aesthetically pleasing. The packaging is of course covered in marketing catch phrases touting all the board's features. The 24 phase power logo takes up about a quarter of the box front. It also has the usual flap detailing more of its feature set. The board arrived nice and safe in the packaging and was totally free of damage.

The first thing I noticed when I removed the board was that it is probably the single heaviest ATX board I've ever handled. The 2oz copper PCB, seemingly endless sea of chokes combined with their very heavy heat pipe cooling solution gave the board enough heft to flatten a squirrel or seriously injure a small dog should it ever fall on one. Included in the box is the usual compliment of cables, manuals SLI bridge, driver disk and I/O shield.

Board Layout

Our sample board was marked as a Rev:1.0 board. The layout of the GA-P55-UD6 is fairly good. There are a couple of nitpicks with the design but overall the complaints I have aren't deal breakers. There are plenty of included fan headers spaced nicely over the board's surface. The ATX power connectors are also thoughtfully placed. The CMOS battery could be positioned better I think; it could easily end up underneath a PCI card easily, but given the fact that the BIOS recovers so easily from a bad tweaking that this is very unlikely. The front panel connectors were placed in an ideal location next to the diagnostic LED display. The USB headers were also located in a nearly ideal spot.

The CPU area is nice and clean despite having a ridiculous amount of chokes present. The heat sink mounting area marked by silk-screening is clear and the only problems I could foresee here would be a result of someone choosing to mount badly designed thermal solutions on the board. I found that while mounting my Apogee GTZ waterblock (with a custom built LGA 1156 mounting solution) that there could be more clearance around some of the capacitors. It was a tight squeeze to get my hands into that area in order to hand tighten the bolts I used to mount the waterblock. Granted the solution I'm using is improvised and far from a custom design. So take this experience with a grain of salt.

The GA-P55-UD6 has a total of six DDR3 DIMM slots. The white slots are the first bank and are color coded to signify dual channel mode as normal. These slots will accept double or single sided modules. The blue slots on the other hand are another matter. When using only two of these (4 DIMMs total), double or single side modules may be used. When populating all six DIMM slots, the blue DIMM slots are only capable of accepting single sided memory modules. Just about any module you'd probably find yourself using on this board will most likely be double sided and thus, these extra slots are of very limited usefulness. I'm not sure why Gigabyte even bothered to put them here, but testing will tell us. Still they don't seem to negatively impact the board layout. Additionally Gigabyte was thoughtful when determining the positioning of these slots. They are positioned so that they are far enough away from the expansion slots to allow modules to be installed or removed while a large video card is installed in the system. This type of foresight seems like an easy thing, but more companies fail to consider this than you'd probably imagine.

The Intel P55 Express chipset is a unified design meaning there is no separation of north and south bridges. The chipset is actually located where the south bridge would be found on most boards. It is cooled with a very heavy cooling solution with embedded heat pipes. Located in front of the chipset are 10 (yes, you counted them right) SATA ports. The blue ones are attached to the P55 chipset while the rest are split between a Gigabyte branded JMicron JMB362, and a JMicron JMB363 controller. Both support RAID0, 1, JBOD, AHCI and legacy IDE modes. The JMB363 supports legacy EIDE devices as well. Thus the IDE port on the board is tied to this chip as well. Floppy drive support comes from the ITE8720 chip. The SATA ports are the right angled variety which also support locking SATA cables. One gripe I have is with the layout in this area is the placement of the EIDE connector. I would have liked to have seen this at the board's edge oriented differently.

The expansion slot area is generally well thought out and laid out in an almost ideal fashion for most users. As is becoming more common, there is a heat sink in the way of the top most PCI-Express x1 slot. This is a very common problem but this particular board has one of the biggest impacts with clearance I've ever seen for one of these PCI-Express x1 slots. There are very few cards that are going to fit in this slot and not run into the heat sink. The cause of this issue is relatively simple. For whatever reason Gigabyte has placed an almost north bridge sized heat sink where the north bridge used to be. I'm not actually sure what's underneath the heat sink as I didn't bother to dismantle the cooling solution to find out. In any case whatever the reason, I think they could have done things better than they did.

There are two PCI-Express x1 slots, 3 PCI-Express x16 slots and two legacy PCI slots. The PCI-Express x16 slots run in a 16x8x4 configuration. According to Gigabyte's specifications, this is true even while running in SLI or Crossfire modes. However the P55 specification with two PCIe inserted into the first two slots is x8 x8 and we would find that a lot more likely. The last PCI-Express x16 slot is not Crossfire or SLI compatible. It has limited bandwidth anyway since it is constrained to four lanes.

The rear I/O panel has 10 USB ports, 1 PS/2 keyboard and mouse combination port, 2 eSATA ports, 2 IEEE1394a ports, 2 RJ-45 ports, 1 S/PDIF out, 1 optical and six-mini headphone jacks for audio output. What is really kind of odd is that Gigabyte is again including their eSATA / USB 2.0 combination ports. They are the yellow eSATA ports. Kind of an odd thing. I did test the USB functionality and found that these ports indeed work for USB devices. I assume they are doing this to save space on the back plane but it was something I wasn't sure I'd see again after the first time they did it but I guess they intend to make this a regular feature on their boards.

Easy Tune 6

Included with the GA-P55-UD6 is Gigabyte's Easy Tune 6 software. The application looks a lot like CPU-Z and GPU-Z. The layout of the software is fairly simple and intuitive.

Displayed here is the essentially the same information CPU-Z would give you. Processor model number, core type, socket type, supported instruction sets, BIOS version, clock speed, etc. There are no settings to adjust here as this is only informational. The memory tab is much the same. It provides only information such as CAS latency information, memory part numbers, and supported clock frequencies.

On the tuner tab you'll see the Quick Boost settings which are little more than profile presets for overclocking. Once you select "advanced" you will find the settings that actually allow you to overclock inside windows. Frequency, Ratio, Voltages, etc. Everything that can be adjusted is adjustable via sliders. The graphics card tab contains settings for overclocking your GPU. The clock frequency values were displayed correctly for the memory, core and shaders.

The Smart tab contains the CPU Intelligent Accelerator feature. You can select several predefined profiles that correspond to varying overclocking presets. Of course these are only useful to the casual overclockers and noobies that are just getting their feet wet. Many long time enthusiasts might not even bother to install the utility at all. Just bear in mind that you won't get really high overclocks out of this and you'll need to venture into the BIOS eventually if you want to hit those higher clock frequencies. Also present here is the Smart Fan modes. This allows the fan to ramp up speed or slow down based on variable thermal parameters either preset or defined by the user. You can easily set the fan speed to correspond to the CPU temperature at your discretion. The Hardware monitor tab allows you to monitor various temperature and voltage ranges for various components and areas. Here you can also set alerts which can notify you of undesirable conditions such as excessively high temperatures or fan failures.