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Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:30:00 -0600

A P55 motherboard that spares no amenity

If you thought Intel’s new budget Nehalem meant rock-bottom, feature-stripped motherboards to match, think again.

Gigabyte’s GA-P55-UD6 jams just about every feature you could think of into the new LGA1156 platform. There are the de rigueur updated power-saving utilities and the dual BIOS, which can save your bacon should your BIOS get corrupted.

And then there’s a whole kitchen sink of new features, such as the ability to secure the system using the onboard TPM module and then have it unlock when the computer detects your Bluetooth phone nearby. The same Bluetooth phone can also be used to put the system in standby or hibernate if you walk away, to save power.

Two other features are probably a bit more useful: As part of the board’s Smart Six apps, the BIOS QuickBoot feature allows you to set the BIOS to initialize much faster if no hardware has been changed. With the feature turned on, we saw the system go from a 30-second POST-to-OS load to 15 seconds. That’s pretty spectacular. The OS QuickBoot promises faster boots, too, but as far as we can tell, it’s simply a different way to invoke Vista’s Hybrid Sleep mode.

Gigabyte's P55 board is the first to sport six DIMM slots for the Core i5.

In the odd-feature department, the Smart Recorder function can log power ons and offs and which files are moved off of the computer. (Not trustful of your roommate?) Even odder is the Smart Dual BIOS feature that lets you store passwords and up to 12 important dates in the BIOS. Why? We don’t know.

On the physical front, the board ups the arms race in power regulation with a 24-phase power feature. A typical budget board features four-phase power circuits—Gigabyte says the 24-phase helps keep the board cooler by spreading the workload among more components and can also aid in delivering higher and more reliable voltage. Gigabyte also says it used two ounces of copper to build the traces in the board instead of the typical one ounce in budget boards. In theory, this should lower the resistance and also thermals.

Of course, there’s also 12 SATA ports (but no SATA 6) and eight USB ports (no USB 3.0), as well as SLI and CrossFire X support. Oh, and did we mention the six DIMM slots? That’s the feature that will get the most attention. Since Lynnfield is dual-channel, the majority of boards for the CPU feature four DIMM slots. The six-slots, though, aren’t as useful as you would think, right now. To populate all six, you must include four single-sided DIMMs. What that translates to with today’s RAM is four 1GB DDR3 sticks combined with, say, two 2GB DIMMs, for a total of 8GB. That’s the same as you would get from a four-slot board. The extra slots might be handy in 12 to 18 months, when RAM density has increased, but not today. We tested the GA-P55-UD6 with six DIMMS to see if populating all of the slots would hurt performance, and it didn’t. In fact, we saw slightly better performance with 8GB using six DIMMs than 8GB using four DIMMs.

We used the GA-P55-UD6 for the majority of our Lynnfield testing (November) and didn’t experience any issues, and performance was quite good when compared to X58 and i920.

Even the cost of the board is quite acceptable. If this were an X58 board, it would push $350, but at $240 MSRP the GA-P55-UD6 is a decent value. The fact that the board is currently selling for more than it lists tells you how hot is right now.

Gigabyte Booktop M1305 Beefs Up While Docked with External GeForce GT220

Paul Lilly — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:48:45 -0600

Gigabyte will soon start shipping its Booktop M1305 ultraportable that was first shown back in June, and peering over the spec sheet, there doesn't appear to be much to get excited about. Not until you look closer, anyway.

The M1305 will come equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Pentium, or Celeron ULV processor. Pushing pixels on the 1366x768 display is Intel's 4500MHD integrated graphics. It will also come with 4GB of DDR3 memory, 320GB or 500GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, a 1.3MP webcam, slim-type DVD burner, fingerprint reader, two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA/USB combo port, HDMI, a 4-in-1 card reader, and Windows Home 7 Premium.

But where this ultraportable stands out from the crowd is with the included docking station. The docking station brings NVidia's GeForce GT220 graphics to the table, giving the M1305 a major boost over its integrated chipset, and includes a bunch of I/O ports. Sure, lugging around the docking station might defeat the purpose of an ultraportable, but leave the thing at home and unwind with a bit of gaming goodness after a busy day on the road.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: Gigabyte via Engadget

Now Available: Motherboards Equipped with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps

Jason Barry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:43:08 -0600

With some of the first USB 3.0 and SATA 6 devices already released, the first capable motherboards are now available for purchase. Asus and Gigabyte were both known to be working on new boards earlier this summer and both companies are now shipping their latest models.

Asus is shipping two boards, one with a P55 chipset, and the other with an X58. Due to the single lane bandwidth bottleneck of the P55 chipset, Asus uses a bridge chip (PLX8613) and four PCIe lanes so the board can run in SLI and Crossfire modes. Gigabyte is shipping seven different boards in the P55A series. Gigabyte opted to avoid the bridge chip so dual-card modes will not be enabled in the board.

These motherboards are shipping despite delayed chipset releases from Intel supporting the latest interfaces. Manufacturers do not expect to have new Intel chipsets with USB 3.0 support until 2011.

Asus P7P55D-E-Premium

MSI and Gigabyte Optimistic About Notebook Shipment Growth in 2010

Bart Salisbury — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:15:55 -0500

With Annie-like optimism, Micro-Star International (MSI) and Gigabyte Technology are reporting their notebook shipments are up in the second half of the year, and both are looking to tomorrow, when “there’ll be sun.”

MSI chairman Joseph Hsu wasn’t entirely positive in his future outlook, however. Windows 7, according to Hsu, will help pick up lagging notebook sales. But a shortage on optical drives and DRAM, which is expected to continue into 2010, will put a crimp on MSI’s ability to meet expected demand.

Gigabyte, on the other hand, is a behind on its projections to ship 200,000 notebooks in 2009 because of a lousy first half. But, the trend in the third quarter is upward, and Gigabyte expects it will get at least 120,000 notebooks out the door by year’s end. For 2010 Gigabyte vice president Richard Ma expects to ship 300,000 notebooks, with half made in-house, and the other half made by Quanta Computer.

On the netbook side of things, MSI reports that the proportion of netbooks shipped dropped from 50% of all notebooks to 30%. Market demand, according the HSU, for ultra-thin notebooks was also weak. Ultra-thin shipments should pick-up in 2010, however, once Intel starts shipping a dual-core CPU for this market segment.

Image Credit: MSI, Gigabyte

Intel Lynnfield Shipments May Outpace P55 Motherboard Availability

Paul Lilly — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:29:29 -0500

Some sources are saying that, at least internally, Intel is talking about shipping one million Lynnfield processors for desktops by the end of 2009. Should Intel meet its goal, it would put the pressure on motherboard makers to keep up.

Asus and Gigabyte are each on pace to ship 400,000 P55-based mobos by the end of the year, leaving 200,000 units for other manufacturers to pick up the slack. MSI, ECS, and ASRock are expected to ship around that many mobos, but all it takes is for one manufacturer to miss its goal for there to be more CPUs than there are mobos.

Asus looks to be the most active for the rest of the year. According to company VP Joe Hsieh, Asus' expects to ship between 5.5 to 6 million motherboards in the third quarter, 6 million in the fourth, and 22 million total. Going forward, Asus says P55-based boards will account for 10 percent of all shipments.

Image Credit: en.expreview.com

Gigabyte Ditches GeCube, GeCube Ditches Graphics Business

Paul Lilly — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:45:29 -0500

If you've ever shopped for a videocard, you may have run across a company called GeCube. The company has been somewhat of a player in the graphics market, producing ATI videocards from the Radeon 7000 PCI series to the much more recent PCI-E Radeon HD 4890. That's as far as the company will go, says news and rumor site DigiTimes.

Citing a Chinese-language Apply Daily report, DigiTimes says Gigabyte has recently released its 61.5 percent stake in GeCube and relinquished its spot on the board of directors. As a result, GeCube decided to sell off its graphics card business, but the company isn't going away completely. Instead, GeCube has already attracted a new partner, and although GeCube isn't saying who the new partner is, going forward the two will apparently work together on a non-graphics card related business.

As of right now, GeCube's website still reflects its graphics business.

Image Credit: GeCube

Asus Inconspicuously Jumps on the Gigabyte Bandwagon

Paul Lilly — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:29:30 -0500

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Gigabyte should be blushing. Why? Because Asus, highly regarded among power users for the company's high-end motherboards, has taken a page from Gigabyte and quietly outfitted some of its motherboards with 2-ounce copper PCBs (printed circuit boards).

Well over half of Gigabyte-brand motherboards shipped during the week before Computex were 2-ounce copper, and by the end of the year, Gigabyte predicts the copper design will account for 80 percent of its boards. But what's interesting about Asus following suit is that Asrock, an Asus subsidiary, at one time decried Gigabyte's copper design as completely unnecessary.

Asrock went on a rampage sending out PowerPoint presentations to the press that not only said a 2-ounce copper design didn't benefit cooling, but was actually harming the environment as well. Funny how watching another company gain marketshare can change one's perspective, isn't it?

Image Credit: Asus via The Inquirer

Gigabyte to Extend DualBIOS Technology to all Motherboards

Paul Lilly — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:21:31 -0500

Good news for Gigabyte fans who like to tweak their systems but fear one bad move (or BIOS flash) could ruin the whole experience. The motherboard maker has begun offering its DualBIOS technology on its entire lineup of motherboards and not just the high-end boards.

Gigabyte refers to its DualBIOS as a "hot spare" for your system, and that's essentially what is. DualBIOS boards contain two BIOS chips. Should the primary chip fail for any reason -- say a power outage during a BIOS update, or a particularly nasty virus infection -- the secondary BIOS automatically kicks in the next time you boot your system.

Gigabyte initially only offered its DualBIOS technology on premium boards, but look to see it on both entry- and mid-level mobos going forward as the company tries to increase its market share.

Image Credit: Gigabyte