Shootouts

The Next Gen. P55 Motherboards (SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0)

By Vincent Chang - 22 Nov 2009

Conclusion

Conclusion

Intel may have appeared to drop the ball on introducing SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 standards to the mainstream but so far, motherboard vendors have been aggressive in getting the technologies out. Obviously, this makes sense as with the increasing role of the processor in recent CPU architectures, there's less room for product differentiation by motherboard vendors. Personally, we would rather they focus on useful features like these than the next iteration of a little used, niche 'feature'.

ASUS and Gigabyte have been the fastest out of the blocks when it came to implementing these new features on their boards, with revised editions that are on sale now. Expect other vendors to pipe in with their own versions, either implemented directly onboard, or through third-party expansion cards. With no native SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0 support in the P55 chipset however, there's a catch to having them on these boards, as seen in their two divergent approaches. ASUS' bridge chip adds more cost but looks to provide the best performance while Gigabyte compromises by giving users a choice between SATA/USB speeds and dual graphics. Other manufacturers, especially those with add-on cards are likely to go for the compromise.

At US$280, the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium deserves its premium billing and will be a tough sell to all but the most high-end enthusiasts. It's surprisingly not the most expensive P55 board out there but it's close. And it gets most things right, with its full support for SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0 complemented by a very decent layout and feature set. As usual, there are ASUS proprietary features that may be superfluous but perhaps there are indeed some who will find them useful. The performance aspect was more or less what we had expected and even at its worse, this ASUS was still very competitive.

The Gigabyte P55A-UD6 meanwhile is a compromise. It makes for a more palatable US$250 price tag; in fact, that's exactly the same price for the older P55-UD6 that does not include SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0. For those that do not need two graphics cards though, this is an acceptable compromise. The performance too, is predictable and up to par with its competitors for the most part; our gaming benchmarks could not distinguish between the P55 motherboards. While we did have some minor complaints about the layout, there's no doubting the quality in this board. Plus not to forget is that the Gigabyte board has more storage related options like more storage controllers, SATA and eSATA ports - great for storage freaks. Like the ASUS, both of these boards are among the most costly of their class and it shows.

With SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 devices hardly seen in retail, these two motherboards are definitely ahead and chasing the early adopters. Based on what we have seen, they are worthy of their flagship status, but given the different approaches, the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium was our favorite as it provides full bandwidth performance to these new connectivity standards as well as dual graphics cards. While we've noticed enthusiast discussions in our forums that are willing to spend for speedier storage technologies, it remains to be seen if most consumers would buy into these boards for the future instead of waiting for the supporting devices. We'll be keeping you updated with SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0 performance soon when we have these devices.

Our Final Ratings
The ASUS P7P55D-E Premium.
The Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6.
Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.