14 DAY TRIAL // Although Intel is yet to officially take the wraps off its much anticipated P55 mainstream platform, it appears that several motherboard makers have already begun seeding some of their early designs to a couple of lucky reviewers. These motherboards are built around Intel's next-generation chipset, featuring support for the upcoming LGA1156 processors, codenamed Lynnfield. Such is the case with Taiwanese manufacturer Gigabyte, which has already finished two designs featuring the aforementioned chipset.
The fellows over at Hot Hardware were lucky enough the get their hands on these two motherboards and have published a “sneak peek” article with them. Unfortunately, as you might have anticipated, the article says nothing about the performance levels achieved by these boards, as such details are yet under NDA. However, it does provide plenty of pictures and some technical specifications, offering us a general perspective on Gigabyte's upcoming Lynnfield-supporting platforms.
First off, there's the GA-P55-UD4P, which boasts a blue PCB, seven expansion slots, including two PCI-Express 2.0, three PCIe x1 and two PCI and aluminum coolers. The board also brings support for both SLI and CrossFire multi-GPU technologies and it appears that the on-board SATA ports are labeled SATA 6Gbps. However, according to Hot Hardware, this feature might not become available to users when the board hits retail channels.
Gigabyte will also roll out a new higher-end version of the next-generation chipset, dubbed GA-P55-UD6, which will be featured with a 24 Phase power design. The board will also come with more SATA ports as well as more memory DIMM slots, and will boast a different design of its expansion slots.
These motherboards should become official very soon, as Intel is expected to officially unveil its new platform before the launch of the new socket 1156-compatible processors. This will give motherboard makers some time to bring the new platforms to market.