Great article on a motherboard roundup it is articles like this that really help solidify someones purchasing decision as you can see the results mono E mono. All the scores looked pretty close to one another except when you factored in overclocking where the Asus and Gigabyte boards pulled away. It was interesting though how on the gaming benchmarks all boards were neck and neck. All in all it appears if you are looking to a P55 motherboard there are plenty of choices out there it also appears the best bang for the buck is to go the P55 route.

Excellent article, really helped break down the differences (albeit typically minor) between boards.

As a bit of article feedback: I felt that there was a lot of information on each board. I realize that it's important to list the featureset/design of the boards, but I feel that it would be a clearer and more concise article to basically say: "all P55 boards share these features.... then go on to basically only mention differentiating ones, like extra lan or SATA3.

The conclusion and graphical results really helped compact that information into more useful form.

Awesome article as always! the graph in the end compared all of them with the gigabyte P55A-UD6 wining everyone but the physical disks!

This is an amazing review. This is why I love this site!

A review like this has just cut down on months of research and questions about what features we all look for. I know personally I have spent alot of time looking for a new motherboard. Then it has gotten to the point to where my brain was about to explode.

I was about to give up on the choice of any of the Intel boards, because most seemed to focus on using Nvidia onboard. Which I found to conflict with using an ATI GPU.  So it is good to know which ones don't.

I have been wanting to try one of the Intel boards, because of the use of Turboboost. They say this is very useful in workstation performance. Some of these EVGA boards look amazing, yet they have a reputation for not being to reliable. It is good to know that, through this review that the Gigabits have emerged victorious.  I have narrowed my choice down to that one manufacturer. Now I am still just stuck with the conundrum of AMD or Intel!

I never really thought about the X55 boards, but thanks to this article. I am now really thinking about it. Seems they have all the features I am looking for Optical out, massive RAM, Good USB connections and Crossfire.  Also some of those EVGA boards are really cool looking. I guess we will have to see if the prices come down in the next few months. Or if the Egg comes down with some really good combo deals!

My main concern would be the upcoming Opteron processors and their comparative performance going up against the I-Series?

Now if HH could just do a current comparison review such as this, for the current AM3 Motherboards? Trying to find the best value for those, with all these great features really gives me a headache :(

Either way, Cracking review Grommet :)

Is it just me or is the EVGA P55 Classified warped?  It looks like the board is trying to smile from the side.  For a $300 board, I sure hope it didn't look like that out of the box.

I was thinking the same thing Infinity....After all the appearance is the only thing we get from these boards on the internet, but I'm sure it doesn't usually come like that, and the boards can warp a great deal and not be damaged.

Holy crap. Looking at these tests definitely surprised me in just how close each of these boards were in terms of scores. 

The P55A-UD6 performed the best in overall scores, I can't agree with you guys more. What REALLY surprised me was that not only did it perform all the other boards, but it uses the least amount of power on idle and load times. THAT was really surprising and impressive. 

I believe that $250 is a very stable price when you consider the overall performance of this bad boy. 

I remember that a friend of mine was trying to explain to me how motherboards don't really matter when building a PC, but this article just proved him wrong I bet. 

I occasionally go to cyberpowerpc.com to build a Intel PC there, and I always stall when I come across my motherboard selection. I have always understood what the long lines of text besides the pictures meant, but I had never really understood how each motherboard actually performed. 

Speaking of which, there was something noteworthy I figured that I should mention. On cyberpowerpc's website, under the motherboard selection category, I noticed that there are only , UD3, UD5 and UD7 versions of the Gigabyte motherboards to choose from, but the HH reviewed the UD6 version. 

I'm curious of why cyberpower doesn't display the UD6 version but will still sell previous versions and the newer, Flagship version model: UD7. 

I'm sure it's nothing, but I've always wondered why cyberpower does things like that haha. 

Another worthy mention, is the other advantage that the Gigabyte motherboards have on all the other boards that were reviewed here: USB 3.0

The Gigabyte P55A-UD6 boasts TWO USB 3.0 slots that none of the other board models currently offer. 

Obviously, the USB 3.0 ports will become more valuable when external devices are able to utilize the massive bandwidth that is now available to them.

I'm glad you guys agree. The 2 USB 3.0 slots are definitely future-proofing material for the computer. Unless you are willing to wait until 3.0 hits mainstream, this Mobo is definitely the one to get, and I would definitely consider it the best bang for your buck. 

Excellent review guys. 

@animatortom Not sure if you want to do Crossfire on these boards. If you got the money for Crossfire, I would suggest increasing your budget a little more to the X58 motherboards because those support dual PCI-e x16. They won't be limited to an x8 configuration on the P55.

@Marius Malek Nothing wrong with waiting until USB 3.0 hits mainstream. Asus makes a PCI-e x4 card that adds USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s for around $30. Also not a bad thing to wait until a more refined controller comes out or when it is supported on the chipset itself. I think someone mentioned (or in that Asus Rampage III news post) that most current controllers share the bandwidth which means a decrease in performance when multiple devices are connected. So waiting isn't so bad.

In regards to the eVGA board warping, I'm glad it wasn't my eyeballs playing tricks on me - wow!

Hope that doesn't cause long-term damage.  Granted, it just might even out if you were to toss a few heavy graphics cards in there for a long period of time.

@animatortom Not sure if you want to do Crossfire on these boards. If you got the money for Crossfire, I would suggest increasing your budget a little more to the X58 motherboards because those support dual PCI-e x16. They won't be limited to an x8 configuration on the P55.

This is more of a comment on the first part, but running current ultra-high end cards at 8x has a ~2% performance loss. An X58 board is typically at least ~100 more; the P55 is capable and cheaper.

Of course what's to stop next-gen cards from being absolutely crippled by 8x :(

sp12:

@animatortom Not sure if you want to do Crossfire on these boards. If you got the money for Crossfire, I would suggest increasing your budget a little more to the X58 motherboards because those support dual PCI-e x16. They won't be limited to an x8 configuration on the P55.

 

This is more of a comment on the first part, but running current ultra-high end cards at 8x has a ~2% performance loss. An X58 board is typically at least ~100 more; the P55 is capable and cheaper.

Of course what's to stop next-gen cards from being absolutely crippled by 8x :(

Do you have a link to those benchmarks? I know it isn't anything big, but I thought it was bigger than 2%.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=571156

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2847/7

It's often less than 1%, but I've seen some reviews with up to 7% on dual-GPU cards in crossfire.

sp12:

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=571156

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2847/7

It's often less than 1%, but I've seen some reviews with up to 7% on dual-GPU cards in crossfire.

Thanks for the links! So there is just a tiny gap. I guess it just comes down to the individual's budget and what they are looking for in a pc.

great article.

I sure wish abit was still around to toss into the mix.

snowballak

RyuGTX:

it just comes down to the individual's budget and what they are looking for

Exactly,.............My latest P55 board wasn't tested here and I wonder how it would have stacked up to the others. I know it works well for me, and it's friendly with many types and brands of memory sticks. (not all P55 boards are)

It's just $109.00 and has a good feature set. It also will accommodate an LGA-775 CPU Cooler as well as the LGA-1156 CPU Coolers. I was able to utilize an extremely efficient older style LGA-775 Asetek VapoChill Micro cooler with my i5-750 CPU and it's working wonderfully.

You could do some benchmarks and upload them here. The test setup should be pretty similar because you got the same cpu that they used. The RAM they used wasn't anything special. They did have a Velociraptor though. It would at least give us a ballpark figure to compare between higher-end motherboards and an ASRock for just a little over $100.

Thank you for this great article.

I looked up that Vapochil cooler and it's outright impressive, I"m glad you were able to keep your old cooler.

What board was it exactly?

On another note, the i7-870 actually outperforms the 920 for less, which surprises me, but makes this system look even more attractive. I definitely feel that this is the best value bar AMD's upcoming Thubans.

Even then, Intel's new setup will be out early next year, but it's still an attractive platform.

sp12:

What board was it exactly?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157171

It's an ASRock P55 Pro and yes, the Vapochill cooler is impressive.

sp12:

I looked up that Vapochil cooler and it's outright impressive, I"m glad you were able to keep your old cooler.

What board was it exactly?

On another note, the i7-870 actually outperforms the 920 for less, which surprises me, but makes this system look even more attractive. I definitely feel that this is the best value bar AMD's upcoming Thubans.

Even then, Intel's new setup will be out early next year, but it's still an attractive platform.

You mean the i7 860? The i7 870 is going for $549.99 on Newegg. It really isn't that surprising because most benchmarks aren't sensitive to the front side bus and favors the higher clock of the i7 860 even though the front side bus is smaller on the P55 and uses less memory. I'm pretty sure that is what is going on.

RyuGTX:

You mean the i7 860?

He probably did. That's what I figured when I read his comment.

Indeed sorry, that was a typo.

Here's another graph supporting a P55 system.

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Case-in-Pont-The-Best-CPU-under-300/?page=6

And I chanced upon another PCIe X8 vs X16

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/p55-pci-express-scaling,2517-11.html

Stuart21:

They gain redress on my behalf.

Well, AMD just got a 1.5 Billion Dollar "Sorry About That" check from Intel, so stick to your guns brother.