P55 Motherboard Round-up: Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, Intel, MSI

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, April 02, 2010, 10:42 AM EDT

Some might say that there has never been a better time to be a PC enthusiast. Compelling new products fighting for our attention abound, as the computer hardware scene is bursting at the seams with upgrade options. For example, it wasn't long ago that AMD launched the world's first DX11 videocard and now the company features a full lineup of products at a wide variety of price points. NVIDIA's answer to the Radeon HD 5000 series has just arrived as well, and the battle for dominance in the graphics market is as fierce as ever. SSDs are also becoming increasingly more affordable, while the release of SATA 6Gbps opens the door to a new generation of faster drives. Equally important, huge 1TB hard drives can be purchased for less than $100, allowing us to backup and store copious amounts of data without breaking the bank.

No matter which of the aforementioned breakthroughs piques your interest, we all have specific reasons for choosing and buying one product over another. But during these difficult economic times, consumers need to be smarter than ever and demand more value for their money. PC hardware companies are left with the task of creating products that provide the performance we seek, while also offering compelling value.

Consequently, the demand for affordable, high performance computing components has brought about Intel's P55 chipset. Initially launched in September 2009, P55 based motherboards are attractive options for those looking to build a new, mainstream system. Its no secret that this platform was created in order to target mainstream consumers that balk at the high overall cost of a flagship X58-based system, but still want the features and performance of Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture. The demand for such products was so high that motherboard makers seemingly had no choice but to saturate the market with multiple P55-based boards that cater to almost every type of PC consumer.

P55 Motherboard Round-up: Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, Intel, MSI

Tags: Intel, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, evga, Motherboard, round-up, P55

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com