Conclusion

P55-USB3

Budget-minded shoppers in the market for a new P55 motherboard will definitely want to take a hard look at Gigabyte’s P55-USB3. The board may be short on extras, but if all you really crave is USB 3.0 along with your Core i5 or Core i7 CPU anyway, the motherboard has the only feature you need.

As we stated earlier, because of the limitations of the P55 chipset, performance is compromised somewhat, but as you saw in the benchmarks, USB 3.0 performance is still light years ahead of USB 2.0. If you absolutely must have optimal USB 3.0 performance, Gigabyte offers pricier P55 boards with a PLX bridge chip, but you will spend substantially more than the P55-USB3’s $120 street price.

As of right now, this is cheapest P55 motherboard on Newegg with USB 3.0 support.

If you plan on running multiple graphics cards for CrossFire with the board, keep in mind that the secondary PCI Express Graphics slot is limited to 4-lane PCIe operation, and is limited to x1 speeds when an expansion card is housed inside the secondary x1 PCI slot. The board’s 6-phase power and cooling may be a little bit of a letdown as well, but remember that these features are pretty much par for the course in this price bracket – you won’t find any 12-phase motherboards here with exotic cooling.








Overall the P55-USB3 is a solid offering from Gigabyte. It’s attractively priced and offers just enough features for the price conscious system builder who wants to build a high-performing Core i5 or Core i7 system. Gigabyte earns a Bull’s Eye hear if you want USB 3.0.

P55A-UD3

The P55A-UD3 is built on the same foundation as the P55-USB3 board, with the primary addition being 6Gbit/sec SATA. The board sells for an extra $15, so it’s not like Gigabyte is excessively gouging for the faster SATA interface, but until more compelling 6Gbit/sec SATA drives hit the market, we think you’d be best off saving your money and getting the USB3 board.

Because they’re both built on the same basic platform, the UD3 board shares the same limitations as the USB3, only you’re paying more for that privilege. Also keep in mind that with 6Gbit/sec SATA added on top of the equation, PCIe bandwidth is even more constrained. The P55/Lynnfield platform just wasn’t built to handle the addition of USB 3.0 and 6Gb/sec SATA.

If it had a couple of extra power phases, or maybe better cooling, the UD3 board would be easy to recommend for the enthusiasts and tweakers out there. But we have a feeling this crowd is going to be disappointed with the aforementioned limitations of this platform when it comes to available PCIe lanes and CrossFire.

For this reason we have a feeling most enthusiasts will pass on this motherboard in favor of a P55 board with support for 2x8 PCIe lane CrossFire/SLI. Until 6Gbit/sec SATA becomes commonplace in faster HDDs like SSDs, this board’s appeal could be rather limited. (By then we should have 6Gb/sec and USB 3.0 native to the chipset also.)

X58A-UD3R

Of all the motherboards represented here today, this one is our favorite. The X58A-UD3R nicely blends enthusiast features you’d expect on a high-end motherboard like heatpipe cooling, gobs of SATA ports and PCIe connectivity, etc, while still being priced aggressively.

Selling for just a little over $200 on Newegg, it’s one of the least expensive X58 motherboards with USB 3.0 and 6Gbit/sec SATA support on the site. And while it’s down on power compared to a high-end X58 board, the power subsystem Gigabyte has implemented is on par with other boards in this price range and also keep in mind that Core i7 is a tremendous OC’er in its own regard – you don’t have to spend $300 on a flashy motherboard to get good OC’ing results with this processor.

Our only real gripe with the board is the location of the uppermost x1 PCIe slot. It’s nestled right next to the motherboard’s massive North Bridge cooling, making it pretty much unusable.

That’s the only real flaw in what is otherwise the perfect budget X58 motherboard. Because of its high feature content and price/performance ratio, the X58A-UD3R is a natural for our Bull’s Eye Award.

X58A-UD5

If you can afford to spend a little bit more than the UD3R’s $210 asking price, you’ll be well served by the X58A-UD5 from Gigabyte.

The X58A-UD5 sports more powerful cooling on the VRMs and North Bridge of the chipset: not only do the heatsinks on the board sport more fins, Gigabyte uses an additional heatpipe on the board as well.

Besides better cooling, the X58A-UD5 also ships with more power. Gigabyte engineers equipped the board with a 12+2+2 phase power subsystem, ensuring cleaner power delivery under more demanding situations. Implementing more phases also helps to lower temps, and with more phases, the workload is spread across them more evenly, helping to improve the board’s longevity as the individual phases aren’t worked as hard.

The UD5 also ships with features like a built-in diagnostic LED display, which is useful for diagnosing problems during POST (say for instance, improperly installed RAM), and integrated power and reset buttons, which makes it easier to power the board on/off when using in on a test bench. Gigabyte also outfits the board with an extra GigE networking controller.

Selling for $270 on Newegg, you have to spend an extra $60 for all that though, which may be a bit too high an asking price for some users. If all you really want is X58 with USB 3.0 and don’t care so much about the UD5’s extra features (which are geared towards OC’ers), the UD3R is the better buy.

The enthusiasts though will probably want to pony up the extra cash for the X58A-UD5.