Gigabyte has launched eleven new motherboards based on Intel P55 Express chipset. Gigabyte's new P55 Chipset motherboards have LGA Socket 1156 to support latest Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors. Build on the much touted Ultra Durable 3 design that adds 2oz copper Printer Circuit Board, Gigabyte boasts of industry's first 24-phase Voltage Regulator Module design.
Gigabyte P55 chipset motherboards are ready to be used with the freshly announced Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 860 as well as 870 processors. These new Lynnfield CPUs have memory controllers integrated directly in the CPU die and thereby allow boosting dual-channel DDR3 memory performance up to 2200MHz and above. Thanks to Intel Turbo Boost technology, the power of idle cores is dynamically channeled to the active cores for significant performance boosts with better power efficiency.
Gigabyte Smart 6 software utilities provide an easier way of managing user system. Smart 6 utilities allow speeding up system performance, boot-up time, managing a secured platform or single click system recovery.
Quicker operating system boot-up is aided with Smart QuickBoot. Processor overclocking becomes easy with Smart QuickBoost that offers three-level CPU performance boost that auto-adjust CPU performance. In case of crash, users can roll back the system to the last known good settings with the Smart Recovery by selecting a day, week or month.
Smart DualBIOS feature offers double protection with two physical BIOS ROMs and can record important dates as well as passwords. System activities are recorded and monitored with Smart recorder even when system was turned off.
Parental controls can be made to use with Smart TimeLock that allows selecting usage time rules for weekdays and weekends.
Gigabyte's new Intel P55 Express chipset based motherboards are:
- GA-P55M-UD2
- GA-P55-UD3L
- GA-P55-US3L
- GA-P55-UD3
- GA-P55-UD3R
- GA-P55-UD3P
- GA-P55-UD4
- GA-P55M-UD4
- GA-P55-UD4P
- GA-P55-UD5
- GA-P55-UD6
Power Consumption will be taken care of by Dynamic Energy Saver 2 utility that allows auto-phase switching for CPU, Memory, Chipset, HDD and System fans.
All Gigabyte P55 series motherboards have ATI CrossFireX and Nvidia SLI support.
These Intel P55 Express chipset based motherboards will compete with those from brands such as Asus, ECS and MSI. No detail on pricing of any motherboard has been revealed but stay tuned as we'll update this space as soon as we hear from Gigabyte. Unless the prices of all the models are announced, the competition lies only on grounds of features offered.
NO ONE knows how many angels can dance on the head of a pin but the boffins at Intel know how many transistors fit into the full stop at the end of this sentence. That magic number is 3 million and it represents a milestone in Intel's four decades of driving the personal computer industry. 
Not being up to date on Intel processors like I used to, (owning an Intel Core 2 Quad QX9450: 2.66GHz, 45nm technology); I wanted to review and get the specs of the Intel Core i7 Processor: Extreme Edition. 
