ASUS P7P55 Premium OR Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4?

[Techno-boy]

Which of these motherboards is better?

ASUS P7P55D Premium

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=kvkzMAsYAaWQ0z8M&templete=2

OR

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=3239


From what I know, both of them support USB 3.0 and SATA 3 (SATA 6GB/S).

I heard that ASUS P7P55D Premium would require PLX PEX add on card to run SATA 3 Hard disk on its motherboard since the first generation PCIe x1's bandwidth would bottleneck SATA3's speed so using only Marvel chip would not guarantee the best solution for SATA3 to run on a P55 motherboard and PLX PEX add on card is a requirement.

For Gigabyte GA-P55-UD4, I don't know whether it also need a PLX PEX add on card to make SATA3 HDD run or not...

If there is something that I am missing then please tell me.

Thanks.

 

[B011]

I'm interested in all this as well, since I'm postponing my new I5 build until P55A hits the market. Wanted to go with Gigabyte P55A. However, today I came across this thread:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=623288

and then checked the specs on Gigabyte site:

"* When set Turbo SATA3 / USB3.0 (Marvell 9128 /NEC USB 3.0 Controller) to enable in BIOS setup, 1st PCIex16 slot will run at x8 bandwidth and 2nd PCIex16 slot will be disabled."


So I'm much closer to getting regular P55 now, and upgrading to SATA/USB3 in the future when there is actual need for it.

 

[Techno-boy]

I'm interested in all this as well, since I'm postponing my new I5 build until P55A hits the market. Wanted to go with Gigabyte P55A. However, today I came across this thread:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=623288

and then checked the specs on Gigabyte site:

"* When set Turbo SATA3 / USB3.0 (Marvell 9128 /NEC USB 3.0 Controller) to enable in BIOS setup, 1st PCIex16 slot will run at x8 bandwidth and 2nd PCIex16 slot will be disabled."


So I'm much closer to getting regular P55 now, and upgrading to SATA/USB3 in the future when there is actual need for it.

Thanks for that interesting link.

Wow! I did not know that Gigabyte did not tell us about the impact on PCe x16 slot by SATA 3 and USB 3.0. That sucks... This means that you can run a video card on 1 PCIe x16 at only x8 mode when you are using SATA 3 and USB 3.0.

They are using SATA 3 and USB 3.0 as marketing hype to sell their motherboards without telling us its negative side.

What about ASUS P7P55D Premium? ASUS did mentioned about the add-on card like the PLX PEX card which would enable USB 3.0 and SATA 3 and avoiding the bottleneck by PCIe x1 1st generation's speed (250mb/s). Would that prevent the PCIe X16 slot's bandwidth from being bottleneck to x8 mode???

Would an add-on PLX PEX card also work on an ordinary P55 motherboard that does not support SATA 3 and USB 3.0????

 

[mrcrybaby]

interesting indeed. the usb3/sata6 was why i was postponing my 1156 build as well... why does it seems like 1156 always has some drawback? bad sockets first and now usb3 and sata6 for the price of a pci-e lane...

~mrcrybaby

 

[sonic-boom]

Both of these boards here are shown on newegg with foxconn sockets
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3661
Weather you overclock or not there is still a problem with foxconn socket.

 

[snorojr]

the p55A ud4 and the p7p55d premiun are not even on newegg page, Those that are on newegg are the normal P55 no A ud4 and the p7p55d. They will only hit the market in mid november or maybe december. The new P55 A Ud4 have lotes socket. I dunno about the asus one. Even on the advertising page of the new accelerated line of gigabyte they talk about the new mobo using lotes socket because of the burning foxconn due to extreme overclocking.

 

[cyman]

Two Gigabyte P55A boards (UD6 and UD4P) are now listed on NewEgg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=ga-p55a

Buying a mobo that is ready for USB 3.0 makes sense to me (it's planning ahead). Releasing a USB 3.0 capable board, but with other significant drawbacks that will no doubt be fixed in the near future (or may even have a fix now) is standard planned obsolescence.

 

[Guest]

and then checked the specs on Gigabyte site:

"* When set Turbo SATA3 / USB3.0 (Marvell 9128 /NEC USB 3.0 Controller) to enable in BIOS setup, 1st PCIex16 slot will run at x8 bandwidth and 2nd PCIex16 slot will be disabled."

Hi, could you post the link where this bit of info came from? All I could find on the motherboard's page on Gigabyte's website is this:

* When dual graphics cards are used in 1st and 2nd PCIex16 slots, SATA3 / USB 3.0 (Marvell 9128 /NEC USB 3.0 Controllers) will work at normal mode.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=3239&ProductName=GA-P55A-UD4

Not really the same thing.

Thanks.

 

[EXT64]

Actually it is the same limitation. Dual cards require at least 16 PCI-E lanes, so the SATA3/USB3 have to go back to slow mode.

"
Two of the primary graphics card’s 16 PCIe lanes supply its USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gb/s controllers, and Gigabyte disables six more lanes to make the upper slot an effective x8 interface. The USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gb/s controllers revert to the chipset’s 2.5 GT/s lanes whenever two graphics cards are installed, to preserve the x8 transfers each graphics card needs for optimal CrossFire or SLI performance.

Thus, users with a single graphics card must sacrifice half of its peak bandwidth to enable 5.0 Gb transfers to the USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gb/s controllers, while those with two cards must live with 2.5 Gb/s bandwidth limits on USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gb/s controllers. Neither of these sacrifices is huge or even noticeable on most of today’s hardware, yet anyone trying to future-proof their system could be left cold.
"

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-usb3-sata3-motherboard,9260.html

 

[DrewkowskiCA]

"Neither of these sacrifices is huge or even noticeable on most of today’s hardware, yet anyone trying to future-proof their system could be left cold."

So the GA-P55A-UD4P with a SATA 3 hard drive isn't going to noticeably limit my GeForce GTX465 video card? I was thinking about just buying two SATA 2 drives half the size of the SATA 3 drive and running them together RAID0. I actually think that the SATA 2 RAID may even outperform the SATA 3 drive. It definitely sucks as far as "future-proofing" but I'm wondering if the gain from 8x to 16x on the PCI-E would be worth any loss from the SATA3 to the SATA2 RAID0. Also, this is just for a storage drive, I'm going to run a two SSD SATA2 RAID0 for my boot drive and applications.

Thanks!