Gigabyte Remains Mum on P67, LGA 2011
Those looking for specifics on Sandy Bridge or LGA 2011—other than what’s already available online—will have to wait a bit more.
For a media Q&A session held after the GO OC 2010 finals, Gigabyte continued to promote its products and carefully cultivated relationship with the overclocking community. Regarding any future plans however concerning P67 and LGA 2011, details were comparatively sparse—which is to be expected for any company that has to follow Intel’s PR line.
When asked about the reported limitations of P67 in terms of overclockability, a Gigabyte rep said he saw Sandy Bridge as a “mainstream” platform, at least when compared with the P55 and H55 platforms. One thing he could say with certainty was that all Sandy Bridge products from Gigabyte would have at least two holes to accommodate MOSFET cooling solutions—even entry-level products.
Tim Handley, the Deputy Director of motherboard marketing, gently reminded the assembled media that Gigabyte would always feature a “core” motherboard line designed for enthusiasts (recent examples include the UD7 motherboard used for GO OC 2010, and the recently released UD9). Whether or not any future P67 motherboards would fall under this category would depend on Intel’s final specifications for Sandy Bridge. Gigabyte hopes to be more definite by first week of next January, in time for CES 2011.
For LGA 2011 the only specifics we got from the Gigabyte reps was that the maker had already started designing products around the unreleased Intel CPU socket. Engineers have yet to do any significant fabrication tests, but they already have “sketches” to work with. As many already know, LGA 2011 is set for a Q3 2011 released.
A few other points that were shared during the Q&A session: Gigabyte considered GO OC 2010 a success. The company will definitely hold a competition for 2011. Gigabyte will start coloring some of their PCBs (printed circuit boards) matte black, a change resulting from “extensive” internal discussions and a desire to appeal more to system integrators. Regarding P67 and LGA 2011, Mr. Handley insisted that Gigabyte would “be ready in every way” next year.



Probably not true, but I like the enthusiasm. It does seem to me that the innovation on the CPU/GPU front far outdoes that of motherboards, so even a hollow promise of progress is nice.
The paucity of information is not Gigabyte's fault.
hello, its mainstream parts we're talking about
Yes, 1155 for sandy bridge "(m)ainstream" that comes out 4Q10 and 2011 for sandy bridge "(E)nthusiast" that comes out 3Q11.
The only problem I have, is that AMD should have changed its socket type for Bulldozer, but then again the i7 980 was on 1336. Bulldozer 940 to i7 1336 and now i9 2011, AMD needs to up its pins to get more bandwidth. The athlons had 462 pins while the pentium 4s had 478 pins and thats why the amd had the upper hand. Around the same number of pins but better performance. AMD step ur game up. All I own is AMD CPUs and GPUs now, but come on AMD 942 or 943 pins for bulldozer isn't enough!!!!!
so true so true..
^ this is what I was talking about even though I do like the blue..
Why only 4 ram slots?
I will miss the blue board color I've been using for years...but black mobo = awesome.