EVGA’s approach to high-end gaming is completely different from Asus,' as the company endows its P55 Classified 200 with dual-gigabit network controllers, dual eSATA ports, and an impressive six x16-length PCIe slots.
How is EVGA able to supply so many high-bandwidth slots when the CPU supports only 16 lanes? The “dirty little secret” is that only the top x16 slot is able to access all those lanes, and only when a single card is installed. The other four red slots share eight of the processor’s lanes via Nvidia’s NF200-SLI-A3 bridge. We knew most readers would find this bit of information incredible, so we took a photo that clearly shows the top slot’s eight fixed and eight flexible pathways, with four two-lane electronic switches that enable the nForce 200 PCIe bridge whenever more than one card is installed.

The black x16-length slot is limited to four 2.5 GT/s lanes by its P55 Express PCH connection, but will likely be useless in most builds, since it’s only a single space beneath the processor-driven x16 slot. The uppermost PCIe x1 slot, which is the only other independent slot, supports full-length cards thanks to a cut-away portion on the nearby nForce 200 heat sink.
At 10.375” wide, EVGA’s P55 Classified 200 is slightly larger than the 9.625” full ATX standard. That’s something users building a luggable system need to consider when choosing a case. But more importantly, it puts the forward-facing SATA ports even closer to any hard drive cage that could potentially prevent cable insertion.
Part of that added space is used for EVGA’s built-in “Show-Volt” volt meter, which is a particularly handy feature. Rather than being connected directly from various rails, it allows tuners to take their own measurements using an included cable at various points, such as the row of rail-detection points (VCORE, VTT, DIMM, PCH, and PLL) along the motherboard’s top edge. Potential buyers who would like to visually see “how much” bigger the P55 Classified 200 is than a standard board can also refer to the longer white line around the “Show-Volt” meter to see where a standard-sized PCB would end.
Layout strengths include the absence of any front panel connectors in the bottom rear corner and every power connector is placed where we prefer to see them, give or take an inch. One unusual strength is the dual eight-pin CPU power connectors used to support an all-digital voltage regulator with up to 600W of power. With that much power available to the CPU, it’s probably a good thing EVGA chose to use gold plating of three times the normal thickness to protect its LGA 1156 pins.
EVGA understands that most gamers don’t have more than six internal drives, and it instead uses the chipset’s three remaining lanes to provide a bi-directional 2.5Gb interface with one eSATA and two Gigabit Ethernet controllers. While many of EVGA’s competitors use a legacy PCI interface to address at least one of those three functions, the only place such a connection is found on the P55 Classified 200 is for its legacy FireWire controller.

EVGA also includes its ECP V2 controller to extend several onboard functions away from the motherboard itself, which is particularly handy when parts such as the onboard Port 80 display and Power/Rest/CLR_CMOS buttons are covered up by graphics cards. However, it’s unfortunate that this device is only really useful when the motherboard is outside the case, since EVGA makes no provisions for mounting it into an external drive bay.
Users who want even more external control over the P55 Classified 200’s overclocking features will find an EVGA EVbot connector on the I/O panel, although the handheld controller for that function must be purchased separately.
BIOS
EVGA’s Frequency/Voltage Control menu contains the most frequently used overclocking controls, plus DIMM reference and PWM frequency settings. The company even provides separate boot and operational controls for CPU Core and Uncore (VTT) voltage, helping tuners overcome cold-boot issues.
The P55 Classified 200 stores up to four custom BIOS configurations as user profiles, a feature that is especially useful on a board that can be somewhat tricky to overclock. Fortunately, EVGA provides overclocking guides in its community forum that can help tuners find a moderately high starting point.
The DRAM Timings menu has a full list of basic and advanced timing controls, with Auto functions that not only simplify basic adjustments but also show detected values.
Accessories

In addition to the expected items, EVGA provides a voltmeter cable and two different 3-way SLI bridges, each with different slot spacing, in its P55 Classified 200 installation kit.
- Nothing But The Best?
- On-Board Features Comparison
- Asus Maximus III Formula
- Asus P7P55D-E Premium
- EVGA P55 Classified 200
- MSI Big Bang Trinergy
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: Crysis And Far Cry 2
- Benchmark Results: Clear Sky And World In Conflict
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Overclocking
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Conclusion







1156 FTW !!!!!
- No six core CPU's, EVER.
- Requires a glued on chip for more then 16 lanes.
- Motherboards overpriced compared to socket AM3.
When you buy a socket 1156 system that is all the performance you're going go get out of it. The top-end CPU's won't come down in price by much and Intel made it clear it's a mainstream platform. My socket AM3 has playable FPS, the motherboard is high end and under $200, and I'll be able to continue upgrading in the future. That is what matters to me. The Intel fan boy articles are getting so old.
They don't.
It might surprise you that new motherboard series articles follow new chipsets. So AMD fanboy, where's the new AMD chipset?
1. Do you mean on these boards or in general?
2. If it is for these boards, did you install the drivers/software from each manufaturer or used the default Windows drivers?
Thanks for the reply
None of the manufacturers list support for DDL or DTS Connect any longer. Those technologies were most likely licensed in the past and neglected due to lack of demand and cost, because typical buyers don't know what they are and won't pay extra for them.
It may well be Intel's monopolize actions that got AMD to this point when AMD had the top processors, but the truth is AMD products suck right now.
There are P55 mobos under $160 that you can easily find, which will still beat AM3 systems quite handily. For example, get a DFI Lanparty P55-T36.
First of all, most reviewers are begging AMD to pull a rabbit out of the hat just to get the competition moving again. Second, AMD does give you more chipset for your money.
Don't rule out P55 as a viable upgrade path, While the vast majority of people will pass on Gulftown due to price, the 32nm Sandybridge will support 1156. Give me low-thermal, high effeciency, super-overclockability in an affordable quadcore package, I'd take that over a hexacore all day long.
But 1156 has to support bottleneck free pci-e. I'm already 98pct sure the NF200 can't pull it off, but was really hoping we'd have a definitive answer.
I agree with the others who wonder why anyone would want this lobotomized platform instead of the x58. There are serious compromises with this. It's great for the Clarksdale, which is a low-end product with a lot of compromises made so it's mainstream, but when you start to go high-end, it just makes no sense at all.
First of all, despite the opening page's assertion that these overclock better than Bloomfields - they don't. They overclock worse, and generally need significantly higher voltages to hit the same clock speeds. They also have to multiplex the already more restricted memory bus of the processor when using video cards that access main memory (since PCI-E is on the processor, it's got to use processor pins to reach memory). On top of this, to get full performance from modern technologies like USB 3.0, or SATA 6.0 GB, you have to do weird things with the PCI-E lanes, which increase latency and/or steal lanes from the video card so it can't use all 16.
This platform is a kludge. It's a series of compromises made to keep costs and power down. It's fine for a mainstream platform, but when we're told it's good for high-end too, it's got a lot of us scratching our heads wondering why we're being told this. It just makes no sense and we're not buying it. Intel can put all the lipstick they want on this pig, but it's still not a Hippo.
Ok this attitude is the EXACT opposite conclusion show here
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16729/40/1/4/
Let's keep it simple: the Socket 1366 platform is obsolete. The turbo modes are very limiting and the three channel memory setup gives only a slight advantage. Of course, Socket 1366 CPUs don't come cheap either. The quite new i5 CPU is much easier to overclock and it's not that hard to achieve higher memory speeds.
Considering system cost, then the P55 platform is the clear winner. We have already proven that Hyperthreading/SMT is more or less a marketing gimmick. It works only with very few applications and in highly optimized applications such as x264 or games, it decreases performance. That's also the reason why we did not consider to use the i7-800 CPU series for this review.
Looking for the best performance money can buy, we recommend the i5-750 CPU. If you need SLI or Crossfire, shop for boards with an additional NF200 chip to get the most out of your two graphics cards, otherwise the P55 does just fine.
System costs are less, no northbridge, never going to have to worry about cooling that. less to troubleshoot.
But I don't think either is a "kludge" whatever that is. Theres a right choice for everyone. It seems if a personal choice is threatened in a tech article people lose it !
You sound like AMD fanboy to me..
And what a bs about upgrading lol, AMD or Intel they all will make you to upgrade, as for pricing, 965 cost same as i5 750, so do the math mate.
Both Intel and AMD here 4 profit, you just need to find a better deal.
Do you guys have anyone technical writing your articles? Is this a cheap way of generating traffic for your site ?
P55 is a series of compromises. The NF200 chip adds cost, power use, and latency, and does not have the same performance of the x58. How could you not know that? If you're going to use this chip, why bother with the P55?
Also, several P55 processors do support hyperthreading. It's not the issue here. However, it clearly does show advantages in some applications, and the cost is negligible in terms of hardware. It does, of course, work better on the x58, since you'll put more strain on the memory bandwidth, which is considerably better.
The memory bandwidth does help in a lot of applications, and some it doesn't. It will matter more the more you are doing, since if you have four active processors, running eight threads, sharing one memory bus, you're going to depend on that bus a lot than when you're barely using it. Again, hyperthreading will make it more important, since you're also going to be missing the caches more often. Throw in a video card that needs memory accesses (which have to go through the processor on the P55), and you can have some problems with the more limited bandwidth of the P55.
On top of this, for reasons mentioned above, you probably will not see more than four cores on the P55 since the platform is so compromised. The x58 can work with more, without the same performance fall off.
No one with any technical knowledge would say the x58 is obsolete. It's not even opinion at that point. It's just a terrible analysis. If you want to say it's unnecessary for most people, we could argue that. But obsolete? It does things the P55 can't do, and does them better. It's a very, very poor choice of words.