We hear from nearly everyone in the comments section that the LGA 1156 platform, which has 16 PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 lanes provided by the CPU's on-board controller, is destined to be nothing more than a mainstream product for gamers using, at most, a single graphics card. A slow DMI interface linking the CPU to the P55 Express PCH at PCIe x4 bandwidth certainly doesn’t help bolster the platform’s performance credentials, causing many to question why Intel would add the Core i7-870—a $540 part—as one of only three launch-day Lynnfield processors. Certainly nobody would drop such an expensive component ontp a “mainstream” motherboard. But that was exactly the option Intel was hoping many builders would choose.

We’ve since found the Core i7-870 to be an excellent (albeit pricey) part, with clock-for-clock performance in a dead heat with LGA 1366 processors, better Intel Turbo Boost ratios, lower average power consumption, and superior overclocking of up to 4.3 GHz on air cooling. All of these great advancements cause us to ask whether the Lynnfield family of Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs might be wolves in sheep's clothing.
Is the limit of 16 PCIe lanes really that much of a hindrance? Is the performance difference between eight and 16 lanes really big enough to dismiss CrossFire from the list of the platform’s capabilities, as some have suggested? Is the x4 slot often added to $200 X58 motherboards really better than those of similarly priced P55 products?
Those are all great questions, and we begin our journey with an examination of slot performance, comparing the performance capability of x4, x8, and x16 slots on both the P55 Express platform and the X58 Express that came before it. Great pains have been made to ensure that everything else is equal throughout each test, as described in our configuration page.
- The So-Called Mainstream Solution?
- Test Configuration
- PCIe Scaling Results: 3DMark And Crysis
- PCIe Scaling Results: Far Cry 2 And H.A.W.X.
- PCIe Scaling Results: Clear Sky And World In Conflict
- PCIe Scaling Analysis
- CrossFire Scaling Results: 3DMark And Crysis
- CrossFire Scaling Results: Far Cry 2 And H.A.W.X.
- CrossFire Scaling Results: Clear Sky And World In Conflict
- CrossFire Scaling Analysis
- Conclusion
Only 2x HD 5970s would have significant bottleneck with x8x8 config of the P55...for rest of the cards, the x8x8 still would suffice...
Only 2x HD 5970s would have significant bottleneck with x8x8 config of the P55...for rest of the cards, the x8x8 still would suffice...
For awhile now it's been known that the p55 will run an 8x8x crossfire within close proximity of it's x58 16x/16x even on 5870's. The only real question that hasn't been seen is the quadfire 5970's and a trifire 5970+5870. Publish that and you'll garner my attention at least.
ps. 150W is also a lot for a processor designed for two digit numbers. Is there some kind of list somewhere of which motherboards support how much vrm power, or how many phases generate how much wattage or whatever can be used as a guideline?
Gonna upgrade the p35 to p55, and I've never been one for stock speeds...
8x Pci-e lanes should now be considered a drawback when purchasing new hardware.
They just proved it was NOT a drawback with two 400 dollar top tier gpu's.
Someone that advocates not upgrading the rest of their motherboard specs to the current high performance components such as DDR3 and the fastest hypertransport speed should not worry about THEORETICAL pci-e bandwidth.
If this article had come out 2 weeks ago, I would have upgraded to an i7-870 and 2x 5870's, but now that we know Fermi is arriving in Q1 2010 I'm afraid i'm gonna have to wait. . . again -.-
Oh well, that's why we love the PC market, always advancing
I'm sorry, but these statements were lame. Plenty of NON-GAMERS might want the CPU power of i7 without caring a rat's kazoo about graphics. P55 makes perfect sense for a number-crunching scientific workstation.
I'd like to see a new article about video cards for high end mainstream use such as professional digital imaging, video editing, graphics design, and engineering.
True - and for image editing as well. Built an i5-750/P55 system before xmas specificly for use with raw 10mpixel images and such work. Don't think the 4350 card I put in the system matters much for its purpose, and a 5870 would've made it the system worse in fact, as we needed the hdmi plug
explain
For me it´s very clear, people who want to use 2 or 3 GPUs, should buy an X58 platform, the others, just go for the P55 or stick with the P45 or 790GX/FX.
Just my opinion of course.