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Budget Micro-ATX P55 Faceoff: Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 and ASRock P55M Pro

 by Gary Key on October 5, 2009 12:30 PM EST
55 Comments | Add A Comment
55 Comments

First up is Gigabyte’s GA-P55M-UD2. You can purchase this board for around $105~$110.

Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 Feature Set



Gigabyte includes the standard array of components like the Realtek ALC888B HD audio codec, Realtek RTL8111D Gigabit LAN controller, T.I. TSB43AB23 IEEE 1394a chipset, GSATA2 (JMB363) chipset, and full support for the Core i7/i5 S1156 processor series.

Gigabyte also includes a rather sparse accessories bundle. You get the standard rear I/O panel cover along with 1 x IDE cable, 2 x SATA cables, a well-written and informative manual, and software CD. We understand the need to cut costs where possible to meet a $100 price target, but including at least one USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394a bracket for the headers would have been appreciated.

BIOS

Gigabyte also includes one of the most extensive BIOS designs in an entry level micro-ATX motherboard that we have seen recently. The BIOS is setup for overclocking and includes all the basic settings: CPU multiplier, PCI-E bus, Bclk frequency, memory multipliers, and nearly every voltage setting you will need. Gigabyte includes Load Load-Line Calibration (LLC) and PCH Core (P55) voltage settings for additional overclocking duties. LLC will help to eliminate line droop on the VCore line. We still recommend having LLC disabled in most situations, but if you have to reach a certain overclock for benchmarking, then you should probably enable it. Generally, we do not need PCH voltages in our experience but it is nice to have the feature.

Two strengths of the BIOS are the granular voltage settings and memory timing options for an entry level board. Gigabyte allows you to tweak CPU clock skews, channel independent DRAM settings, and CPU/PCI clock drives although we found the auto settings to be just about perfect.

One last feature we would like to mention is the Q-Flash utility that is accessed via the F8 key. Q-Flash can read files directly from a USB flash drive making BIOS updating a simple and safe procedure. We tried this feature 30 times as part of our testing routine and it never failed.

We did have a couple of slight disappointments with the BIOS. In the voltage setting options, Gigabyte does not provide the base voltages that the board defaults to at startup. Our other complaint has to do with the PC Health section, as the lack of SmartFan adjustments for the lone chassis header is not available. The CPU SmartFan adjustment for the CPU is limited to Auto/Voltage/PWM without the ability to determine temperature ranges. Oh how do we miss abit’s uGuru technology. Other than that, we were impressed with the BIOS considering the entry level nature of the board.

BIOS Information

Let’s take a brief look at the BIOS. We discussed the features earlier, but a visual representation sometimes speaks louder than words.



System Status Summary Screen - Those numbers are real for a $105 motherboard. Of course we had to use the i7/870 to do it.


Same Advanced Frequency options as the more expensive Gigabyte P55 motherboards.






More than enough memory options for most of us...


All the voltages you will need to hit 4.3GHz on air and it takes about ten seconds to do it.
Gallery: Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 - BIOS
P55 Refresher Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 Layout
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  • Sunburn74 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    Thanks.
    Which board? I searched the thoughts section and don't see any mention of sleep :(

    I just know its a huge problem with gigabyte boards, pretty much every p45- and a good number of the x58 boards mysteriosly can't s3 sleep with significant overclocks in place and its something I'm seriously going to explore before my next mobo purchase.

  • Ryun - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    I purchased and Asrock 760g, which is a great little motherboard, yet it does not support S3 state (standby mode). I have an email from Asrock's (surprisingly quick-response) tech support saying that none of their boards officially support S3 state and to use their Instant Boot technology instead.

    Did the Asrock motherboard you tested allow you to go into S3 state/standby mode? I really like Asrock's boards but the lack of standby is a deal breaker for me.

  • Gary Key - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    S3 is fully supported on the ASRock board. In the power consumption section I did note what needed to be enabled for it work. Also, this was probably in the wrong spot, but in the OC section I briefly mentioned that the board had no problems resuming from S3 with the Bclk set to 215. I can understand why ASRock wants you to use Instant Boot, but S3 operation is just fine, even when overclocked.

  • Ryun - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    Ah, looks like I missed that part. Many thanks for pointing that out. Sadly though, I don't have those BIOS options on the 760g board I have but perhaps I can tinker a bit more.

  • n7 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    Just wanted to say a massively huge thank you for testing with 8 GB!

    It's extremely encouraging to see, as the large majority of reviewers do not bother testing with all slots populated.

    Thanx again.

  • vlado08 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    Which board has the quickest Power On Self Test?

    With fast CPU's and SSD I expect fast booting!

    Now I have a Gigabyte board (P965 DS4) and when the Sata is in AHCI mode POST is quite long.

    I hope that in future articles you will include this information.

  • MadMan007 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    S3 is your friend. Really, who boots their computer every time any more?

  • strikeback03 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    I usually do, since I dual boot and won't necessarily know which OS I need the day before.

  • Gary Key - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

    Cold Boot - Quick Boot turned off in BIOS - AHCI enabled, External Hard Drive attached via IEEE 1394a, LAN attached to our Promise NAS via a Gigabit Switch.

    Time reported is from the time we turn on the board until Win7 has correctly installed the network stack. So this is the full POST and OS is usable process that is being timed.

    ASRock - 44.7 seconds
    Gigabyte - 53.2 seconds

    I have the information since we run this for every board, just did not know if anyone would care to see it. ;)

  • vlado08 - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link

    Thanks Gary

    But I was interested in time from pushing the power on switch until the begining of the OS loading. I think that there might be difference between boards depending on their BIOS.
    Time from begining of the OS loading until fully functional OS depends on the computing power ot the CPU and the speed of the HDD (SSD) and not on the design of the board.
    And because you (we) want to distinguish between the boards I thought that this might be one of the criterion.
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