Asus' P7P55D EVO Motherboard: Core i5 Finds A Home

[cangelini]

The Core i5/P55 hardware has slowly started arriving. Today's preview covers Asus' P55-based P7P55D Evo, the company's first platform that'll support Core i5 in a couple of months. We can't talk performance yet, but we can give you a peek at the hardware.

Asus' P7P55D EVO Motherboard: Core i5 Finds A Home : Read more

 

[dmv915]

Sweet post. I always wondered how the new locking mechanism worked.

 

[burnley14]

I'm still a little curious why Intel released 2 new sockets so close together. I'm sure there has to be a good reason why i5 was not released on 1366, since it certainly makes things less convenient.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]burnley14[/nom]I'm still a little curious why Intel released 2 new sockets so close together. I'm sure there has to be a good reason why i5 was not released on 1366, since it certainly makes things less convenient.[/citation]

Think of i7 as Xeon 5500-series and it makes a little more sense. That was Intel's high-performance breakout of what it was planning in the workstation/server market, really.

 

[anamaniac]

I love you Angelini.
I want a i5 now. =D

The board is very clean looking. Hope they keep up the perfect professional look (such as the 15 phase power, which looks very sexy all neatly organized, and the colour scheme).

 

[cangelini]

LOL, cheers, friend!

 

[doomtomb]

Thank you for this look over on the board. It appears as though the P55 boards have plenty of features but lack in the PCI-Express department which is rather disappointing for even people looking at two-way SLI or Crossfire (like myself).

 

[falchard]

Where is the southbridge?

 

[dmv915]

[citation][nom]falchard[/nom]Where is the southbridge?[/citation]

That basically is the south bridge that you see. P55 is a single chip motherboard. Most if not all of the north bridge has been moved onto the cpu.

 

[Guest]

Losing one memory channel isn't too bad, benchmarks show Nehalem gets enough bandwidth from dual channel. But it's disappointing to think that most P55 boards will have only 4 dimms. I was waiting for i5 to build a workstation running SQL Server and wanted to put at least 12 GB of RAM inside (2GB DDR3 sticks are a lot cheaper than 4GB sticks).

 

[cimtaurus]

[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]Thank you for this look over on the board. It appears as though the P55 boards have plenty of features but lack in the PCI-Express department which is rather disappointing for even people looking at two-way SLI or Crossfire (like myself).[/citation]
This was exactly my reasoning for NOT waiting for the i5 and instead building an i7 machine.
When the new 40nm cards come out I want to put triple SLI into my rig, and i5 just wouldn't handle that well.
Still, for a mid range machine this looks promising. If/when they develop some micro boards for the i5 I can see it making a nice HTPC.

 

[WyomingKnott]

No ESATA? Disappointing in this day and age.

 

[scook9]

So does this mean that the integrated graphics are no longer on the cpu package now? As I see no graphic output, or will that be a G55 chipset? If that is G55, is it part of the CPU package or the PCH chip? This feature was one of my main turnoffs for this series of chips.

 

[freak77power]

i5 is waste of money cause it wont see 6 and 8 core CPU. Socket 1366 is a way to go. It is better investment on the long run and i920 is fairly cheap cause that thing goes up to 4.0Ghz with no problem.

 

[jonpaul37]

So, what can Core i5 (if it's going to be called that) be compared to? in terms of other CPU's?

 

[freak77power]

I don't want to sound like i am spamming here but I really don't know what the hell Intel is thinking. If you planning to burn money on this socket and buy i5 CPU whose certain models will be more then what i920D0 costs, you are out of your mind. You just made the worst investment. I use i7 coupled with evga x58 and now i am even more happy i did get that setup especially considering the fact that upcoming 6 and 8 core CPUs will be 100% compatible with it.

 

[freak77power]

What Intel should do is to introduced 2.2, 2.4 Ghz i7 CPUs and new x56 chipset with dual memory channel, less number of SATA plugs basically cheaper version of x58 board but still having 1366 socket. Also introduce dual core version of i7 and completely eliminate LGA775 socket.

 

[freak77power]

i5 performace is going to be between Core 2 and i7. Basically AMD is a better solution in that case. To be honest i5 has no its place at all. I predict to be a biggest failure. People will go with AMD or i7.

 

[juncwil]

Intel will have to introduce some CPUs for LGA 1156, or else there is no point buying that mobo which has no other cpus that it can use.

 

[chripuck]

[citation][nom]freak77power[/nom]I don't want to sound like i am spamming here but I really don't know what the hell Intel is thinking. If you planning to burn money on this socket and buy i5 CPU whose certain models will be more then what i920D0 costs, you are out of your mind. You just made the worst investment. I use i7 coupled with evga x58 and now i am even more happy i did get that setup especially considering the fact that upcoming 6 and 8 core CPUs will be 100% compatible with it.[/citation]

Only reason I would consider the i5 better than my i7 rig is if it's considerabley cooler running. In the summertime my i7 heats up my entire office and with the thermostat on the otherside of my downstairs I have to keep the rest of the house at 68 degrees just to hit 74-76 in my office.

 

[JeanLuc]

The X58 and LGS1366 is heading towards the server market, Intel haven't kept this a secret and have been open about it, so if you want to enjoy 6 and 8 core CPU's you will have to by CPU processors at $1500 a time.

 

[downer88]

Would be an interesting socket, if Intel came out with a low wattage CPU version right away. Socket 775 already has 2.83Ghz Q9550S at 65 watts, but had to wait until recently.

Doesn't make sense to buy a value socket that is too new to have same features as Core 2.

 

[scook9]

@ JeanLuc

Or just buy multiple i7 920's now since they are cheap and throw them into a multi-socket board when the time is right

(sorry if this double posts, was acting odd)

 

[freak77power]

@JeanLuc

No. They wont cost $1500, maybe extreme edition but who cares about it. 6 core will have reasonable price just like i920 had. i5 wont come as 6 and 8 core and AMD will bring 6 core CPU to desktop so does Intel in their i7 line.

Speaking of cooling. Get Thermalright solution and you're set.

 

[rooseveltdon]

seems pretty cool....but can it play crysis?