GIGABYTE P55A-UD7 Motherboard Review :: Features

• Industry leading 24 phase power VRM design for optimum power efficiency and thermal solution
• Leading quality standard of Ultra Durable 3 technology with 2oz copper PCB design
• Supports newest NEC SuperSpeed USB 3.0
• 3X USB power
• Provides newest Marvell SE9128 SATA3 support
• Supports Intel Core i7/Core i5/Core i3 CPUs with LGA-1156 Socket
• Dynamic Energy Saver 2
• Smart 6
• Supports dual channel DDR3 2600+ memory
• 4 PCIe graphics interfaces support both 3 way SLI and 3 way CrossfireX
• Smart DualLAN with intelligent LAN port auto-switching
• XHD technology
• AutoGreen technology
• GIGABYTE DualBIOS
• Dolby Home Theater audio
• Hybrid Silent-Pipe
• Onboard debug LED
• Precision OV
• Windows 7 Compatible
• EuP

GIGABYTE has implemented a 24 Phase Power VRM design on the UD7 which is the industry’s first motherboard with 24 phase power. This design allows the best delivery of power to your system allowing better overclocking ability and the lowest temperatures to reach maximum performance levels. The 24-phase design allows heat to be spread across 24 phases and has a quick response time.

GIGABYTE has been using 2oz Copper PCB Layers on their boards for a while now. 2 oz is double what most motherboard manufacturer’s use in the material in PCB layers. The Ultra Durable 3 features Japanese Solid Capacitors, Lower RDS (on) MOSFETs and Ferrite Core Chokes.

Two new technologies have recently surfaced USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/second devices. One issue is that the chipsets available do not have native support for either of those technologies requiring GIGABYTE and other motherboard manufacturers to either take PCI Express lanes from the CPU or take up PCI Express lanes from a bridge chip as ASUS does. GIGABYTE chose to use PCI Express lanes from the CPU for their implementation.

USB 3.0 is the third iteration of the USB interface. USB 2.0 which is the standard that existed before has a bandwidth between the USB device and the host controller of 480Mbits/second and 500mA of power. The USB 3.0 implementation improves the bandwidth up to 4.8aaGigabits a second and the power to 900mA. GIGABYTE takes this a step further by providing up to 2700mA of power a 3x increase over the standard USB 3.0 implementation. GIGABYTE uses the NEC chip to control USB 3.0.

SATA 3.0 or SATA 6 Gigabit/second is the next innovation. As the SATA 3.0 is easily confused with SATA 3.0Gbits/second the SATA 6Gigabits/second is the preferred usage. SATA 6Gb/s offers twice the bandwidth of the previous generation. Normal Hard disks hardly saturate the SATA 2 standard, but with the advent of SSD drives being more mainstream and available, the new standard is necessary to alleviate the bandwidth issues. The GIGABYTE uses a Marvell SE9128 chip to control the SATA 3 controller.

SMART 6 is GIGABYTE’s utility for system management on their motherboards. It consists of Smart QuickBoot, Smart DualBIOS, Smart Recovery, Smart Recorder, and Smart TimeLock. Smart QuickBoot allows you to boot the system in a matter of seconds instead of a minute or two with regular Windows. Smart DualBIOS allows you to keep a personal reminder of your passwords and the like in Windows. Smart Recovery is like Windows System Restore in functionality. Smart QuickBoost is one-click overclocking. Smart TimeLock allows you to control your computer usage by user. Smart Recorder records your computer activity.