Pricing

Last topic we have to tackle before moving onto the evaluation and the conclusive thoughts is of course the pricing rates. In contrary to the Core i5 review, this time we have checked the actual prices. For the European market we used the prices at Geizhals.eu, for the US market we checked the pricing rates at Froogle and checked with the prices over at the Newegg webshop.



The P55-UD3 is, obviously, the least expensive board of the three we tested today, which is noticeable in the amount of extras. The P55-GD80 comes in second, being a 10€/25$ cheaper than Gigabyte's top P55 model, the P55-UD6, although the extra's offered are a bit less extensive than what MSI offers.

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Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3


If you're looking for an inexpensive P55 platform, the UD3 of Gigabyte is definitely worth to consider. Know that the performance is on par with the high-end models as well as the overclockability on air cooling. The package doesn't contain lots and lots of extras, but then again this still is a low-end motherboard. It's not the cheapest, but just a solid product.

+ Bios
+ Overclockability on air ~ high-end products
- Content of the box


Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6


When it comes to pure overclocking results using LN2, this motherboard is consistently a tad better than the P55-GD80 although it seems to require a bit more voltage to do the same frequencies. This board is actually really easy to work with when overclocking and it doesn't take an overclocking genius to get any decent numbers. Especially when it comes to memory bandwidth, this board has made a good impression on me. The price is a bit higher than the P55-GD80, though, and that while the package content is less extensive. I'd say this board is a very good choice if you want to overclock your configuration to the absolute maximum under subzero conditions. It doesn't blow away the competition, but it certainly does what you want it to do. Note that this is the only board on the market that offers 6 memory slots, so for those who need a lot of memory; this is actually the only choice.

+ Extreme overclocking performance
+ Bios
+ 6 memory slots
+ Very complete motherboard in terms of features
- Price
- Content of the box


MSI P55-GD80


That the board is trailing the UD6 in the ultimate overclocking performance tests is a fact, but not a shame. I'm still convinced that the clock per volt ratio of this motherboard is absolutely excellent and I think this is actually a good choice for those who want to push their system on water- or basic phase-change cooling. The board is a tad cheaper than the UD6 and offers a bigger package of extras, which is also good. The bios is improved constantly, so I hope to see this board perform at a higher level in the near future. In our testing, the turbo mode produces below average numbers, which is a bit disappointing as it's one of the key advantages of the Core i5. The issues were mainly memory performance related, though, as in other benchmarks the results were on par with the UD6.

+ Clock per volt ratio
+ Follow-up on the bugs; bios gets updated frequently
+ Box' contents
+ V-switch and V-check features
- Turbo mode problems (?)
- Harder to work with when using subzero cooling

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Conclusive thoughts

The LGA1156 platform is still very new, so it's more than normal that motherboards are not completely fine tuned and have room for improvement. I must say that the Gigabyte team did quite a good job as the board already seems to have most bugs ironed out, especially after switching to the latest F5c bios. The GD80 is getting there as well, but needs a bit more time to mature to compete in the extreme overclocking field; with basic subzero cooling, the GD80 overclocks just a tad better than the UD6 (we're talking 2MHz BCLK here), but the UD6 has the advantage of being very easy-going in terms of memory overclocking and memory performance. I think it's safe to say that both boards are good enough for a decent overclocking session, but in the end I might choose the UD6 if I want to reach my absolute top results. However, to name one board that deserves the title 'absolute best', no, not just yet. I have yet to test a board that makes me go completely bezerk and shoots past the competition like nothing.

To end with, I would like the following people for providing the necessary hardware for this article:

Eric and Leona from MSI for providing the Core i5 750 and MSI P55-GD80.

Ron from Coolermaster for providing the LGA1156 bracket for the Coolermaster V8

Tobias from OCZ Technology for providing the OCZ Freeze cooling paste

Bernice and Sibren from Gigabyte for providing the P55-UD3 and the P55-UD6.

Jason Shek from Acard Technology for the Acard ANS-9010.

'Till the next time!!