The official launch date for the Lynnfield series is quickly approaching and with them a veritable swarm of P55 motherboards is going to hit the market. The sheer scope of new models available at launch is going to surprise and shock many consumers. That is why smart manufacturers like MSI have wisely chosen to preview their new P55 models to help their motherboards stand out from the crowd as early as possible. Today, we will be showing off MSI's most fully-featured new model: the P55-GD80.

As the Top of the Line model in MSI's roster, the P55-GD80 has been designed to surpass the best that the competition has to offer. It supports all upcoming Lynnfield LGA1156 processors, has a formidable DrMOS 8+2 phase power design, four DDR3 memory slots with frequency support up to DDR3-2133 (O.C), three mechanical PCI-E x16 slots, CrossFireX and SLI support, dual Gigabit LAN ports, an 8-channel HD audio CODEC, 8 SATA II ports, 9 USB 2.0 ports, 1 FireWire ports, 3 eSATA ports, a new OC Genie real-time overclocking processor with accompanying OC Genie & DirectOC buttons, touch-sensitive onboard power/reset switches, phase LEDs for every major component, a post code debug display and quite a bit more.

In this our third P55 motherboard preview, we will give you a quick rundown of all the features this model has to offer in order to whet your appetite until the actual review hits our front page. Unfortunately, due to NDAs we can't show you performance or BIOS screens but don't worry, you won't have to wait too long before we put this board through our torture tests.

P55s are getting cheaper already

We are getting REALLY close to the launch of the new Intel Lynnfield processors (for really this time) and along with them will come a BARRAGE of new motherboards based on the P55 chipset.  We have already spent some time with several of them but wanted to get at least a couple more of our pictorial/video previews online for you all to see to keep the juices flowing for launch.

This time we are taking a look at the MSI P55-GD65 motherboard; a mid-range board that will offer you a solid feature set, stable power and overclocking functionality for a modest price of $160 or so.  I have included a brief video preview here followed by some photos and descriptions.  Enjoy!

 

 

With Intel's launch of the P55 chipset based Core i7 and i5 processors, we knew it would not be long until we saw a slew of motherboards with the P55 chip. Today is the first full review of one of such board from MSI! Our first example is the P55-GD65, which is priced right smack in the middle of P55 motherboards. That should give you an early indication as to where this board stacks up as far as features and performance are concerned. In actuality, this motherboard has an incredible number of features, which we will touch on shortly.

Since the release of Intel’s P55 platform, a seemingly endless number of motherboards have been popping up, ranging from under $100 for basic entry-level boards to close to $300 for feature-packed overclocking powerhouses. MSI’s top end 1156 motherboard, right around the middle of the P55 price range, is the P55-GD80. With all of the features and overclocking options, I was very excited when MSI sent me this board for testing.

 

 

From MSI P55-GD80 review P.2

 

DhryStone CPU test