Gigabyte shows off two P67 enthusiast boards

IDF 2010: Mutliple USB3 ports too

Gigabyte logoGIGABYTE WAS SHOWING off not one but two P67 based enthusiast mobos at IDF this week, and both looked really good. As soon as Sandy Bridge comes out, the enthusiast community is going to be well supplied with boards.

Gigabyte P67-UD7

GA-P67A-UD7 board

The two boards are the GA-P67A-UD7 and the -UD5. Both are really similar, differing mainly by PCIe slot count. When you see either one, the first thing you’ll notice is the new heatsinks and color scheme. It is a titanium grey finish with gold or blue highlights, gold on the UD7, blue on the UD5. They look really good in person, far less so in pictures.

Gigabyte P67-UD7 side

The UD7 port lineup

As you can see, the UD7 is filled with ports, dual NICs, optical audio, and a lot of USB ports. If you are keen eyed, you will notice that there are four USB3 ports, the blue color is easy to spot. Either Gigabyte got a great deal on blue plastic mid-way through the production run, or there are multiple USB3 controllers on the board. There were multiple chips that Gigabyte obscured on the board, so something is up, but we will have to wait for a bit to find out what.

Gigabyte P67-UD5

GA-P67A-UD5 from it’s good side

The main difference between the UD5 and UD7 is the USB3 count, and the PCIe count. The UD5 has two PCIe2 16x slots and one 4x as well. The UD7 has at least four, likely 2 16x and 2 8x, and supports CrossfireX and tri-SLI. If it is tri-SLI capable, it makes you wonder what the tax is this time around, cash, 800 GT310s for every board, or a PCIe decellerator. Who knows?

One easy way to find out is to pull off the heatsinks, and luckily Gigabyte did a really nice thing for the enthusiasts, they put the heatsinks on with screws. You can unscrew them from the bottom just like the CPU heatsink. About time someone did this!

Whatever the final specs are, it looks like Gigabyte is not abandoning the enthusiast community when the P67 chipsets come out. These boards look like a lot of fun.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate