[Computex09] Intel P55 motherboard gallery

One of the most important things on the Computex convention are the motherboards with Intel's upcoming P55 chipset, shown by almost every manufacturer. These boards -featuring socket 1156- are intended for the to-be-released Core i5 processors. Since the name Core i5 hasn't officially been announced by Intel yet, the companies still refer to it by its codename Lynnfield. Because the Core i5 will not be introduced before September, most manufacturers aren't too keen on disclosing much about their new motherboards. Though the shown prototypes give a decent impression, they surely aren't finished yet. It's quite possible that additional options will be added prior to the CPU launch. This means that it's possible for high-end motherboards to feature a simple cooling block right now; the final version of the cooling system is just not completed yet.

Information about the P55 chipset is starting to find its way to the surface. Several companies have confirmed that the chipset supports Serial ATA 600. This is no surprise, given the current situation in the SSD market. Though there are no official announcements made, one manufacturer claimed that the P55 is also SLI-compatible, if a set amount is paid in royalties to nVidia. That's a remarkable fact, since nVidia also has a license on the DMI-bus, thus making it possible for the company to create its own chipset. It's possible that the strategy was decided upon as a result of a time shortage.

Each manufacturer shows its own P55 boards on their respective stands, but Intel makes it easy for us to compare the different models. The Intel stand has all shown motherboards, displayed side-by-side. For your convenience, we have placed an overview of the motherboards below.

Also part of the gallery are a number of P57 chipset boards. This is the more luxurious version of the P55 chipset and features the Brainwood technology. These are expansion cards with flash memory that will be used as a hard disk buffer. It's rumored that Intel will be branding this technology Turbo Memory 2. The slot for a Brainwood module looks the most like a mini DIMM-slot and is positioned next to the conventional memory slots.

It's possible that additional specifications of the individual boards will be released throughout the week. If that is the case, we'll keep you updated on the situation.

Tags: computex corei5 sata ssd p55 socket-1156

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