GIGABYTE P55M-UD4 Motherboard Review @[H]

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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GIGABYTE P55M-UD4 Motherboard Review - GIGABYTE’s newest board may look small, but this micro-ATX wonder packs a punch and hits where it counts. The P55M-UD4 performs like the big boys, proving that size truly doesn’t matter...for a motherboard.

The Gigabyte P55M-UD4 is quite an achiever given its small micro-ATX form factor. That used to mean giving up performance, but obviously, as you can see here today, the P55M-UD4 does not give ground on the enthusiast front in either raw performance or overclocking. The P55M-UD4 can be had for around $140 with Free Shipping, so it shows to be a quite a value as well as a performer.
 
Good review. I have been very happy with my Gigabyte board lately. They have replaced Asus in most of my new builds.

And there is a typo on the first page describing the rear panel.
"GIGABYTE chose to integrate the following ports in to the P55M-UD4’s rear panel: 1 PS/2 keyboard/mouse port; none USB 2.0 ports; one dual function USB 2.0/e-SATA port; 1 Realtek GigE Ethernet port; and six analogue and S/PDIF optical and RCA component audio output ports"

But again, other than that, another good review!
 
I just got this board yesterday and it is performing well. I was thinking of holding out until Gigabyte released the version with USB 3.0 (and non Foxconn CPU socket) but decided to go with this version.
 
GIGABYE did a masterful job with the P55M-UD4. The board's amazing performance both at stock and overclocked speeds screams quality, with that in itself a testament to the design time put in to implementing this gem.

This statement sums up the tone of the review in general. Based on this and how well the board performs and overclocks I'm surprised it only got a Silver award, when it would seem to be an outstanding piece of hardware, especially when compared to its intended (micro-ATX) competition.

Regardless, it sounds like a winner, and an affordable one too.
 
Kyle how accurate do you think the temps from the easy tune software were compared to say realtemp or coretemp

on the gigabyte board i just got only the easytune software will report the proper 12v voltage so im wondering about the temps it reports
 
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I wonder how much of this UD4 review applies to the UD2 version. Only thing I can tell is that the UD4 supports SLI while the UD2 does not.
 
Kyle how accurate do you think the temps from the easy tune software were compared to say realtemp or coretemp

on the gigabyte board i just got only the easytune software will report the proper 12v voltage so im wondering about the temps it reports
You can't really trust voltages even if you see them in line with what a multimeter reports some of the time, since under other circumstances they could be very inaccurate. But that isn't much of a concern in most situations anyway.

Regarding temperature, I believe Gigabyte's software still reads temps from a sensor built into the motherboard, in which case its readings would be completely worthless. The only way to get accurate temperature readings through software is with a program like Real Temp or Core Temp that reads the distance to Tjmax straight from the CPU's DTSes.
 
I've got the UD2 for 100 bux and it performs admirably as well.
 
It's marked as supporting SLI/CrossFire, but is the board really spacious enough to allow for the placement of two double-slot cards? Like, could I fit two 5850s in there? Two 5870s?
 
It's marked as supporting SLI/CrossFire, but is the board really spacious enough to allow for the placement of two double-slot cards? Like, could I fit two 5850s in there? Two 5870s?
The largest video cards right now require two slots, and this board has another slot in between the PCI-E graphics slots plus a slot right below the second PCI-E slot, so yes, you can fit a pair of double-slot video cards.
 
I guess I missed something in the review, what kept this board from getting a Gold award?
 
Gigabyte has been making some very good boards the past few generations. The one thing that would make this board better is Asus's single sided DIMM slots. That said, this generation has a lot more to choose from for high end micro-atx boards. Great for lan party cases and other computers you need to move a lot. :)
 
I'm very happy with this board, been running it for the past 2+ weeks.

I got it up to [email protected] w/my 860, stable enough for windows/browsing but would crash on linpack. took it back to 4.0(20x200) and 1.35v and it's rock solid.
 
I've been running this board for about two months now and am very impressed as well. It really has all the features of a full-sized board, and options like this now make enthusiast microATX computing feasible. Currently I'm running 4GHz (3.99GHz, 190BCLK x 21) @ 1.35V Vcore, 1.21VTT, 1.9V CPU PLL, and 1.05V PCH.
 
Too bad I've heard/read nothing but horror stories of their non-existent tech support, and their rebate scam.
 
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