In March of this year (2009) I built a new box using one of AMD’s 3-core Phenom chips on a Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 Socket AM2+ motherboard. Unlike most if not nearly all motherboards, this board had an “incomplete” chipset – in that no graphics capability was included in it. – The only way to get graphics was to plug in a PCIe graphics card. This I did, using a fairly-cheap 256MB nVidia card with dedicated DDR3 RAM onboard, and the box is still working well, running Windows 7 Ultimate RC1 without even a single blue-screen (BSOD) yet, as far as I can recall.

The graphics-less motherboard appeared to be a one-off as far as Gigabyte was concerned; until the launch of the first of Intel’s new Core i5 family of processors, that is.

In order to accommodate yet another socket designation; Socket LGA1156, the second new socket in a row from Intel, Gigabyte produced the P55M-UD4. This board appears, from all reports that I’ve seen to date, to be the current forerunner for running the new Core i5 technology. – And well it does so too.

The board utilises Intel’s P55 chipset, which isn’t possessed of a Northbridge; Why not?  Because the Core i5 family are the first chips to have the Northbridge functions fully integrated into the processor itself! – How’s that for a technological leap? ‘Good thinking Intel.

(In all honesty I did suggest the idea to myself earlier this year; but not being a chip-designer I was totally miffed on the inherent practicalities of the idea, and forgot about it as quickly as I’d thought of it. Did I cheat myself out of a copyright by doing so? I very much doubt it: I’m sure that Intel’s plans had been on the drawing board long before then. I could suggest at this point integrating both Northbridge and Southbridge, memory controller, SATA controllers, audio codec, BIOS, even the graphics card itself, and why not? I see that coming in the not-too-distant future too: An entire computer integrated into a single 3D chip… And why not have a monitor on the chip too? – After all an LED monitor is just a collection of light-emitting transistors wired as diodes to a greater extent; exactly the same components as found inside a processor; but with their substrates doped with extra chemicals so that they produce light/change colour, whatever, when activated in whatever way. Think: An entire mini-computer on a single chip. – All it needs is a power supply and a cooler! (See this article.))

I’ve just wandered right off-topic there. Back to the old – er – new, motherboard:

Core i5 integrated memory controllers support DDR3 RAM only: Intel appear to have gone right off DDR2; which can’t be a bad thing, as it means that DDR3 prices can only fall eventually. The memory controller also supports dual-channel configurations, rather than the triple-channel configurations of the i7 on the X58 boards, and the mobo reflects this with only 4 RAM slots.

Although there are no outputs for onboard graphics/monitor sockets on the board itself; once again the addition of a fairly inexpensive PCIe card should put paid to this. – The processor has, in this case, direct control over the two PCIe slots, and a single slot will run at X16 while both slots will run at X8 individually; so there should be no problems whatsoever if the builder decides to incorporate SLI or CrossFire.

(Why ATI had to make their technology sound like something from the Klu Klux Klan I have no idea. – But anyway; moving on…)

Just to enforce my position as one of the net’s technologically-predictive geniuses; AKA I made a good guess that anyone with half-a-brain could have made, I’ve just read that Intel propose, in their forthcoming “Clarksfield” chips, to also integrate the graphics into the chip. – No word of a lie: That’s going to give rise to a rather interesting chipset, don’t you think?

The P55M-UD4; the board that this article’s meant to be about – Although you wouldn’t think so from the way I keep going off-topic, has only a single PCI slot, and also a single PCIe X4 slot. – This might sound rather strange, bearing in mind that the Southbridge is capable of controlling 8 PCIe lanes. However, being a micro-ATX board I suppose space is at a premium. There are, after all, 2 PCIe X16 slots; so maybe if planning more than 2 expansion cards the builder will have to stick with a single graphics card.

The chipset supports 5 SATA II ports + a single eSATA port on its RAID controller. With the addition of a second controller, however, Gigabyte have provided 2 more SATA II ports as well as a PATA port. – Useful for the old IDE DVD drive no doubt. These extras are separately capable of RAID 1 and 0 support.

Ten USB 2.0 ports on the back panel compliment the single PS2, FireWire, and the ethernet port, the latter of which supports Gigabit Ethernet. – All this; plus a BIOS that supports manual overclocking, causes Gigabytes second board-without-graphics to weigh in at a price of around £116GBP or more; depending on where you get it from. – Not cheap by any means; although it’s reportedly the best board to run a Core i5 on at the moment. No doubt this may soon change; but if you expect me to keep up with all technology at all times I’d need a large data-centre powered by a supercomputer. – And nobody’s even offered to buy me a Mac yet.

Have you anything to add? If so then please do so in that largely-unused box marked ‘comments’ below.