Originally Posted by PureOverclock

Today we're looking at MSI's foray into the USB 3.0 and SATA III market with their premium LGA1156 board, the P55-GD85. Based on a very similar design of the GD80, this new board looks to build upon the success of its predecessor, offering the same enthusiast features including MSI's OC Genie, the popular auto overclocking utility that brings performance to the masses.

Originally Posted by LegitReviews

I mention all of this as today I have Gigabyte's latest flagship X58 motherboard, the X58A-UD7. In traditional Gigabyte fashion there is an overabundance of everything on this board ranging from "24" phases for CPU power to a total of 14 available connections for SATA/PATA hard-drives. We'll talk about the specifics later but let's get a general look at the board now. Price is a big factor with this board with a $349.99 price tag at Newegg.com. At least they are so kind as to throw in free shipping which actually is rather nice as the box this board comes in is huge.

Originally Posted by BenchmarkReviews

ASUS has been a longtime partner to Intel, and both companies have been made better because of their relationship. But when it comes to new technology, sometimes Intel takes a little too long to implement change while ASUS prefers to offer their faithful consumers the options right away. Intel's tick-tock plan doesn't coincide with the technical improvements made to areas outside of processor development, such as SuperSpeed USB-3.0 or Revision 3.x SATA 6.0-Gbps (aka SATA-III) controllers. Most hardware enthusiasts agree that it's awkward to see Intel's "Enthusiast" branded X58-Express chipset paired to older standards while "Mainstream" P55 motherboards enjoy the better and faster new ones. ASUS feels the same way, and now offers their P6X58D-Premium motherboard to forward-thinking enthusiasts who might not want to wait for the launch of Intel's X68-Express platform. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests several X58-based motherboard against the ASUS P6X58D-Premium in heat-to-head graphics, processor, memory, and SSD storage performance.

Originally Posted by Firefox

This time round though, we think Zotac is onto a winner: price and performance permitting, of course. If you thought the DFI MI P55-T36 was good, in our opinion you're really going to like this - the Zotac looks even better.

Feature List
-Support for Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 LGA1156 processors
-Intel H55 PCH
-Support for dual channel DDR3 1,066/1,333 up to 8GB
-14 USB 2 ports: ten via rear I/O, four via headers
-Six SATA 3Gbps
-Wireless-n Ethernet
-Intel PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet
-Realtek ALC888 7.1 Channel High-Definition audio
-One x16 PCI-Express port