Introduction

MSI P55-GD80 Lynnfield Motherboard preview
A week or two ago we brought you a preview on a P55 (Core i5) motherboard from Gigabyte. Shortly after that a lot of previews popped up on the web everywhere. Today we'll take a peek at MSI's finest offering -- a P55 motherboard tagged GD80. And you guys .. this thing is going to be awesome ! But what is P55 and how does it relate to motherboards and processors you ask.

So as you guys know Intel is slowly but steadily preparing to release the new mainstream Core i5/i7/i9 series processors. The new processors are quite different from Core i7 Nehalem socket LGA 1366, it's based on what Intel calls Lynnfield architecture and as such the new processors will (unfortunately) come with a new socket design; Socket LGA 1156.

The new upcoming processors will of course over time slowly replace the Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo series (actually these will be renamed to Core i3) of processors in the long run, we kid you not. From what we can tell there will be three models Lynnfield processor on socket LGA 1156 released at launch, all are quad-core processors and based on the Lynnfield architecture, fabricated on a 45nm node.

Some key features of the Lynnfield architecture:

• Four x86 processing cores with support for HyperThreading technology
• Dual-channel DDR3 memory controller specified to run DDR3-1066 and DDR3-1333 modules
• 8 MB of L3 cache, and support for TurboBoost technology.
• The three processors will have clock frequencies of 2.66 GHz, 2.80 GHz, and 2.93 GHz and priced respectively $196, $284, and $562 USD.

To facilitate the new Lynnfield architecture processors Intel has been working on the P55 chipset, this chipset will replace P45.

So with a new processor series based on a new package, you need a new chipset for the motherboard. That is P55 -- it  supports both Lynnfield 45nm Nehalem family based quad-cores and IGP dual-core Nehalem codenamed based Clarkdale (32nm with native GPU) processors. Due to the fact that Lynnfield processors feature an integrated memory controller, like current Core i7 processors, and that they're outfitted with 16 lanes of embedded PCI Express connectivity, there's no need to pair the processors with a second chip (Southbridge). Instead, the processor will connect only to the P55 chip.

The motherboard we'll look into is the MSI P55-GD80 ... and it promises to be a black pearl of a motherboard based on that p55 chipset. Next page please.