EVGA P55 FTW – Features

With half a dozen X58 boards on offer, EVGA was one of the few manufacturers who aggressively targeted the high-end marketplace for Core i7 processors, and they appear to be doing a repeat with the P55.

With seven P55 motherboards on offer already, EVGA looks to have something for everyone, or most. Their nigh basic model the EVGA P55 LE all the same costs $160, while the most expensive ones can go beyond the $300 mark.

The P55 FTW is likely their about sensible high-finish motherboard and therefore this is the board nosotros chose to look at. Priced at $220, the P55 FTW goes head to head with the Asus P7P55D Deluxe and Gigabyte P55-UD6 motherboards.

In terms of features, the EVGA P55 FTW is equipped to become caput to head with the all-time and it stacks up well against the Asus P7P55D Palatial. EVGA has non gone overboard with the P55 FTW, creating a very balanced feature set. For example, the board offers 6 SATA ports on-board which are connected to the P55 chip. Even so an additional two eSATA ports can be found on the I/O panel thanks to the inclusion of the Marvell 88SE6121 controller.

Firewire is also on the tabular array thanks to the T.I. TSB43AB22A controller that adds support for 2 ports, 1 onboard and another on the I/O panel. Improving connectivity are a pair of Marvell 88E8057 Gigabit LAN controllers that make use of the PCI Express bus. Finally, the Realtek ALC889 audio codec is featured delivering 8-aqueduct audio.

The P55 FTW comes with a characteristic called ECP V2, which is an external debugging control panel. The intention is to never have to open your case to encounter your debug code, disable PCIe jumpers or to access diverse on-board overclocking options. It is a pretty cool picayune feature aimed at the hardcore overclocker.

At that place are a many other things lurking on the EVGA P55 FTW, which we are virtually to explore, but before we do I wanted to mention that the P55 FTW was 1 of the few motherboards that disabled Intel'southward Turbo Mode by default.

When benchmarking this P55 motherboards we did so with Turbo enabled as this is the default setting for well-nigh P55 products.