P55 and Lynnfields are here! I've got a Gigabyte P55-UD4P and P55-UD6 (will make a separate thread or post in sno's 
) and two Lynnfields (860 and 870) to play with. I'll post results in individual threads as I make progress with each.
I've only had them for a few days and haven't had time to play with them as much as I'd like, but in the limited time I've spent, I've been pleasantly surprised by a "mainstream" and reasonably priced motherboard that can hold it's own very well. The first time that happened, it was the P45-UD3P. This time it's the P55-UD4P.
Nicely laid out board. The PCIe slots have enough room for a Crossfire/SLI setup that leaves actual room for them to breathe even when the cards have a dual-slot cooling solution. The DIMM slots also have plenty of space between the vid card and mounting tabs. I've hated for years having to remove an extended length vid card to change mem because the tabs wind up under the card. If you change memory often, you know what I am talking about!
LGA1156 up close and personal. This socket has a unqiue locking system. Opening the lid simply requires pull the level back. No more unlocking and then trying to get a fingernail under the lid to pull it up. It's all done with the lever on these.
Here is a Core i7 860 (left) next to a Core i7 920. The LGA1156 is the same physical size as LGA775, but the new socket also means a new mounting hole pattern for cooling solutions. Prepare to buy yet another bracket for your TRUE.
Gigabyte P55-UD4P
Intel Core i7 860 proc
Kingston 2000MHz CL8 2x2GB
Gigabyte GTX260
Odin 1200W PSU
Water cooled, mostly because a new socket means newly placed holes and my water block was the easiest thing to make fit
These are just some random "who wants to see yet another 4GHz @ 1.30-1.35Vc" benches. From what I can tell so far, they are definitely "Core i7". 4-4.2GHz with HT enabled is pretty reachable at real world Vc (ie. <1.35Vc), but much over that clock is going to be pretty warm without really good cooling.
None of these are tweaked beyond the basics, in most cases, I never even rebooted.
VERY reasonable Vc for 4400MHz with HT enabled and a 200BCLK with 1000MHz mem to boot. I had no problem reaching 200+BCLK in either the UD4P or UD6. 220BCLK is easily benchable, but YMMV depending on CPU and cooling.
25x multi on a proc with 21x default? You noticed that, eh? "Turbo" on 1366 allows one higher multi than default. 1156 goes quite a few higher. They are not "selectable" multis, but depending what settings are, like how many cores are enabled, will allow higher or lower extra multipliers. Max multi on the 860 is 26x, max on the 870 is 27x.
Same Vc as the 1M above (drops a hair on load).
) and two Lynnfields (860 and 870) to play with. I'll post results in individual threads as I make progress with each.I've only had them for a few days and haven't had time to play with them as much as I'd like, but in the limited time I've spent, I've been pleasantly surprised by a "mainstream" and reasonably priced motherboard that can hold it's own very well. The first time that happened, it was the P45-UD3P. This time it's the P55-UD4P.
Nicely laid out board. The PCIe slots have enough room for a Crossfire/SLI setup that leaves actual room for them to breathe even when the cards have a dual-slot cooling solution. The DIMM slots also have plenty of space between the vid card and mounting tabs. I've hated for years having to remove an extended length vid card to change mem because the tabs wind up under the card. If you change memory often, you know what I am talking about!
LGA1156 up close and personal. This socket has a unqiue locking system. Opening the lid simply requires pull the level back. No more unlocking and then trying to get a fingernail under the lid to pull it up. It's all done with the lever on these.
Here is a Core i7 860 (left) next to a Core i7 920. The LGA1156 is the same physical size as LGA775, but the new socket also means a new mounting hole pattern for cooling solutions. Prepare to buy yet another bracket for your TRUE.
Gigabyte P55-UD4P
Intel Core i7 860 proc
Kingston 2000MHz CL8 2x2GB
Gigabyte GTX260
Odin 1200W PSU
Water cooled, mostly because a new socket means newly placed holes and my water block was the easiest thing to make fit
These are just some random "who wants to see yet another 4GHz @ 1.30-1.35Vc" benches. From what I can tell so far, they are definitely "Core i7". 4-4.2GHz with HT enabled is pretty reachable at real world Vc (ie. <1.35Vc), but much over that clock is going to be pretty warm without really good cooling.
None of these are tweaked beyond the basics, in most cases, I never even rebooted.
VERY reasonable Vc for 4400MHz with HT enabled and a 200BCLK with 1000MHz mem to boot. I had no problem reaching 200+BCLK in either the UD4P or UD6. 220BCLK is easily benchable, but YMMV depending on CPU and cooling.
25x multi on a proc with 21x default? You noticed that, eh? "Turbo" on 1366 allows one higher multi than default. 1156 goes quite a few higher. They are not "selectable" multis, but depending what settings are, like how many cores are enabled, will allow higher or lower extra multipliers. Max multi on the 860 is 26x, max on the 870 is 27x.
Same Vc as the 1M above (drops a hair on load).
