Gigabyte has joined Asus in the race to build motherboards equipped with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s connectivity, introducing an entire P55-based lineup sporting the next-generation I/O technology. The company has brought a host of new motherboards to the table, including the GA-P55A-UD6, GA-P55A-UD5, GA-P55A-UD4P, GA-P55A-UD4,GA-P55A-UD3P, GA-P55A-UD3R, GA-P55A-UD3.

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I thought usb 3 was postponed until 2011

See this news post for more information, Deso: http://www.techspot.com/news/36673-i...ntil-2011.html

I must say, I'm REALLY digging the new colors Gigabyte has chosen to use in some of it's motherboards. I'm not sure if these White/BabyBlue/Blue colors represent their HTPC type of motherboards and the usual colors represent overclocking? I'm more of an AMD fan so I lose track of all the Intel boards that come out.

I also forgot about USB 3.0 powering capabilities. At first I thought it would be pointless to have them on your new motherboard if nothing works with it but being able to power up all of your USB products would be awesome. What I'm wondering though, is if USB 2.0 compliant cables would deliver enough power? I just tossed out a handful of USB cables I had laying around because many of them would not power my 2.5" External Enclosure properly.

Just to clarify, that probably isn't a picture of the boards mentioned above... since it has 6 RAM Slots, it's obviously an X58 board... anyways I hope Sata 6Gp/s will make normal drives as fast as WD Velociraptors, that'll be sweet, and will be a good selling point for these new boards also.

Sweet, I was beginning to wonder when someone would start using 3.0. I was actually waiting to upgrade my desktop until there were some real choices with 3.0. However, now I don't have any money to spend on such (heh). Oh well. I guess there will be far more variety out there by the time I have money again.

What is your definition of a normal drive? Increasing the Gbps won't do anything for a standard hard drive that isn't capable of even 3Gbps. The 6Gbps provides the necessary bandwidth for drives in a RAID configuration and perhaps future SSD drives.

The image I used in the article is of the GA-P55A-UD6, which has six DIMM slots according to the official spec page: "6 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory"

I guess this is in direct competition to Intel's new fiber optic technology. Maybe that's why it was delayed.

so gigabyte is using third party suppliers for usb 3.0 instead of intel?

@Deso: The last sentence of TechSpot's article: "The motherboards rely on NEC's uPD720200 chip for USB 3.0, and Marvell's 88SE9128 controller for 6Gbps SATA, and bring the expected features and in-house technologies."

@Matthew, ahh I missed that, thanks for pointing it out

No problem, Deso.

Thinking about building a new computer pretty soon. When are these boards actually going to be available at retail?

I would also be interested in AMD versions of these motherboards. I suppose Gigabyte will be producing them eventually.

When will these boards be available to the public?

I just have a feeling the reason why Intel is postponing USB3.0 could be because Apple and their new optic light peak....

Seconded. Looking to upgrade to a phenom X4 and HD 5870 or 59XX soon and I think I might get rid of this M4N-E Pro. What was I thinking getting an Nvidia chipset @_@

I will wait and see what ASUS has to offer also but I know almost certainly I will get a newer board with USB 3.0.

It's nice to see that Gigabyte is introducing this to mid-range models and not just high end. This means more people will buy them, and more add-ons will have a reason to implement USB 3 features (even just using it for power will be good). IMO it also means that AMD support is more likely (since AMD is definitely a mid-range solution).

I must say that board looks pretty cool! I cannot wait until USB 3.0 is released as the speeds you can get are a huge difference compared to USB 2.0!