Asus P7H55-M Pro - Features
There are certain features that can be found on all H55 motherboards for the simple fact that they are provided by the chipset. Such features include 6 SATA 3Gb/s ports, Gigabit LAN, HD Audio, USB 2.0 as well as a number of display ports which connect to Clarkdale processors. Typically these display ports include HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort.
While all Intel H55 motherboards support Gigabit LAN and HD Audio, their implementation will vary. Asus has gone with the Realtek RTL8112L controller in order to provide Gigabit LAN support – a controller they generally feature on their cheaper low-end motherboards.
Providing 8-Channel HD Audio support is another Realtek chip, this time the ALC889, which can handle 16/20/24-bit SPDIF input and output with up to 192kHz sample rate. This is one of the more impressive Realtek HD Codecs and certainly an excellent addition to the P7H55-M Pro.
A far less exciting addition was the JMicron JMB368, which is a single port PATA controller that uses a single PCI Express lane to support older PATA drives. This is not a feature that we feel is necessary to provide on modern boards, but being an affordable low-end product it could potentially save some consumers a small amount of money.
Other than these three controllers Asus has not done anything to make the P7H55-M Pro more feature rich than your typical Intel H55 motherboard. They have provided the ability to utilize all twelve USB 2.0 ports, though out of the box it is only possible to use half of them. Additional USB headers must be purchased to use the other six.