Intel P55 chipset is a single-chip solution. The basic features provided by this chipset include six SATA-300 ports (RAID support is optional), no support for parallel ATA (PATA) ports, 14 USB 2.0 ports supporting port disable, embedded Gigabit Ethernet MAC (Medium Access Control) and eight x1 PCI Express lanes.

ASUS P7P55D Premium provides all the six SATA-300 ports with support for Intel Matrix Storage, which provides RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10, plus two SATA-600 ports controlled by a Marvell 88SE9123 chip. The SATA-600 ports are light gray, while the SATA-300 ports are light blue. One ATA-133 port is available, controlled by a JMicron JMB363 chip. No eSATA port is provided on the rear panel from the motherboard, however this motherboard comes with an eSATA port together with two USB ports on an I/O bracket, so you can covert one of the internal SATA ports on an eSATA port.

Four of the SATA-300 connectors and the two SATA-600 connectors are placed facing the motherboard edge while the others are placed near the left edge of the motherboard, as you can see in Figure 8. This is a terrific solution, because on motherboards where the ports are facing up the video cards usually block the access to them or even completely prevent you from installing SATA cables on them.

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Figure 8: SATA ports.

No floppy disk drive controller is present.

From the 14 USB 2.0 ports supported by the chipset, ASUS P7P55D Premium offers 12 of them, eight soldered on the rear panel and four available through two motherboard headers. Additionally ASUS P7P55D Premium comes with a FireWire (IEEE 1394) controller, providing two FireWire ports, one soldered on the rear panel and one available a header. The motherboard comes with an I/O bracket containing two USB ports and one eSATA port, as mentioned before.

Audio is generated by the chipset using a VIA VT2020 codec, which looks like a professional-grade component, however we can’t say the exact specs from this codec as it isn’t listed on the manufacturer website. According to ASUS it supports 10 channels (7.1 audio plus two channels for streaming audio), 24-bit resolution and 192 kHz sampling rate. The most important information for us, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was not informed. This motherboard comes with on-board optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs. The board also has an SPDIF out header, which can be used to route sound to the video card HDMI output in order for you to have an HDMI output with digital audio on a single connector. As you can see in Figure 9, this motherboard has independent analog outputs for all eight channels.

ASUS P7P55D Premium has two Gigabit Ethernet ports. One is controlled by a Realtek RTL8110SC chip, which is connected to the system through a standard PCI connection. This is not the best configuration possible, as the use of the standard PCI bus can limit the maximum transfer rate achieved by a Gigabit Ethernet port (click here to learn more about this issue). The other port is controlled by a Realtek RTL8112L chip, which is connected to the system using one PCI Express x1 lane and thus not presenting any potential performance issues.

In Figure 9, you can see the motherboard rear panel with PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, clear CMOS button, eight USB 2.0 ports, coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs, FireWire port, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

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Figure 9: Motherboard rear panel.

ASUS P7P55D Premium also has a serial port, available through a header on the motherboard. The board, however, doesn’t come with the connector required to use it.