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. P55 does not support parallel ATA (PATA) ports.

Gigabyte P55-UD6, however, has twelve SATA-300 ports and one ATA-133 port. Ten SATA ports are internal and two are e-SATA-300 available on the rear panel of the motherboard. The six blue ports shown in Figure 7 are controlled by the chipset, and support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 (Intel Matrix Storage).Two white ports are controlled by a chip called by the manufacturer "Gigabyte SATA2 chip" (actually a renamed JMicron HMB363), which also controls the ATA-133 port, supporting up to IDE devices. This chip supports RAID 0,1 or JBOD. There are also two JMB362 chips, one controlling more two SATA-300 internal ports and other controlling the e-SATA ports on the rear panel. Each one of them supports RAID 0, 1 or JBOD.

This motherboard comes with an adapter that allows you to turn two internal SATA ports into more two e-SATA ports.

The ten SATA-300 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 7. 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. The heatsink that seems to cool the southbridge actually cools the additional SATA ports controller chips, since Intel P55 chipset does not have a southbridge.

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Figure 7: SATA Ports.

This motherboard has a diskette port, controlled by an ITE IT8729 chip.

Gigabyte P55-UD6 offers the 14 USB 2.0 ports supported by the chipset, ten soldered on the rear panel and four available in internal headers. An interesting detail is the fact that two rear connectors are combo ones: the work as e-SATA ports or as USB ports. So, if you do not use those e-SATA ports, you will have ten USB ports on the rear panel, but if you use both the e-SATA ports, "only" eight USB ports will be available on this panel.

This motherboard comes with a FireWire (IEEE 1394) controller with three FireWire ports, two soldered on the rear panel (one standard and one micro tipe) and one available in an internal header.

The audio section of the motherboard is 7.1, produced by south bridge chip with the aid of a Realtek ALC889A codec, one of the best available, with a signal/noise ratio of 108 dB for analog outputs and 104 dB at its analog inputs, so you can use this motherboard to work profissionally with audio and video edition with no need for a separated sound card. The motherboard provides independent analog audio outputs in 7.1 format, which is excellent. It also has coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs on rear panel.

This motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports controlled by two Realtek RTL8111D chips, which are connected to the system using PCI Express lanes and therefore are able to achieve its maximum performance. Those ports are compatible with "teaming" configuration, where both the ports are used as one in order to double the connection speed.

In Figure 8, you can see the rear panel of the motherboard: one PS/2 connector for keyboard or mouse (if you use it for a keyboard, you will need to use an USB mouse and vice versa), ten USB 2.0 ports (two of them shared with e-SATA ports), SPDIF coaxial and optical outputs, two FireWire ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and independent 7.1 analog audio outputs.

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Figure 8: Rear panel.

Gigabyte P55-UD6 has a legacy serial ports, available through an internal header, but the motherboard does not come with the connector necessary to use it.