MSI P55-GD80
Lynnfield Motherboard Preview‏

As we mentioned in our preview of the ASUS P7P55D and EVGA P55 FTW motherboards, the official launch date for the Lynnfield series is quickly approaching and with them a veritable swarm of P55 motherboards is going to hit the market. The sheer scope of new models available at launch is going to surprise and shock many consumers. That is why smart manufacturers like MSI have wisely chosen to preview their new P55 models to help their motherboards stand out from the crowd as early as possible. Today, we will be showing off MSI's most fully-featured new model: the P55-GD80.

As the Top of the Line model in MSI's roster, the P55-GD80 has been designed to surpass the best that the competition has to offer. It supports all upcoming Lynnfield LGA1156 processors, has a formidable DrMOS 8+2 phase power design, four DDR3 memory slots with frequency support up to DDR3-2133 (O.C), three mechanical PCI-E x16 slots, CrossFireX and SLI support, dual Gigabit LAN ports, an 8-channel HD audio CODEC, 8 SATA II ports, 9 USB 2.0 ports, 1 FireWire port, 3 eSATA ports, a new OC Genie real-time overclocking processor with accompanying OC Genie & DirectOC buttons, touch-sensitive onboard power/reset switches, phase LEDs for every major component, a post code debug display and quite a bit more.

In this our third P55 motherboard preview, we will give you a quick rundown of all the features this model has to offer in order to whet your appetite until the actual review hits our front page. Unfortunately, due to NDAs we can't show you performance or BIOS screens but don't worry, you won't have to wait too long before we put this board through our torture tests.