Review Index:

Gigabyte 8I955X Royal Intel 955X Motherboard Review

Subject: Motherboards
Manufacturer: Gigabyte

Introduction and Specificaions


Along with the new Intel Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition processors there came a requirement for a new chipset to go along with them.  From Intel, this came in the form of the 955X core logic.  We have initially previewed the 955X chipset and compared it to other Intel and AMD-based chipsets in terms of performance and features.

The 955X chipset doesn't have much more to offer from a technical point of view over the features of the 925X or 925XE chipsets previous to it.  The 955X simply brings support for dual core processors to the Intel chipset line up and was obviously a requirement from Intel if they were to start selling Pentium D CPUs. 

In this review we are going to compare the performance features of the reference board from Intel to this first retail sample we received from Gigabyte based on the same chipset. 

Specifications (from Gigabyte website)


  1. LGA775 IntelÂ® PentiumÂ® D processor

  2. Supports 1066/800/533MHz FSB

  1. Northbridge: IntelÂ® 955X Chipset

  2. Southbridge: IntelÂ® ICH7R

  3. Silicon Image Sil3132 SATA II controller

  4. T.I IEEE1394b controller

  5. GigaRAID ITE8712 IDE RAID controller

  6. 2 x Broadcom 5751 Gigabit Ethernet controller

  7. Realtek ALC882M audio codec

  1. 4 DDR II DIMM memory slots (supports up to 8GB memory)

  2. Supports dual channel DDR II 677/533/400 unbuffered DIMM

  3. Supports 1.8V DDR II DIMM

  4. Supports 64bit ECC type DRAM integrity mode
Internal I/O Connectors

  1. 1 x U-Plus D.P.S connector

  2. 6 x Serial ATA II 3.0Gb/s connectors

  3. 1 x UDMA ATA 100/66/33 connectors

  4. 2 x UDMA ATA 133/100/66 connectors

  5. 1 x FDD connector

  6. 2 x IEEE1394b connectors (supports 3 ports)

  7. 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 connector (supports 4 ports)

  8. 3 x Cooling fan pin headers

  9. 1 x Game/Midi connector
Expansion Slots

  1. 1 PCI Express x 16 slot

  2. 2 PCI Express x 1 slots

  3. 3 PCI slots
Rear Panel I/O

  1. 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports

  2. 2 x RJ45 ports


  4. 1 x Coaxial S/P-DIF out

  5. 1 x Optical S/P-DIF out

  6. PS/2 Keyboard/ Mouse

  7. 1 x COM port connector

  8. 1 x LPT port
Form Factor

  1. ATX form factor; 30.5cm x 24.4cm
Other Features

  1. U-Plus D.P.S

  2. DualBIOS

  3. C.I.A. 2

  4. M.I.B. 2

  5. R.G.B.

No comments posted yet.

Post new comment

  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

By submitting this form, you accept the Mollom privacy policy.