Suggestions for P55 Socket 1156

[saaya]

Hi All,
I figured it would be interesting to hear some feedback on features youd like to see on our next Intel board.
What I can tell you so far is that its black PCB and red/black slots and will follow our current heatsink design as well.

Different Heatsink?
Sas?
extra pciE slots?
waterblock?
hydra?
creative zii (whats it good for tho? )
onboard larrabee graphics?

be creative and let me know what youd like to see, and ill forward it to the engineers here

[CmB]

Hi All,
I figured it would be interesting to hear some feedback on features youd like to see on our next Intel board.
What I can tell you so far is that its black PCB and red/black slots and will follow our current heatsink design as well.

Different Heatsink?
Sas?
extra pciE slots?
waterblock?
hydra?
creative zii (whats it good for tho? )
onboard larrabee graphics?

be creative and let me know what youd like to see, and ill forward it to the engineers here

Please allow enough room between the PCIe slots for CrossfireX, QuadSLI, raid card/tv tuner card and sound card. That is about every gamers wish, and a big deciding factor for many on the X58 boards. This goes for any and all your boards, not just P55.

I think onboard sound could be dropped but this is more of a mainstream board, no? Maybe you better leave it. SAS and extra PCIe are always nice.

--Chris

[Praz]

Instead of the normal onboard secondary drive controllers one optimized for SSDs would be sweet. There are currently a couple of companies working on them which are optimized for small random read/writes along with built-in cache.

[saaya]

that was fast
thanks for the feedback

no onboard sound at all?
i dont think thats a good idea since a lot of people dont use soundcards and integrated audio is enough for them.
and onboard sound is really cheap, less than 10$, so it doesnt make sense to drop it i think...
nobody would really care about a price drop of 10$ but some people will definately not like the missing integrated audio

about sas and extra pciE slots, sure, its always nice to have extra options, but they do cost something as well
adding sas is a bit expensive, about 20$... and im not sure how many people use it...

extra pciE slots are only possible via pciE switches, which create more slots but the traffic is shared between them, which can actually hurt performance.
see nf200 on the asus workstation and evga classified boards... and those chips cost around 30$ as well, so im not sure how useful they really are.
Especially since we will have a very affordable X58 board soon with full pciE 16 16 for Xfire and SLi (FlamingBlade) so people who really want performance and extra pciE slots will most likely go for that and P55 is really about price/perf... and adding a pciE switch adds a lot of price and not really much of extra performance.

so you want to run 2 dualslot vgas plus a single slot pciE card, plus a pci card, right?
thatll fit with the current layout

[saaya]

Instead of the normal onboard secondary drive controllers one optimized for SSDs would be sweet. There are currently a couple of companies working on them which are optimized for small random read/writes along with built-in cache.

yeah, intel claims they will have everything optimized for ssds with ibex peak but i have my doubts
thanks for the headsup!

[systemviper]

make more of them...

[zanzabar]

a 1x slot with onboard sound or a 1x card that can go into it for sound, and an SD or compact flash card slot in it that detects as an internal HDD, plx

or the same as i put on the gigabyte thread
i would like digital pwms, multi phase ram power, no heat pipes linking the NB/SB or NB/mosfets. no onboard sound (pci-e 1x card is preferred on a real 1x slot), removable non proprietary bios chip. fan headers that can take 1A, no firewire on the IO (or no firewire). compact flash or SD controller on the board that runs as an internal non removable HDD. and no display port, that needs to end before it can get rolling

that goes for p2 aswell since thats my next buy, but also to be a QF tester for the p2

[INFRNL]

make more of them...

Thats funny but true. I second that; make enough to have a good supply for release!

I dont know if its an option, but maybe get rid of pata/ FDD connectors. I think most of us are now using SATA, SSD, and USB flash drives.
Also if it has the onboard pwr/rst switches; possibly place them with enogh clearance from anything. The otherday I was connecting a sata cable and accidentally hit the reset. I know the system should have been off anyways, but we all take shortcuts sometimes.

I also second more space between pci-e slots.

Thats all I can think of atm. Im sure there are many more suggestions available.

[zanzabar]

sata is hot swap why do u need to turn the comp off, that reminds me sata that u can plug things into without crowding the graphics card.

edit

i forgot something, it would be nice if the fan headers could put out 13-15V like the dfi UT/LT can

[saaya]

make more of them...

thats a good one
i forwarded it to my manager
you cant imagine how frustrating it is to push and push to create a really sweet board and then it actually happens, it turns out great, people love it, BUT it cant be produced in large volume cause of some stupid circumstances and problems in the factory management...

a 1x slot with onboard sound or a 1x card that can go into it for sound

P55 will have the sound on the main pcb. there is enough space on p55 since there is only one chip left, the southbridge pretty much. but there are 2 x1 slots and one is the first slot so that will always work for a x1 soundcard no matter what vgas you use
is that fine?

and an SD or compact flash card slot in it that detects as an internal HDD, plx

hmmm that should be cheap and an interesting option.. but CF is based off ot PATA, so then wed have to keep PATA on the board for sure... there are very cheap adapters from PATA to CF... do you really think its necessary to add that to the board?

i would like digital pwms

why?
there has been a lot of talk on how digital is better than analog and im sure its true to some extent, but if it really makes a difference for ocing, then how come people get the same cpu clocks on analog pwm boards than on digital pwm boards? im kinda sceptical about the whole thing and our engineers say the only advantage of digital is current per chip/phase... so you need less phases/chips or have more current for the same phases.

multi phase ram power

2 phase, 3 phase on BR was way overkill, 2 kinda makes sense if you think about extreme overclocking high capacity modules, but 3 was really overkill

no heat pipes linking the NB/SB or NB/mosfets

there is no nb on p55... there is only a sb and trust me, you wont need better cooling on it, so you can just leave the stock cooling on there.

no onboard sound (pci-e 1x card is preferred on a real 1x slot)

how about onboard sound plus a well placed x1 slot?

removable non proprietary bios chip

i dont think there are proprietary bios chips... there are a lot of vendors and not all of them are compatible... i noticed that when using roms from es boards on retail boards, they work, but i couldnt program them for some reason, i had to use an eeprom burner to do that... anyways, unless intel pushes mainboard makers to use 100% compatible and interchangeable bios chips then i doubt its gonna happen... and intel would never do that cause... it doesnt make sense. 99.999% of the boards dont need their bios chips to be compatible, its only weird people like us who think of using a bios chip from one board on another

i like the idea, how where do i start? ask them to use the same chips as gigabyte? or asus? or dfi? and then what would be the gain? we probably use the same chips as one of them already...

fan headers that can take 1A

on BlackOps and BloodRage the fan headers can deliver close to 1A, but isnt that a bit much? On my radiator i have 35mm deep 120mm fans which are quite noisy at full speed and pull a lot of air, and they are rated .35A...
i just googled and even papst 120mm fans are 4W max, which is .3A as well...
I think i had a fan that was more than 1A some time ago, but those things are evil... thats a fan that fanspeed control is useless on, cause its noise even at 5V so yeah, if you use those fans then why would you care about fanspeed control? just plug them into the molex connectors of the psu... or is there something im overlooking? maybe we can bundle a molex to 4x 3pin fan header or something like that... would be a nice little feature...

no firewire on the IO (or no firewire).

jupp

compact flash or SD controller on the board that runs as an internal non removable HDD.

again, dont really see the point, many cases have those card readers built in and CF adapters to PATA and SATA are dirt cheap on ebay and work fine

no display port, that needs to end before it can get rolling

ok

Thats funny but true. I second that; make enough to have a good supply for release!

at release it was ok actually, we had a couple hundred pieces, but they were gone quickly and then supply crawled and almost stopped cause of the chinese new year vacation for 3 weeks, terrible supply of components since most factories in china cut down their work force bit time cause of the economic crysis etc etc...

I dont know if its an option, but maybe get rid of pata/ FDD connectors. I think most of us are now using SATA, SSD, and USB flash drives.

yeah i started polls to convince people at foxconn here, i hope a lot of people vote in there, the more the better! please ask your friends to vote as well, im sure somebody from evga,asus,gigabyte etc is reading this as well, or at least they will be pointed to those polls eventually. so hopefully a lot of people vote and every board mfc stops using those ancient interfaces soon

Also if it has the onboard pwr/rst switches; possibly place them with enogh clearance from anything. The otherday I was connecting a sata cable and accidentally hit the reset. I know the system should have been off anyways, but we all take shortcuts sometimes.

hmmmm ok, ill keep that in mind... any suggestions where to put them instead? top of the board next to the dram and psu connector somewhere?

I also second more space between pci-e slots.

ok

Thats all I can think of atm. Im sure there are many more suggestions available.

thanks! if you think of anything else let me know!

sata is hot swap why do u need to turn the comp off, that reminds me sata that u can plug things into without crowding the graphics card.

some devices arent hotplug... or they are but its not official cause it takes a lot of work and time to test it, so some mfcs prefer to not officially guarantee it as it MIGHT cause a crash or freeze.

is there a problem with the sata connectors on BloodRage?

i forgot something, it would be nice if the fan headers could put out 13-15V like the dfi UT/LT can

hmmm i actually thought of that too, but we need extra parts on the board that cost over 5$, and thats a lot for a feature most people wont use... 90% of the people asking about fans want more fancontrol to REDUCE the fanspeed and noise
which dfi board puts out 13-15V for the fans?

i can only imagine that they use a -V line for that, and thats kinda tricky cause it might cause psu problems if you dont do it properly or there is some problem...

[zanzabar]

how long did it take u to do that break down

and the blackops the ports are right below the gpu so its hard to add cables in without taking the card out, and how do u make a fan go higher than 12V i waws thinking using both the 12V and 5V but that might mess up the psu and or fan, the vf900 has alot less power on the black ops or psu at 12V compaired to 125% that dfi lets u do. and the compact flash thing would be great u could load all of the drivers on it, install linux or XP or win CE with just FF memtest and an AV, have the slot right on the back of the board

[saaya]

probably half an hour
but its good stuff, nice feedback, so i wanted to reply to each point you guys made

yeah, SATA placement on BlackOps was not good, that was before my time, sorry
if you combine 5v and 12v you get 7v, not 17v

hmmm in theory, yes, but CF is PATA based so we would have to keep the jmicron controller that i hope we can get rid off
and all the things you mention, you can also do with a usb stick, and usb sticks is something you find on the street nowadays hehe
so i think usb would be better instead of CF or SD which is less popular and common... dont you think?

[zanzabar]

i thought of more things, blue tooth, voltage measurement on the fan headers and not a % (or both) and hd activity led on the MB

[CmB]

One thing a couple of gamers mentioned to me yesterday is that would love something like a Killer nic card included like some boards have xonar or x-fi sound cards. I've never used a Killer nic card, so i don't know how good it is. I always use onboard. My 2 cents. And oh by the way, HELL YES MAKE MORE!!!! i second that.

--Chris

[jfbbms]

Hello

Well, this great for asking.
Well, here in Portugal, one thing that i see is that many of my costumers buy and specially since the crysis in all the world because of money and all sort of things, the cheapest motherboards but with quality.

One thing that i would like to see in an motherboard, in an motherbaord with
not so many extras like sas that here nobody uses and lose the second pci-e
slot for example.

So in this i think, good price / cost motherboard is :

-> 1x pci-e Slot 16x
-> 1x pci-e Slot 1x ( above the pci-e 16x )
-> 1/2x pci-e slot 4x
-> 2x pci slot ( the normals ) for tv tuner and older pci device.
( forgive me if i dont do the math´s for the lanes ).

-> Bios with ZIF socket ( of exchange in case of corruption )
-> SPI connector for recording and reading bios with apropriate device
-> Display led ( if i not expansive ).

-- Connections on the backside :
-> ps2 conector for mouse and keyboard
-> plenty of usb connectors
-> no firewire
-> 2 esata connectors
-> audio onboard good quality with optical/rca output


-- In the motherboard
-> 6 sata connectors -> lay down in motherboard as in dfi p45jr
-> passive cooling for the SB but in place that dont interfere
with dual cards like gtx 295 , that kills the airflow of the SB.



Things that personally i would like to see because of the "dumb" ones :

Really big stick in cpu socket about damage pins.
and some protection in the SB chip because of the replacement of the
heatsink.

if foxconn has an good motherboard and simples, meaning users dont have
to pay for what they dont use, that is commercially ok, than it´s sales ( that
is the purpose in the end, proffit ).

Thanks

[zanzabar]

why would u want ps2, its a waste of space IMO

[-Radiant-]

Suggestions? release the board not 4 months too late.....and after the release it should be available....not like the bloodrage......

[gillbot]

Keep the "frilly" features to a minimum so the price is decent. That's my only request.

[HDCHOPPER]

1... 256k raid stripe adavible in raid & sas
2... extra pcie slot at least X8 for hardware raid
3... at least ability to water n/b
4... sata 6gb
5... picture of nude redhead midget in center of board
thats all nutten much

[saaya]

blue tooth, ill check it out

One thing a couple of gamers mentioned to me yesterday is that would love something like a Killer nic card included like some boards have xonar or x-fi sound cards.

welllll i looked into that actually but im rather sceptical... i found one review where several people were invited to play on a test machine, first with and then without the killer nic, and they either didnt notice a difference or thought the second time the nic was installed, when it was actually installed the first time. that was probably their imagination cause thats what you expect, first without and then with...

and another thing is, the reviews that DID say the card helped, all said that it only helped on systems with a slow cpu, so the nic card takes care of all the traffic requests and its faster cause the cpu doesnt have to do it anymore...

idk... it might all have to do with what game you use and what internet connection you have as well... but all in all im rather sceptical... its a cool innovative thing, but its quite expensive and i find it weird that there is no scientific review that really shows lower pings or faster fps... at least nothing above a 2% improvement or therabouts...
and even if it would work better, then it would probably cost at least 50$ to integrate with the licensing fees and all, and it would take quite some pcb space, need a lot of r&d time etc...

Hello

Well, this great for asking.
Well, here in Portugal, one thing that i see is that many of my costumers buy and specially since the crysis in all the world because of money and all sort of things, the cheapest motherboards but with quality.

One thing that i would like to see in an motherboard, in an motherbaord with
not so many extras like sas that here nobody uses and lose the second pci-e
slot for example.

So in this i think, good price / cost motherboard is :

-> 1x pci-e Slot 16x
-> 1x pci-e Slot 1x ( above the pci-e 16x )
-> 1/2x pci-e slot 4x
-> 2x pci slot ( the normals ) for tv tuner and older pci device.
( forgive me if i dont do the math´s for the lanes ).

-> Bios with ZIF socket ( of exchange in case of corruption )
-> SPI connector for recording and reading bios with apropriate device
-> Display led ( if i not expansive ).

-- Connections on the backside :
-> ps2 conector for mouse and keyboard
-> plenty of usb connectors
-> no firewire
-> 2 esata connectors
-> audio onboard good quality with optical/rca output


-- In the motherboard
-> 6 sata connectors -> lay down in motherboard as in dfi p45jr
-> passive cooling for the SB but in place that dont interfere
with dual cards like gtx 295 , that kills the airflow of the SB.



Things that personally i would like to see because of the "dumb" ones :

Really big stick in cpu socket about damage pins.
and some protection in the SB chip because of the replacement of the
heatsink.

if foxconn has an good motherboard and simples, meaning users dont have
to pay for what they dont use, that is commercially ok, than it´s sales ( that
is the purpose in the end, proffit ).

Thanks

well, its better to add a second 16x slot even if its not used by most people
do you really think 2 pci are necessary or is one ok?
FlamingBlade, our sub 200$ X58 has 2
bios socket, yepp
spi connector? nobody uses that anymore here, they all use adapters hooked to the bios sockets, they are cheap, try it
asus copied us and is using the same sockets now and i think some other board makers also followed
what do you mean with display led?
what do you mean with sb protection?

Suggestions? release the board not 4 months too late.....and after the release it should be available....not like the bloodrage......

ill forward that
but this is not really helpful, its like telling foxconn to have the first board on the market, have it perfect and everything 100% working and compatible on day1 of the release, have all features, the best ocing results and the lowest price

Keep the "frilly" features to a minimum so the price is decent. That's my only request.

well its hard to tell whats filly and what not, whats frilly for me might not be filly for others thats why i created all the polls here, so get a better feel for what people want and dont want, after all we build these boards for YOU

1... 256k raid stripe adavible in raid & sas
2... extra pcie slot at least X8 for hardware raid
3... at least ability to water n/b
4... sata 6gb
5... picture of nude redhead midget in center of board
thats all nutten much

1. thats something we cant add, gotta ask intel or marvell about that, im sure its possible to change in their firmware
2. ok
3. ok, FlamingBlade comes without the waterblock but the same heatsink array so you can use a waterblock or other cooling on there.
4. not ready yet... :/
5. nude redhead ok, but midget? why midget? ^^

[CmB]

blue tooth, ill check it out



welllll i looked into that actually but im rather sceptical... i found one review where several people were invited to play on a test machine, first with and then without the killer nic, and they either didnt notice a difference or thought the second time the nic was installed, when it was actually installed the first time. that was probably their imagination cause thats what you expect, first without and then with...

and another thing is, the reviews that DID say the card helped, all said that it only helped on systems with a slow cpu, so the nic card takes care of all the traffic requests and its faster cause the cpu doesnt have to do it anymore...

idk... it might all have to do with what game you use and what internet connection you have as well... but all in all im rather sceptical... its a cool innovative thing, but its quite expensive and i find it weird that there is no scientific review that really shows lower pings or faster fps... at least nothing above a 2% improvement or therabouts...
and even if it would work better, then it would probably cost at least 50$ to integrate with the licensing fees and all, and it would take quite some pcb space, need a lot of r&d time etc...

You came to the same conclusion I did, but they were adamant about the NIC cards performance. I have not used Killer nor do I plan to onboard has suited me fine for many a year. Thanks for at least loking into it, though.

--Chris

[masxerofkartis]

Well some nice heatsink, ability for sli +CF, The pata is ok but in most cases not needed really so even if it makes no price difference i'd prefer 2x extra Sata's even if im not to use them at all. After all Sata dvd's are dead cheap on any shop. Colours are more than fine, i actually love 'em

Just some queries, of the kind:
When is the ETA?

What is the difference between this and the bloodrage, i mean why get a bloodrage instead, any extra features on the BR?

Will that kick**s oc panel be included?

Personally i prefer the x-fi cards manufacturer's tend to include instead of the onboard sound, however since they most probably add up to the price if there is no reason to include them then it's not necessary

The BR kind of HSF hole spacing, please include that it is really convenient.

Also the antistatic protecton chip asus has on her p5q series is also very nice in cases where the board is outside the case on the table and someone not aware of the static problems with hardware is around (i.e. parents, sibligs or cleaner(believe me,i have suffered before))

thats all i guess, oh and not to forget an appealing price tag :P that is a must these days with the crunch.

[saaya]

static protection chip? huh?
that doesnt really make sense, you cant use a single chip to safe an antire board against static discharges ^^
must be some marketing mumbo jumbo... still interesting, can you linke me to it?

the ETA of FlamingBlade is in a few weeks, anywhere between 2 and 6, depends on how many surprising delays our colleagues in china come up with this time ^^
the ETA of P55 and 1156 is August 2009 more or less, and it depends on Intel to decide when exactly to launch it...
FlamingBlade will be less than 200$... and itll have most of the nice features of BR, looks very similar, and have almost the same bios...

BloodRage
X58
4 pciE 16x
1 pciE
1 PCI
1 HDA slot for the Sonar XiFi

FlamingBlade
X58
2 pciE 16x
1 pciE 4x
1 pciE 1x
2 PCI

im not sure about the pwm specs, i dont want to post something wrong, ill post something later

compared to P55/1156, well basically look at the boards you see at cebit right now, its gonna be like that... but better
The main difference is 2 channel memory, and only 16 pciE lanes going directly to the cpu...
Dont get too excited, that wont mean a speed boost from what ive seen so far

775 holes will be on the FB and on the P55 board as well, and XiFi, yes, sure, bundled cards would be better, but half of the people here seem to be more than happy with onboard sound and i dont think they would pay extra for a card they dont use/want... and those who want a xifi most likely already have one... so then again they wouldnt want to pay extra for something they dont want/need...

oc panel wont be bundled with FB or P55, no... OC panel is a standalone drive bay panel and will be sold seperately... before you ask, i dont know
i already asked a dozen times when itll finally be for sale

[CmB]

^^ Looks tasty, we really need a not that extreme high end x58 board, that would help for the crunchers that just want the OC and performance forget tri sli. It's great to have all your markets covered as best you can.

--Chris

[geo]

1. matx
2. onboard x-fi/zii/auzentech whatever's best
3. loose legacy controllers like floppy,ide,ps/2....
4. 802.11n wifi support
5. bluetooth support
6. good color combination like in bloodrage.. black/orange maybe
7. onboard led indicators