P7P55D-E vs P7P55D-E PRO

[BadOmen]

When comparing products on Asus website, one thing caught my eye:

p7p55D-E
- True USB 3.0 or True SATA 6Gb/s Support
p7p55D-E PRO
- True USB 3.0 Support
- True SATA 6Gb/s Support

Would that mean that the D-E actually does not support both at the same time, while the PRO would do the trick?

any tips are very welcome

(I tried, but couldn't find a review or anything other than launching news about this board. )

 

[CraigRT]

I am under the impression any of the -E Asus boards support both..

I find their comparisons frustrating because things are not always worded the same, so you are left wondering, even though you have a direct manufacturer comparison in front of you!

If you're skeptical at all, get the Pro... The Pro was the best bang for buck before the -E iteration came along too. (The -E Pro is the board I almost got instead of my UD4P)

 

[BadOmen]

The Pro was indeed the best option, however the E upgrade seems to have reduced the gap between them. For instance, both now have firewire.

The standard seems ok to me (I won't need SLI), especially because ncix is selling it for cd$145, compared to cd$215 of the PRO. But I cannot order it before solving that odd riddle: it sounds just too absurd to "turn off" sata 6 in order to use USB 3.

Edit: after some research, I noticed that people don't seem to agree if the p7p55d-e needs half of the PCIe lane for its USB3/SATA6 support or not. The PRO, I'm sure it doesn't.
Does anyone know how the standard version deals with that?

 

[*kjm]

Edit: after some research, I noticed that people don't seem to agree if the p7p55d-e needs half of the PCIe lane for its USB3/SATA6 support or not. The PRO, I'm sure it doesn't.
Does anyone know how the standard version deals with that?

I have the P7P55D-E and the manual does state you will lose half of your PCIe lane for USB3/SATA6. With the numbers for SATA6 Drives I don't care now but if I ever will down the road I can lose half the lane and not hurt my 5870 by that much. If the technology catches up two to three years down the road...... oh well get a nother $150 board for me.

 

[aggressor]

I'm just chipping in to say that you do drop down to 8x PCI-E speed if you enable SATA3\USB3 on the P7P55D-E. You need to spend $30 more for the Pro version for it to borrow from the PCI-4 4x lane.

 

[dharmavir]

PLX chip is not available in addition..

For those on a tighter budget, but still want ASUS quality and those supported features, another option is the non-PRO version of this board, which retails for around $160. There's no way that a $160 board could be considered "budget", but it's as good as it gets from ASUS right now. There might be one downside on that model, though, as I can't spot the PLX chip there, so that board might not include one. I'm checking with ASUS to see if that's the case, and will update below once I hear back.

Read more on http://techgage.com/article/asus_p7p55d-e_pro/10

Dharmavir@DiGiTSS