Gigabyte P55/X58 Budget USB 3.0 Motherboard Roundup

Introduction

With the first wave of USB 3.0 drives delivering 3-4 times the performance of USB 2.0, PC hardware enthusiasts in the market for a new motherboard are flocking to products that support the new spec. If you’re going to spend the money on a new mobo, you might as well get one that supports the latest and greatest tech right?

Gigabyte seems to have seized on this opportunity and has flooded the market with USB 3.0 compliant motherboards. Right now the company offers no fewer than 10 different USB 3.0 motherboards for the P55 chipset alone, and has shipped more than 1 million USB 3.0-ready motherboards to date. Gigabyte currently offers P55 motherboards starting at $120 and going up to nearly $250 on Newegg. On the X58 front, Gigabyte offers three X58 motherboards with USB 3.0, with their GA-X58A-UD3R among the least expensive X58 boards with USB 3.0 support, priced at $210 on Newegg right now.

Earlier this year we looked at Gigabyte P55A-UD6 and X58A-UD7, these are their high-end offerings for the P55 and X58 chipsets respectively.

While they’re both excellent motherboards, they’re priced as such and may be a bit too expensive for some enthusiasts on a budget who want USB 3.0 support, but don’t want to fork over a lot of money to do it. So with this in mind we’re looking at a quartet of P55 and X58 motherboards Gigabyte offers with support for USB 3.0. All of them are cheaper than the boards we looked at back in January, with the P55-USB3 actually the cheapest P55 USB 3.0 offering on Newegg right now and the X58-UD3R tied for that distinction amongst X58 boards.

Let’s start with the P55-USB3…