An exclusive look at DFI’s upcoming codenamed “Ibex Peak” single chip design Intel P55 Express based motherboards.

DFI’s UT P55-T3eH8 and DK P55-T3eH6 motherboards that we saw today are not mass production level samples and will see some changes – you will see some hand wiring and so on that obviously won’t be there in the final shipping product. You’ll probably be able to buy them sometime in September this year, once the compatible Socket LGA-1156 Core i5 quad-core “Lynnfield” processors go on sale.

We think Intel pushed back the P55 launch again and again to allow the market to shift more of its P45 and Core 2 Duo parts before the new platform comes in and takes over the mainstream level.

P55 also supports the codenamed “Havendale” Core i5 dual-core processor which includes an on-die GPU, but we were told this will be phased out and never actually reach mass production (just for testing purposes). Instead, a newer 32nm version of it will be released sometime in Q1 next year, according to our sources.

Back onto the DFI boards – UT is DFI’s ultra high-end board and DK is a slightly cut-down version, coming in a little cheaper. The difference between the two is that the UT features a more advanced power system using a digital power management (PWM) system. UT also gets a more advanced audio add-on card as well as a better cooling system which exhausts air outside of the case – we were not shown this, DFI has to keep some surprises until Computex in a couple weeks time.

One feature you will probably notice straight away on the UT board is a the SO-DIMM like looking slot between the DDR3 DIMM slots and the IDE connector. This is an Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) slot that allows for an Intel made and sold 4GB or 8GB flash module to be installed to boost system performance. You can think of it as a roughly similar feature to Microsoft’s ReadyBoost in Windows Vista, but much quicker than plugging in a USB 2.0 pen drive. It acts as an extra type of cache (some are calling it “L4″ cache) and apparently you’ll even be able to access this flash memory as a hard drive and even install your main operating system on it.

Some common features on both boards – you’ll notice that the CPU socket is different from what you get on X58 and P45 boards since these boards only support Socket LGA-1156 processors – namely Core i5, as we spoke about above. Core i5 is designed to be the mainstream and cheaper version CPU of the high-end enthusiast Core i7 processor. One of the big differences is that Core i5 will only have dual-channel DDR3 support whereas Core i7 has triple-channel.

At the time of writing, DFI was unable to provide any details on pricing for either motherboard model. However, they did state a little dissatisfaction over Intel charging the same price for P55 chipsets as the P45 north and southbridge combo. Keep in mind that P55 is a single chip solution and P45 was a dual chip solution – something is clearly not quite adding up.

DFI UT P55-T3eH8 motherboard

DFI DK P55-T3eH6 motherboard

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