Gigabyte has launched its series of P55 chipset motherboards in conjunction with the official release of Intel's Core i7 and Core i5 Lynnfield processors (check out our review here.) The P55 chipset boards use the new LGA1156 socket required for the new Intel processors, support dual-channel DDR3 memory up to 2200MHz and are all built using Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 3 technology.

The Ultra Durable 3 motherboards use 2 ounces of copper for both the power and ground layers which allows for greater heat dissipation while also offering improved energy efficiency and enhanced stability for overclocking; they also feature Japanese solid capacitors boasting 50,000 hours of operation, ferrite core chokes with higher energy efficiency compared to the commonly used iron core chokes and Lower RDS(on) MOSFETs that features a lower resistance, resulting in reduced power consumption and heat generation.

The new P55 motherboards offer a host of other features including the introduction of the world’s first 24 phase power VRM design on the GA-P55-UD6 model that has been designed and engineered to deliver fast transient response times through quick and seamless power delivery during extensive CPU loading variations; this results in a cooler and more stable platform as heat from the VRM is effectively reduced by spreading the load between all 24 power phases.

The P55 series boards also come with GIGABYTE Smart 6, six software utilities that provide an easier and smarter way for managing your system; the utilities include functions for faster boot times, easy overclocking, dual BIOS, rollback features and more.

The are six models in the P55 series at launch and you can find out more by checking out the web site here.