The Asus P7H55D-M EVO is an H55 board, a series of chipset from Intel that almost expects you to use the new Intel Core i5 661 to power it, both as a CPU and as your GPU.  This is good news for anyone who has used an integrated Intel graphics chipset.  The idea seems to be that at just over $200 the the Core i5 661 should come in roughly the same price as an AMD CPU and graphics combo.  This is a high bar to set, you would have to work at finding a motherboard using AMD’s 785G chipset that cost over $100, so the AMD CPU and motherboard are still half the price of the Intel offering.  When you consider what kind of AMD card you could pick up for $100 it seems that Intel really has their work cut out for them.

Think Computers matched a Phenom II X3 720 on a M4A785TD-V EVO, so unfortunately we cannot see a direct comparison between the current onboard graphics capabilities.  What you can see is exactly what the H55 board is capable of; if you want to see the 785G in action, you can see it here.

“All of these changes in processor and chipset design, along with Intel’s new 32nm manufacture process, opened the door for their latest and most radical change yet…placing the VGA on the processor. Yes, Intel’s new 2010 Core i5 600 series processors have on-die graphics processing. Of course to accommodate this, Intel has released a new motherboard chipset, the H55 Express. Sporting the same LGA 1156 socket as the P55, this new design has monitor ports in the I/O panel. So far I’ve seen 20 H55 motherboards for sale at my favorite online retailer. Of these 20 boards, 19 are mAT X boards, including the motherboard I am looking at today, the Asus P7H55D-M EVO. Sporting Asus’ EVO cosmetics and onboard extras, this motherboard also natively supports the new “Superspeed” USB 3.0. Read on to check out the Asus P7H55D-M EVO!”

Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:

Click Here to go to Motherboards  Motherboards