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Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 Review & Overclocking - PAGE 1
William Henning - Thursday, August 14th, 2008

Back in June, Intel launched the P45 chipset - its replacement for the extremely succesfull P35 chipset. Since then, we have had the opportunity to review the Asus P5Q Deluxe and the MSI P45 Platinum - and while both of those boards were good, well thought out boards, both initially suffered sub-par DDR2 performance for this day and age; however both improved significantly with BIOS updates.

The improvements with newer BIOS's make me suspect that the P45 memory controller has undergone more changes than merely a  geometry shrink from the P35, and as such, BIOS writers have to find the right "tuning" for it.

Today we are looking at a third P45 based board - the Gigabyte EP45-DQ6. Will it have better memory performance than the other P45 based boards we have seen to date?

Specifications


CPU
  1. Support for an Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme processor/ Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor/Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor/ Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core processor/Intel® Celeron® processor in the LGA 775 package
    (Note) This motherboard is designed with VRD11.1 power phase, and cannot be compatible with VRD10 designed CPU. Please refer to "CPU Support List" for details.
  2. L2 cache varies with CPU
Front Side Bus
  1. 1600/1333/1066/800 MHz FSB
Chipset
  1. North Bridge: Intel® P45 Express Chipset
  2. South Bridge: Intel® ICH10R
Memory
  1. 4 x 1.8V DDR2 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory
  2. Dual channel memory architecture
  3. Support for DDR2 1200/1066/800/667 MHz memory modules
    (Refer to Memory support list for more information)
Audio
  1. Realtek ALC889A codec
  2. High Definition Audio
  3. 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel
  4. Support for Dolby Home Theater
  5. Support for S/PDIF In/Out
  6. Support for CD In
LAN
  1. 4 x Realtek 8111C chips (10/100/1000 Mbit)
  2. Support for Teaming
Expansion Slots
  1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16
  2. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8
    (The PCIEx16 and PCIEx8 slots support ATI CrossFireX technology and conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
  3. 2 x PCI Express x4 slots
  4. 1 x PCI Express x1 slot
  5. 2 x PCI slots
Storage Interface South Bridge:
  1. 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATAII0, SATAII1, SATAII2, SATAII3, SATAII4, SATAII5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
  2. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
GIGABYTE SATA2 chip:
  1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
  2. 2 x SiI5723 chips (Smart Backup): -4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (GS0-Source, GS1, GS2-Source, GS3) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices - Support for Smart Backup (RAID 1)
iTE IT8720 chip:
  1. 1 x floppy disk drive connector supporting up to 1 floppy disk drive
IEEE 1394a
  1. T.I. TSB43AB23 chip
  2. Up to 3 IEEE 1394a ports
    (via the IEEE 1394a brackets connected to the internal IEEE 1394a headers)
USB
  1. Integrated in the South Bridge
  2. Up to 12 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
    (8 on the back panel, 4 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers)
Internal I/O Connectors
  1. 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
  2. 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
  3. 1 x floppy disk drive connector
  4. 1 x IDE connector
  5. 10 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors
  6. 1 x CPU fan header
  7. 2 x system fan headers
  8. 1 x power fan header
  9. 1 x front panel header
  10. 1 x front panel audio header
  11. 1 x CD In connector
  12. 1 x S/PDIF In header
  13. 1 x S/PDIF Out header
  14. 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers
  15. 3 x IEEE 1394a headers
  16. 1 x serial port header
  17. 1 x chassis intrusion header
  18. 1 x power LED header
  19. 1 x power switch
  20. 1 x reset switch
  21. 1 x clearing CMOS switch
Back Panel Connectors
  1. 1 x PS/2 keyboard port
  2. 1 x PS/2 mouse port
  3. 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
  4. 1 x coaxial S/PDIF Out connector
  5. 8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
  6. 4 x RJ-45 ports
  7. 6 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone)
I/O Controller
  1. iTE IT8720 chip
H/W Monitoring
  1. System voltage detection
  2. CPU/System temperature detection
  3. CPU/System/Power fan speed detection
  4. CPU overheating warning
  5. CPU/System/Power fan fail warning
  6. CPU/System fan speed control
BIOS
  1. 2 x 8 Mbit flash
  2. Use of licensed AWARD BIOS
  3. Support for DualBIOS™
  4. PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.4, ACPI 1.0b
Unique Features
  1. Support for @BIOS
  2. Support for Q-Flash
  3. Support for Quad BIOS
  4. Support for Download Center
  5. Support for Xpress Install
  6. Support for Xpress Recovery2
  7. Support for EasyTune
  8. Support for Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced
  9. Support for Ultra TPM
  10. Support for Time Repair
  11. Support for Q-Share
Bundle Software
  1. Norton Internet Security (OEM version)
Operating System
  1. Support for Microsoft/ Windows/ Vista/XP
Form Factor
  1. ATX Form Factor; 30.5cm x 24.4cm

next: The Board »

Article Index

1.Introduction
2.The Board
3.The BIOS
4.More BIOS
5.Test Setup & Benchmarks Used
6.Businesss Winstone & Content Creation
7.WinRAR & HDTach
8.LAME MP3 & TMPGEnc
9.Call of Duty & Commanche 4
10.Doom 3 & Quake 4
11.Halo, Jedi Knight & UT4K
12.Sandra
13.RightMark Read & Write
14.RightMark Latency & Bandwidth
15.Overclocking & Conclusion
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