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Test Setup 

Hardware for testing of the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3:

• Intel Core 2 E6400 processor (Socket LGA757, 2.66 GHz, two cores)
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT video card
• Western Digital WD1200JD SATA hard drive
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA2 drive
• 2 * 1024 MB Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-10/2T

The Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 will be duking it out with several other Core 2-compatible motherboards:

• Abit AB9 Pro (Intel P965, DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12/2T)
• Abit AW9D Max (Intel 975X, DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12/2T)
• Asus P5B Deluxe Platinum (Intel P965, DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12/2T as per our E6400 review)
• Asus P5W DH Deluxe (Intel 975X, DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12/2T)
• MSI P965 Platinum (Intel P965, DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12/2T)
• MSI 975X Platinum (Intel 975X, DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12/2T)
• FoxConn 975X7AB (Intel 975X, DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12/2T)
• Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi (Intel P965, DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12/2T) but E6400 data taken from the E6400 review  

Unfortunately when we benchmarked the ASUS P5B Deluxe WiFi we were still using an E6700 for all motherboard testing; since then we've decided to switch to the E6400 as it seems to be a bit easier to go to higher FSB speeds with it, so we can not compare directly compare to the P5B for every benchmark as some were not run for the E6400 processor review on that board.

Benchmarks Used

For now, here is a listing of the tests performed:

• PC Magazine Business Winstone 2004
• PC Magazine Multimedia Content Creation 2004
• RightMark Memory Analyzer
• SiSoft Sandra Memory Analyzer
• HDTach
• WinRAR
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding
• XviD Video Encoding
• LAME MP3 Encoding
• Rightmark Audio*
• Call of Duty
• Doom 3
• Comanche 4
• Halo
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Unreal Tournament 2004

Video drivers used were NVIDIA ForceWare version 84.97