Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P P45 Motherboard Review | ||
| by MAC | October 30, 2008 | ||
| Included Software Included SoftwareIn this section, we will take a closer look at EasyTune6 and D.E.S Advanced, which are the two main software utilities that Gigabyte has packaged with the EP45-UD3P. EasyTune6 EasyTune6 is a system management utility that displays system clock speeds, voltages, temperatures, and fan rotationbut more importantly it allows users to overclock from within Windows. Now anyone familiar with past EasyTune iterations knows that although this utility has always contained a fair bit of functionality, its usability left a little (or a lot!) to be desired. Well thankfully Gigabyte went back to the drawing board, and created a brand new EasyTune version from scratch. Let's check it out.   The CPU and Memory tabs provide basic component information and are somewhat reminiscent of the immensely popular CPU-Z utility.  Quick Boost mode is a new feature that GIGABYTE introduced along with Ultra Durable 3. It is basically a user-friendly way for novice users to enjoy the performance boost that overclocking provides. Once you click on one of the three boost levels, the utility will automatically optimize system settings according to your specific hardware combination....as long as it is a hardware combination that was pre-tested by GIGABYTE engineers. For example, when I installed PC2-5300 modules the Quick Boost feature disappeared without a trace.   For those who desire a more manual approach to overclocking, the Tuner tab has an Easy mode which allows control over the front side bus. However, it's when users click on Advance that EasyTune 6 reveals its true inner beautyunprecedented Windows-based overclocking options. Not only can you adjust the front side bus, the processor multiplier, the memory multiplier, and the PCI-E frequency, but they have actually provided overclockers with nearly every voltage option that is found in the BIOS. The best part is that all of the on-the-fly voltage tweaking options actually work! This is quite an achievement for a manufacturer-provided piece of software. The experience was not quite flawless though, as the reference voltages and the DRAM Termination are misreported by ET6. You can still tweak them, but you just have to remember that those settings will be wildly different from what you can set in the bios.   The Graphics tab can be used to manipulate your graphics card痴 core/memory/shader clock speeds, but we still recommend RivaTuner for VGA tweaking since it is much more capable. The Smart tab gives you access to the CPU Intelligent Accelerator (C.I.A) 2 and Smart Fan functions. The CPU Intelligent Accelerator was designed to automatically overclock the CPU according to system load and user-selected level. However, in our experiences, C.I.A.2 has never really worked properly, and it has effectively been replaced by Quick Boost, so we expect to see it disappear shortly. As its name suggests, Smart Fan gives allows users to control the CPU fan speed.  Lastly, we have HW Monitor which is the only part of EasyTune6 that disappoints us. Despite providing us with over a dozen voltage tweaking options in the Tuner tab, the HW Monitor only displays four voltage readings. Yes, this is a mainstream motherboard, so some features have to be left out, but surely comprehensive voltage monitoring doesn't have to be one of the exclusions. At the very least, we would have liked to see the +5V rail included to complete the trio of important system voltages. Overall though, we do sincerely enjoy using EasyTune6. It was consistently one of the first pieces of software we installed after a fresh Windows installation, and it was definitely a huge help in finding this motherboard's overclocking limits. If EasyTune keeps improving it will definitely become another worthwhile reason to recommend GIGABYTE motherboards. DES Advanced Now let's have a look at the DES Advanced energy saving solution, which is arguably Gigabyte痴 most highly-touted feature.  After first installing the Dynamic Energy Saver (DES) software, we are greeted with a powered down control panel. This means all DES functions are turned off and disabled. Only when we click on the large DES logo to the right does the panel come to life and power saving begin.  The software is pretty straight forward; we have our power savings meter in the top portion providing us with information about how much power we have saved. We can see the meter total that we can easily reset and the total amount based on the first installation of DES. Just below is the graphic that tells us how many phases of the PWM are actually running. Because the system was in a high load state, all 6 phases were in use.  In this last photo the system is in an idle state, and DES Advanced has throttled down the CPU and only 2 power phases are being utilized. Below we see that the on-board LEDs also show how many phases are in use. These LEDs can be turned on and off through the control panel with the little green light to the right under the main DES on/off switch.   Now that we have gone through all the trouble of explaining how it works, the big question is does it work? In order to test this out we enabled all the Intel energy saving features in the BIOS, then let the system idle for 1 hour and measured the KW/h of energy used through our UPM EM100 power meter. We repeated the same procedure for 1 hour of Prime 95 Blend load. We then installed the DES software, set it to maximum energy saving, turned the Dynamic Frequency on, and repeated the tests. Here are the results:  While the power savings at idle were unmeasurable during our brief one hour test, these results prove that DES works quite well in high load scenarios. While running Prime 95 Blend the power consumption of the DES-enabled system reached a maximum of 146W, whereas the default system peaked at 151W. This might seem like an insignificant decrease, but over the span several months the energy and monetary savings would begin to add up, especially for those who constantly run intensive programs like Folding @ Home. Last, but of particular importance to the enthusiast crowd, is the fact that Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced can be used with an overclocked system, which is something that most competing energy saving technologies do not support.         | ||
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