Gigabyte EP45-DS3R P45 Motherboard Review

Intel P45 Chipset Features

The new P45 chipset by Intel supports a variety of features including new Intel 1600 MHz Front Side Bus processors, high speed DDR2 and DDR3, Extreme Memory Profiles (Intel XMP), next-generation dual PCI Express 2.0 lanes, and Intel Extreme Tuning, allowing for maximum platform performance.

The Intel P45 Express Chipset is driving PCIE 2.0 to mainstream users, delivering up to 16 GB/s bandwidth, twice the bandwidth of PCI Express 1.0. The Intel P45 Express Chipset supports either a 1 x 16 or 2 x 8 PCIE 2.0 configuration for expandable discrete graphics capability. PCIE 2.0 also provides greater flexibility and reliability in design because it is backward compatible with PCIE 1.0 and can dynamically manage power and performance through software controls. The greatly improved 16 GB/s of graphics bandwidth capability enables much higher levels of performance on graphics-intensive applications such as high-end gaming and video rendering.


Gigabyte EP45-DS3R Features

Gigabyte has a motto or slogan for its boards – Ultra Durable, Ultra Cool, Ultra Power Efficient. These areas provide the framework for the feature set which is composed of features such as: DES Advanced, 45nm Intel Core 2 processors with FSB 1600 MHz support, dual channel DDR2 1333+ support, CrossFireX support, Dolby Home Theater audio support, DualBIOS, and a Hardware Overvoltage Control IC. A brief summary of each of the key features is as follows: