Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 Motherboard Review

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark 06

We used the venerable 3DMark 06 because it is less GPU-bound than Vantage, and thus a better indicator of overall system performance.


Here we have relatively minor 5% performance improvement, and based on the static SM2.0 and SM3.0 scores, it is clear that our reference-clocked GeForce 8800 GT 512MB is becoming a bottleneck at such high CPU speeds.


Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

You asked for it, so we have finally included 3DMark Vantage, Futuremark’s latest release in their renowned line of 3D benchmarking software. This latest DX10-only 3DMark comes with a variety of presets, but for our tests will be use the standard Performance preset which is suitable for a much greater range of system specifications than the other more demanding presets.


Since 3DMark Vantage is such a GPU-intensive application, it’s really not surprising that our increased system specs only yielded a 5% performance improvement.


Crysis - Sphere Benchmark

Although Crysis is intensely GPU dependent, we added it to our gaming benchmarks to see how system changes can improve the performance on a mid-level system. We utilized the Sphere level demo for our benchmarks, and ran it in DX10 mode with a resolution of 1680x1050 with all detail levels set to medium.


At first glance the results are fairly unimpressive, plus or minus 1FPS in both average and maximum frame rates. However, the all-important minimum frame rate has inched closer towards the baseline 30FPS level that is required to maintain a smooth(-ish) gaming experience.


Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

This test consists of actual gameplay using a single mission (Authie: Boudica's Boys from the British Campaign) since it holds a bit of everything the game has to offer: vehicle battles, artillery barrages and house-to-house fighting. We recorded framerates using FRAPS up until the 15 minute mark of the mission and excluding any in-game briefings / cutscenes. The game was run in DirectX 9 mode at 1680x1050 with all detail levels set to high.


Although COH: OP is quite graphically intensive, the extra system clocks do provide a noteworthy 8% performance boost over the stock configuration.


Team Fortress 2

As our last gaming benchmark, we will use the addictive and CPU-intensive Team Fortress 2. For this test, we made an action-packed 30-minute timedemo on the “2_Fort” map with a constant 20-24 player load. This test represents a worst-case scenario because it is a small map with a high number of players on the screen at all times, placing a significant load on the CPU. The resolution was set to 1680x1050 with all settings on high.


The Source engine is well-known for having excellent CPU scalability, and this fact is quite evident in our results. Our overclocked system posted a 36% performance gain, which suggests that the game not only benefits from the additional processing power, but also from the increase in memory bandwidth. The performance benefits are definitely tangible, as you can clearly tell that the fast-paced FPS experience is much more fluid due to the significant reduction in frame rate dips.