Introduction:

Gigabyte EP45-DS3R Motherboard

As far as I can remember, there haven't been quite as many success stories from enthusiasts as there have been with motherboards sporting the Intel P35 Chipset. It has been a nice jump for regular users, but especially for extreme users that like to overclock. Straight out of the gates, the chipset offered some form of respectable overclocking as well as plenty of features even on budget ended motherboards. Many a user have found the chipset to be a good reason to upgrade from slower motherboards and systems.

Well, we're now seeing P35 motherboards in shorter supply around the market. And as with the ever scaling momentum of the computer market, it was only a short matter of time before we see a replacement. The real question with all new upgrades are whether or not it's worth the cost. Rarely do I advise someone jumping to the next chipset unless there is some extreme new performance gains. Otherwise, it just seems worth skipping a generation in between for good measure.

Naturally, the P45 was the next logical step in the chipsets evolution. Since a lot of us rarely see what's going un underneath those chipset heat sinks, here's a little comparison chart to bring us all up to speed on the major differences between the P35 and P45 Chipset. 
 

The foremost differences are supported maximum memory, type of memory supported, generation of graphics cards, storage features, and upgraded memory controller. Naturally, the chipset supports all of the latest LGA 775 Core 2 series processors.

Previous P35 platforms only supported 8GB of DDR2 or DDR3 memory in it's maximum configurations. The P45 now offers 16 GB DDR2 or DDR3 memory support depending o the model motherboard. That's a lot of memory for the average desktop users who know what to do with it. The upgraded memory controller could help offer up some more memory bandwidth to help speed up performance. And the ICH9R has been replaced with the ICH10R stream lining the benefits of RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 offering Rapid Recovery Technology only.

And since PCI-x support has become increasingly necessary as standard PCI slots fade out of existence, more updated Gen2 slots have been included on the P45 platform versus the P35. This should allow for more updated PCI-x hardware compatiblity.

One feature that could be an issue, if we ever really have the need for the bandwidth any time soon, is the dual PCI Express 2.0 graphics slots. A single slot on a motherboard translates in to 16 GB/s over 16 lanes, or X16. Even though the P45 chipset does Crossfire-X graphics, it has to be split up over two 8 Lane, or X8 graphics slots. Performance gains are currently, pretty much negligible when comparing dual X16 versus X8. This could change as the interface is improved in future chipsets.

Well, that's enough of the spec talk and predictions. Let's see what the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R Motherboard is capable of whether in performance or efficiency.

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