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GIGABYTE GA-P35-DQ6 Motherboard Review

Date Published:
10-08-2007

Written By:
Wesley Patison

Edited By:
Diceman

Provided By:
Gigabyte

Where to Buy:
Gigabyte

Discuss Article:
VH Forum link

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DQ6 Motherboard

Introduction:

The Intel P35 chipset has flooded the retail channels for a few months now. The P35 is designed as the replacement for the mainstream P965 chipset but offers DDR-2 or DDR-3 functionality, depending upon the support selection by the manufacturer. The P35 revamp also offers support for the 1333MHz FSB and 45nm processors.

The board I will be reviewing from Gigabyte is the GA-P35-DQ6 featuring a P35/ICH9R chipset combination. This model supports the DDR-2 standard, dual PCIe graphics capability (only crossfire is supported on the Intel chipsets), solid caps all over the board, Quad bios solution, Eight Channel HD audio provided by the Realtek ALC889 codec and silent heatpipe cooling. All great features contributing to the very bling-bling nature of this board. Let’s dig in and see if it stacks up.

Features:

Intel^® P35 + ICH9R Chipset

Supports Intel^® Core™ 2 multi-core and upcoming 45nm processors
Supports DDR2 1066* memory for outstanding system performance.
Ultimate graphics performance with dual PCI-E x16 interface
Integrated SATA 3Gb/s with RAID function
Features high speed Gigabit Ethernet and IEEE1394
Ultra Durable 2 motherboard features High Quality CPU Power design with Ferrite core chokes, Low RDS (on) MOSFET and Solid Capacitors.
Durable Capacitors that take advantage of Japanese manufactured SMD (Surface Mount Device) solid capacitors for enhanced system durability.
All New Copper SILENT-PIPE that includes heat sinks covering MOSFET modules, the north bridge and the south bridge.
Audio controller from ALC 889A codec and DTS Connect, featuring 106 dB Signal to Noise ratio and supporting for both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats.

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DQ6 Specifications:

Form Factor	ATX form factor, 305 x 244mm
BIOS	Supports Quad BIOS 2 x 8 Mbit flash ROM Use of licensed AWARD BIOS PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.3, ACPI 1.0b.
Chipset	Northbridge: Intel^® P35 Express Chipset Southbridge: Intel^® ICH9R T.I IEEE 1394 Controller Gigabit Lan Controller 8 Channels ALC889A Audio controller
Processor	Supports Intel^® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel^® Pentium^® Extreme/ Intel^® Pentium^® D processors Supports1333/1066/800 MHz FSB
Internal I/O Connectors	8 Serial ATA 3Gb/s connectors 1 UDMA ATA 133/100/66/33 connector 1 FDD connector 1 IEEE 1394 connectors 4 USB 2.0/1.1 connectors (supports 8 ports) 1 audio pin header (supports 8-Channel) 1 TPM pin header 1 S/PDIF In pin header
Rear Panel I/O	4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports 1 SPDIF Out port (coaxial+ optical) 1 IEEE 1394 port 1 LPT Port 1 COM Port 1 RJ45 port 6 audio jacks PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse
Expansion Slots	2 PCI Express X16 slot(x16, x4) 3 PCI Express X1 slots 2 PCI slots
Other Features	Ultra Durable 2 Motherboard All Copper Silent Pipe and Crazy Cool All Japanese manufactured solid capacitors with SMD (Surface Mount Device) Over-clocking Enhanced
Memory	Supports DDR2 1066/800/667 memory Dual Channel architecture supports up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots Please refer "Memory Support List" for memory support information.
Remark	Due to different Linux support condition provided by chipset vendors, please download Linux driver from chipset vendors' website or 3rd party website. Due to most hardware/software vendors no longer offer support for Win9X/ME. If some vendors still has Win9X/ME drivers available, we will publish on website. Duo to chipset limitation, Intel ICH9R RAID driver does not support Windows 2000 operating system.

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