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Published: August 12, 2008 | Source: Gigabyte | Author: Rich Weatherstone

Gigabyte EP45-DS3P (P45) DDR2 Motherboard

Test Setup
 
Matching our previous reviews of P45 based motherboards, we used the same setup to guarantee a fair review.
 
 Specs List
  
During the testing of the setup above, special care was taken to ensure that the BIOS settings used matched whenever possible. A fresh install of Windows Vista was also used before the benchmarking began, with a full defrag of the hard drive once all the drivers and software were installed, preventing any possible performance issues due to leftover drivers from the previous motherboard installations.
 
To guarantee a broad range of results, the following benchmark utilities were used:
 
Synthetic CPU & Memory Subsystem
• Sisoft Sandra XII 2008c
• Lavalys Everest 4.0

File Compression & Encoding
• 7-Zip File Compression
• River Past ViMark

Disk I/O Performance
• HDTach 3.0.4.0
• Sisoft Sandra XII 2008c

3D / Rendering Benchmarks
• Cinebench 10
• 3DMark 05
• 3DMark 06

3D Games
• Oblivion
• F.E.A.R
• Call of Duty 4

 
 
Overclocking
 
Overclocking was on a par with the other P45 chipset based boards we have tested recently. Despite not managing quite as high FSB as the other motherboards reviewed, an overall CPU overclock with our test Q6600 of 3.9 Ghz was impressive. While not the best, it is certainly not the worst and as this is the cheapest board on test it was a very strong showing indeed.
 
 
 
One worrying point though is the amount of Vdrop between the setting in the BIOS (1.55v) and the actual figure in windows (1.504). The Vdroop was also cause for concern drooping 0.078v to 1.472 when testing under 100% load (Prime95). In order to keep the overclocking enthusiasts happy it would have been nice to have included a loadline calibration type setting to prevent this from happening. Still, not a bad showing at all, Let’s see how it gets in with our run of benchmarks.