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Published: November 4, 2008 | Source: Gigabyte | Author: Rich Weatherstone

Gigabyte EP45-EXTREME

Test Setup
 
Matching our previous reviews of P45 based motherboards, we used the same setup to guarantee a fair review.
  
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.
 
Processor: Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz @ 3.6 Ghz
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-Extreme
Memory: Cellshock DDR2 PC-2 6400 5-5-5-18 @ 800mhz
Graphics Card: ATI X1950 pro
CPU Cooling: Scythe Ninja
Power Supply: OCZ 780w ModXstream
Hard Disk: Hitachi 7K160 7200rpm 80Gb
Display: Dell 3007 WFP-HC 30″ LCD
BIOS: F9
Chipset Drivers: Latest Intel P45 series.
Graphics Drivers: Cat 8.10
Operating System: Windows Vista 64bit SP1
 
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
 
All of the motherboards on the overclocking test today have Intels P45 chipset as a base and thus far have performed pretty much on par. Kentsfield CPU’s are tricky to get anywhere near 500FSB and out test Q6600 ‘G0’ is no different. If ultra high FSB is your bag then you would be much better using a Wolfdale CPU but as we like to use the same system throughout our motherboard tests we will stick with our ‘difficult’ Q6600.
 
 
 
Predictably, the Quad core was very stubborn once 475FSB was reached and the motherboard took 1.65v on the Norhtbridge to stabilise the 485 FSB attained. Rest assured though as there are plenty of reports of this board hitting 600FSB+ with the dual core 45nm but as our results show, it is not the best board for the older 65nm Quads, at least where Front Side Bus speeds are concerned.
 
For the maximum overclock, as we are on air cooling, we prefer to use a maximum cpu core voltage of 1.55v. However, because of a 0.03v vdrop and a further 0.04 droop, we had to set the vcore to 1.62 in the BIOS to compensate when testing for stability. I ran a ‘quick’ 2 hour prime95 session to prove basic stability and once I figured out the vdroop problem, a maximum overclock of 3924mhz was attained.
 
Lets take a look at how this motherboard performs in our standard set of benchmarks against a variety of other chipsets on offer today.