Gigabyte EP45-UD3P (P45) Motherboard
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-UD3P
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: F2
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
• 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
• Bioshock
• F.E.A.R
• Quake 4
Overclocking
Again we see that the Gigabyte boards are not the best boards for high FSB overclocks. However, what the UD3P lacks in front side bus, it more than makes up for in maximum CPU overclock, finishing second and more importantly beating its bigger brother, the EP45 EXTREME.
Let’s see if these results translate to better system performance when we put it through its paces in our standard suite of benchmarks…
