Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P (Intel P45)

HARDWARE COMPUTER

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P (Intel P45)

The intense competition between the top tier motherboard vendors means that you're likely to find manufacturers touting new features with every chipset refresh or introduction. Some have worked better than others, becoming household names among enthusiasts and creating first mover advantage for vendors who got it right. Others have sunk in the market, to be removed quietly in the next revision. Among the notable vendors, Gigabyte has had its fair share of such moments. Its recent successes, including the introduction of solid capacitors on its motherboards and its Dynamic Energy Saver technology for active phase power management have been taken up by other vendors and consolidated Gigabyte's status in the market. While some companies have been focused on cutting production costs to compete, Gigabyte has upped the stakes with high quality products that appeal to power users. So it's with great interest that we examine another new development in this competitive segment. Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 'umbrella' of features will see an addition - the company is doubling the amount of copper in the PCB. The hence renamed Ultra Durable 3 (UD3) will lead to a cooler motherboard and greater power efficiency. At least that's what the marketing claims. We'll see how this plays out in Gigabyte's latest P45 motherboard enhanced with Ultra Durable 3, the EP45-UD3P.
The bright and colorful Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, now with more copper in the PCB than before.
Gigabyte has four models of P45 motherboards enhanced with UD3 at the moment, two are DDR3 and the other two are DDR2 models. As for the difference between the two (using the same memory type), it appears that the UD3P version that we received has 1 more Gigabit LAN port and more importantly, 2 PCIe x16 slots for CrossFire compared to the UD3R model. There weren't any excessive extras in the Gigabyte package, no audio add-on module for instance. Here's the complete list of the items we found, followed by the technical specifications:-
· 3 x SATA data cables
· 1 x eSATA data cable
· 1 x SATA power converter cable
· 1 x 80-conductor Ultra ATA data cable
· 1 x floppy drive data cable
· 1 x eSATA I/O bracket
· I/O shield
· Driver CD
· User manual
· Hardware installation guide

By Vincent Chang

Category : MainboardPublished

by Vijay Anand on Tuesday, 11th November, 2008

Gigabyte EP45-DQ6

The Mother of Boards: Gigabyte EP45-DQ6

The DQ6 class of motherboards have a way of creating their own headlines as each revision comes into existence and GA-EP45-DQ6 has several landmark features to make the DQ6 family proud of this newcomer. On board, you'll find four PCIe based Realtek 8111C Gigabit LAN controllers and this is readily seen by the rear-I/O panel's impressive quad Gigabit LAN ports. Before your jaw drops to the floor, we'll jog your memory that this isn't the world's first consumer board with quad LAN ports - that honor while still belonging to Gigabyte, was first introduced in their nForce 680i implementation in the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 motherboard . So that makes the GA-EP45-DQ6 the second board in history to feature four Gigabit LAN ports. That's not to say that that this isn't one-of-a-kind, because the Realtek Gigabit controllers as well as the new software stack now supports teaming functionality across all these ports which enables four discreet connections to act as a singe massive connection with four times the bandwidth. Simply put, you've the equivalent of a single 4Gbps connection at your disposal for an ultra high performance digital media home server. Factor in Duplex operational modes and your theoretically have an 8Gbps connection! And unlike previous onboard LAN incarnations, these new network connection standards support Receive Side Scaling (RSS) that helps balance network traffic load among dual-core processors for better overall system performance. Furthermore, the network ports and the software stack are more resilient than ever before with fault tolerance support. Should any link suffer from a hardware failure, it is able to prevent network downtime by transferring the load to the other remaining working ports - be it in teaming mode or not. Sounds almost as if you're getting an onboard router with this motherboard, doesn't it?

By Vijay Anand

Category : Mainboard

COMPUTER HARDWARE - MOTHERBOARD MSI X58

MSI's X58 Motherboard Previewed

MSI's X58 Motherboard Previewed -->MSI's X58 Motherboard PreviewedWill it Eclipse the competition? With such a name, we bet that when MSI's upcoming X58 motherboard does the review circuit, it's bound to generate such similar headlines among both enthusiasts and reviewers. At the moment though, we can't answer that question yet, since our unit came without an Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) processor. We can however show you some of the features that you can expect to find on the Eclipse, which is targeted at the enthusiast. As you should know by now, Intel's next generation CPU is almost upon us. We are about a month or so away from the launch of the Core i7, hence in recent weeks, we have first seen the ASUS P6T Deluxe arriving in our lab and now followed by the MSI Eclipse. We have no details about the number of SKUs that will be based on the Eclipse, though knowing motherboard vendors, it's quite likely that they are multiple SKUs for any designs, varying slightly in terms of features. Meanwhile for our early preview sample, the Eclipse appears to be brimming with all the expected features of the Intel X58 + ICH10R chipset. Obviously, there's a new socket for the larger Core i7, the integration of a triple-channel DDR3 memory controller and Intel's QuickPath Interconnect for greater bandwidth and up to 24GB of DDR3-1333 memory if you so desire. Additionally, MSI has its own proprietary technologies, ranging from the integrated MOSFETS (DrMOS) to the Green Power feature found in its P45 boards and mentioned in our review here . A new, less elaborate Circu-pipe like heatsink with dual heatpipes is also found. There is even a Creative X-Fi Xtreme audio add-on card instead of the usual onboard audio, which is a clue that this board is anything but mainstream.
MSI has gone with blue and black with its new Eclipse X58 motherboard and these colors certainly fit the name. From here, it's looks like a fairly conventional and well designed layout.
MSI is including a PCIe Creative X-Fi Xtreme soundcard for the audio on the Eclipse, giving it more real estate to place up more USB and eSATA ports at the back. There's also dual Ethernet LAN ports, a FireWire port and more convenience' sake, a Clear CMOS switch at the back. Users would have to be more careful when attaching their peripherals since accidentally pressing the CMOS switch would not be cool.
With three PCIe 2.0 slots for graphics, a pair of PCIe x1 and another pair of PCIe, this board is ready for the latest technologies, including CrossFireX. MSI is expected to have a X58 SKU with NVIDIA's nForce 200 to give it SLI functionality besides native CrossFireX.
With the Intel X58 chipset and its onboard memory controller/QuickPath Interconnect, you can expect DIMM slots to be in multiples of three and MSI has included 6 on the Eclipse, supporting up to DDR3-1333 and a total of 24GB.

By Vincent ChangCategory : Mainboard

Published by Vincent Chang on Friday, 3rd October, 2008

MOTHERBOARD ASUS X58

ASUS Unveils its X58 Board

As we near the fourth quarter of the year, Intel's X58 chipset is almost ready to be unveiled to the public. Made for the upcoming Nehalem family of processors from Intel, now rechristened Core i7, the new chipset will have a 1366-pin socket for these new processors and also a new QuickPath Interconnect technology, including an onboard memory controller supporting triple-channel DDR3.

ASUS has sent us an early version of one of its X58 motherboards, the ASUS P6T Deluxe, which was previously mentioned here. This motherboard will support up to 24GB of DDR3-1333 memory, thanks to its six DIMM slots. It will also have features like a Serial Attached SCSI controller to support higher-end SAS hard drives for power users who desire enterprise class performance.

Other proprietary ASUS technologies and features, like its ExpressGate, Stack Cool 2 and a new unique thermal heatsink design will aim to attract enthusiasts when the ASUS P6T Deluxe is officially released in the coming weeks. Before we get a Core i7 and start testing this board, here's a pictorial preview of what to expect:

We'll have more in-depth information about this motherboard, including benchmarks, when we get a Core i7 in our labs.

It may be a standard sized ATX board but there's not an inch of free space on the PCB, with ASUS packing its own features, not to mention the standard X58 + ICH10R features. Connectors are all placed at the edge of the boards for easy access.

We saw eight USB 2.0 ports, eSATA port, two Gigabit LAN ports, FireWire, optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs and audio jacks. There's even a PS/2 connector still, so backward compatibility is not as issue.

This is the new LGA1366 socket for the upcoming Core i7 (Nehalem) processor from Intel. ASUS has gone for a 16-phase PWM for the processor and solid capacitors from Fujitsu rated to operate at up to 105 degrees Celsius. As usual, heat-pipe based passive heatsinks are used to cool the MOSFETs surrounding the socket.

Six DIMM slots for DDR3 (up to 1333MHz) memory, supporting up to 24GB of RAM (with 4GB DIMMs when available) or up to 12GB (with 2GB DIMMs) through a 3-channel CPU integrated memory controller for a total memory bandwidth of 3200MB/s. This is one of the main highlights of the new platform and processor combination. By Vincent Chang Category : Mainboard Published by Vijay Anand on Thursday, 11th September, 2008

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