bit-tech News: Gigabyte's GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard

news · November 21, 2008

Hi all,

We have just published a review of *Gigabyte's GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard*

- if you could post a link on your site that would be very much appreciated.

*Link:*

*Picture:*

*Quote:

*/We've had a far better experience with this board than we have had

with the DS3R - it feels more stable, more reliable, it looks better and

for £100 it's good value too. It's not the most feature rich P45 on the

market - it's missing dual LAN and CrossFire - but not everyone wants

those, and there are lots of different P45s on the market to cater for

every possible whim. It still has a very useful eight SATA, great audio,

a superb BIOS and plenty of PCI and PCI-Express for expansion - all

these are genuinely useful additions and not marketing gimmicks or "nice

idea, probably won't ever use" like Asus' Express Gate.

Does the extra ounce of copper make that much of a difference? It's very

difficult to say - simple BIOS evolution, the redesigned layout or

simply updated hardware could afford the improvements on their own, so

it's hard to quantify the difference. At worst though, it's a marketing

gimmick that Gigabyte loves to throw onto its "Ultra Durable" branding

and it doesn't seem to cost any more.

The very good quad core overclock that does notably better than the

DS3R, but dual core overclocking still matches and can't break that

500MHz barrier others clearly have done. If you're after a cheap,

extreme overclocking board, check elsewhere, but for most of us this

board should achieve an acceptable, stable overclock with any Core 2 CPU.

Since the DS3R now retails for almost an identical price to this and it

was between the two - we'd get the UD3R every time: it's better cooled,

better performing in our benchmarks and lower power. It doesn't achieve

excellence but we'd certainly recommend it for those needing a solid P45

purchase./*

*Cheers guys!

Tim Smalley

www.bit-tech.net

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