Gigabyte EP35-DS4 Review

Makaveli - March 24, 2008
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Testing:

The Gigabyte EP35-DS4 is going to be put up against some very tough competition. The competitors are the Abit IX38 GT, ASUS Maximus Formula, Foxconn Mars, and the Gigabyte X48-DQ6. All the motherboards were tested with the same equipment to eliminate the possibility of unfair advantages for any motherboard. All the boards had the latest drivers installed and were tested at stock, to begin with.

Testing Setup:

Processor: Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad 266x9
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP35-DS4
Memory: Mushkin XP2 6400 2x2GB 4-4-4-12
Video Card: Gigabyte 8800GT Turbo Force Edition
Power Supply: Ultra X3 800watt Power Supply
Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 500GB SATA
Opticals: Sony Dual Layer Burner
O/S: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Motherboards:

Comparison Motherboard 1: Abit IX38 Quad GT
Comparison Motherboard 2: ASUS Maximus Formula
Comparison Motherboard 3: Foxconn Mars
Comparison Motherboard 4: Gigabyte X48-DQ6

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Processor: Intel Q6600 455 x 7
Sytem Memory: Mushkin XP2 6400 5-5-5-18

To overclock this motherboard, I'm going to be using the highest possible Front Side Bus to really push this motherboard. After a few days of trying different settings, the highest FSB that I could reach was 455 with a multiplier of 7. This is a 3.18GHz CPU clock, which isn't significantly higher than the stock 2.4GHz clock of the Q6600 processor. 455 isn't bad, I was able to get 466 x 7 out of the Gigabyte EX38-DS4, so if you compare the chipsets, it seems as if the X38 has a tad higher overclock. Don't get me wrong though, 455 x 7 is a good overclock, but I would have liked to see it go slightly higher.