Gigabyte EP45-DS3R Review

Makaveli - September 10, 2008
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Testing:

To fully test the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R motherboard, I'm going to put it through the gauntlet of benchmarks that we at OverclockersClub.com have created. This set of benchmarks will stress this motherboard during the testing of various real world, scientific, and video benchmarks. There will be four motherboards that I will compare this DS3R to, including the Gigabyte EP-45 Extreme, the ECS P45T-A, the ASUS P5QL-E (P43+ chipset), and the Gigabyte X48-DQ6 motherboard (X48 chipset). Eeach component will be set to its stock timings, speeds, and voltages to ensure we are getting accurate stock scores from each motherboard. Enough talking, let's start testing!

Test Setup:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 9450 333 x 8
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-DS3R
Memory: Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-5-5-12
Video Card #2: PowerColor Radeon HD 4850
Power Supply: Mushkin 800w Modular Power Supply
Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 7200.11 750GB SATA w/32MB Cache
Optical Drive: Sony Dual Layer Burner
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Motherboards:

Comparison Motherboard 1: Gigabyte EP-45 Extreme
Comparison Motherboard 2: ECS P45T-A
Comparison Motherboard 3: ASUS P5QL-E
Comparison Motherboard 4: Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 9450 500x6 / 3.00GHz
System Memory: Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-7-7-23

Overclocking this board felt exactly the same as overclocking the Gigabyte EP-45 Extreme. The only difference is that the multiplier had to be 6 on this DS3R whereas on the Extreme I could take it to 7. I was able to obtain a front side bus of 500MHz, which is quite good. I definitely could have gone further but the memory was holding me back. As much as I fought, I wasn't able to get anything higher than 500 x 6. I tinkered with the memory until it would finally pass MemTest and Prime 95 in Windows. Overall, it was easy to overclock but the memory was holding the motherboard back.