I prefer not to spend 200 bucks on a motherboard. I find the features of super expensive boards become more obscure and not value for money - do I need four Ethernet ports and a billion front side bus? Not really, just a decent overclock and something stable with a good layout that has the essential features -- getting the most value for money is a prerequisite.
Currently, this mobo can be bought for $155...retail Sept 2008.
The Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R of last year was one of the favourites among enthusiasts looking for a bargain. After a few BIOS revisions it turned into a very overclockable, reasonably featured board suitable for those looking to use a single graphics card. In hindsight when reviewed 12 months ago it was just too early to take advantage of future BIOS' and with that in mind we've sat back and waited for the latest P45 platform to mature slightly. After all, our initial P45 coverage was significant enough to wet the appetites of many, but it was apparent the new chipset was a difficult beast to tame.
Gigabyte uses an "E" prefix to denote "energy efficient" hardware, dynamically regulating the amount of power phases being used depending on CPU load. This feature came into existence at the start of the 2008 to become the Dynamic Energy Saver.
Matched with an inexpensive, performance DDR2 should go together nicely.
Gigabyte DS3 board come in no less than six varieties: EP45-DS3 (vanilla), EP45-DS3L (single PCI-Express x16), EP45-DS3P (three PCI-Express x16), GA-EP45T-DS3R (DDR3 only), EP45C-DS3R (DDR2 and DDR3 combo), and the EP45-DS3R (two PCI-Express x16 and DDR2) reviewing here, not to mention the DS4, DS5, DQ6 and Extreme models that go up in scale of feature to satisfy everyone.
BIOS
The first thing you do if you buy this board is to update the BIOS. With the first P45 boards we reviewed around launch we learnt that there was still a lot of development taking place, and although the Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 and Asus P5Q Deluxe worked out well, MSI's P45 Platinum was not so lucky, essentially failing because of its poor BIOS.
At the time of writing the board is shipped to us with the F4 BIOS and it was pitiful. We had VGA and memory compatibility problems from the outset and when we finally did get the OS to install, we mistakenly tried to flash the BIOS with @BIOS and learnt that our sheer laziness was our downfall. Thank the heavens for Gigabyte's dual BIOS and effective backup system that's all I can say - at least we can comment that this works very well!
We grabbed the latest F9f from the Gigabyte website and used the in-BIOS QFlash to upgrade it instead. It made a world of difference in stability and compatibility. One thing we did find when tweaking the memory settings in particular was that it requires some gentle pushing rather than large jumps. We were able to optimise the memory subsystem pretty well but only after several restarts and profile saves to make sure we didn't lose anything.
Of 73 newegg reviews...
Excellent 5 star 36 reviews 50%
Good 4 star 17 reviews 23%
Average 3 6 reviews 8%
Poor 2 5 reviews 7%
Very poor 1 9 reviews 12%
Overclocking
Throw in the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 and Core 2 Duo E8500 and started to whip up the front side bus. We managed to get a healthy but quite average 465MHz on the quad core, but even after tweaking the GTL reference voltages and clock skews just couldn't quite get it perfectly stable. We suspect our tame PLL and termination voltages of 1.65V and 1.30V were the problem and increasing these would have helped, but don't quite fancy killing the CPU just yet.
We tried with the dual core E8500 next and got the system to boot all the way up at 530MHz but had to dial it right back to 490-495MHz FSB before it would actually boot Windows and achieve stability. We'd have expected at least 500MHz FSB and we know this CPU will do 535MHz stable at least.
Pushing extra voltage through the P45 northbridge on its small heatsink did see the temperature hit around mid-40s with an 80mm fan over the top which is really not that bad, although some might want to consider use of a bigger heatsink.
One thing to note is that Gigabyte's overclock-failure recovery system is again, really quite good. Sometimes the board will cycle itself turning on and off one or two times before resetting itself. It's better than previous Gigabyte boards where it would do this dance several times before coming up with something it likes.
Conclusions
Our initial impressions were very luke-warm to say the least. With the F4 BIOS as standard it was barely functional, yet once we had the latest F9f on it things improved considerably. We'd steer clear of the @BIOS as QFlash in the BIOS works far more reliably, however at least the @BIOS did allow us to test the BIOS backup function Gigabyte included which worked admirably in preventing us from bricking the board.
The one-click driver installation disk has yet again improved and is probably the best out there now, as is the latest EasyTune (6) software which is incredibly functional and easy to use, even if it is still a bit buggy with certain types of memory detection.
Things got better as we benchmarked - the BIOS was easy to learn and relatively easy to tune, any seasoned tweaker/overclocker will have some fun that's for sure. The performance is excellent once you get it in the sweet spot, although we can't really recommend the board in its current state if you want to use CrossFire - we had to dial back the memory performance really quite far, and in our stability test the graphics portion again couldn't take it, even if Prime95 continued to churn out results unhindered.
Feature-wise the board doesn't feature extra SATA or even niche features like onboard Linux distro's but that doesn't mean it isn't well kitted with the essentials - for the most part, even if you're building a quite extensive rig you should be satisfied.
A neat segue to Linux distro's - comparing the EP45-DS3R to the competition there is the Asus P5Q Pro that fits the same fold as the Gigabyte board at around the same price too, as is the MSI P45 Neo3-FR and while it doesn't feature CrossFire it does have eight SATA ports. Finding the Neo2 in the UK is nigh on impossible though.
If you want to pay for DFI P45 Dark features, you'll have to chuck £20 more in the pot, but you also get better CPU power regulation - at this price though you're into Gigabyte EP45-DS4 territory, such is the closely priced SKUs of P45.
Finally, a wildcard from the Foxconn P45A that again closely matches in price but doesn't necessarily offer the features to compete - there's no energy saving, and we can't say any particularly notable features either, plus the fact that it's not exactly the talk of the town means you might want to miss this one.
In all, ignoring the dozens of DS3 iterations Gigabyte flood the market with, there's plenty of choice out there from other manufacturers too around the same price so absolutely don't feel the need to compromise - you should get exactly what you need.
Final Thoughts
The DS3R was designed as an inexpensive essentials board and it exceeds its quota. While we cannot recommend the board for Multi-GPU purposes that doesn't mean you can't use a good single card or a GX2/X2 or the second slot for another Nvidia card for PhysX. Like any P45 if you can tweak the nuts off it the performance is exceptionally good - and the Gigabyte has plenty of options that work (!!) to do this.
For the average user, the overclocking available should suffice but it's unlikely to score the big numbers on the cheap, and while there's oodles of competition gunning for your cash around the £80-90 mark, Gigabyte doesn't necessarily seem favourably cheap on the surface compared directly to some of the competition. But when you count everything Gigabyte includes and the manner in which it is presented, for the price, it's a very well featured product.
In all, it's clearly not perfect but it does very well for itself in the meantime, so while we are adamant you can get precisely what you need given the ample variety on offer, if it does tick your boxes it should be a tempting proposition.
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