Gigabyte has one of the most innovative board makers I could think of when it is in power efficiency and component features. While ASUS is one of other major companies that create boards and does for the fun on introducing feature packed boards, as example of the deluxe version boards with world class design on heat-sinks also giving out one of these Linux operating systems built in for free! Gigabyte however is more of a power saving option, with the first board makers to go all solid capacitors into high-end and mainstream boards, also the new versions of the PWM’s and MOSFET chips. The Ultra Durable 3 version form Gigabyte is one such feature, with the sold capacitors and MOSFET kept in top quality with longevity and power saving system in mind. Then with this P45 chipset, they made the first board to have double the copper layer in the PCB, 2oz copper inner layer, almost double the thickness from the traditional PCB layers. With its purpose of the copper to efficiently disband heat from the chip equally to the surrounding areas, more like heatsinks but runs all over the board. The Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R is a board that we are going to look at. The EP45-UD3R is a new version of the UD3R series from gigabyte, but now it has double the copper layers it has in the previous one. Sporting the P45 chipset for functionality and performance; it supports the newer Intel core 2 duo and quad processors and extreme cores with a limit frequency of about 1600MHz fsb, so you can link it with a QX9770 in it. With the memory, supports the DDR2 memory but have a higher clock frequency of about 1366MHz, 300MHz more than the conventional 1066MHz. is because it has a four phase digital PWM’s located on top of the memory slots, with the help of the two other PWM’s, in theory can have a stable clock and power input through the memory module. Going blue colour PCC for this one, much of its features in the board are eight SATA ports, two are located in the top for RAID support, and a single PCI-ex 16, not crossfire on this one. Much of the expansion slots are being used by other three PCI-exes 1x slots and three more regular PCI. Design and features are bit of an old side, two floppy slots in the bottom, is unusual for most boards (we in the other hand, only need one of these floppy drives) and the use of aluminum heatsinks in the north and south Bridge keeps everything cool on top, but aluminum! What happened to the copper? Can the 2oz layer take all of the copper? Pretty much, for the prize what I meant. If they were to go wit the copper heatsink, the prize would have shot up to $50 more in each chipset. But never the less, they really keep the board temps at a low 25’c in load with a quad core and idle in 20 degrees. For the performance factors are pretty well up to standard, going most in the respectable areas in encoding and world apps like image rendering and anti-virus scanning. But for the games, is pretty limited when only having a single PCI-ex x16, but with the inclusion of a 9800GX2 or 4870×2, you would never think of upgrading to crossfire. Going good frames in Crysis with an X2 on high, with the other games however is pretty much average. But for the board usage however really limits it from the features it has, on gaming only a single PCI-ex, for a media PC with low on features with storage and also peripherals, Gigabyte EP45-UD3R is for those normal PC use or no problems with the limited features.
