Gigabyte 6Quad GA-P35-DQ6 Review :: 6Quad GA-P35-DQ6 Features

Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 Spec Sheet
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Part Number	GA-P35-DQ6
Manufacturer	Gigabyte
Price Check	Find Best Price
Downloads	BIOS Drivers Manuals
Chipset	Intel P35/ICH9R
North Bridge	Intel P35
Socket	LGA775 Socket
Processor Types	Quad Core, Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo, Pentium 4, Pentium D
Number of CPUs	1
Front Side Bus	1333/1066MHz
Memory Type	DDR2
Memory Channels	Dual
Maximum Memory	8GB
External Graphics	PCI Express x16
IGP	None
South Bridge	Intel ICH9R
Audio	8-channel
IDE	133/100/66/33
SCSI	None
SATA	3.0 GB/s
RAID	0, 1, 0+1, 5
LAN	10/100/1000 x2
Firewire	IEEE 1394a
USB	USB 2.0
Expansion Slots
BIOS	Phoenix
Form Factor	ATX

The P35 chipset supports every Intel LGA-775 CPU on the market including the QX9650 and the 8500 series that are the latest in a long line of Socket 775 CPUs. One of the ways in which Gigabyte really rocks is that they have a direct link to the CPU Support list right on their webpage for the motherboard in question. Many companies, such ASUSTek require you to look on the support page to find the CPU Support list for the motherboard, which is easy to do, but it’s easier if there is a link on the page for the part.

The P35 chipset supports both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, but DDR3 memory is the more expensive and rarer big brother of DDR2, with prices online of DDR3 memory ranging $100 more than the same amount of DDR2. The 6Quad board has 4 DIMM slots, supporting up to 8GB of DDR2 memory. Gigabyte also has an up-to-date memory list on their board page, allowing a user to see what’s been tested on the board, with various DDR2-667, 800 and 1066MHz memory tested in single channel and dual channel modes.

Dual graphics solutions come in the form of SLI and Crossfire and support for dual graphics cards is important to the enthusiast. The P35 platform supports Crossfire as NVIDIA does not allow SLI to be used on anything but NVIDIA chipsets and Intel’s forthcoming SkullTrail platform for enthusiasts. The GA-P35-DQ6 has two PCI Express 1.0 slots, allowing for two AMD video cards to be used in Crossfire mode. In between the two PCI Xpress x16 slots are two PCI Express x1 slots. Gigabyte also includes two legacy PCI slots for the user that has older devices.

SATA drives have replaced the IDE drive in almost every respect, with SATA hard disks standard on the home computer. GIGABYTE outfits the GA-P35-DQ6 with 8 SATA ports and 4 external SATA ports with the included adapter. As the P35 chipset natively supports 12 SATA ports, this means that the board has more than enough SATA support to satisfy the most demanding enthusiast. A legacy IDE port and a FDD port complete the drive options present on the board, in case you have a DVD drive or a floppy disk drive for your computer. The ICH9R Southbridge doesn’t support native IDE, requiring Gigabyte to add a ITE controller for native IDE support. Two headers for Firewire cables are on the board, meaning you have both Firewire and USB 2.0

High Definition Audio is the major home computer standard that was of course introduced a few years ago with the 975X chipset. Gigabyte’s motherboard is outfitted with the Realtek ALC889A CODEC, their latest audio CODEC. The 889A has 10 DACS and supports multiple audio streams (7.1 and 2 channel). The DAC and ADC Sample Rates of the 889A includes 44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192 kHz. The board comes with all the audio connections you will need on the rear panel I/O. The rear panel I/O contains 6 audio jacks, S/PDIF input/output jacks, four USB 2.0 ports, a Parallel port, a IEEE-1394 Firewire port, PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports. There are four additional USB headers, allowing the board to have 12 USB devices (8 by cable).

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