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Gigabyte has always been feature-rich with the extras on their motherboards and the X48T-DQ6 is no exception. The X48T-DQ6 is based upon Intel’s X48 chipset which I’ve exhaustively covered in the Intel DX48BT2 review. Main features of the X48 chipset include support for FSB 1600MHz CPUs including the QX9770 Yorkfield CPU, DDR3 memory support, CrossFireX support and more which this board supports.  DES  DES Max power saving mode Dynamic Energy Savings is Gigabyte’s trademark for their power saving technology on the X48T-DQ6 board and other boards with this technology. DES has the following features: One-Click Power Savings, Dynamic LED Display, Dynamic MultiGear Power Design, and Unmatched Energy Efficiency. So what does all this mean to the consumer?  Gigabyte logo The Gigabyte Dynamic Energy Saver interface can be enabled with a single click of the button. There are two modes for DES, Power Saving Mode and Total Power Saving Mode. Metered Mode shows how much power has been saved in a set period of time. Total Power Saving mode shows how much power has been saved total since DES was turned on for the first time. On our X48T-DQ6 a total of almost 5 Watts was saved from 9:17:49am 7/12/2008 to 12:15am on 7/16/2008. Gigabyte has really been pushing the envelope with their Ultra Durable 2 TECHNOLOGY. Ultra Durable 2 offers Lower RDS (ON) MOSFETS, Ferrite Core Chokes, and Lower ESR Solid Capacitors. With the addition of the Dynamic Energy Saver chip on the board to Ultra Durable 2, Gigabyte says that up to 70% power savings can be garnered over other solutions and over 20% power efficiency over other solutions. Every motherboard company is doing similar things with the Green initiative about saving the environment through lower power usage. DDR3 memory has really come into the limelight as the replacement for DDR2 memory, especially on high-end motherboards like the X48T-DQ6 board. Gigabyte says that they support DDR3 memory up to 1900MHz, which is faster than most memory on the market today, with the notable exception of XMP memory or EPP memory. XMP is Intel’s initiative to improve memory performance by offering Multiple SPD profiles, Memory vendor specific profiles, Easy Overclocking, Advanced Overclocking and a fail-safe default boot. EPP or Enhanced Performance Profile memory is the NVIDIA standard for their motherboards. The Q6 in the name of the board stands for Quad BIOS, Quad Cooling, Quad e-SATA, Quad Triple Phase, Quad Core Optimized, and Quad DDR3 slots. Quad BIOS means that there are four copies of the BIOS between the Dual BIOS chips, a copy on the hard disk and the copy on the driver CD. This makes a bad BIOS flash very easy to recover from as the BIOS can be loaded from so many locations. Quad Cooling combines the Crazy Cool and Silent-Pipe technology to offer the best cooling solution. There are heat sinks covering the MOSFET modules, the Northbridge and the Southbridge. Quad e-SATA2 is really a cool feature of the board as usually there are only one or two external SATA ports on most boards. Contents:
 
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