Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 Motherboard Review :: Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 Layout

The X48T-DQ6 CPU area is clear of obstructions, allowing the use of after-market cooling solutions. A Cooler Master CPU cooler with a funnel in the back proved no problems installing on the board despite the location of the Silent Pipe heatsink being directly behind it. Two rows of Japanese Solid State capacitors line above the CPU Socket and to the right of the Socket.

The board is designed to operate two ATI video cards in CrossFireX mode. The X48 Express chipset has enough PCI Express lanes to provide two cards with x16 lanes each, meaning up to 8GB/second of bandwidth is provided to the video card. ATI cards like the 4870 are very popular due to price/performance ratios and the ability to install two of them in this motherboard makes for a powerful CPU/graphics card combination.

Two PCI Express x16 Generation 2.0 slots, three PCI Express x1 slots and two PCI slots make up the expansion slot options on this motherboard. There is a separation of two PCI Express x1 slots between PCI Express x16 slot 1 and PCI Express x16 slot 2. This allows enough airflow between the spacing of two video cards to effectively provide cooling to the cards in question. Two slot video cards like the 4870X2 and GTX280 will have better airflow on a board like this than on a board with insufficient spacing.

SATA hard disk drives are the main mode of storage connection today. Intel has support for up to six HDDs on their ICH9R Southbridge, which the X48T-DQ6 has eight SATA ports on it with six controlled by the Intel ICH9R chip and two controlled by the Gigabyte SATA2 controller. The SATA2 controller also supports IDE drives, as the Intel ICH9R chip does not support the legacy devices. The FDD controller is controlled by an IT8718 chip.

Realtek provides audio for most motherboards on the market today. The X48T-DQ6 has a Realtek ALC889 CODEC onboard, the latest CODEC from Realtek. This CODEC supports up to 7.1 surround sound with a second simultaneous stream 2 channels out of the front panel jacks. The 889 has support for Content Protection, meaning that the 889 has Full Rate loss-less DVD-Audio, Blu-Ray DVD and HD-DVD audio content playback.

The rear I/O on the board consists of PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard ports, S/PDIF Coaxial and out ports, Firewire A/B ports, 8 USB ports, 2 RJ45 jacks for the Gigabit LAN, and six audio jacks for the onboard audio. This is the first time I’ve seen a motherboard with eight USB 2.0 ports on the rear I/O and is a welcome addition. The RJ-45 jacks are capable of Teaming, which means that they can work together to provide bandwidth of up to 2 Gigabits/second instead of the 1 Gigabit a second that the jack provides.