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Gigabyte EP45 DS4R Motherboard Review :: Gigabyte EP45 DS4R Features
The Gigabyte board has a feature called Dynamic Energy Saver which Gigabyte is pushing on their motherboards as their newest coolest feature. This has the features of Ultra Durable 2. Ultra Durable 2 means that the motherboard uses Lower RDS (ON) MOSFETs, Ferrite Core Choke and Lower ESR Solid Capacitors to lower the temperatures of the CPU Zone. Gigabyte says that their Ultra Durable 2 technology can lower the CPU Zone temperature up to 33C and extend the life of the CPU by doing so.  DES Gigabyte says that this board is optimized for 45 nanometer processors. Their CPU list includes the QX9770 CPU and the various Core 2 Quad CPUs that are 45-nanometer based (Yorkfield), so while the Intel P45 chipset does not officially support the QX9770, this board does. The EP45-DS4 supports DDR2-1200, which by the way is the fastest available on the market today. The P45 chipset supports up to DDR2-1066MHz memory but the EP45-DS4 supports the faster memory. One of the cool new features found on the Gigabyte EP45-DS4 motherboard is the onboard diagnostic LEDS. The seven LEDs include the CPU, Memory, PCI-Ex16/x8, PCI-Ex4/x1, PCI, SATA, and IDE. If a problem is detected on the initial boot up, the LED will indicate where the likely problem is. There are also four Advanced Configuration and Power Interface status indicators to indicate power status to ensure safe operation of hardware. Gigabyte’s CPU Support page lists every CPU that they have tested with this motherboard. One note on the CPU support list, the EP-45 DS4 supports CPUs with VRD 11.1. Earlier CPUs such as the Prescott Pentium 4 on the LGA-775 Socket are not supported. Every CPU with a N/A on the list means not supported. All Core 2 Quads, Core 2 Duos, and Celeron 400 Sequence D processors are supported, while CPUs like the Pentium D 955 and earlier Dual Core CPUs are not supported. Multiple graphics cards have come back into the forefront of the enthusiast community with the launch of the ATI 4870X2 cards and the use of multiple NVIDIA cards on the same motherboard. Intel’s P45 chipset supports ATI’s CrossFireX implementation. The next generation Intel X58 chipset will support SLI from NVIDIA but that isn’t announced yet. In any event, all Intel and ATI motherboards with more than one graphics slot support Crossfire which allows them to use two ATI video cards to improve performance. Dual Gigabit LAN is a feature that really comes into play when you have Teaming. Teaming allows the two ports to work together giving nearly the same performance as a single 2 Gigabit LAN. There are a few Gigabyte boards with four LAN ports, but most have one or two ports. Teaming in this case has the features; Fault Tolerance, Receive SIDE Scaling, Green Ethernet. If you have ever had a BIOS Flash go bad, then you know the pain of having to replace the motherboard unless you get a new BIOS chip from the manufacturer. Gigabyte has implemented a Dual BIOS with the EP45-DS4 motherboard, meaning that the secondary BIOS will kick in if the primary BIOS get corrupt. Dual BIOS checks to see if the Primary BIOS is ok, then either moves on or moves to the second BIOS if the first crashed. It’s a lifesaving feature that means that you can flash the BIOS without worry. Contents:
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