GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R Motherboard Review :: Conclusion

Author: Ben Sun · 01-25-2009 · Category: Motherboards

Scores

  • Features: 30
  • Ergonomics: 9
  • Compatibility: 25
  • Support: 10
  • Performance: 09
  • Total: 83
  • How Does it Rank?

The GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R board is an interesting motherboard in this day and age of economic crisis. While the Core i7 and the like outperform the P45 and X48 motherboards with the Core 2 Duo and AMD Phenom II CPUs by a wide margin, the COO (Cost Of Ownership) of the new platform is also much higher. You can buy a Quad Core CPU, DDR3 memory and this motherboard for a much lower price than buying the Core i7 platform. This provides a good level of performance without the need for buying three sticks of DDR3 memory, a new $300 motherboard and the CPU. This is where a under $100 motherboard like the EP45T-DS3R fits in the market. Performance is a little under that you would expect from a X48 board but the P45 chipset is still excellent for what it does.


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