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Follow us on FacebookGigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard
@ 2008/11/21We've had a far better experience with this board than we have had with the DS3R - it feels more stable, more reliable, it looks better and for £100 it's good value too. It's not the most feature rich P45 on the market - it's missing dual LAN and CrossFire - but not everyone wants those, and there are lots of different P45s on the market to cater for every possible whim. It still has a very useful eight SATA, great audio, a superb BIOS and plenty of PCI and PCI-Express for expansion - all these are genuinely useful additions and not marketing gimmicks or "nice idea, probably won't ever use" like Asus' Express Gate.
Does the extra ounce of copper make that much of a difference? It's very difficult to say - simple BIOS evolution, the redesigned layout or simply updated hardware could afford the improvements on their own, so it's hard to quantify the difference. At worst though, it's a marketing gimmick that Gigabyte loves to throw onto its "Ultra Durable" branding and it doesn't seem to cost any more.
The very good quad core overclock that does notably better than the DS3R, but dual core overclocking still matches and can't break that 500MHz barrier others clearly have done. If you're after a cheap, extreme overclocking board, check elsewhere, but for most of us this board should achieve an acceptable, stable overclock with any Core 2 CPU.
Since the DS3R now retails for almost an identical price to this and it was between the two - we'd get the UD3R every time: it's better cooled, better performing in our benchmarks and lower power. It doesn't achieve excellence but we'd certainly recommend it for those needing a solid P45 purchase.
Does the extra ounce of copper make that much of a difference? It's very difficult to say - simple BIOS evolution, the redesigned layout or simply updated hardware could afford the improvements on their own, so it's hard to quantify the difference. At worst though, it's a marketing gimmick that Gigabyte loves to throw onto its "Ultra Durable" branding and it doesn't seem to cost any more.
The very good quad core overclock that does notably better than the DS3R, but dual core overclocking still matches and can't break that 500MHz barrier others clearly have done. If you're after a cheap, extreme overclocking board, check elsewhere, but for most of us this board should achieve an acceptable, stable overclock with any Core 2 CPU.
Since the DS3R now retails for almost an identical price to this and it was between the two - we'd get the UD3R every time: it's better cooled, better performing in our benchmarks and lower power. It doesn't achieve excellence but we'd certainly recommend it for those needing a solid P45 purchase.
