jmke

All things considered, even though the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 performs very well and fits well into a price niche we can't really recommend it – its only advantage over the significantly cheaper GA-EP35-DS3R is CrossFire, and it screws that up so much with its subpar layout that it becomes a net feature loss, not a gain. If you really want CrossFire, get the MSI P35 Platinum because it not only keeps up with the DS4 in all areas, it has a better layout and costs around 25 percent less!

The MSI P35 Platinum shows that it can not only match the EP35 power saving efforts, without needing funky software, but it's also been doing so since June last year. In addition, the Gigabyte solution doesn't adjust the front side bus and auto-overclock under load, like the Asus EPU. I think it's a great effort from Gigabyte – we're always massively in favour of energy efficiency, but the current system needs to be greatly refined.

Unfortunately the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 doesn't do it for us, but don't discount the whole EP35 range, because we'd certainly give the GA-EP35-DS3R some serious attention instead.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200..._ga-ep35-ds4/1

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