Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6
Introduction
Gigabyte P35-DQ6 is gigabyte's high Performance product based on the latest Intel P35/ICH9R chipset. With support for 1333 MHz FSB, crossfire, upto DDR2-1066 and many more. This board is a part of GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 2 series of motherboard. The board uses 100% Solid Caps for enhanced reliability, longer durability and for high overclocking capabilities. Gigabyte calls this motherboard series as 6-Quad motherboard, reason given for the same is the Quad bios (details in the BIOS section), Quad cooling (4 Heatsink on the board) , Quad Triple (virtual 12 phase), Quad e-SATA 2, Quad Core optimized and Quad DDR2 Slots. All these features are common to DQ6 series of Gigabyte. Now lets see about the board in detail and how well this board performs.
Over to the specification of this board.
CPU
- Support for all Intel Core 2 architecture based processors
- Intel Pentium D/4 processor in the LGA 775 package (5xx/6xx)
- Intel Celeron D processor in the LGA 775 package (3xx/4xx)
- North Bridge: Intel® P35 Chipset
- South Bridge: Intel® ICH9R
Memory
- 4 x 1.8V DDR2 DIMM sockets supporting up to 8 GB of system memory
- Dual channel memory architecture
- Support for DDR2 1066/800/667 MHz memory modules
Audio
- Realtek ALC889A codec, Support for DTS, S/PDIF In/Out, CD In
- 2 x PCI Express x16 slots (16x & 4x)
- 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
- 2 x PCI slots
- 8 SATA Port
- 1 x FDD port & 1 x PATA port
- LAN : Realtek 8111B Chip
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard and 1 x PS/2 mouse port
- 1 x parallel port
- 1 x coaxial S/PDIF Out connector
- 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
- 1 x serial port
- 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports (expandable-Upto 8 via internal USB headers)
- 1 x IEEE 1394a port (expandable Upto 2 via the headers)
- 1 x RJ-45 port
- 6 x audio jacks
[BREAK=Package and contents]
The Motherboard box comes with a flashy yet neat graphics contents over it. The entire feature about the board is well given in the box itself.
The packaging in my opinion is very good. With the usual set of content, gigabyte has provided 2-SATA brackets, where one can connect upto 4 SATA drives externally. The user manual explains everything about the board.
[BREAK=Motherboard Layout]
The space between the two PCIE x16 slots are good enough to use 2 graphics cards. The First and second PCIE x16 runs at 16x and 4x respectively. The three PCIE x1 slots shares the bandwidth with the second PCIE x16 slot and when the second PCIE x16 slot is used all the PCIE x1 becomes unavailable. Lastly there are two PCI slots as well. One more thing is the placement of the CMOS battery is bad, it'll be very difficult when one use a graphics card which takes space of 2 slots, i don't need to explain if the dual graphics cards are used.
This board has still got the parallel and serial port. There are only 4 usb ports, which i feel could have been increased to 6 or 8. Also there is no e-sata port in the rear panel.
This board features 8 SATA ports. The 6 sata ports (Sata II 0-5) are controlled by the South Bridge(Intel ICH9R) and other 2 purple Sata ports are controlled by Gigabyte SATA II Chip (JMicron-JMB 363), the same chip also controls the IDE port.
The Ethernet port is controlled by Realtek 8111B chip and the 8 Channel Audio is taken care by Realtek ALC889A chip.
[BREAK=Cooling Design]
In order to have a effective cooling performance from the silent heat pipe Design the airflow should be very good inside the cabinet. The motherboard temperature as shown in Everest is 39c @ idle and 55c at load (1.5vcore, 390FSB).
[BREAK=BIOS]
Gigabyte has a feature call Quad Bios which has 4 copies of bios distributed between the ROM, Hard Disk and the driver CD. Read here to know how Quad Bios work.
Overclocking options:
Voltage adjustments in BIOS Setup (CPU/DDR2/PCIe/FSB/(G)MCH)
- Increase CPU voltage (Upto 2.35v)
- Increase DDR2 voltage by 0.05V increments to 3.35V
- Increase PCIe voltage by +0.05V to +0.35V with 0.05V increment
- Increase FSB voltage by +0.05V to +0.35V with 0.05V increment
- Increase (G)MCH voltage by +0.025V to +0.375V with 0.025V increment
- Frequency adjustments in BIOS Setup
- Adjust CPU host frequency from 100 MHz to 700 MHz with 1 MHz
The Bios settings can be saved and loaded to CMOS using <F11> and <F12> respectively. Upto 8 Profiles can be created. A very neat feature indeed.
[BREAK=Test Setup & Overclocking]
System
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (Provided by Intel)
Memory: Corsair 2*1GB DDR-2 667 (5-5-5-15) (Provided by Delta Peripherals)
Graphics : Zebronics 7200GS (Provided by Delta Peripherals)
Hard Disk: Seagate 160GB 7200.9
SMPS & Cabinet : Antec Earthwatt 380 & Chieftech GX-01(Provided by Delta Peripherals)
Cooling: Stock Cooler
OS : windows XP Professional w/ SP2
I have compared this board with Asus P5N-E SLI (nVidia 650i Chipset) and Gigabyte P965 DS3 (Intel P965 Chipset).
Overclocking:
Due to non-availability of performance ram, i was able to get only a Corsair Value Ram (DDR-2 667) and was able to reach only a max of DDR-2 800 (5-5-5-15). Thanks to supra i was able to get to know the bios and overclock easily in this board, this being my first core 2 based Processor. Had to hit the wall @ 400FSB thanks to the ram. No doubt that this board can do more than 500 very easily.
SuperPi
[BREAK=Benchmarks]
Everest Memory Read/Write
SiSoft Sandra 2007
Memory Bandwidth Test
Stock
Overclocked
Both in Everest as well as SiSoft the P35 board has the edge over the others, but scores are very similar.
CPU Arithmetic
Stock
Overclocked
Here again the P35 has the edge.
FutureMark 3DMark 06
CineBench 9.5
Overall the P35-DQ6 has an edge over the 650i and P965 based boards. With better ram i think the difference might be noticeable.
[BREAK=Final Thoughts]
Finally, the concluding part of the review. The board is has one of the best layout among other P35 boards in the market. Given a high performance ram and with good cooling, this board will perform much better. Overall Performance of this board is very good. A nice board to play around with. Would give a rating of 8.5/10.
-Pros:
- Silent Heat Pipe Design
- 100% Solid Capacitors
- FSB 1333 Support
- DDR-II 1066 Support
- Quad Bios
- Future 45nm processor Support
- 8 Sata II Ports
- Crossfire Support
-Cons:
- Bad placement of CMOS Battery
- 4 USB Port in the I/O Panel
- 4x Speed in the 2nd PCIe Port
Credits:
Thanks to Mr.gaurav of Gigabyte for arranging me this board, Mr.Praveen of intel for the CPU and Mr.Kamal of Delta Peripherals for the rest of the stuff.
.....
.. "nice"