Gigabyte P35-DQ6

Gigabytes packaging is extremely impressive, the design is slick with a huge amount of information on the box. On the front we have a note of CPU and FSB support as well as Vista compatibility. Interestingly there is also a logo stating that the board has “full rate lossless audio” for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, the first motherboard we have seen to actively publicise this feature. Gigabyte have also provided a flip open front panel which details the boards cooling system. There is also a handy window through which we can see the motherboard. Packaging obviously does not directly impact how good a product is, however if a company is willing to put this much time and effort into educating the consumer then it bodes well for the contents of the box.

Gigabytes bundled extras are pretty much perfect. There is no spurious free software that would be ignored, instead we find all of the cables we need plus brackets for additional USB ports. Various manuals are included and it is fair to say the main manual provided with the P35-DQ6 is one of the most thorough we have ever received with a motherboard.

As the name suggests this product uses Intel’s new P35 chipset and as a result features support for the latest socket 775 CPU’s which use a 1333MHz FSB. Older CPU’s are also supported and officially this goes down to the Celeron D 325 (which uses a 533MHz FSB) meaning that this motherboard can power the highest specification enthusiast systems or more budget conscious multipurpose systems. We also have Intel’s latest Southbridge, the ICH9R. The Southbridge on Intel products has been evolving rapidly and in the past 18 months we have seen 3 generations, starting with the ICH7 on the 975 based boards through to the ICH8 on the 965 on to the 9 series used here. The onboard audio used by Gigabyte is also all new and is a Realtek ALC889A based solution. The 8 channel ALC889A has a 106db signal to noise ratio and support for lossless audio in content protected media. Although this is marketed as a 7.1 channel chipset there is also the ability to perform multiple streaming and have a 2 channel stereo output (via the front panel audio) running at the same time as the 7.1 playback. The above shot shows the inclusion of analogue and digital outputs on the board as well as the various standard connectors for USB2, fire wire, PS/2 and Gb-Lan. It is also possible to see the dual eSATA ports which are used to connect newer high specification external hard drives/enclosures.

Looking specifically at the lower section of the P35-DQ6 we can see the PCI/PCI-Express slots. There are dual 16x PCIe slots, which are CrossFire compatible as well as two 1x PCIe slots between these. An additional 1x slot is located above the main (blue) 16x connector which means that even with a dual slot graphics card installed we still have the option for two 1x components to be added into the system. Whilst this is a well thought out design there is one small issue with the layout, the top PCIe product will have to be short rather than full length due to the Northbridge cooler extending past the slot. Also pictured are the standard PCI slots, of which there are two. Moving to the other side of the product we find the drive connectors, there are 8 SATA ports which are all SATA 2 (and raid) enabled and a single IDE socket. The inclusion of these 8 SATA’s takes the final compliment to 10 when we include the external ports, probably more than anyone will ever need. It is also possible in the above images to see many of the boards high quality components such as the solid state capacitors, low profile mosfet's (designed to produce lower switching resistance and faster charging/discharging) as well as the Ferrite Core Chokes which feature a iron/metal compound rather than iron only design used on many other products. The benefit of these Chokes is to hold energy for longer at higher frequencies. As with all standard ATX motherboards there are also 4 DDR2 slots which are dual channel capable and support 4 x 2 GB sticks, allowing for a maximum 8 GB of memory.

The inclusion of these high specification capacitors, chokes and mosfets indicates that Gigabyte are doing everything they can to ensure that the DQ6 is stable and has the ability to provide power levels which are appealing to enthusiasts. This is further demonstrated by the cooling solution which is used on the board. Like many other P35 based boards there is a large copper heat sink which covers the Southbridge, Northbridge and Mosfet’s to the side of the CPU. Somewhat surprisingly there is more... flipping the board over reveals two copper heat sinks on the underside of the board which are designed to take heat away from the sections of PCB which are in line with the CPU, NB and SB. The only down side to this cooling is the size, we mentioned earlier that the Northbridge cooler may interfere with graphics cards installed in the top PCIe connector, we also had some issues with larger CPU heat sinks, such as Thermaltake's Sonic Tower Rev.2. It was not possible to install this cooler on the Gigabyte Motherboard.