GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

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.

The GA-EP45-DS3R from GIGABYTE is a mainstream motherboard loaded with features and performance for the price.

All three of these P45 motherboards reviewed today are competent offerings for anyone looking to build or upgrade an Intel Core 2 processor-based system. Depending on your budget and feature desires, either the MSI, Gigabyte or ASUS board is going to have what you need. If you have or want to move on to DDR3 memory technology then the ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe/WiFi AP is the choice for you but if you are looking to stay on a tight budget while still getting a lot of great features and technology then both the MSI P45 Platinum and Gigabyte EP45-DS3R make excellent choices.