Hardware Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/06/18/gigabyte-ga-ep45-dq6/1

Oodles and oodles of features can't even begin to describe the latest Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 motherboard. The question is though: is this board a political statement against the Asus P45 Premium or does it warrant a place high above all on its own?

 

4 LAN ports? i've never even touched the 2nd LAN port on my Abit iP35 Pro.
am i building a router or a computer with this motherboard?

think practical, not useless big numbers, god!

personally, i would not even consider this board. looking forward to (and considering) Abit iP45 Pro or Asus Maximus 2 Formula. (hint, hint for review )

 

I know I know

Abit IP45 is available mid-July and we're waiting for the Max 2 Form BIOS to mature first (that's my excuse for a ton of other things to do first)

 

Exactly what I was thinking, why would I need 4 lol. I actually use both on my DFI 680ilt board, one for the lan between me and my brothers PC and I leave the other for major LAN party's I go to.

 

4 lan ports?!?
i would substitute 2 of them for something a little more useful....

 

Besides the ridiculous 4 lan ports, I have always disliked the 'teletubby' color scheme of Gigabyte motherboards, and why not use 90degree connectors for all Sata buses.

 

When will motherboard developers stop including that obsolete floppy connector? It's waste of space & money. I haven't used it for ages(not even for updating BIOS)

 

They DO want to drop it, but people still request it - like they request parallel ports ffs

 

4 eth ports are very usable!

get a 24port gig switch, team the 4 ports on the mobo together, and now with the 10 1TB HDs you have, you could have that real-time HD feed being saved to your drive, while also compressing it into a MKV, and also while streaming that mkv back to like 10 computers for the 10 70" 1080P screens in your house...

opps I think i went overboard...

 

But how many people? Anyone can buy USB floppy drive(IMO better solution)

 

Don't ask me - I was just told "people" :s

 

They include it because how else would you run all your old Lucas Arts games?

 

You have to run a whole bunch of extra software to fire USB up - hence its notoriety for eating CPU time. People building embedded systems which don't necessarily run windows can be quite sensitive to that sort of thing, and may well need floppy drives. But even those situations, I think, are now getting very rare and would probably not use this sort of board anyway - I'm surprised they still need floppy ports.

But I must question some of the audio figures. -98dB would be a good noise level on a piece of broadcast television equipment and it beggars belief that it's achievable on a PC motherboard among a million and one sources of RFI. What's the test setup here? How's the grounding worked out? Have you considered doing this as a round-trip reading?

P

 

It's simply a cable loopback test using Rightmark audio analysis, there's nothing special about it.

 

Weird.. They make a enthusiast board and to my knowledge, there is not one enthusiast who uses a floppy nowadays. It would be a great idea if Bit-Tech tries to investigate this and ask 'all' mayor motherboard manufacturers why they still insist to include this obsolete technology. There is absolutely no reason to still integrate this on the motherboard because you can use a external usb fdd.

 

Initial impression: That's a whole lotta' heatpipe!

But seriously, they tried to cram too much junk onto this chipset. I'll take the plethora of USB ports, but they can keep a couple of those ethernet jacks.

We should make a petition in favor of removing the floppy connector from existence.

 

> It's simply a cable loopback test using Rightmark audio analysis, there's nothing special about it.

A-weighted? Psycho-acoustic function?

I would look again at your test methodology. -98dB on an unbalanced mic input, on a device which costs £150, is - for want of a better word and accepting that Gigabyte may have come up with something genuinely new and amazing - not really feasible.

P

 

Try it yourself - install RMAA 6.06, find a good quality male to male loopback cable and plug it into speaker out and microphone input. Disable all audio enhancements and adjust the levels so the speaker is about 75 percent and microphone reaches a level that leaves RMAA "in the green". It's not the best test in the world, but its consistent and a number comparison without having to buying serious equipment.

 

Sorry, I am really confused about the PCIe configurations. I presume you can't have all of them at full speed (i.e. x16(V2), x16, x4, x4) so is it
16(2) 16 0 0
8(2) 8 4 4
or something like that? Wikipedia is useless and Intel seems to say that you can have one x16 (v2) slot and then a maximum of 16 PCIe (v1) lanes configured however you like. Is that right?

 

LAME mother board. I hate gigabyte. Asus rocks the hell out. I got my asus rampage over the X48 DQ6 and I'm happy that I did that.

all motherboards I owned it the past years was gigabyte but each one had a problem, like my older one 965-DQ6, It was bad OCing and Have damaged sensors etc.....

Gigabyte motherboards looks like kids toys. Colors are mixed and no cool look at all.

Thanks BT for the review.