X-bit labs

Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 (rev.2.0) Mainboard Review

Category: Mainboards

by Doors4ever

[ 04/23/2007 | 03:07 PM ]

Sometimes the desire to create a perfect product results in somewhat absurd consequences. Today we are going to introduce to you a perfect illustration of this saying – the top-of-the-line Gigabyte mainboard from the Intel P965 Express based family.

Table of contents:

• Package and Accessories
  
• PCB Design and Functionality
  
• Specification
  
• BIOS and Overclocking
  
• Functionality Paradox
  
• Conclusion
  

Intel Core 2 Duo processors boast very attractive set of features: they are fast, relatively economical, support various power-saving technologies, and offer good overclocking potential. No wonder that mainboards supporting these processors get so much attention. At this time, Intel P965 Express based mainboards are indisputable favorites, although Nvidia nForce 650i based solutions that have started coming out lately may become worthy competitors to them.

As for the manufacturers, Asustek and Gigabyte are among the leaders these days. They didn’t introduce just one or two mainboard models: they launched the entire families of mainboards based on Intel P965 Express chipset that boast different feature sets, accessories bundles and have their own points of attraction. We have already reviewed the simplest and least expensive mainboard from Gigabyte’s Intel P965 Express based mainboard series called GA-965P-S3 (for details see our article called Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 Mainboard: Budget Leader for Core 2 Duo Overclocking). It made a very favorable impression. Gigabyte Company, however, didn’t stop there and by now there are three mainboard revisions released already. Today we are going to look at the top solution in the product family that belongs to Revision 2.

Please meet Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6.

Package and Accessories

I have to say that Gigabyte has joined the manufacturers who pay special attention to the packaging and accessories bundle for their solutions. Of course, it has to do only with the expensive solutions, which is natural. The colorful carton box with a lot of additional information on it contains the internal transparent plastic casing with the mainboard itself and a separate smaller box with accessories. Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 is accompanied with standard and not very rich set of accessories:

• 80-pin IDE cable;
• FDD cable;
• 4 Serial ATA cables;
• User’s manual;
• Poster with installation instructions;
• I/O Shields for the rear panel;
• CD-disk with drivers and utilities;
• Gigabyte logo sticker for the case front.

However, besides that there is also something very unique included with the bundle. It is Quad e-SATA2. The board comes with two additional brackets each featuring two e-SATA connectors and a power supply port.

In order to connect external SATA hard disk drives to the board you have to use two e-SATA cables and two power cables.