Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R Mainboard with Universal Memory Controller

by Ilya Gavrichenkov
08/02/2007 | 05:18 PM

Our recent article on DDR3 memory performance called DDR3 SDRAM: Revolution or Evolution? we have clearly demonstrated how promising the new technology actually is. The currently existing DDR3 SDRAM modules already can ensure pretty decent performance of contemporary platforms. Although this type of memory features somewhat higher latency than the widely spread DDR2 SDRAM, its higher working frequency that today reaches up to 1600MHz ensures higher bandwidth, which can make up for the latency. Taking into account almost the same performance of systems built with DDR2-1067 and DDR3-1333 SDRAM, we can conclude that DDR3-1600 will ensure higher performance. However, it important to remember that clocking the memory subsystem of contemporary platforms at frequency above 1333MHz is only possible with FSB overclocking, which may limit the public interest towards this high-speed memory. Nevertheless, it will hardly discourage most hardware enthusiasts, because many of them do work with overclocked systems anyway. And it means that DDR3 SDRAM is finally turning from useless rare novelty into a truly efficient solution that is worth your consideration.

However, even though we can now find convincing arguments in favor of the transition to DDR3, we shouldn’t forget that there is always another side to the picture. One of the most crucial factors that prevent the new type of memory from becoming very popular is its high price that is more than twice as high as that of the DDR2 SDRAM. And far not everyone is ready to pay that much for the few percents of performance advantage.

Despite this fact, it is definitely too early to give up on DDR3 SDRAM yet. High price of this memory type has pure marketing origins. The manufacturers and resellers raise the DDR3 prices on purpose, because they are new solutions for the computer market and aren’t widely spread yet. So after a while the price of DDR3 SDRAM modules should inevitably drop down to at least the level of DDR2 SDRAM thus letting much broader user group to improve the performance of their platforms by switching to the new memory standard.

Unfortunately, the transition from DDR2 SDRAM to newer DDR3 memory will require a platform upgrade in most cases. New memory uses lower voltage and slightly different signal protocol that is why DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM modules are logically incompatible and are not interchangeable. However, some of the mainboard makers came up with a great solution to this problem. Among the existing mainboards for Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors there are solutions supporting both memory types at the same time, as they carry onboard memory slots for DDR2 and DDR3 modules.

These mainboards are only based on the new Intel P35 chipset. This is the only chipset today that not only supports the upcoming Penryn processor family, but also features a universal memory controller than can work with both: DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM. Some of the leading mainboard makers – Asus and Gigabyte in the first place - are currently offering a hardware implementation of this feature. Their solutions allow using inexpensive DDR2 SDRAM until the market situation changes, and then transition to the new memory type without any additional financial investments into the platform.

However, “hybrid” mainboards like that, which can work with two memory types, have never been really popular among computer users. The thing is that they usually failed to offer high level of performance. As a rule, the manufacturers had to sacrifice some internal chipset optimizations for the sake of this universality. At least, this is what it used to be like: take, for instance, Intel 915P based hybrid mainboards that used to work with DDR1 and DDR2 SDRAM at the same time. But will the history repeat itself this time when we are talking about Intel P35 based mainboards?

To answer this question we decided to take a closer look at a new generation hybrid mainboard. We picked Gigabyte P35C-DS3R. This mainboard is going to be the main hero of our today’s article, where we will discuss the main features of this solution and study its performance with DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM.

Package, Accessories and Technical Specification

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R is the only solution with simultaneous support of two different memory types among numerous Gigabyte mainboards. It is impossible to confuse it with any other mainboard: it has unique exterior look and specification. Its major peculiarity is 6 memory slots onboard.

At first glance you can see that Gigabyte P35C-DS3R belongs to the mainstream price category, its average retail price today rests around $160-$170. This board is not overloaded with additional controllers and connectors, and the chipset cooling system doesn’t astonish you with fantastic sophistication. All this has certainly found its reflection in the mainboard technical specifications:

The accessories bundle is not very rich, just like the specifications. It is actually pretty typical for the product from this price range.

The mainboard comes with a full and brief user’s guide, a CD disk with the drivers and software, I/O Shield panel, IDE and FDD cables and four Serial ATA cables. Besides this typical set of accessories the board is also bundled with a unique rear panel bracket with two eSATA ports and a MOLEX power connector, an eSATA cable and an external HDD power cable.

All these accessories come packed into an ordinary box of standard size together with the mainboard. The box has no transparent windows or transportation handles that are becoming pretty popular these days. It is decorated with the company’s logos on the front and the description of Ultra Durable 2 series features on the back side.

In other words, we got the impression that the specifications and accessories bundle of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R offer a good balance between the necessary functionality and low price of this solution.

Functionality

The first thing that catches your eye is the similarity between Gigabyte P35C-DS3R and Gigabyte P35-DS3R mainboard that we have reviewed recently. In fact, the difference between the two boards is only in the implementation of the memory subsystem. For example, you can clearly see it from the functional flow-chart of the Gigabyte P35C-DS3R:

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R is based on Intel P35 chipset and it uses all of its features in full. It means that the board can not only work with the entire range of contemporary CPUs supporting 800, 1066 or 1333MHz bus, but will also support the upcoming Penryn processor family. This way Gigabyte P35C-DS3R is one of the promising products that will remain up-to-date and compatible with all contemporary technologies for quite a while.

The main peculiarity of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R is the simultaneous support of two memory types. That is why the board comes with 6 DIMM slots: three per channel.

Yellow and red DIMMs are intended for DDR2 SDRAM, green ones – for DDR3 SDRAM. The mainboard can work with either DDR2 or DDR2 memory, but not with both memory types at the same time. When you configure your Gigabyte P35C-DS3R based platform for use of DDR3 SDRAM, the whole process remains the same: in order to enable the most efficient work mode the memory modules should be installed in pairs and for the best results the DIMMs should be identical.

Although the mainboard features only two DDR3 SDRAM slots, it is hardly a significant drawback. There are quite a few high capacity DDR3 memory modules in the market already, so you will easily be able to equip your system with 2GB and even 4GB of RAM. Another important thing is that 2GB DDR3 memory modules shouldn’t cost more than a pair of 1GB modules anyway.

Despite the flexibility of the memory subsystem, we can’t say the same about the graphics subsystem. Gigabyte P35C-DS3R features only one PCI Express x16 slot, which means that it doesn’t support ATI CrossFire technology. Only more expensive Gigabyte mainboards offer support for multiple graphics accelerators.

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R offers pretty advanced options for hard disk drive connection. It uses RAID modification of the ICH9R South Bridge that supports six SATA-300 ports, so that you could arrange the connected HDDs into RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5 arrays. Besides, the mainboard also features an additional PCIE x1 controller – Gigabyte SATA2 that provides support for the PATA-133 channel and two additional SATA-300 ports marked with purple color on the PCB. These ports support RAID 0 and 1 arrays.

I would like to specifically stress the original implementation of the eSATA interface on this mainboard. The corresponding ports are not laid out on the rear connector panel, as they usually are. Instead these two ports are placed on a separate bracket. The advantage of this solution is evident” the MOLEX power connector is on the same bracket. This connector and the cables bundled with the board allow connecting to this eSATA port not only special HDD chassis, but also regular SATA hard drives. BY the way, the HDD plug-n-play feature is implemented in both: the ICH9R chip as well as Gigabyte SATA2 controller. So, eSATA ports can be actually connected to any SATA-300 connectors on the board.

The new ICH9R South Bridge model differs from the predecessors by the support of 12 USB 2.0 ports. All of them are laid out on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard one way or another. However, the board doesn’t offer support for IEEE1394 interface: the manufacturer decided to save some money on the additional controller for that.

At the same time, the mainboard does have a Gigabit network controller. It is Realtek RTL 8111B chip connected to PCIE x1 bus. Since Gigabyte P35C-DS3R is a relatively inexpensive product, there is only one Gigabit Ethernet interface.

Integrated HD sound is implemented via the integrated 8-channel Realtek ALC889A codec. High-quality sound quality (106dBA SNR) is not the only distinguishing feature of this solution. It also supports Blu-Ray and HD DVD audio formats. Besides, this codec boasts two independent output channels (for the front panel) that can be used for headphones, for instance.

PCB Design

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard belongs to the Ultra Durable 2 series – this is what the “D” in the name stands for. It means that despite relatively low price, this mainboard is built with new type of electronic components and chips that ensure higher reliability and longer life of the end product.

You can see it clearly from the fact that Gigabyte P35C-DS3R uses only solid-state capacitors with organic polymer electrolyte made in Japan and ferrite core chokes.

The second distinguishing feature of the Ultra Durable 2 series is the six-channel processor voltage regulator circuitry built with high-frequency Low RDS(on) MOSFET. This circuitry design ensures not only longer lifetime, but also higher efficiency of the voltage regulator and lower operational temperatures. By the way, this is exactly the reason why the processor voltage regulator on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R has no heatsinks: it simply doesn’t get hot.

Another peculiarity of the processor voltage regulator is the fact that it is being powered from the 4-pin 12V power supply connector. By the way, you will not be able to use an 8-pin connector in it, because the coil located very close to it won’t let you plug it in.

Chipset micro-chips on the inexpensive Gigabyte P35C-DS3R are cooled down with regular aluminum heatsinks of golden color. They are actually more than enough to ensure proper cooling of the North and South Bridge of the chipset, but nevertheless they heat up quite tangibly during work. Therefore, feel free to replace the North Bridge cooler or top it with an additional fan. As for the South Bridge, you will hardly be able to modify its cooling system in any way, because it appears to be right underneath the installed graphics card, which leaves you no room for invention.

Luckily, the P35C-DS3R mainboard has no sophisticated cooling system that Gigabyte typically puts on all its high-end mainboards these days and that doesn’t allow installing most of the high-end processor air-coolers. As a result, Gigabyte P35C-DS3R can accommodate almost any CPU cooling system easily. There is a lot of room around the LGA775 socket and no components get in the way.

However, it wasn’t all so rosy. There are a few pins sticking out on the reverse side of the mainboard PCB next to the processor socket, which may prevent you from mounting some of the cooler backplates.

As for the overall PCB layout, it made a slightly strange impression. The board is pretty large, there are not too many components on it, but the lower right corner of the PCB is not utilized at all. Therefore, we were a little bit disappointed with the location of the PATA and SATA ports for hard disk drives. Moreover, Clear CMOS jumper also falls right underneath the installed graphics card, and you need to be able to reach it to shift from DDR2 to DDR3 SDRAM.

The mainboard connector panel carries pretty standard set of connectors and ports, considering the Gigabyte engineers make sure that their solutions still support most of the older devices. Therefore, we can see a Serial and Parallel port that most of other mainboard makers have long given up. Besides that there are four USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit network port, PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, optical and coaxial SPDIF ports and six analog audio-jacks for sound equipment.

BIOS

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard was tested with the BIOS version F4b from June 12, 2007.

The BIOS of our mainboard is based on Award micro-code. It has pretty traditional looks and structure. The list of features you can access through BIOS Setup is also standard.

As for the options that might be of interest to overclocking and fine tuning fans, all of them are placed into a special section called MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.).

Here you can set the processor clock frequency multiplier and FSB frequency in the 100-700MHz interval with 1MHz increment. Also you can enable dynamic CPU overclocking depending on its workload at a given moment of time (C.I.A.2).

The BIOS Setup of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R also offers a tool for graphics card dynamic overclocking called Robust Graphics Booster.

You can set the memory frequency using the FSB:Mem divider, like on all other Intel P35 based mainboards. If you use Gigabyte P35C-DS3R with DDR2 SDRAM you get access to the entire range of dividers that do not depend on the selected FSB speed. It includes the following ratios: 1:1, 5:6, 4:5, 2:3, 5:8, 3:5 and 1:2. If you install DDR3 SDRAM, the list of supported dividers will be reduced down to four: 5:6, 2:3, 5:8 and 1:2. Selecting dividers in the BIOS Setup is very conveniently organized: you can see the resulting memory frequency, that also depends on the FSB speed, right when you set the divider.

There are two more parameters here that deal with memory subsystem configuring. Performance Enhance option allows selecting the most suitable profile for the memory timings: Standard, Turbo or Extreme. High Speed DRSM DLL Settings allows improving the system stability in some cases, according to the manual.

As you can see from the screenshot above, you cannot set memory timings manually. Other BIOS sections also do not offer this option. This is a typical drawback of Gigabyte’s BIOS Setup. Timing settings are hidden in a secret area that can be accessed only if you press the undocumented combination of Crtl+F1 on the main BIOS page. After that you will see the corresponding settings next to the DDR2/DDR2 SDRAM frequency settings.

The adjustable parameters with their corresponding value intervals are given in the table below:

All these settings can also be set to Auto, which makes the system configuring process much easier for not very experienced users.

As for the voltage adjustment, the board offers the following settings:

Parameter	Supported interval
CPU Voltage Control	0.5125 - 2.0 V
DDR2/DDR3 OverVoltage Control	Up to +0.7 V
PCI-E OverVoltage Control	Up to +0.3 V
FSB OverVoltage Control	Up to +0.3 V
(G)MCH OverVoltage Control	Up to +0.3 V

Nest to the processor Vcore adjustment option there is a useful field reporting the nominal processor voltage.

Note that all voltages except the processor Vcore are set in relative values. Their absolute values are carefully hidden: you can’t find them even in the system monitoring section.

As you see, instead of the actual voltages, Gigabyte engineers decided to use the “OK” and “Fail” indicators. It is another drawback that we can point out in the BIOS Setup of this board.

If the mainboard cannot start with new parameter settings, it will automatically reset everything to defaults. This way you will hardly ever have to use the Clear CMOS jumper.

However, to ensure that overclockers do not have to reset all the parameters every time Gigabyte allows saving the settings profiles. Although these profiles will still be erased if you use perform hardware Clear CMOS.

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R also features Q-Flash utility integrated into the BIOS. it allows updating the BIOS without loading the operating system.

Overclocking

The BIOS Setup of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard contains all options required for successful processor overclocking. The supported frequency and voltage ranges are big enough to cause no problems. Theoretically. To find out what the situation looks like in reality, we need to perform some experiments first.

The test platform we used for our overclocking experiments with Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard was built with 2GB DDR3 SDRAM (Kingston KHX11000D3LLK2/2G), OCZ GeForce 8800GTX graphics card, Western Digital Raptor WD1500AHFD hard disk drive and SilverStone SST-ST85ZF power supply unit. The processor was cooled with Scythe Infinity cooler equipped with two fans rotating at 1800RPM.

First of all we decided to find the maximum FSB frequency when our mainboard remained stable and reliable. The system was running with Core 2 Duo E6850 processor. To test the system stability we ran Prime95 25.3 in Large FFT and Blend modes for 30 minutes.

Our experiments showed that up until 540MHz FSB frequency the mainboard remained absolutely stable. Unfortunately, we cannot say if this frequency is the maximum limit that Gigabyte P35C-DS3R can handle, because 540MHz is the FSB Wall of our test processor.

I have to stress that we only had to increase the North Bridge voltage by 0.2V to obtain this result. All other voltage remained at their default settings.

After the latest Intel price drop, mainboard features for successful quad-core processor overclocking became even more acute. We couldn’t disregard this matter and performed additional overclocking tests with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor. The main goal was again to find the maximum FSB frequency when Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard would remain stable.

As you probably know, contemporary mainboards cope with quad-core processor overclocking much less successful than with dual-core ones. We saw the same during our tests as well. The maximum FSB frequency when Gigabyte P35C-DS3R could work flawlessly with the quad-core CPU was only 455MHz.

To ensure system stability at the speeds shown on the screenshot above, we had to raise the voltage on the chipset North and South Bridges and FSB bus to the maximum: by 0.3V. Besides, we have installed additional 40mm fan on top pf the North Bridge heatsink: without the fan the chip was heating up to scary temperatures.

So, we have every right to state that Gigabyte P35C-DS3R is very good with dual-core as well as quad-core processors overclocking. It proves as efficient as the mainboards from the higher price range.

But let’s check out memory overclocking. Since Gigabyte P35C-DS3R supports both: DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM, the memory overclocking efficiency may have suffered.

Unfortunately, at the time of tests we didn’t have high-frequency DDR3 SDRAM modules in our lab. The Kingston KHX11000D3LLK2/2G modules designed to work at 1375MHz overclocked to 1428MHz, the same result we obtained on Asus P5K3 Deluxe before. The memory voltage in this case was set 0.3V higher and the timings were at 7-7-7-20.

However, DDR2 SDRAM overclocking wasn’t as successful. Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5D kit with 1250MHz default frequency could only work stably on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R at 1100MHz. Even maximum possible memory voltage didn’t help. So, it turns out that this mainboard can only work with high-speed DDR3 SDRAM.

Testbed and Methods

The main goal of this test session is to determine the performance of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard against the competing solutions. And taking into account that it supports both: DDR2 and DDR3 memory, we are going to check out its performance with both types of memory. Therefore, we will compare the results of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R against those of Asus solutions supporting DDR2 (Asus P5K Deluxe) and DDR3 (Asus P5K3 Deluxe), that we have already tested before.

Our test platforms were built with the following hardware components:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 ((LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe).
• Mainboards:
• ASUS P5K Deluxe (LGA775, Intel P35, DDR2 SDRAM);
• ASUS P5K3 Deluxe (LGA775, Intel P35, DDR3 SDRAM);
• Gigabyte P35C-DS3R (LGA775, Intel P35, DDR2/DDR3 SDRAM).
• Memory:
• Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5D, working as DDR2-1066 5-5-5-15;
• Kingston KHX11000D3LLK2/2G, working as DDR3-1333 7-7-7-20.
• Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI-E x16).
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.

Performance in Nominal Mode

The first batch of tests was performed with the CPU running in its nominal mode: at 2.66GHz frequency set as 8 x 333MHz.

Memory Subsystem Synthetic Benchmarks

As usual we would like to start with the performance in synthetic benchmarks working with the memory subsystem. This parameter has the biggest influence on the mainboard performance overall for Intel platforms. For our tests we used Lavalys Everest 4.0 utility.

As we can see, Gigabyte P35C-DS3R shows very good results with DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM at default FSB speed. In the first case it performs as fast as Asus P5K Deluxe, while with the promising DDR3 SDRAM it is considerably faster than Asus P5K3 Deluxe. So, we have every right to state that the universal memory controller onboard of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R doesn’t have any negative effect on its performance.

SuperPi, PCMark05, 3DMark06

3D Games

Video Encoding

Office Applications

Final Rendering

High speed of the Gigabyte P35C-DS3R memory controller tells on the results of the complex benchmarks as well as of real applications. This mainboard is a little faster than Asus solutions with both types of memory, which makes it one of the fastest solutions on Intel P35 chipset today.

Performance in Overclocked Mode

Besides the performance tests in nominal work mode, we will also check out the results of overclocked systems. The thing is that relative performance of overclocked platforms is usually very much different from the mainboard performance in nominal mode.

For our tests we decided to use the same Core 2 Duo E6750 processor, but overclocked to its maximum (with air-cooling), which in our case equaled 3.72GHz. We set this frequency as 8 x 465MHz. For maximum stability the processor Vcore was increased to 1.45V.

During CPU overclocking and preparation of our test platforms for performance tests we once again stumbled upon the fact that Gigabyte P35C-DS3R didn’t overclock the memory as good as its competitors. So, looks like the universal memory controller supporting DDR2 and DDR3 at the same time still has had some negative effect on the mainboard performance, even though indirectly. Therefore, our testbeds were configured a little bit differently this time.

Asus P5K Deluxe with DDR2 SDRAM:

Click to enlarge

Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5D memory we used with Asus P5K Deluxe worked at 1116MHz with 5-5-5-15 timings. The FSB:Mem divider was set to 4:5, and all other timings (except the main ones) were set to Auto in the BIOS Setup.

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R with DDR2 SDRAM:

Click to enlarge

As we have already said before, the maximum frequency we could get our DDR2 SDRAM to work at on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R equaled 1110MHz. that is why we had to clock Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5D with 1:1 divider at 930MHz frequency. However, this allowed us to reduce the major timings to 4-4-4-12. All secondary timings were set to defaults.

Asus P5K3 Deluxe with DDR3 SDRAM:

Click to enlarge

The nominal speed of Kingston KHX11000D3LLK2/2G memory is 1375MHz, so no wonder that we could push it a little higher, to 1397MHz, with 7-7-7-20 timings on Asus P5K3 Deluxe mainboard.

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R with DDR3 SDRAM:

Click to enlarge

And on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R the 2:3 FSB:Mem divider turned into a problem. We couldn’t get the board to run stably at 1395MHz memory frequency, so we had to use the next coefficient: 5:6. As a result, the memory frequency on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R dropped to 1116MHz, which, however, allowed us to slightly improve the primary timings to 7-6-6-18.

Memory Subsystem Synthetic Benchmarks

Once we increased the system bus frequency above the nominal, mainboards that used to perform equally fast started showing very different results. There are a few reasons for that. First and the most important reason is the different configuration of the memory subsystems, and the second - different ways of dealing with FSP Strap. As a result, Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboards becomes an outsider compared with the Asus solutions. However, will we see the same results in complex tests and real applications? Let’s find out!

SuperPi, PCMark05, 3DMark06

3D Games

Video Encoding

Office Applications

Final Rendering

As we see, in complex tests and real applications Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard cannot boast the same high performance as in nominal work mode. It falls quite noticeably behind the Asus platforms, which definitely makes it less attractive for users.

Power Consumption Tests

We don’t usually measure the mainboards power consumption, believing naively that the difference between the mainboards from different makers is not going to be too critical. However, in case of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R we decided to make an exception and check it out. Its six-channel processor voltage regulator built with high-frequency transistors dissipates very little heat, which indicates its high efficiency. This gives us hope that this mainboard may prove more efficient from the power consumption standpoint than the competitors.

To be able to make any definite conclusions, we measured the power consumption of systems with similar configurations built on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R and Asus mainboards on Intel P35. We measured the power consumption in idle mode and in burn mode, when the processors were loaded to their maximum with Prime95 utility. Enhanced Intel SpeedStep power-saving technology was enabled.

What a surprise! We did expect Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard to be more economical than Asus solutions, but not that much more economical! Thanks to very thorough design of the processor voltage regulator circuitry and high-quality electronic components Gigabyte P35C-DS3R wins about 20W from Asus boards in idle mode and about 30W under workload! It is a great advantage of this Gigabyte solution as well as all other mainboards in the Ultra Durable 2 series.

Conclusion

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard proved an extremely strong product. Although it is relatively inexpensive, the board can boast not only simultaneous support of DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM. This solution offers excellent set of features that will undoubtedly be of interest to computer enthusiasts. It is perfect for CPU overclocking, demonstrates excellent stability and is fantastically economical.

However, Gigabyte P35C-DS3R is not ideal, it has a couple of frustrating drawbacks. For example, it loses to Asus mainboards in overclocked mode and has some problems with memory overclocking. However, overall it leaves a very favorable impression. The advantages backed up by very attractive price make up for the drawbacks that are actually not that crucial in the end of the day.

Highs:

• Guaranteed support for future processors;
• Support for both: DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM;
• High performance in nominal mode;
• Six-channel processor voltage regulator built with high-quality components;
• Easy and efficient CPU overclocking;
• Highly economical;
• Smart approach to eSATA implementation;
• Attractive price.

Lows:

• No second PCI Express x16 slot;
• Relatively low performance during FSB overclocking;
• Poor memory overclocking results;
• No tools for system voltages management in the BIOS.