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Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 |
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Written by Djordje Kovacevic
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Wednesday, 13 February 2008 |
Once again, we have a Gigabyte DQ6 motherboard on our testing table, which means we are dealing with something prestigious. Of course, the board arrives in a huge packaging, size matching the status of the series, and the bundle is quite large as well. Inside the box, we found, besides the driver disc and the manual, one FDD and IDE cable, four SATA cables and two additional brackets which turn internal SATA ports into external and have a power output (power cables included).
The board itself is located inside a separate plastic packaging which guarantees for its protection. The first thing you are bound to notice is the vast quantity of copper on it, like on the other models in this series. The cooling solution is a passive heatpipe system, which is well-screwed into the PCB, which results in maximum efficiency.
| Motherboard | GIGABYTE GA-X38-DQ6 | | Memory | 4 x DDR2 (Max 8 GB) | | Chipset | Intel X38 + ICH9R | | Audio | 8 Channels ALC889A Audio controller | | SATA | 8x SATA2, 1x IDE PATA , 1 + 1 IEEE 1394a | | LAN | Dual Gigabit LAN | | RAID | Serial ATA RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | | Connectors | 2 PCI Express x16 (2,0), 3 PCI Express x1, 2 PCI, 8 + 4 USB 2.0 |
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The layout is also pretty much standard for Gigabyte – a few flaws, but generally very good. Those flaws would include the position of Clear CMOS jumper and the BIOS battery, which are positioned between the PEG slots, which is hardly the ideal position in terms of accessibility.
However, the PCI-E 1x slots are also situated between these two, which is a great idea, since they are used very rarely nowadays. There is an additional PCI-E 1x slot above these mentioned ones, as well as two regular PCI slots beneath them, which are not easily “blockable” by other components. CPU is powered via a top-class 12-phase voltage filtering unit (a doubled 6-phase one), the source being the EPS 12 V 8-pin connector right next to it.
We should also mention that the socket position provides plenty of space for installing all sorts of “copper fortress” coolers. On the rightmost edge, there is a 24-pin power connector, followed by the PEG slot molex, the FDD connector and the IDE connector, rotated by 90º in order to enable easier manipulation. The SATA ports are also in the traditional Gigabyte manner, which means that they might be hard to reach if using dual-slot graphics cards in CrossFire.
The motherboard supports the PCI-E 2.0 standard, with both PEG slots having 16x bus width, which is one of the new chipset's advantages. The back panel was very neatly designed, containing eight USB 2.0 ports, FireWire, two LAN ports, two PS/2 ports, audio connectors and the optical and coaxial I/O.
Upon turning the freshly assembled system on, we visited BIOS first. It has been signed by Award and unlocks all of its advanced options by pressing the well-known key combination CTRL+F1. All the vital overclocking options are located inside the “MB Intelligent Tweaker” menu, or “M.I.T.” for short.
The FSB bus has a variety of possible settings, with the FSB bus speed from 100 to 700 MHz and multipliers of 2.5, 3, 4, 2, 2.4, 3.2, 3.33, which results in huge flexibility. There are many voltage options as well. The CPU voltage is settable to 0.5-3.25 V in 0.0125 steps (!), with the step increasing to 0.05 V after 1.6 V.
| | GIGABYTE | GA-X38-DQ6 | | | DEF | OC 3.52GHz | | EVEREST | | | | Read (MB/s) | 6051 | 7401 | | Write (MB/s) | 4856 | 7940 | | Copy (MB/s) | 5266 | 6723 | | Latency (ns) | 81,9 | 71,8 | | 3D Mark 05 | 13194 | 18448 | | 3D Mark 06 | 8476 | 9890 | | SM 2.0 | 3689 | 3929 | | HDR/SM 3.0 | 4187 | 4401 | | CPU | 1896 | 3079 | | WinRAR 3.7 (KB/s) | 970 | 1261 | | CINEBENCH R10 | 4116 | 6635 | | BLENDER (M:S,S) | 01:22,1 | 00:50,2 | | FARCRY (low, 800x600) | 202,11 | 286,15 | | DivX (FPS) | 133,59 | 199,8 | | PRAY (low, 800x600) | 180,2 | 254,9 | | COH (low, 800x600) | | | | Average | 84,6 | 84,8 | | Maximum | 88 | 88 | | Minimum | 41 | 59 | | wPrime | 42,452s | 25,719s | | Nuclearus | 6709 | 11019 |
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The FSB and PCI-E bus can be “fed” with +0.35 V increase compared to the default voltage value, in 0.05 V steps. The memory voltage has a +0.8 V tolerance, again in 0.05 V steps, whereas the chipset voltage (GMCH) can be increased by +0.375 V from the nominal one. MCH and DDR reference has “Normal”, “+10%” and “-10%” values, while the DDR Termination voltage is settable to “Normal”, +50 mV or -50 mV.
As we expected, the motherboard worked great. Everything was rock-stable and the overclocking was good as well. Besides, the mobo is very cool no matter the O/C values, which is also a testament to the efficiency of the cooling system. Another nice touch is that there was no Vdrop whatsoever. |
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