Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R Living Review

 

Box and Package

Box Front, Gigabyte seem to have adopted a new style for the UD3 boards, looks quiet classy. Note the blurb about the new UD3 pcb and improved cooling etc.,

Box Rear

Open

Motherboard underneath in bag With plenty of labels.

The Motherboard

Looking very striking with the metallic blue heatsinks. As usual with recent Gigabyte boards, there is a very solid and quality feel about the board.

There seems to be fractionally less room between the CPU and northbridge than the Extreme, but the heat sinks are all low profile so your gigantic air cooler should fit with no issues.

Rear I/O Panel

Motherboard Detail

  • Sata Ports Area
  • PCI/PCI-E Slots
  • CPU Socket
  • Ram Slots

Accessories and extras

I was very pleasantly surprised looking at the accessories that accompany this board, despite being about half the price the UD3R has many of the same extras that come with the top end Gigabyte GA-EP45T-EXTREME

  • 1x E-sata bracket allowing 2x sata drives.
  • IDE & sata leads
  • I/O Back Plate

More Motherboard Detail

Dual Bios Chips Excellent feature on a sub £100 motherboard.

CPU Socket

North Bridge

Sata Port Area

Backside

MIT - Advanced Clock Control - Sub Menu

CPU Clock Drive

Running with a wolfdale I generally leave tthis on 700mV, a higher value may help with a high FSB or running a quad core CPU.

PCI Express Clock Drive - Leave at default, I've never really used it.

CPU Clock Skew

With wolfdale I find that >550FSB adding a notch oir two can help with stability. Again it's probably more useful for quad core CPUs.

MCH Clock Skew

A nice to have but to be honest I've not used it. It's possible it may help ram stability.