The future for Intel 's P965 chipset is a bright, particularly with processors Core 2 Duo finally launch the door (actually, as physically). Besides PCI Express x16 videocard support, the chipset Intel P965 leads with a 1066 MHz front bus, a new 12.8GB / s "Fast Access Memory" memory controller, and some other technologies will address momentarily. Launched in line with the Intel chipset 975, the most affordable 965 core logic is likely to be the real favorite of the show with the majority of consumers.

As PCSTATS embarks on the review you come to the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 mother, it is worth noting that little has changed since Asus, Gigabyte merged. Both Gigabyte ASUS and maintain separate product lines, but the manufacturer of the motherboard is among the largest in the world. The only direct competition has left the industry behemoth Foxconn, which in addition to its own brand of motherboards numbers in almost every single motherboard produced at some level .... But that is another story.

Gigabyte's GA-965P-DS3 motherboard offers a good combination of performance and value for the Intel Pentium D or Core 2 Duo microprocessor. The board itself varejos for a reasonable price of $ 156 CDN ($ 140 EU, £ 75 pounds), with a little bit in terms of packaged into accessories. GA-965P-DS3 is for Intel's remarkably proficient Core 2 Duo processor series, and for the purposes of this review PCSTATS will test him with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU - the sweetheart of the flock to its 2.4GHz clock speed E 4 MB of L2 cache.

Featuring Intel's P965 Express northbridge and ICH8 southbridge chipsets, the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard supports all Socket 775 processors emblematic of the Core 2 Duo / Extreme to the Pentium D / 4 and Celeron D. Or 1006MHz Front Side Bus 800 MHz or FSB is the number to remember, but it will also accept 533MHz FSB chips if you are really strapped to a chip. The motherboard ATX the four slots of memory DDR2 accommodate up to 8GB of RAM DDR2-533/667/800, and unofficially, at least, he also works with memory modules of DDR2-1066. There are some devices incorporated outside of the range associated with the collection P965 Express chipset, as a controller IDE, 7.1 channel Azalia High Definition Audio and a network card Gigabit 10/1000.

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 matrix

User Manual, CD Driver, Hardware Installation Guidebook, Ultra/133 IDE Cable, Floppy Cable, Four Serial ATA cables, I / O Shield, Gigabyte Sticker.

The Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard has three PCI Express x1, three 32-bit PCI slots and a single PCI Express x16 slot for graphics cards. The variety of devices expansion will make it easier to build a computer that fits their needs, without forcing the total abandonment of a PCI system is updated, for example.

As for external devices, the GA-965P-DS3 mother has four USB 2.0 slots on the rear I / O, and there are headers by six slots by the fund PCI slot. It is a little strange, but there are only four 3GB / s Serial ATA II channels associated with ICH8 Southbridge, two more slots (in purple), the lone channel IDE (green) are related to the board "Gigabyte 3GB / s Serial ATA II controller ". Ultimately, that results in a platform capable of supporting six disks SATA 2.0, and two IDE devices. The Gigabyte SATAII ports also include RAID 0, 1 and JBOD capacity.

A unit of floppy and connector, 24-pin ATX power connector round out the list of monkeys on motherboard itself, while in the back I / O, also find optical SP / DIF and coaxial audio outputs between the usual assortment of USB , parallel, COM, RJ-45 GbE network and 7-channel audio jacks.

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Marketing Reliability with Solid capacitors in place of the variety electrolytic

One of the oddest aspects of the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 is promoted across the front of the box. I never would have thought that the kind of power capacitors used in a motherboard could influence the average consumer looking to build a PC, but it is clear that I underestimated how tech galloping become consumers.

Gigabyte proudly say that the GA-965P-DS3 uses only "higher quality solid capacitors" instead of standard electrolytic capacitors. Remember that the recurring problem with bursting electrolytic capacitors that blossomed into a full blown epidemic a few years back? Because obviously, explosion and leakage capacitors continue to be a problem for the industry.

The Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 uses Chemi-con polymers drivers of solid aluminum capacitors of the kind pictured on the left. These are the same type found in most videocards capacitors, or the CPU's feeding circuitry. The essence of the situation is that the Gigabyte have produced a motherboard with just this type of capacitor, because it is supposed to improve the overall stability of the mother as well as its longevity.

Being a solid device, the physical conditions that caused poor quality of electrolytic capacitors fail and exploded after 3 years, is a non-issue. If you want to read up on the back story of espionage that led to the whole problem of explosion and leakage caps, see this article PCSTATS.