Gigabyte has fixed out a desirable standing as a top level motherboard producer, but it still has a few way to go ahead of it overtakes Asus as the number one selection for fans. The GA-EP45-UD3P will surely help it in this reason as it stands out as the best P45-based motherboard we have so far experienced, plus as one of the quickest Core 2 solutions on the marketplace.

With a £100 price mark, the GA-EP45-UD3P engages the middle ground in Gigabyte's expensive P45 series. The aspect set is more envoy of a board estimating far more, but, as it is decked out with an overabundance of high-end features. No less than eight SATA ports are offered for storage junkies, with six power-driven by the Intel ICH10R Southbridge as well as a further two consideration of a JMicron controller that also offers the motherboard's with single IDE slot. Moving to the I/O panel as well as we are spoilt for choice, with a kind eight USB ports being attached by dual gigabit Ethernet connections, two types of Firewire, both flavors of SPDIF audio output with a couple of PS/2 ports for legacy input devices.

Somewhere else the motherboard offers with dual full-length PCI Express slots for Crossfire sustain with three 1x PCIE slots for newer add-in cards. A couple of conservative PCI slots offers sustain for previous cards with perfect placement means that you'll have access to one of the latter as well as two of the former even with two double-height Radeon installed. The overall design of the Gigabyte is excellent, with abundance of space around the microprocessor socket for huge heat-sinks as well as sensible position of the memory slots that (just) let access without having to eliminate the video card.

Overall the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P is a success. It presents all of the performance, features with overclockability of an exclusive X48 solution for an extremely pretty price tag. Even with Core i5 just about the corner, this board confirms that Socket 775 is still extremely aggressive as well as will stay an significant part of Intel's product lines for some time to appear.

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