Intel released their X38 chipset last year and X48 chipset earlier in 2008 but both of these chipsets were very expensive and also did not see a die shrink from the 90nm manufacturing process. Luckily not long ago they've updated their mainstream chipset with a new one, the P45, a follow up to the P35, which as you'll see is quite a formidable chipset. Today we're taking a look at a board with this new chipset in Gigabyte's GA-EP45-DS3R motherboard.

The new Intel P45 chipset boasts a number of new features the first of which is the new 65nm manufacturing process. This not only should cut down on power requirements dramatically but also should put off much less heat and therefore be a great overclocker. This chipset fully supports 45nm Intel CPUs both quad and dual core.

PCI-Express 2.0 is fully supported allowing for bandwidth of 2.5 Gbit/s to 5 Gbit/s as two PCI-Express 2.0 16x lanes are featured on the motherboard supporting AMD/ATI's Crossfire technology. Gigabyte stacks on the features even more so with their well known DualBIOS feature allowing you to recover if you happen to have a bad flash or BIOS failure for whatever reason the board should bring it back with little to no hassle.

Other unique features include Green Ethernet which adjusts power consumption based on LAN cable lengths, dual LAN functionality which allows 2 single connections to work as one for twice the bandwidth, ultra secure TPM technology, hardware overvoltage control integrated circuits and more. Gigabyte includes quite a lot to go with the P45 chipset.

The external connectors on the board include a whopping 8 USB 2.0 ports, two Gigabit ports, S/PDIF output and analog 7.1 sound, both types of Firewire connectors PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports. On the board there are two PCI-Express 16x slots, 3 PCI-Express 1x slots, two PCI slots, six SATA connectors, one IDE connector, and a floppy disk connector. It might have been good to see E-SATA over one of the Firewire ports but still Gigabyte basically maxes out expansion potential.

Here are the technical specs.

Intel® P45 + ICH10R Chipset
Revolution energy saving design with DES Advanced featuring hardware based Dynamic 6-Gear switching
Supports 45nm Intel® Core™ 2 multi-core processors with FSB 1600 MHz
Dual channel DDR2 1333+ for remarkable system performance
2 PCI-E 2.0 x16 graphic interface with CrossFireX support for ultimate graphics performance
Built-in TPM chip with 2048bits encryption to highest level digital data protection
2 Gigabit Ethernet LAN with Teaming functionality
Supports Dolby Home Theater® audio to create a stunning surround sound listening experience.
DualBIOS solution gives a multiple security to the system
Hardware Overvoltage Control IC Provides more voltage control options on CPU, North bridge and memory
Blu-ray playback outputs supported by high quality 106dB SNR ALC889A HD audio

Here are BIOS screenshots for the board.

Overclocking the board was quite easy within the BIOS adjusting voltage and front-side bus where necessary. We were quite happy with our fantastic overclock.

These tests were from our earlier AMD 4670 review which mirrors our results with this Sapphire 4670.

Power consumption was measured from the wall socket directly from the computer. Idle was taken after 5 minutes into the Windows desktop and Load was tested emphasizing gaming performance and the video card in Crysis' GPU demo.