Conclusion

Even Gigabyte representatives admit that their Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 mainboard is not ideal. The board itself as well as the BIOS Setup and the brand name software are not free from a few issues. We have pointed them all out in our today’s review. However, all of them are not very serious and get completely forgotten in the light of phenomenal overclocking potential of Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6. We haven’t yet seen a mainboard that would overclock dual- as well as quad-core processors so easily and impressively as Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6. In fact, these results are not final yet. We are going to continue working with this board and will certainly keep updating you regarding its progress in our lab on a long-term basis.

Mainboard is a very complex high-tech solution. There are many reasons why one model may perform differently from another same model. Of course, you may think that we were just lucky with a particular mainboard sample and some other Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 may not be able to show the same impressive results. However, we will hardly test another Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 sample in the near future. You will have to agree that far not everyone will actually use all four network cards. Besides, the price of this top solution is pretty high, too. Therefore, it is even more interesting to check out a few other models from unprecedentedly large lineup of Gigabyte solutions on Intel P45 Express. In the beginning of our Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 review we have mentioned all of them already. Particularly promising is Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS5. However, if you don’t need to connect a lot of hard drives and are not interested in Smart Backup technology, then check out Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4. We will do our best to test them as well and share the results very soon.

Our today’s review showed very clearly that Gigabyte’s investments in improving the quality and functionality of their solutions over the past years have paid back in full. Having passed all the milestones on the way to the leadership pedestal Gigabyte now has to make the final step to becoming an indisputable leader in the mainboard market. So, they should definitely keep up the good pace they’ve taken so far. Of course, past achievements do count, but they will not last them forever. From the functionality standpoint more and more Gigabyte mainboards win in side by side comparisons. As for Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6, it will remain a worthy part of our collection. Not as a useless decorative overclocking toy, but as a highly efficient solution for achieving maximum performance.

We here at Xbit Labs decided to award Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 mainboard with the Editor’s Choice title as the best overclocking platform: