Gigabyte EP45-Extreme Motherboard

Author
Mathew Miranda
Editor
Aron Schatz
Posted
August 24, 2008
Views
631
Its always refreshing when a manufacturer brings something different to the table and tries to raise the bar of the current gold standard. With each new model, motherboard makers have been doing their best to one up each other as onboard reset / power / clear CMOS buttons, fault displays, LEDs and integrated water cooling have all found their place among high end mobos. Gigabyte has another trick up its sleeve with their new EP45-Extreme motherboard that features 1600 FSB, Crossfire support, holds up to 16GB of DDR2-1200 and the most radical chipset cooling ever made. Leave it up to HardwareLogic to find out if this "Extreme" motherboard can live up to its name.
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Its always refreshing when a manufacturer brings something different to the table and tries to raise the bar of the current gold standard.  With each new model, motherboard makers have been doing their best to one up each other as onboard reset / power / clear CMOS buttons, fault displays, LEDs and integrated water cooling have all found their place among high end mobos.  Gigabyte has another trick up its sleeve with their new EP45-Extreme motherboard that features 1600 FSB, Crossfire support, holds up to 16GB of DDR2-1200 and the most radical chipset cooling ever made.  Leave it up to HardwareLogic to find out if this "Extreme" motherboard can live up to its name. 

PRODUCT
CPU SUPPORTSocket LGA775
  • Support for an Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme processor/ Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor/Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor/ Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core processor/Intel® Celeron® processor in the LGA 775 package
  • 1600/1333/1066/800 MHz FSB
CHIPSET
  • Northbridge:  Intel® P45 Express Chipset
  • Southbridge:  Intel® ICH10R
MEMORY
  • 4 x 1.8V DDR2 sockets supporting up to 8 GB of system memory
    Memory Supported.
  • Support for DDR2 1200/1066/800/667 MHz memory modules
    (Refer to Memory support list for more information)
EXPANSION SLOTS
  • 1 x PCI Express x16 slot
  • 1 x PCI Express x8 slot
    (The PCIEx16 and PCIEx8 slots support ATI CrossFireX technology and conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
  • 1 x PCI Express x4 slots
  • 1 x PCI Express x1 slot
  • 3 x PCI slots
STORAGE

South Bridge:

  • 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATAII0, SATAII1, SATAII2, SATAII3, SATAII4, SATAII5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
  • Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10

iTE IT8213 chip:

  • 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices

iTE IT8720 chip:

  • 1 x floppy disk drive connector supporting up to 1 floppy disk drive
AUDIO
  • Realtek ALC889A codec
  • High Definition Audio
  • 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel
  • Support for Dolby Home Theater
  • Support for S/PDIF In/Out
  • Support for CD In
LAN
  • 2 x Realtek 8111C chips (10/100/1000 Mbit)
  • Support for Teaming
    To enable Teaming or Bonding (IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation) feature, it is required the connected network switch or router device supports 802.3.ad LACP function.
    Please refer to your network switch or router device manual for further details.
REAR I/O PANEL
  • 1 x PS/2 keyboard port
  • 1 x PS/2 mouse port
  • 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
  • 1 x coaxial S/PDIF Out connector
  • 1 x clearing CMOS switch
  • 8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
  • 2 x RJ-45 ports
  • 6 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone)
INTERNAL I/O HEADERS
  • 24-pin ATX main power connector
  • 8-pin ATX 12v power connector
  • Floppy disk drive connector
  • IDE connector
  • Six SATA 3Gb/s connectors
  • CPU fan header
  • Two system fan headers
  • Power fan header
  • Front panel audio header
  • CD In connector
  • S/PDIF In header
  • S/PDIF Out header
  • Two USB headers
  • Three IEEE 1394a headers
  • Serial port header
  • Power LED header
  • Chassis intrusion header
  • Power switch
  • Reset switch
SYSTEM BIOS
  • 2 x 8 Mbit flash
  • Use of licensed AWARD BIOS 
  • Support for DualBIOS™
  • PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.4, ACPI 1.0b
FORM FACTOR
  • Standard ATX
WARRANTY
CURRENT PRICING

Bundle

ACCESSORIES
  • I/O shield
  • eSATA bracket
  • 1394 bracket
  • Chipset heatsink bracket
CABLES
  • Four SATA signal cables
  • eSATA cable
  • eSATA power cord
  • IDE/PATA cable
  • Floppy disk drive cable
APPLICATION DVD

Gigabyte Motherboard CD

  • Drivers
  • Norton Internet Security
  • Adobe Acrobat Reader
  • EasyTune 6
  • Gigabyte Online Management (G.O.M.) utility
  • Ultra TPM security utility
DOCUMENTATION
  • EP45-Extreme Motherboard User's Guide
  • Hardware Installation Guide

Gigabyte provides a nice bundle to compliment the EP45-Extreme motherboard.  The included eSATA and Firewire brackets help offset the fact that the board does not have those ports on the rear panel.  They also provided eSATA data and power cables which is a nice touch.  Lots of great information can be found in the easy to read User's Manual.  It goes into lots of detail about the board's features and the capabilities of the BIOS and is the best one I've ever come across.  Novice system builders may find the hardware installation guide to be helpful as a quick reference duing installation.  Unfortunately, there are only four included SATA cables provided for the six ports located on the board.  For a product at this price point, two more should be offered.      

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