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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 SUPPORT | Socket LGA775
|
| CHIPSET |
|
| MEMORY |
|
| EXPANSION SLOTS |
|
| STORAGE | South Bridge:
iTE IT8213 chip:
iTE IT8720 chip:
|
| AUDIO |
|
| LAN |
|
| REAR I/O PANEL |
|
| INTERNAL I/O HEADERS |
|
| SYSTEM BIOS |
|
| FORM FACTOR |
|
| WARRANTY | |
| CURRENT PRICING |
Bundle
| ACCESSORIES |
|
| CABLES |
|
| APPLICATION DVD | Gigabyte Motherboard CD
|
| DOCUMENTATION |
|
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.