Testing Methodology and System Setup
The P45 is still a fairly new chipset on the market. With this in mind, I will mainly be focused on comparing this board to two other boards based on the P45 chipset. The GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DQ6 will be compared performance wise with the GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R, and the ECS P45T-A, both are P45 based products. By doing so, we will insure that the GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DQ6 is up to par performance wise, with other P45 products on the market.
A Intel Q9550 CPU was selected as the test CPU, because its based off of Intel’s latest 45nm process, and a Quad core tends to stress the power regulation of the board more than a dual core equivalent. Its also a good check for overall compatibility with Intel’s current Quad core lineup..
For some strange reason, CPU-Z was detecting the memory as DDR3, even though this is clearly a DDR2 based product. So ignore that particular readout in the CPU-Z screen shot. Over the next several pages, we will run this board through its paces, in some synthetic and real world benchmarks.
