Alright, first off a little background info on this motherboard. The Gigabyte GA-EG45M-UD2H is powered by the Intel G45 Express chipset. The motherboard comes with all new Gigabyte Ultra Durable 3 Technology. Gigabyte has doubled the amount of copper on the circuit board and managed to spread the heat throughout the board, which in the end should result in lower temperatures.

As such they now use 2 ounces of copper (thicker layers for power and grounding, this should help to reduce temperature, increase energy effectiveness and stabilize the system under overclocked conditions) for both the power and ground layers.

As you can expect with an Intel chipset, this motherboard is intended for Intel processors, including 45nm based processors and even those with 1600 MHz FSB frequency. As such we'll be testing it with a QX9770 processor. The memory frequency is standard, supporting 667/800 MHZ DDR2 memory, yet can be raised to DDR2 1066 MHz in the BIOS as well. Some generic facts, the GA-EG45M-UD2H comes with a four-phase power solution. You'll spot one slot PCI express x16, one PCI express x1, two PCI, five ports SATA 3 Gbit/s, one eSATA 3 Gbit/s and gigabit Ethernet adapter.

With an integrated graphics solution, the GA-EG45M-UD2H is equipped with a wide range of video connectivity options including D-sub and DVI, as well as support for HDMI.

The chipset's north bridge obviously houses the graphics core, a Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD. This GPU is a respin of the GMA X3500 architecture featured in the older G35 Express chipset. The X4500HD has DirectX 10-class unified shaders with support for Shader Model 4.0 and OpenGL 2.0.

Well, with 10 Shader cores (oh no I'm not joking there my man) in there .. don't expect much fragging power. They do run at 800MHz for the X4500HD though, so at least that sounds cool :)

The GA-EG45M-UD2H does allow for playback of HD content up to 1080P, with full support for HDCP for Blu-Ray HD content (MPEG2, VC-1, and AVC/H.264). As such, it might even be a very interesting choice for HTPC builders. While Intel's G45 chipset may not be the most powerful around, Intel has solved Blu-ray acceleration problems and as such has it grown into a much more capable platform for those looking for a power efficient yet capable media computer.

To complement that thought the GA-EG45M-UD2H also features built-in high-definition 7.1 + 2 channel Realtek ALC889A sound chip for a home theater entertainment experience, including an optical TOSLINK output. The Southbridge is the full ICH10R chipset, complementing the motherboard with raid functionality as well.

Alright, on the next page a full specs and features list after which we'll dive into a photo-shoot and test session.