The Verdict
Okay, it's time to sum things up. The Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 Motherboard is a fine piece of machinery. But if you already are on a P35/38 based chipset ... chances are slim to none you need to upgrade. Flash in a new BIOS and you will receive similar tweaking results as shown today. The X48 chipset seems to be made with one thing in mind, support for that 1000 EUR costing QX9770 processor, and that's just a very slim market.
None the less, the mainboard offers really excellent features, in fact it's loaded with them. Pretty good audio & great connectivity, heaps of SATA connectors, passive (silent) cooling and in many ways .. put simple .. it's just a really nice mainboard. Problem however it that it is downright expensive. In the USA expect a sales price of 300 USD, here in Europe we see a 200-250 EUR price tag .. and that's just a bucket-load of money for a mainboard. So that's a bit of a dilemma because while being a grand mainboard, I do feel it's not as good as the nForce 780/790 series. That's mainly due to our overclocking experience. We needed to squeeze a lot of voltage into the CPU to reach the maximum 3600 MHz of the processor, that means more heat. That's just not something we had with the NForce series 7 products. perhaps I'm a bit spoiled with that experience, but the feeling there was simply put better.
None the less, it's still a good overclocker, it's just not in the same league and at 300 USD, I feel it should have been and equal user experience.
Very nice was the introduction of DES. Our tests have shown a measurable yet small difference on power consumption. While we did not reach the claimed 70% I simply say .. be green. Every Watt helps. This is innovation, good stuff, no matter how little difference is. it's a sigh of things to come and I applaud any manufacturer for doing so. As I have been screaming to manufacturers for a long time now, being green is business as well. Being green is hip, trendy and simply good. You as a manufacturer can make money with that. DES (Dynamic Energy Saver) is such a nice idea.
The bottom line then: though the difference between the older X38T-DQ6 and the GA-X48-DQ6 is only petit it inevitably will replace that older mainboard. You'll gain broader processors support, yet get equal performance and pretty much the same features. Again there's no real reason to upgrade. In the end if you come from a low-end mainboard and need something beefy, this product might be the one for you, one thing is a certain fact, it's stable, loaded with features and has what seems to be splendid build quality. Definitely recommended, though I do hope the price will come down.
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