14 DAY TRIAL // The entire P35 motherboards series from Gigabyte has recently been revamped with the new EP35 series which contains motherboards that feature DES (Dynamic Energy Saver) hardware/software combination which can adjust the CPU power phase on the fly, maximizing the efficiency of the power subsystem. This means that it will use less power phases when idle and more when under heavy load. Although GA-EP35-DS4 includes DES and also The full Ultra Durable 2 feature set, it manages to remain at a low price.
At a closer look, the motherboard appears even more surprising. It supports Intel Core 2 Duo, Quad and Extreme CPUs, as well as 45nm processors, Intel Pentium 4, Pentium D and Celeron CPUs featuring up to 1333 FSB. It includes Intel P35 North bridge and Intel ICH9R South bridge. Its four DDR2 slots support up to 8 GB of memory ranged between 667 and 1066MHz. The sound card is a Realtek ALC889a supporting 7.1 channel High-Definition sound, S/PDIF in and out and the Lan card a Realtek RTL8111B PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet.
GA-EP35-DS4 supports ATI CrossFire on its two PCI-Express x16 slots (one x16 and one x4 electrical) and has eight SATA 3Gbps ports. It also includes one IDE port, three PCI-Espress x1 slots and three IEEE1394a Firewire slots. Also, some of the internal SATA port can be changed into external ones, as the eSATA bracket is included. And to make it easier, the comprehensive manual gives you plenty of details on the board, BIOS or RAID components and software.
All nice and shining, but there still are some problems that you have to be aware of. One of them regards the SATA slots and the graphics card. The secondary PCI-Express slot sits in line with four of the SATA ports. When using a single slot card, two of the ports are lost, but with a dual slot card all four ports are gone. That means that half of the connectivity is lost. Still, there is enough hard drive connectivity left, so one should consider GA-EP35-DS4 as being a good motherboard, especially because it's so much cheaper than Intel X38 boards.
If you intend using CrossFire on this board, you should know that all three PCI-Express x1 slots are lost. There are not enough PCI-Express lines available, so this is one of the ICH9R South bridge limitations. If you need more PCI slots, the solution is a non CrossFire DS3 version. On the Rear I/O you'll find eight USB ports that can be supplemented and the possibility of losing the PS2 mouse socket for a eSATA . There are also two 6-pin Firewire sockets that come in handy if the Gigabit Ethernet controller is not enough.
The Dynamic Energy Saver feature is a noticeable one, especially for the little LEDs on the motherboard that show power consumption and are colored from green to red, and also for the included software that allows you to monitor or make some changes on the motherboard. The software comes with a detailed manual which explains what can be done and what should not be done. The only problem with the software is that is shows only the power consumption of the CPU and not of the entire system.
An overall look shows that the motherboard is quite stable even when heavily loaded and the power used remains at low levels. Also, there is a small amount of overclocking available, though if it is too much, it will cause POST failure. The good thing is that it recognizes the failure and resets itself, so you won't have to search the clear CMOS pins. A performance increase may be achieved also by turning System Performance option to Extreme and the system is more stable than with the usual overclocking. If you want to use CrossFire, remember that you lose four SATA ports and also that one PCI-Express slot is a x4 bandwidth. The PCI slots won't be useful, for they are either covered or disabled. Yet the board provides good cooling and high stability. Even so, there still are other motherboards on the market that have good prices and do not encounter the problems of GA-EP35-DS4. There are also other Gigabyte EP35 boards that may worth going for.