Gigabyte - GA-X38T-DQ6 review

Let's talk chipsets. Intel introduced its P31/P33/P35 family of Core 2 Duo chipsets six months ago, but it left a gap at the top of the range for an Extreme performance chipset that would replace the venerable 975X Express.

The problem is that 975X supports dual ATi graphics cards in CrossFire but you only have two options for PCI Express. You can assign all 16 lanes to a single graphics card or divide them in two and give eight lanes to each card in CrossFire. That sounds rotten but it doesn't present a bottleneck in the real world as PCI-E has so much bandwidth, however 975X doesn't support the latest 1,333MHz FSB and certainly won't be compatible with Intel's next generation of 45nm CPU. Added to that 975X is twinned with the ICH7 Southbridge, which is looking a bit long in the tooth when it comes to the quantity of USB 2.0 and SATA ports supported.

You might think that P35 is the answer to this particular problem, as it uses the latest ICH9 Southbridge and supports the 1,333MHz FSB, but there's a significant problem here. Although you'll have seen P35 motherboards with dual graphics slots, the 20 lanes of PCI Express are assigned in a fixed pattern with a full 16 lanes going to the primary graphics slot and the remaining four lanes for the PCI-E x1 expansion slots.

If you plug in a second graphics card it shuts down those PCI-E expansion slots, which is unfortunate if you're actually using them, and means that the second graphics card only gets four lanes of PCI-E. That's fine if you're running dual Radeon X1600s but a problem if you have X1900s in CrossFire and a serious headache if you have gone the whole hog and use Radeon HD 2900XT cards.

It's taken a long time, but enter stage left the X38. This new chipset answers all of those problems in one fell swoop as it supports dual graphics slots and each slots gets a full 16 lanes of PCI-E. In addition we're talking about PCI-E 2.0, which has double the bandwidth of the original PCI-E, which will be handy when PCI-E 2.0 graphics cards go on sale. In addition it supports Penryn 45nm processors and a 1,600MHz FSB and of course it has the ICH9 Southbridge.

This Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 makes the most of the new chipset and has four DDR3 memory slots which can accommodate up to 8GB of 1,600MHz DDR3, provided you are running a 1,600MHz FSB, which currently means that you'll have to overclock or the memory speed will be capped at the 1,066MHz or 1,333MHz of your CPU.

We overclocked a QX6850 CPU from a 1,333MHz FSB to 1,520MHz very easily and raised the FSB of a Core 2 Duo E6700 from 1,066MHz to 1,280MHz, so you have plenty of scope to overclock, however we have seen higher performance from P35 and P965 motherboards.

Intel has taken the bold step of introducing some overclocking features with X38. There's support for XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) which works with compatible DDR3 memory that contains SPD settings that boost performance. The other tool is a piece of Intel software called Extreme Tuning Utility, however our review sample didn't come with this software.

In the main the layout of the GA-X38T-DQ6 is very tidy, which is what we've come to expect from P35 boards. Like so many manufacturers, Gigabyte has specified Ferrite Cored Chokes, solid aluminium capacitors and small MOSFETs as well as an extensive passive cooling system that links the Southbridge to the Northbridge and power regulation hardware.

Unfortunately the latches for the memory slots are too close to the top graphics card slot and the graphics retention devices are very awkward to release when you have dual-slot graphics cards. Added to that the primary SATA connectors require you to feed the cables in very close to your graphics card and the eight-pin ATX-12V power connector is tucked in very tightly behind the I/O panel.

We were also unhappy that there isn't a power LED on the board, so you can't be sure whether it's safe to work inside your PC.

There's a long line of ports and connectors on the I/O panel, which is just as well as there are no brackets in the package, apart from some eSATA adapters which connect to up to four of the eight internal SATA connectors.

In addition to the two legacy PS/2 ports there are coaxial and optical audio connectors, eight USB 2.0 ports, a mini Firewire, six-pin Firewire, dual Gigabit LAN and six audio mini jacks. If that's not enough, and you have appropriate connections on your case, there are headers for four more USB ports and one more Firewire.