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Preview - Gigabyte P35 "Bearlake" Motherboards

By Zachary Chan - 25 Apr 2007

Gigabyte P35-DS3R

Gigabyte P35-DS3R

The second board we picked is the successor to the GA-965P-DS3, which is widely acknowledged to be the budget overclocking king of the Intel P965 motherboards. Can Gigabyte's new P35-DS3R live up to the hype? We won't really know till we get to test out the production boards, but hey, at least you can see what's in store for you right now.

Mainstream targeted Gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard. Will this be the new budget overclocking king? Only time will tell.

No fancy heat-pipes or redundant PWM designs, but the DS3R will also feature all the new goodness of Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 2 features.

"My, what a big heatsink you have!" - Apparently from what we've heard, the P35 Northbridge runs warmer than the current P965 Northbridge, hence the larger heatsinks. We noticed this trend not only on Gigabyte, but for other board vendors as well.

PCI slots are still the order of the day for new boards, but Gigabyte is also banking on PCIe taking off. Both the DS3R and DQ6 have three PCIe x1 slots each in addition to the others.

Like the DQ6, the DS3R also only supports DDR2 memory, but unlike the DQ6, it doesn't look like Gigabyte will make a DDR3 version of the board. However, a DS3 variant will be available and it will come in both DDR2 and DDR3 versions.

Looks like the DS3R will also use the same Realtek ALC889A audio component.

Gigabit LAN component on the DS3R also uses the Realtek RTL8111B.

The DS3R features the same storage functionality as its bigger brother, which is a good thing if you have plenty of drives.

The rear panel of the DS3R looks a little sparse compared to the DQ6, but the only item that is missing is a FireWire port, which the board does not have.

Things that are not available on the board.

Well that's all we have from Gigabyte for now, but keep checking this space for more first hand previews very soon. We will also definitely do a full blown review of these boards as well once the actuall retail units arrive at our labs (and after the NDA has been lifeted of course).

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