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One look at Gigabyte's P965-DQ6 and you can see this is a full feature-packed board. Inside the box, you'll get most of the accesories you'll need to get the most out of this board: the standard floppy and IDE data cables, 4 SATA cables plus another 4 SATA cables for e-SATA connectors and 2 ATX to SATA molex converter cables. We wish Gigabyte had not chosen to integrate the SATA cables to the e-SATA connectors. If they had, users who bought the board will be able to use them for internal SATA hard disk as well. 4 e-SATA connectors for 4 hard drives seem a little bit too much. Old users of Gigabyte''s high-end 865P motherboard will remember back then, Gigabyte still allowed the use of ordinary SATA cables for both e-SATA ports or internal hard drives.

Just like the ASUS P5B Deluxe, the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 suffers from the same problem with all full featured motherboard. There's just not enough space for you to be able to install and remove DDR2 DIMM modules without first removing the graphics card. There's also another potential problems for those using full length PCI cards or a second graphics card in the second x16 PCI-E slot. The IDE connector and 2 SATA connector may cause problems with long, PCI or PCI-E graphics cards with long dual slot coolers. Very likely, since you probably use the IDE connector for your DVD-ROM drive. Except for this two potential problems, we didn't see anything else we don't like with this board.

Of all the features on the Gigabyte P965-DQ6, the most noticeable is the passive heatsink conected with a single heatpipe. Air flowing from your CPU fan should be able to cool the two radiator fins around the CPU socket. Though your mileage may vary, we did find installing and removing the default Core 2 Duo cooler slightly a bit tricky with this setup. However, that's just a minor incovenience and should not deter you from the many strong points this board has.

Expansions and Add-Ons

For all your expansion needs, the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 comes with just enough ports - 2 PCI. 2 x1 and 2 x16 PCI Express slots. The placement of the ports may limit you somewhat with dual slot graphics cards. If you use Gigabyte's own Radeon X1950 Pro solution, you'll quickly find there's no more room if you install two of them on this board. You can try to squeeze in one x1 PCI-E and 1 PCI card if you use the Radeon X1900 default double slot cooler, but we wouldn't recommend it. Two 12v ATX power connectors are integrated on the board - one near the PCI-E x16 slots to supply additional power for you graphics cards and one near the standard ATX connector, though in most situations you do not have to use them.

There's 4 USB ports, 1 Firewire port and 1 Gigabit LAN connections for your peripherals and communications needs plus the standard COM and printer port. For audio connections, you'll find the standard outputs, plus both a coax and optical SPDIF connectors. All of these connectors are placed on the back of your case, so users who want front panel connectors should be prepared to get additional cables. Might as well, you'll likely want to grab some additional SATA cables to use all the board's 8 SATA connectors.

Tweaking and Overclocking Friendly

Gigabyte have kindly place all important, overclocking settings In the BIOS under the menu 'MIB Intelligent Tweaker'. Various processor settings, including multiplier settings are available, in addition to other settings such as chipset, memory clock and voltages. A nice touch is the default processor voltage display inside the BIOS. You can always tell how far your voltage settings are from the default voltage just by looking at the information. Memory divider settings are in ratios, but you can always see what the current settings are and at what speed the memory will be when you change them. All these settings can be set manually or automatically, just make sure you know what you're doing and the limits of your hardware. Unfortunately, not all these settings are changeable from Gigabyte's V-Tuner software - for example, you can't change the multiplier on the fly.

As you would guess, we do have some minor gripes with this board, though nothing serious.
Overall, a good board with lots of features as you expect from a high end offering. However, you may have to spend extra money for additional cables to get the most of this board. The inclusion of DTS Connect feature does add some value for multimedia buffs though it doesn't add much value for gamers.

Gigabyte P965-DS3

Intel Pentium 4 / Core socket LGA-775
P965
PCI Express, PCI

Overall Score: 90 points
The full specification (taken from Gigabyte's website)

CPU
Supports Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme/ Intel® Pentium® D processor
Supports 1066/800/533 MHz FSB

Chipset
Northbridge: Intel® P965 Express Chipset
Southbridge: Intel® ICH8R

Memory
Supports DDR2 800/667/533 memory
Dual Channel architecture support up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots

Expansion Slots
Storage
6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
Intel Matrix Storage Technology supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.
GIGABYTE SATAII controller

LAN
Marvel 8053 Gigabit LAN Controller

Audio
Realtek ALC883 8 Channel Audio Codec

Unique Features
Back Panel I/O Ports
Internal I/O Connectors
Form Factor
ATX form factor, 30.5cm x 21cm

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