Delayed for a bit, Intel's P45 chipset and motherboards powered by it are gearing up for a release before the end of Q2, likely around late May or early June. With the release reasonably close, it's natural that motherboard manufacturers would have board designs ready. Today, after Foxconn and MSI, it's Gigabyte's time to come into the spotlight with a P45 board, and it can be viewed just below.

Dubbed GA-EP45-DS3P, the motherboard is equipped with the P45 and ICH10R chip pair, has support for 45nm CPUs, the 1600 MHz FSB and DDR2-1200 memory. Still having a blue pigment, the board also features three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (one likely being x4 'for real'), six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, two Gigabit Ethernet connectors, no eSATA ports and three useful buttons - power, clear CMOS and reset. At first glance, the GA-EP45-DS3P is well-equipped and very colorful. We just need some tests to see its performance.







Pictures courtesy of xfastest.com.