The model with on-board video based on G33 chipset is called GA-G33M-DS2R and you can see it on Figure 3. It still has one x16 PCI Express slot, so you will be able to disable its on-board video and add a “real” video card on it in the future, if you like to. It also has an x4 PCI Express slot, two PCI slots and four DDR2 sockets, supporting up to 8 GB and dual channel mode, of course.

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Figure 3: Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R.

As we mentioned, G33 and P35 chipsets do not have parallel IDE and floppy disk drive ports. So Gigabyte added on this motherboard a small JMicron JMB368 chip to add these features to this board.

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Figure 4: JMicron JMB368 chip adds one parallel IDE and one floppy disk drive port to this motherboard.

For the mainstream market the model Gigabyte is releasing is called GA-P35-DS3R. As you can see on Figure 5, it has one x16 PCI Express slot, three x1 PCI Express slots, three PCI slots and four DDR2 sockets, supporting up to 8 GB and dual channel mode, of course. It also has a “Gigabyte SATA2” chip (a relabeled JMicron chip) bringing two extra SATA-300 ports to the board (for a total of eight SATA-300 ports) and also support to parallel IDE and floppy disk drives.

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Figure 5: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R.

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Figure 6: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R rear panel. All models have optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs soldered on the board.

Let’s now talk about the models supporting DDR3.