Gigabyte Unveils EP45-Extreme Motherboard Series
By
Cássio Lima
on July 31, 2008 - 1:31 PM
Gigabyte has officially unveiled EP45-Extreme motherboard series targeted to overclocking enthusiasts. Two boards were launched within this new series: GA-EP45T-EXTREME e GA-EP45-EXTREME. The only difference between them is that the former supports only DDR3 up to 1,900 MHz, while the latter supports only DDR2 up to 1,600 MHz. Both boards are based on Intel P45 chipset (with Intel ICH10R south bridge), support FSB up to 1,600 MHz, two PCI Express x16 slots (one of them running a x8), one PCI Express x4 slot, one PCI Express x1 slot, three PCI slots, six SATA-300 ports, one IDE port, one floppy disk port, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and they support up to 12 USB 2.0 and three Firewire (IEEE1394a) ports.
On the audio section a Realtek ALC889A codec is used. It features a 106 dB signal-to-noise ratio, 7.1+2 channels (translation: besides the 8-channel surround sound, it features an extra stereo channel, usually used for audio streaming) and DTS Connect compatibility (i.e. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD audio compatibility).
Motherboards from EP45-Extreme series also have a myriad of overclocking options and a copper heat-pipe used for liquid and traditional cooling.
Originally at http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/Gigabyte-Unveils-EP45-Extreme-Motherboard-Series/3182