Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 Motherboard

Another glance shows connectors pushed to the very edge of the board. Many current motherboards have begun following this trend, and the benefit in such placement is that it should help both cable management and, as a result, overall cooling.

This board supports the full Intel LGA775 processor lineup, including Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core, the current flagship in Intel's lineup. Around the CPU sit a series of lower profile capacitors, and the heat pipe sinks are placed far enough away that support for third party coolers should never be a problem. All this on top of a 12-phase PCB places this board at the top tier of Core 2 Duo compatible motherboards on the market.

The GA-965P-DQ6 comes with four color coded DIMM slots supporting up to 8GB of DDR2 800/667/533 memory, and you can find the official list of supported memory here.  To run in dual-channel, you would install pairs of RAM in same colored slots (both in yellow or both in red).  Below the DIMM slots rest the main ATX power connector, the floppy IDE connector (nope, the floppy still isn't dead!), and a supplemental four-pin molex connector to provide additional power for Crossfire setups or particular power hungry videocards.

Storage duties are handled by a healthy serving of no less than 8 SATA 3GB/s ports.  Six of these come with support for RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 on the Intel ICH8R controller (color coded orange), with the remaining two sporting RAID 0 and 1 capabilities on the Gigabyte controller (color coded purple).

Expansion slots include a primary PCI-E x16 slot, a secondary PCI-E x4 slot, three PCI-E x1 slots, and two standard PCI slots. The videocard slots support the use of two AMD/ATI Crossfire compatible videocards for some dual GPU lovin', and you'll still have access to at least two PCI-E x1 slots and one standard PCI slot when running videocards with wide coolers.

The placement of the GA-965P-DQ6's CMOS battery and CLR CMOS jumper are a little baffling. In a fully configured system with the board mounted vertically, both are fairly hard to access without removing the videocard. I do however like the fact Gigabyte used a two pin CMOS jumper instead of three, as this removes any chance of the user shorting the wrong jumpers while clearing the board's BIOS.

Overall, the Gigabyte GA-965-DQ6 v2 is a fantastic looking board with a plethora of interesting and promising features. Considering the target market of the board, I'm a little surprised by the "Crazy Cool" backplate used, as you'll need to remove it to use most high quality heat sinks. One other issue I didn't care for was the placement of the board's CMOS battery and CLR CMOS jumper, which could prove to be a real hassle for overclockers looking to get every bit of performance out of their board.

Lets see how the "Quads" pay off during our testing.

I have to say right up front that I really don't like the BIOS used for the GA-965P-DQ6. While every possible setting you could ever need is there, most are very poorly explained, and some are simply hidden.

When I say poorly explained, I mean that in the sense that Gigabyte takes for granted that the end user will know what every default setting really is. Under the M.I.T BIOS screen, settings are explained in the "+/-" method, as in under or over the default for a given setting. While this may be okay for those in the know, it doesn't help anyone just getting started or unsure of what they are doing in the slightest. If this isn't bad enough, the settings are not even listed under the board's health menu, only a "pass" or "fail" gives you any clue as to whether you are even in the right ballpark when it comes to tweaking the settings. As I said, perfectly acceptable for the experienced user, but a little complicated for the beginner. I'd have much rather seen simple numbers telling me exactly what the voltages and timings are set to.

My next gripe is no less goofy. For some reason, Gigabyte decided to hide the memory timings settings, which can only be accessed by pushing CTRL+F1 while at the BIOS main menu. Doing this will give you access to the memory timings via the M.I.T. BIOS menu. Seems goofy to me, because we all know a lot of enthusiast rue reading manuals, and not having direct access to the ever important memory settings is bound to send more than one user into a tizzy.

Gripes aside, once you figure out the BIOS, you'll realize you have one bad-ass motherboard. During our testing the GA-965P-DQ6 simply flew. With VERY minor tweaking, we achieved a 100% stable OC of 460MHz FSB. With some more time and patience, I wouldn't be surprised to see this board go much further.

Our Recommendation

Four months ago, finding a high quality INTEL motherboard for your Core 2 Duo processor was hit or miss. My how times have changed, as over the last month we have covered some outstanding products from a variety of board makers. Gigabyte has firmly established themselves in some fine company with their new and improved 965P boards. Both the Gigabyte 965P-DS3 and DQ6 have gone from very good (Revision 1), to damn fine boards (Revisions 2 & 3.3) with minor adjustments on Gigabyte's part.

As far as the GA-965P-DQ6, it has for the most part a fantastic layout that's extremely pleasant to work with. All of the connectors are placed along the board's edge, making cable management exceedingly simple. INTEL's 965P chipset is a rock solid and feature packed solution that offers quite simply some incredible performance at a decent price.

On the negative side, the passive cooling solution can make installing a good aftermarket cooler a real hassle. The board could also have used another PCI slot (at the expense of a PCI-E x1 slot). The Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 can be picky when it comes to memory compatibility, make sure you check out Gigabyte's memory compatibility list before buying. Lastly, we are still waiting on ATI's new R600 GPU with DirectX 10 support, and until then, those wanting a dual GPU system are better off with SLI.

Those not interested in Crossfire would be better suited in checking out Gigabyte's equally impressive, and much cheaper, GA-965P-DS3 motherboard. But those wanting Crossfire and RAID support, as well as an all around superb board could do a lot less than the Gigabyte 965P-DQ6. In the end, the only thing holding this back from our Recommended Hardware List is the price, and a bundle inferior to that found with the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard.

Other Reviews Of Note

Its always nice to have more than one opinion on a component before you spend your hard earned money. For one, We may see something others missed, or vice versa. As with all reviews published at HardwareLogic, we'll not only give you our recommendation, but also point out some reviews from some other great sites around the web.
Neoseeker
Firing Squad
Bit-Tech
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