Final Words

When it's all said and done, from a performance standpoint, the Gigabyte X48-DQ6 performs on par with other X48 boards we've tested. Save for a couple memory score losses, the overall performance is very good.

If stock performance is not enough for you, overclocking is a snap with the board. With little effort, we were able to reach 490Mhz on air, which isin line with other boards we've tested. We did need to push the voltage up though to do so. We were able to bring our Intel 6750 up to 495FSB, but were not able to stay stable for more than 15 minutes.

One thing we don't talk about often, mostly because it's uninteresting, is the software. The Gigabyte X48-DQ6 is amongst the easiest one-step installs we've experienced. Well, it's actually several steps, but the software does it's own reboots and install on its own once you select what you want to install and click next.

Another nice tool is the Dynamic Power Saver. For today's power conscious consumer, this is a nice feature. As the plans are to use the Gigabyte X48-DQ6 as a HTPC, power savings are important as I normally leave it on all the time.

The extras are nice and compared with some recent boards, Gigabyte X48-DQ6 has really gone all out with all the goodies that make it fun to play with hardware. The eSATA adapter for example is incredibly useful if you have a spare SATA drive and no enclosure. Through use, it does perform as expected, but I still find enclosures better over the long run as the better ones typically have special cooling. Even a bare drive, out in the open got very hot during testing.

Truthfully, the only real fault we can find is the board is very expensive. It is very well built and comes with a plethora of extras, but the price can be a bit steep for some people, even if they do not have to spring for DDR3 memory. As DDR3 drops in price, it may be more feasible to buy some of that with a cheaper X48 package if you do not need all of the extras that comes with the Gigabyte X48-DQ6.

Otherwise, the Gigabyte X48-DQ6 is one of the best motherboards we've had the opportunity to test the past year. Except at the highest overclocks, stability was simply excellent and we did not experience one issue during testing and the build process. The board is a tad expensive, but it is very well built and does come with peripherals normally not included in cheaper, more basic packages. If you have plenty of DDR, this board is certainly worthwhile.

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