Gigabyte P35-DQ6 and P35T-DQ6 – Features & Layout

The DQ6 line is Gigabyte’s premium set of boards. DQ6 stands for 6 Quad. This means there are six features that have something to do with the number four. This could be quad-core support, or quad SLI or something else along those lines. The precise DQ6 features change depending on the chipset used. The P35 DQ6 boards have the best feature set yet.

Right away you can see that the P35-DQ6 is a board of a much higher price range than the P35-DS3R. A quick glance probably brings your eyes on the massive copper heatsink on the P35 Northbridge. This is the first of the P35-DQ6 and P35T-DQ6’s quad features. Quad cooling spans across the Southbridge, Northbridge, and two sets of MOSFETS around the CPU socket.

Unfortunately, the power management chips are not cooled, even though they are right next to the MOSFETS. Cooling them might have obstructed certain heatsinks though, such as Intel’s stock cooler for the Core 2 CPUs. If your cooler can sit fine without covering the PWM, we suggest you get some RAM heatsinks, like those found on video card memory.



Second in the six quad features comes quad triple-phase power. This provides extremely stable and clean voltage to the CPU for maximum performance and overclocking. Most motherboards today only have 8-phase or even 6-phase power, versus Gigabyte’s 12.

The next quad feature is quad-core support. Of course, this isn’t a feature unique to Gigabyte’s DQ6 boards, all P35 motherboards support Intel’s quad-core Core 2 CPUs. We think Gigabyte may just have run out of quad features and stuck this one in. :)

Moving to the expansion slots, we see two PEG slots. ATI’s dual GPU solution Crossfire can be used. NVIDIA’s SLI solution can only be implemented on their 680i boards.

The rest of the slots are very standard, consisting of two PCI slots and three PCI Express x1 slots. The battery is here too because of the cluttered bottom corner. This brings up the next quad feature. No it’s not quad batteries. It’s quad BIOS. Gigabyte extends their dual BIOS technology by adding a copy of the BIOS on a CD that can be easily used to restore either of the corrupt physical BIOS chips onboard. This makes the board really have four BIOS storage areas, not just two.


All of the controllers found on the P35-DQ6 boards are also found on cheaper Gigabyte boards such as the P35-DS3. The ITE chip handles the monitoring task. The Realtek ALC889A controller takes care of the high definition audio. Another Realtek controller is in charge of the single gigabit Ethernet port. This is very surprising, a top end board like this having only one Ethernet port. Even some cheaper boards have two. They may not be needed, but the concept of lacking basic features isn’t a positive thought. Finally we see a new controller onboard, one not on the P35-DS3R. It is a Texas Instruments Firewire controller supporting three ports. One port is provided on the back panel and two more ports come in the form of two headers on the bottom edge of the board.



The bottom corner of the motherboard is full of headers, and connectors. The IDE port is correctly placed, not only vertically along the edge of the board, unlike the P35-DS3R’s strange horizontal placement, but also down 90 degrees for slightly less cable clutter. There are 4 yellow USB headers for 8 ports. Most cases have two to four on the front, so Gigabyte provided two expansion slot brackets for an additional four ports should you need them. On those same brackets are two eSATA connectors. This brings us to the fifth quad feature. With only two eSATA connectors (none on the rear panel), Gigabyte notes that there is a possibility for four eSATA ports if you provide your own brackets. However, in theory you can have as many eSATA ports as you have internal SATA ports. So once again, this quad feature isn’t unique to Gigabyte. Gigabyte does provide a SATA controller for two additional SATA ports, making a total of 8. Lastly the front button and LED connectors are color-coded for easy placement in such a small space.

The only difference between the P35-DQ6 and the P35T-DQ6 is the memory they support. The P35 accepts DDR2 in four 240-pin slots. The P35T relies on DDR3, also in four 240-pin slots. This also brings up the DQ6’s last quad feature. Both boards have four memory slots. Unfortunately, just like quad core support, almost every motherboard has four memory slots. This quad feature was just added to make a total of six.

The rear panels of Gigabyte’s P35-DQ6 and P35T-DQ6 boards are surprisingly dated. As we mentioned before, there is only one Ethernet (RJ45) port. Gigabyte also includes Parallel and Serial ports, both gone on many modern boards. In their place Gigabyte could have added a couple of extra USB ports, another Ethernet port, and some eSATA connectors.

Overclocking

We tested both boards to see how high their FSB wall was. Even though the two boards are nearly identical from layout to BIOS, we got slightly different results. This is because overclocking is the luck of the draw. Anything above the 333MHz FSB that the DQ6 boards are certified for is a gamble. Our gamble for both boards ended relatively high. For the DDR2 based P35-DQ6 we hit 512MHz. This is average as far as 680i and P35 boards seem to go. The previous Gigabyte DQ6 board based on NVIDIA’s 680i chipset we tested hit 528MHz. The DDR3 based P35T-DQ6 hit 510MHz. So it’s safe to say that the Gigabyte’s DQ6 boards with the P35 chipset will hit just over 500MHz. Of course you may not hit anything over 350, or even get over 550. It’s all the luck of the draw. Our testing gives you a rough idea of how well your board might do.