Verdict: Lots of overclocking potential at a low price

Gigabyte produces a complete range of Intel P965-based motherboards, from the gizmo-packed GA-965P-DQ6 right down to the more value-orientated GA-965P-DS3, reviewed here.

The GA-965P-DS3 is based around the Intel P965 chipset, although it doesn't support CrossFire, unlike some other P965 boards. However, it can support a single GeForce 7950 GX2 if you feel the need for a dual-GPU graphics card.

There are three PCI slots, three 1x PCI-E slots and a single 16x PCI-E slot. The PCB is smaller than the GA-965P-DQ6, as the GA-965P-DS3 is a much lower-spec model. For example, it uses the ICH8 Southbridge, which supports four S-ATA II ports, although Gigabyte has added one of its own branded I/O controllers, which provides two RAID-capable S-ATA II ports.

Intel HD Audio is supported, via a full set of analogue jacks, and both coaxial and optical S/PDIFs. There are ten USB 2 ports in total. Unlike the fancy heatsink and heatpipe cooling arrangement on the GA-965P-DQ6, the Northbridge and Southbridge on the GA-965P-DS3 are cooled by simple heatsinks, while the VRMs aren't cooled at all.

All of the P965-based motherboards performed well in our benchmarks, slipping past the 975X motherboards, despite the fact that the P965 sits lower in the Intel chipset pecking order than the 975X.

The GA-965P-DS3 doesn't have quite as many BIOS options as the GA-965P-DQ6, but even so, by raising the FSB of our test Core 2 Duo CPU from 266MHz to 350MHz, we managed to overclock it much further. This is a great overclock, but still not quite as good as the awesome Abit AB9, Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP and Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe. By dropping the CPU multiplier from 10 to 6, we were able to increase the FSB to 380MHz - another impressive overclock, but still a long way off that of the ludicrously overclockable Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP, which can manage a 480MHz FSB.

The GA-965P-DS3 is competitively priced and a good overclocker but, with so many good P965 motherboards now available, it doesn't quite have what it takes to stand out from the crowd.

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• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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