X-bitlabs reviews Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R Intel P35 based motherboard
Today we are going to test a very attractive universal mainboard from Gigabyte that belongs to Ultra Durable 2 series. It boasts simultaneous support of DDR2 and DDR3 memory. Let's find out what the cons and pros of this flexibility are.
Our recent article on DDR3 memory performance called DDR3 SDRAM: Revolution or Evolution? we have clearly demonstrated how promising the new technology actually is. The currently existing DDR3 SDRAM modules already can ensure pretty decent performance of contemporary platforms. Although this type of memory features somewhat higher latency than the widely spread DDR2 SDRAM, its higher working frequency that today reaches up to 1600MHz ensures higher bandwidth, which can make up for the latency. Taking into account almost the same performance of systems built with DDR2-1067 and DDR3-1333 SDRAM, we can conclude that DDR3-1600 will ensure higher performance. However, it important to remember that clocking the memory subsystem of contemporary platforms at frequency above 1333MHz is only possible with FSB overclocking, which may limit the public interest towards this high-speed memory. Nevertheless, it will hardly discourage most hardware enthusiasts, because many of them do work with overclocked systems anyway. And it means that DDR3 SDRAM is finally turning from useless rare novelty into a truly efficient solution that is worth your consideration...
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