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First Ultra Durable 3 motherboards pictured

by on24 September 2008

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Some additional changes have been made


We thought we should bring you some more details about the first Ultra Durable 3 motherboards from Gigabyte, namely the GA-EP45-UD3P, GA-EP45-UD3R and GA-EP45-UD3. The three models have been given an overhaul, not just in terms of the new PCB, but also in some other areas.

The most noticeable change is the new chipset cooling, with the GA-EP45-UD3P and GA-EP45-UD3R featuring a different looking heatpipe solution with blue metal covers and blue heatsinks, while the GA-EP45-UD3 has gunmetal grey heatsinks instead of Gigabyte's more traditional gold colored heatsinks.

The slot layout has also changed compared to the Ultra Durable 2 series, and the overall component layout has also changed accordingly. What's disappointing is that Gigabyte seems to have removed the onboard power and reset buttons on the GA-EP45-UD3P when compared to the GA-EP45-DS3P, but this is the only real downside we can see on the new boards, as having three x16 PCIe slots on a P45 is all but pointless.

The GA-EP45-UD3R and GA-EP45-UD3 has to make do with a single x16 PCIe slot, which seems like something of waste of the P45 chipset, but not everyone is interested in running a pair of graphics cards; but you also lose out a few other features by going with these models, such as TPM, Dolby Home Theatre audio and dual Gigabit Ethernet, while the GA-EP45-UD3 also lacks RAID support.

For more details, we suggest you head over to the GA-EP45-UD3P, GA-EP45-UD3R and GA-EP45-UD3 product pages.

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GA-EP45-UD3P

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GA-EP45-UD3R

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GA-EP45-UD3

Last modified on 25 September 2008
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