Introduction

This time around we are looking at a double whammy of a review. Rather than putting out a couple of reviews (one of the chipset and one of the product we are testing), today we are doing a 2-in-1 review of both the new Core 2 Duo supporting Intel P965 Express chipset and the first retail P965 motherboard we have in our labs, the Gigabyte 6-Quad which we first saw at Computex earlier this year.

Intel and its Core architecture has now got the hardware community a stir, just like AMD had when the Hammer CPU was released to the market at Computex 2003. Core Architecture is finally a unified architecture for Desktop, Server/Workstation and the mobile sector all in one unique design, only the extra feature discern what sector the CPU goes to.

Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme are the desktop versions of the Core architecture and to go with them are either the older 975X chipset or the newest member to the Intel family, the P965 Express chipset. Shortly you’ll have some other new options including nVidia’s nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition as well as several boards based on ATI’s RD600 chipset.

Today we test out what the Intel P965 has compared to the Intel 975X chipset as well as the features of the high-end Gigabyte 6-Quad P965-DQ6 motherboard. The feature list from Gigabyte’s latest motherboard is very extensive, so prepare yourself.