Conclusion

At this time we can confirm that the new EP45-UD3P with Ultra Durable 3 is as efficient as other modern motherboards, and it delivers the same performance as comparable products based on the same P45 chipset. However, the Ultra Durable 3 technology, which incorporates considerably more copper on the inner layers of the printed circuit board paired and high-quality components, does not make any difference in performance or power efficiency. The conventional Gigabyte EP45-DS3R is just as good.

Tiny Advantages…

That said, we still found that the Ultra Durable 3 motherboard ran considerably cooler when we installed a power-hungry Core 2 Extreme QX6850 quad-core processor, which we operated at an overclocked 3.33 GHz clock speed and overvolted to 1.4 V. When we compared the motherboard surface temperature on the lower side with Gigabyte’s EP45-DS3R motherboard there was a 11 °C difference (72°C versus 83°C for the conventional board). Although the DS3R motherboard does not come with heat sinks for the voltage regulator MOSFETs, the difference is still considerable. Since we could not remove the heat sinks easily, we couldn’t accurately track the difference of Ultra Durable 3 versus the traditional design here, but it appears that there are advantages in this area. They may become more obvious if you go for hardcore overclocking.

… But Still a Great Motherboard

Whether or not you’re impressed by the fact that Gigabyte focused on improving the actual circuit board and the components, we found that the EP45-UD3P is still one of the best P45 motherboards we've had through our lab. Its performance is solid, it comes with interesting features, and it may represent one of the best platforms for overclocking. We liked that Gigabyte focused on the essential features. Ultra Durable 3 may not have the impact Gigabyte hoped, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with it either.