Gigabyte has a better PCIe x16 graphics card lock than the competition. Furthermore the board is a born-and-bred Gigabyte model: The blue PCB is typical, so is the amount of hardware features.

Although there is no dual Gigabit Ethernet as seen with Foxconn's 945P motherboard, Gigabyte offers DualBIOS, which uses two EPROM chips for providing a backup BIOS, Firewire chips for both 1394a and 1394b, a GigaRAID UltraATA/133 controller featuring two channels and HD audio with both optical and coaxial outputs.

It's a pity that Gigabyte decided to use a three-phase voltage regulator only, as four phases would be capable of handling a Pentium D 840 or Pentium Extreme Edition 840. However, our Pentium D 840 did not seem to stress the motherboard at all.

We appreciate that both chipset components do not require active cooling. Should you require a Northbridge fan, just click it on, as there is one included for optional use. Also, this is the only motherboard that has the floppy connector at a place where it can be accessed easily using the floppy cable that comes included.

Gigabyte usually masks the higher level memory settings. It's the same with the GA-8I945P-Pro. If you want to change certain parameters, you need to enter the BIOS and press STRG+F1 for receiving the chipset features menu. Enthusiast will certainly consider this a real pain while the average user likely will never notice that something is missing. The settings you can choose as well as the overclocking options are far over-average and make this board an excellent choice for performance geeks and enthusiasts.