Gigabyte has carved out an enviable reputation as a top tier motherboard manufacturer, but it still has some way to go before it overtakes Asus as the number one choice for enthusiasts. The GA-EP45-UD3P will certainly help it in this cause as it stands out as the finest P45-based motherboard we have yet tested, and as one of the quickest Core 2 solutions on the market.

With a £100 price tag, the GA-EP45-UD3P occupies the middle ground in Gigabyte's expansive P45 line up. The feature set is more representative of a board costing far more, however, as it is decked out with a plethora of high-end features. No fewer than eight SATA ports are provided for storage junkies, with six powered by the Intel ICH10R Southbridge and a further two courtesy of a JMicron controller that also provides the board's single IDE slot. Moving to the I/O panel and we are spoilt for choice, with a generous eight USB ports being joined by dual gigabit Ethernet connections, two types of Firewire, both flavours of SPDIF audio output and a couple of PS/2 ports for legacy input devices.

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Elsewhere the board provides dual full-length PCI Express slots for Crossfire support as well as three 1x PCIE slots for newer add-in cards. A pair of conventional PCI slots provides support for older cards and perfect placement means that you'll have access to one of the latter and two of the former even with two double-height Radeons installed. The overall layout of the Gigabyte is outstanding, with plenty of space around the CPU socket for large heat-sinks and sensible placement of the memory slots that (just) allow access without having to remove the video card.

If we were being really picky we would have preferred SATA ports angled at 90 degrees on the outside edge of the board (as seen on Gigabyte's own P45-DQ6) but here they are suitably positioned for easy access. The floppy port is not placed ideally, but with these drives becoming scarce and many major stockists no longer even selling the disks, this is unlikely to be a problem for many.

The GA-EP45-UD3P's performance is extremely impressive with results in our suite of benchmarks almost identical to those of considerably more expensive X48 solutions. The board gave up an unnoticeable 2 percent compared to these flagships when used in Crossfire mode, proving that an 8x PCI Express 2.0 slot is plenty fast enough to get the best out of the fastest cards on the market.

What really impressed us were the outstanding overclocking options this board provides. Voltage adjustment options are expansive and we were able to take our Q9550 test chip to a new record speed of 3.9GHz with nothing more exotic than a beefy heat sink and fan. The maximum FSB we were able to obtain was even more impressive, with the Gigabyte only running out of steam once we pushed it beyond 550MHz. This means that even with the lowest of CPU multipliers you can be sure your chip will run out of steam long before the board even breaks a sweat.

Users familiar with Asus or MSI boards may find Gigabyte's BIOS layout a little confusing at first, but everything of importance is grouped sensibly into a single menu and we love the fact that profiles can be saved with ease to both pen drives and the board's own CMOS. Those who just want access to the main memory timing features are ably catered for, whilst those prepared to invest a lot more time in squeezing out every last MB/s will welcome the more advanced areas of the BIOS where a multitude of latencies, voltages and timings can be tweaked.

Overall the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P is a triumph. It offers all of the performance, features and overclockability of an expensive X48 solution for a very attractive price. Even with Core i5 just around the corner, this board proves that Socket 775 is still highly competitive and will remain an important part of Intel's product lines for some time to come.

As an outstanding high-end board for a mid-ranged price, the GA-EP45-UD3P is the ideal product for those looking to add some extra performance to an existing Socket 775 PC. It has unrivalled overclocking capabilities and has a feature set and performance on a par with X48 based boards costing far more money.