Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8I915P-D Pro

This high-end board based on the Intel 915P Express chipset is loaded with all the 915 chipset features such as PCI Express and SATA. But it is low in performance. We tested it with Intel P4 3.6GHz Prescott, Gigabyte GV-NX59128D PCI Express X16 card with 128 MB RAM based on the nVidia 5900 chipset, Maxtor 250 GB (16MB cache buffer) HDD and 1 GB DDR II RAM. The board has one PCI Express X16 slots, three PCI Express X1 slot, four Serial ATA connectors, eight USB ports, eight channel audio with jack-sensing, supports dual BIOS and has overclocking support as well. Coming to performance, the board was a big disappointment, with scores that barely managed to beat the Gigabyte 8I845GVM-RZ (which is based on the Intel 845GV chipset) in Business Winstone and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone. The margin of victory was only 5% in Business Winstone. When we compared the test results with a 915G chipset-based Gigabyte GA-8I915G-MF, we found that this board lagged by 21% 3Dmark and by 55% in Quake3. The reason for this is that the 915G chipset includes the new generation of Intel's Extreme Graphics Processor. The board is priced at the same level as the Gigabyte GA-8I915G-MF.

The Bottom Line: Very low on performance. The competitive pricing is not worth the lower performance.

Ankit Kawatra