Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 DES

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 DES

Back in December we looked at the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 motherboard and compared it against the ASUS P5K-E WiFi, which was also backed by Intel's P35 Express Chipset. In that review, the Gigabyte motherboard had presented a slight lead when it came to the Linux desktop performance, but both motherboards received our recommendations. Since then, Gigabyte has made a few changes to their latest motherboards in order to provide heightened power efficiency. The newest Gigabyte motherboards support DES, or Dynamic Energy Saver, technology. In this review we are taking a brief look at Gigabyte's efforts into green computing with their Dynamic Energy Saver technology on the GA-EP35-DS4 motherboard.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=11938

[puntarenas]

Interesting, however according to the german Gigabyte support forum, DES will do absolutely nothing without the proprietary software tool involved. So what you call "hybrid" and made the board save some Watts may just be an effect of the "Ultra Durable" design which means some components to be of slightly better quality, especially MosFets and so on.

Nevertheless I highly appreciate to see power consumption measurement in a Phronix review, hope you will continue to do so in all upcoming hardware reviews Shame on Gigabyte, kudos to Phronix!

BTW, the GV-NX88T512HP TurboForce (NVidia 8800GT) also suffers from an unnecessary reliance on another proprietary Gigabyte-Tool and therefore doesn't reach its excellent Idle power consumption under Linux.