Author: Scott Piercy

Editor: Nigel Woodford 

Model: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3

As you're no doubt aware, Intel's Core 2 Duo platform is becoming the platform of choice for the desktop enthusiast. After roughly two years of suffering through more confusingly named Pentium D and Pentium 4's than you or I have had hot dinners, Intel has finally taken the performance crown from it's venerable rival, AMD. Now personally we don't see AMD laying down and dying on us, but for now Intel has the high ground.

With this in mind, people naturally (us included) want to build Core 2 Duo systems. As we've gone a few months into the rollout phase of things, we're finally seeing a rather broad selection of Intel P965 chipset motherboards available. One such board, is one we've been playing with for about a week, a rather basic motherboard from Gigabyte, the GA-965P-S3. We'll put it through the usual paces and see how it performs, as well as looking at features and cost relative to those features.

Before we dig deep though, let's get the wonderfully scintillating specifications out of the way.