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Gigabyte GA EP45 DQ6 Motherboard
C. I. A. 2
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C.I.A. 2 Menu |
If you are one of those people who don't really want to mess around with the overclocking, Gigabyte offers a "set it and forget it" kind of option. C.I.A. 2 or CPU Intelligent Accelerator 2 dynamically overclocks your machine based on load level of your processor.
Easy Tune 6
The applications Gigabyte's GA-EP45-DQ6 has provided us are as powerful as the motherboard itself. EasyTune6 is styled after CPU ID, an application that displays information about the hardware, but adds a lot of extras. The CPU displays the information about the hardware and the speeds at which it is running at. The Memory window displays more information about the memory timings.
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CPU |
Memory |
Tuner |
The Tuner tab provides 2 modes of overclocking. The first mode, "Basic" only provides the option to overclock the FSB of the CPU and does not let the user change any of the voltages set in bios. The "Advanced" option unlocks all of the voltages available in bios by unlocking the "Voltages" tab.
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Graphics |
Smart Overclocking |
HW Monitor |
EasyTune6 provides users with the ability to overclock their graphics card(s). I was able to overclock my Radeon 4870 through the EasyTune window without touching the ATI control panel. The only limitation that I was able to find with EasyTune graphics tab was that it was not able to push the graphics card clock beyond 900 MHz which is the max value defined in the ATI control Panel. In the Smart tab you can again see the C.I.A. 2 overclock. Unlike the Tune tab, which will only change the voltages when the program loads, the C.I.A. 2 directly implements any and all changes straight into the BIOS thus over-riding previous settings. If you are running an overclock, I suggest that you put the BIOS into default setting before you play around with C.I.A. 2 to prevent a system lock up.
Energy Saver
"La creme de la creme" of this board is energy saving. Gigabyte's software for energy saving is very stylish and easy to use. All you really have to do is push the "On" button and sit back and relax knowing that you are now burning less energy. If you get tired and decide to close the program down, it offers you an option where it can run on a hardware level bringing you savings without generally affection your performance.
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Power Saver |
After running the computer under normal conditions from five minutes I found out that you will save about 0.003 Watts while under full load saving up to 5 watts per hour. While it is not much, if you have your computer on 24/7 for an entire month the savings will add up to quite a bit as time accrues.
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