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Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Motherboard
Conclusion
Sure, you can always spend more, upgrade ferociously, tirelessly, and stay up at night wondering if you've chosen the bestest, bulletproofest hardware path... or you can just buy and build a PC. Guess who the GA-P31-DS3L is for. It's a solid mainstream performer, with a handful of layout woes, and without [crappy Intel] integrated graphics. The truth is that any performance losses can be easily made up with by buying a good video card and even a half-decent Intel processor, and it would make way more sense to focus on a video card if you're a gamer than any motherboard. If you're just looking for a decent web browsing machine, then this board is way more than enough to get you through the pop-up jungle. I can't help but think, though, that it'd be possible to cram this board into a Micro-ATX form factor; Hell, that would be more suited to the complete product that makes up this particular motherboard; it's not hugely expansion-friendly, it's budget-oriented, and it's mainstream. Just the same, Gigabyte has a handful of other offerings that I'd eagerly choose over this particular example. But if the $50 can be spent elsewhere, by all means, go with this P31. You'll get great quality hardware with a well-developed software bundle. Pros Low, low price Good software features Ultra Durability Cons Awkward layout Limited hardware features full-ATX
Page 1: Introduction and First Looks
Page 2: Layout and BIOS Page 3: Testing Methodology, General Benchmarks & Graphics Benchmarks Page 4: Performance Summary, Power and Noise, and Overclocking Page 5: Conclusion 
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