Hi, I was recently looking through my box of old PC parts and a discovered a Intel Q6600 along with a socket 775 Gigabyte EP45C-DS3R.Sadly it doesn't support more than 4GB of DDR3 1600mhz, usally this wouldn't be a problem but my friend is after building a 'good enough' gaming PC. I offered him this motherboard and processor for £50.00, quite cheap considering the processor and motherboard cost me £500, but he doesn't want to use it unless he can use 8GB+ of DDR3 in there. This is mainly due to the fact that DDR2 is more expensive than DDR3 for less capacity and slower clock speeds. I have been trying to see if i could BIOS mod it out (I haven't tried yet) then i thought i should try here because the majorty of us a PC gamers. I would appriciate any help provided.
According to this Intel Doucment The chipset can support 8GB of DDR3 RAM max. However, note a keypoint about it's design. It has two memory controllers that can both support ddr2 or 3.
Since DDR3 requires a much higher bandwidth, I imagine it would require both memory controllers. But with your board one of the memory controllers is used for the DDR2.
Thus your board can not be modded via the BIOS, I am afraid to achieve what you want would require a redesign of the boards wiring and adding 2 more DDR3 slots to the board.
On the plus side, it can support upto 16GB of DDR2 RAM. You could always look on ebay for some DDR2 RAM, the prices are not much more (or equal to in some cases) to that of a DDR3 module (at 4GB)
Okay, thanks for the help.