HKEPC has got their hands on a P31 chipset based motherboard from Gigabyte, the GA-P31-DS3. This is an entry level motherboard with pretty basic features and the P31 as with the upcoming G31 chipset, is paired with the old ICH7.

The board itself is fairly basic as if features a single x16 PCIe slot, three x1 PCIe slots and three PCI slots as well as four memory slots, four SATA ports and a single IDE connector. At least it's got 7.1-channel HD audio with S/PDIF out and Gigabit Ethernet, but that's as exciting as it gets.

Performance wise this little board keeps up with the P965 and P35 in every benchmark thrown at it, there's very little to distinguish between the three chipsets. Although not officially supported, Gigabyte has added support for 1,333MHz bus speed for the P31 chipset.

However, it's not a great overclocker compared to the P35 chipset, or at least this early sample wasn't as it stopped at 390MHz bus compared to 575MHz for a couple of different Gigabyte P35 boards.

You can check out a couple of pictures as well as some benchmark figures here (the site is in Chinese)