Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Motherboard Review

[gvblake22]

Great info, thanks Ranger!

[Capper]

Ranger really did an awesome job with this review......I'm eagerly awaiting his next review, the Core 2 Duo E6400.

[jph1589]

First let me say I'm not experiencing any troubles from what I am about to show you. I just think there are still some issues with the way memory voltages are set and reported....etc. I updated to F6 bios back when I first set up the board. I'm not sure if that is the same as F6A or not. I only saw an F6 available to the general public.

When I boot up with the Dimm volts set to normal this is what I see.

Attachment 20Attachment 21
You will have to take my word for it that easytune shows 1.8v. I can't get the screen shot to upload for some reason.

See next post for the shots of what it shows at +.4v

[jph1589]

When I boot up with the Dimm Volts at +.4 this is what I see.

Attachment 23Attachment 24

With it like this easytune shows the volts at 2.2v just where they should be.

So the conclusion is that at least with my memory and F6 bios, the default Dimm voltage is still 1.8v. When you set the Dimm Volts to 2.2v (what my memory recommends), it shows a fail in the ddr18v display in the health screen, but easy tune shows it correctly at 2.2v.

The interesting thing is that the system will post and boot into windows set either way.

Maybe this is all something to do with F6 versus F6A bios??

Now that I"m thinking about it, does A stand for alpha?

[polobunny]

So what's the problem? It shows "Fail" because those are not the defaults for DDR2.
If you were in another situation, not overclocking, this Fail could show a potential problem with standard memory. This is not your case, so you shouldn't worry with it.

[jph1589]

This is NOT a problem....it is a good thing in my opinion.

In the bios for Fan control, you have a great number of options. If you leave it set to auto, you get Intel's fan control. It works fine if you are running stock. It will slow the cooler fan down as low at 600rpm or as high as 2200 rpm depending on temp. It speeds up a little slow in my opinion, but that is intel fan control

You also have the ability to turn fan control off, which sets the cpu fan to full speed (2200rpm). That is not the top speed of my coolers fan though so I wanted to fix that.

There is another option called legacy which let's you choose volts or PWM. When you choose legacy with PWM you get the full range of RPMs for your fan. It actually runs at about 1800rpm most of the time until it heats up and will go up to it's top end of 2750rpm. That knocks off about 3 degrees C off my load temps and with this cooler isn't loud anyway. So with that option chosen, I get about 56c at full load when running 4.0ghz. I love it.

There is one more option that let's you use intel's quiet mode. I think that is only needed if you are using the intel stock cooler though :> LOL

So big time atta-boys to gigabyte for all the options for fan control. Some people might not care, but I really appreciate having that flexiblity.

[jph1589]

Originally Posted by polobunny

So what's the problem? It shows "Fail" because those are not the defaults for DDR2.
If you were in another situation, not overclocking, this Fail could show a potential problem with standard memory. This is not your case, so you shouldn't worry with it.

Earlier in the thread there were comments that Gigabyte had increased the default voltage in bios F6A. I was just showing that on my board with F6 they didn't do that . The default is still 1.8v. If you look up above you will see it.

Edit....by the way overclocking doesn't have anything to do with it. My memory default voltage is supposed to be 2.2v