Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Motherboard Review

**Capper** · August 17th, 2006

Quote:

GIGABYTE was born 20 years ago, brought into the world by a handful of elite IT engineers. Since then, GIGABYTE has grown into one of the largest motherboard manufacturers, and more recently has focused on catering to the enthusiast PC market.
With the recent introduction of Intel's Core 2 Duo procesors came a new breed of chipsets, the Intel P965. Gigabytes GA-965P-DS3 comes to light, featuring the P965 chipset, All-Solid Capacitor Motherboard Design, and maybe most importantly, weighs in with a modest price-tag. Today, HardwareLogic is going to find out exactly what the GA-965P-DS3 is made of....come along and see for yourself....

http://hardwarelogic.com/news/129/AR...006-08-17.html

In my humble opinion a very well written review, Bo's best work so far!!!

yurimxpxman · August 17th, 2006

Dittos. Good review :thumleft:

Lead Head · August 17th, 2006

nice review :)

The slowness you encountered was an issue with the DS3 until gigabyte updated the drives, it would put anything on the IDE channel in PIO mode wich hogs up CPU resources unbievably massively.

Although im not sure, i could have sworn the ICH8 had no IDE support at all, and that the j-micron chip provided the IDE and some more SATA?

RangerXLT8 · August 17th, 2006

Ok I went in and just noted that the only IDE support is available VIA the JMIcron controller, not ICH8.

EDIT:

@ Lead HEad: The optical drive was soo slow, at the rate it was going, F.E.A.R would have taken 2hr to install. All I did was download the latest Intel chipset INF drivers and wa la. Back to the normal 'install a game in 3 minutes" from the Plextor drive.

Blake also did a wonderfull job on the new graphs. They make the article IMO.

Lead Head · August 17th, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by RangerXLT8

Ok I went in and just noted that the only IDE support is available VIA the JMIcron controller, not ICH8.

EDIT:

@ Lead HEad: The optical drive was soo slow, at the rate it was going, F.E.A.R would have taken 2hr to install. All I did was download the latest Intel chipset INF drivers and wa la. Back to the normal 'install a game in 3 minutes" from the Plextor drive.

Blake also did a wonderfull job on the new graphs. They make the article IMO.

The fastest PIO mode , is PIO5, wich is around 8MB/s with massive CPU overhead

**gvblake22** · August 17th, 2006

A great review for sure! What is your feeling on the overall stability and user friendlyness of this board?

Oh, and thanks for the compliment on the graphs, I'm glad you like them :thup:

RangerXLT8 · August 17th, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by gvblake22

A great review for sure! What is your feeling on the overall stability and user friendlyness of this board?

Oh, and thanks for the compliment on the graphs, I'm glad you like them :thup:

I have nothing but good things to say about the board. I think Gigabyte has come along way with these new Core 2 Dup MBs. The bios is very easy to menuever, even for beginnners. And for the price, at around 149.00, it can't be beat. At first I was kinda preturbed because the bios did not support changing the memory timings, but a bios came out to address that.... I highly recommend this board to anyone who is thinking about going Core 2 Duo.

an0nym0us · September 25th, 2006

this board is what dreams are made of, cheap, easy to work with. bios revisions are readily availible. great overclocker, i LOVE the bios. good board to learn on if you're a **** at overclocking.

Blondie · September 26th, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by RangerXLT8

Quote:

Originally Posted by gvblake22

A great review for sure! What is your feeling on the overall stability and user friendlyness of this board?

Oh, and thanks for the compliment on the graphs, I'm glad you like them :thup:

I have nothing but good things to say about the board. I think Gigabyte has come along way with these new Core 2 Dup MBs. The bios is very easy to menuever, even for beginnners. And for the price, at around 149.00, it can't be beat. At first I was kinda preturbed because the bios did not support changing the memory timings, but a bios came out to address that.... I highly recommend this board to anyone who is thinking about going Core 2 Duo.

There is actually a hidden feature on Gigabyte mobo's that give you the option to see more. Now, don't quote me on this but from memory it was pressing Ctrl & F3 or something to that effect. If your interested I can find the exact combo.

I scanned the article and didn't see a hardware specs list. Did you use a sata or pata drive? Did you try the Xpress Recovery2?

I'm a Gigabyte fangirl, only mobo I'll use because of the Xpress Recovery. With 5+ systems in the house, reformatting has to be easy.

Also, Gigabyte & Asus are merging from what I read. Hope it's for the best and hope they don't kill my favorite features.

Looks like a great mobo.

**stinger608** · September 26th, 2006

Blondie, I believe that it is alt-f1 gets you into the advanced bios settings.

Not sure if the new boards support that feature anymore though.

August 17th, 2006	#3
Lead Head Join Date: May 2006 Location: Rhode Island USA Posts: 1,716	nice review :) The slowness you encountered was an issue with the DS3 until gigabyte updated the drives, it would put anything on the IDE channel in PIO mode wich hogs up CPU resources unbievably massively. Although im not sure, i could have sworn the ICH8 had no IDE support at all, and that the j-micron chip provided the IDE and some more SATA? Opteron 64 165--1.5GB DDR--ECS KA1 MVP(thanks HL!)--x1800GTO 256MB--Seagate 320GB SATA--Antec 550 Watt--Antec P180

August 17th, 2006	#4
RangerXLT8 Worker Ant Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: New Jersey Posts: 963	Ok I went in and just noted that the only IDE support is available VIA the JMIcron controller, not ICH8. EDIT: @ Lead HEad: The optical drive was soo slow, at the rate it was going, F.E.A.R would have taken 2hr to install. All I did was download the latest Intel chipset INF drivers and wa la. Back to the normal 'install a game in 3 minutes" from the Plextor drive. Blake also did a wonderfull job on the new graphs. They make the article IMO. Quad Core Xeon 3210@3.22ghz GA-EP35C-DS3R 460FSB x 7 -- 60mm Delta fan on NB 2x2gb Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 Sapphire 4870 512mb GDDR5 2x Raptor 150 ADFD RAID 0--WD320YS RE 16mb Storage Samsung Super WriteMaster 20x DVDRW X-Fi eXtremeGamer w\Logitech Z-2300 Silverstone OP650 54A 12v Rail @50C DamgerDen Torture Rack--MC-TDX--Black Ice GTX240--MCP355 Rev 2--Swiftech MicroRes-- Tygon 3603 3/8"ID Logitech G5 - Logitech LX-710 wireless KB Vista Ultimate 64

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August 17th, 2006	#2
yurimxpxman Banned Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: /home/yurimxpxman Posts: 1,695	Dittos. Good review :thumleft:

August 17th, 2006	#6
gvblake22 Modder-ator Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Tempe Desert Posts: 6,480 Blog Entries: 1	A great review for sure! What is your feeling on the overall stability and user friendlyness of this board? Oh, and thanks for the compliment on the graphs, I'm glad you like them :thup:

September 25th, 2006	#8
an0nym0us Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 22	this board is what dreams are made of, cheap, easy to work with. bios revisions are readily availible. great overclocker, i LOVE the bios. good board to learn on if you're a **** at overclocking.

September 26th, 2006	#10
stinger608 Silence..Or I kill you! Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: In the Zone! Posts: 2,834 Blog Entries: 1	Blondie, I believe that it is alt-f1 gets you into the advanced bios settings. Not sure if the new boards support that feature anymore though.