Gigabyte DS4 intel P35-mini review

[steelballzz]

Hey guys

I just received the Gigabyte DS4 P35 motherboard and i went testing right away

I was curious about this new chipsets from intel and especially the new products from gigabyte

Already prepared to 1333 cpus and with much more ram dividers it promises very good performance at a reasonable cost…

Would it deliver…?

For now lets see some generic and bios pics

 

 

 

The board prepared to mount the waterblock

 

 

 

 

 

The bios is very easy…..too easy for my taste:D ……the drawback is that you need to CTRL-F1 every time you want to access advanced options

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much more ram divisors allowing more flexibility and giving the chance to run high ram speed with low fsb

 

 

 

 

Concerning voltage options, Gigabyte was very generous offering 2,3 V vcore and 2,9 V vdimm, enough even for the most extreme overclocker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 2nd setback in this bios was the page where you can see the voltages and temperatures…(hardware monitor).instead of a nominal value it only say vcore (ok) or (fail) wich is very little information

 

 

 

 

I also got a pair of thermalright HR-07 to go with my D9 ram

 

 

 

1st impression is very good….all worked out of the box….and i even used my former 965 OS

 

 

I already have XP and VISTA with a clean install and a set of mushkin 2x2048 to run more tests

For now this is what I have

 

Test bed

 

 

 

X6800 (cooled by apogee WB & 2 x 240 BIX)

Gigabyte DS4 intel P35

2 x 1024 teamgroup 5300 D9GMH (cooled by HR-07)

Twintech 8600 gts (158.18 nvidia driver)

Lc-power 850w

Xp sp2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know that everybody is waiting for Max fsb on this board but the Max with this cpu was 500

It’s the 2nd board where I get stuck at 500…so I assume it’s the cpu fsb wall

I have a 6600 arriving that i know can do 540 fsb no problems

 

 

On the other hand i went for Max benchable speed/ low cas with my ram using this board and the HR-07 solution

 

And I was pretty happy with it

Only a couple of hours running this board and everything comes so easy

 

 

 

The board is very easy to tune

Excelent voltage options

Everything seems so natural

[steelballzz]

small update while i prepare the comparison between XP and VISTA

 

498 was the max fsb i was able to squeeze from it.....since its the 2 nd diferent board that stops at this freq i assume i have found the fsb wall from this x6800cpu

but 490 1:1 was so easy to achieve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

you can take this board with your eyes closed

 

been working on it for 4 or 5 days and i didnt do a clear cmos yet......

simple...easy to handle

 

 

i am bored....lol......

 

regards

[Branjo]

Looks like a solid board. lol thats an awesome! Super PI time bro. Nice work on the OC

[HITandRUN]

Super PI as well here! Let see the numbers!

[steelballzz]

i also did a comparison between XP and VISTA with diferent ram timings

 

[MsB]

Nice work. My P35-DQ6 arrives on tuesday. Im hoping to get my q6600 over 3.2 ghz that I've been stuck at.

[Splave]

very nice, isnt that alot of TIM? Cant wait to see your e6600 results

[White_Hair]

Time to say good bye to my 965-DQ6 (with a non-working lan chip).

 

What's your current voltage and timing settings in details to reach 490 FSB?

[steelballzz]

i dont have the board with me anymore

 

 

for that fsb i needed a little bump on fsb and mch voltage