Gigabyte 965P mobo's, Conroe ready!

Richard Dower

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2295&ProductName=GA-965P-DQ6

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=2295&ProductName=GA-965P-DQ6

This appears to be the high end board, look at the amazing specs and layout of the board?...dosen't the cooling solution make you cream in your pants?

:eek:

So it looks like once again i willl go with Gigabyte for my mobo choice, i've dumped my AM2 plans, have G.SKILL DDR2 800 ready to rock and roll...i sold my AM2 4000+ in a private sale

Never bothered to get an AM2 mobo, so it's Intel for me...E6600 Conroe and some serious overclocking backup up by a Thermalright Ultra 120 with two 120mm fans in push/pull.

This setup should last me a good while :cool:

Richard Dower

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2288&ProductName=GA-965P-DS4

Next model down.

DemonOfTheFall

Hmmm... Personally I'd wait till a more reputable manufacturer came out with their 965 offering. I've never heard anything good about Gigabyte for overclocking. All the forums are full of people who bought gigabyte boards and can't get about 250 FSB (Athlon 64 anyway, dont know about intel).

BigEejit

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Hmmm... Personally I'd wait till a more reputable manufacturer came out with their 965 offering. I've never heard anything good about Gigabyte for overclocking. All the forums are full of people who bought gigabyte boards and can't get about 250 FSB (Athlon 64 anyway, dont know about intel).

Indeed ... I wont be buying another gigabyte board ... crap crap crap ... Abit or Asus are yer only man

unklerosco

Richard Dower wrote:

dosen't the cooling solution make you cream in your pants?

:eek:


This setup should last me a good while :cool:

Cooling solution is nothing new, its on loads of boards... Fair enough its bigger but dependind on how high it is it could intefere with allot of HSFs..

Last u a while me pants, nothig lasts these days.... espec with u

SeanW

AMD (Socket 939 at least) boards don't need any kind of on-board cooling, the stock heatsink and fan keeps the processor under control very nicely, and is not large physically.

Richard Dower

You guys are mental, Gigabyte are a PREMIUM mobo maker and my current board can reach 290FSB with ease!

Richard Dower

unklerosco wrote:

Cooling solution is nothing new, its on loads of boards... Fair enough its bigger but dependind on how high it is it could intefere with allot of HSFs..

Last u a while me pants, nothig lasts these days.... espec with u

Yeah, i'm kinda worried about that, hope the heatsinks on the MOSFETS don't interfere with the Ultra-120.

DemonOfTheFall

I don't know about gigabyte being premium now.... They're boards are often among the cheapest everywhere and I have seen an awful lot of forum threads about their overclocking suckage.

That's not to say that they don't make some boards that overclock nicely though, just that I'd be waiting for reviews before buying one of their boards.

Personally, I'm waiting till August or thereabouts when I can hopefully afford a full Conroe upgrade, and everything should have settled down so that I don't buy any lemons.

Richard Dower

They make low, middle and high end boards to cover all sections of the market. The 965P board i listed is top end. As always people seem to get snobbish about a certain brand and write everything else off as crap.

DemonOfTheFall

I'm not being snobbish, I'm just saying that in my experience there's very little positive about them and I've rarely seen anyone saying that they're any good before.

There's no need to get so defensive because you want to support an underdog brand.

Richard Dower

Have you owned a Gigabyte mobo?...i have owned four since the Intel 875P. Every one has worked without a hitch from bios to hardware.

Not one issue, they are quality gear based on my oen personal experience.

astrofool

I reckon he has shares in Gigabyte and Thermaltake

Seriously though, Gigabyte boards are generally quite cheap compared to the likes of Abit/Asus/DFI, and are usually fully featured. I feel their bios options often aren't quite on the par with the other three however, and they can often rush to market with boards that don't meet expectations. i.e. the K8N-Royal Quad SLI won't ever support Quad SLI.

I wouldn't call them a premium mobo maker, the above three are, with MSI below them with Aopen/Epox, and then Gigabye, then come the likes of Jetway/ECS.

conzy

astrofool wrote:

I reckon he has shares in Gigabyte and Thermaltake

Seriously though, Gigabyte boards are generally quite cheap compared to the likes of Abit/Asus/DFI, and are usually fully featured. I feel their bios options often aren't quite on the par with the other three however, and they can often rush to market with boards that don't meet expectations. i.e. the K8N-Royal Quad SLI won't ever support Quad SLI.

I wouldn't call them a premium mobo maker, the above three are, with MSI below them with Aopen/Epox, and then Gigabye, then come the likes of Jetway/ECS.

Grrrrrrrrrr:mad:

Epox make kickass NF4 boards, Better overclockers than ASUS and second to DFI.....

The also use very high quality components and their capacitors are great......

Stop slating Epox everyone!!

Anyway, The Gigabyte has a nice layout and good cooling, maybe it is a good overclocker, we will have to wait and see...........

astrofool

I'm not saying that one motherboard maker is better than another, just that there is a definite tiering in perception of who is the best, going something like:

Asus/DFI
Abit
MSI/AOpen/Epox
Gigabyte
Jetway/ECS

And that is also mostly reflected in pricing as well, just as any commodity products will face a tiering in percieved quality. I'm sure a Merc isn't €x better than a Honda, but people will pay the difference anyway. (although other things such as what the neighbours think come into play here:))

Richard Dower

Pricing does not always equal quality, the high end Gigabyte boards are on par in price with Asus high end, in fact you'll see people like Overclockers doing discounts on Asus all the time, but not on Gigabyte.

Asus use Pheonix bios while Gigabyte uses Award, so it's obvious bios options will not be the same from mobo to mobo, that includes DFI and MSI...each board has different features.

Richard Dower

"An exclusive feature found only on GIGABYTE motherboards, this unique design incorporates 12 Power Phases to deliver steadier power and immediate current support for the CPU during heavy work loads or over-clocking. Additionally, Quad-Triple Phase helps to improve component lifespan system stability by delivering lower component temperature."

Twelve phase!!..Asus only have 8 phase on their high end...eat that!

DemonOfTheFall

conzymaher wrote:

Grrrrrrrrrr:mad:
Epox make kickass NF4 boards, Better overclockers than ASUS and second to DFI.....
The also use very high quality components and their capacitors are great......
Stop slating Epox everyone!!

Epox hardware makes me cry. I've done 4 PCs using epox boards. 3 NF3 and 1 NF4. They all had serious issues to get set up stably.

My pc is running an NF3 board, it has serious warm boot issues, 2 of the SATA ports aren't frequency locked, it locks if you boot it with a usb mass storage device plugged in and the chipset fan has died. In fact the chipset fan has died on all 3 epox NF3 boards I've used, and they use the same one on their NF4 boards.

That said, the NF3 boards are sweet overclockers and mine is FSB stable up to 315mhz or so. Pity about the huge list of issues that plague them.

Epox FTL. I think I'll be going high end and dropping big dollars on a high end Asus/DFI/Gigabyte. Forget epox for me...

Richard Dower

Yeah...Epox suckx! [snooty mode on]

conzy

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Epox hardware makes me cry. I've done 4 PCs using epox boards. 3 NF3 and 1 NF4. They all had serious issues to get set up stably.

My pc is running an NF3 board, it has serious warm boot issues, 2 of the SATA ports aren't frequency locked, it locks if you boot it with a usb mass storage device plugged in and the chipset fan has died. In fact the chipset fan has died on all 3 epox NF3 boards I've used, and they use the same one on their NF4 boards.

That said, the NF3 boards are sweet overclockers and mine is FSB stable up to 315mhz or so. Pity about the huge list of issues that plague them.

Epox FTL. I think I'll be going high end and dropping big dollars on a high end Asus/DFI/Gigabyte. Forget epox for me...

Ok, not all Epox boards are good but the EP-9NPA+ is the great one with the good caps and it is one of the best S939 overclockers.......

I would rather an Epox than a gigabyte:p

Gilgamesh

the new ASUS Mobo with th 975 chipset has 12phases too.

I have had Gigabyte since their HX series (in the early Pentium days) and never had a problem with them, allthough I have eard catastrophic revies of their latest high end 975X Mobo, so I might consider going to Asus when I switch to conroe

zuma

conzymaher wrote:

Ok, not all Epox boards are good but the EP-9NPA+ is the great one with the good caps and it is one of the best S939 overclockers.......

I would rather an Epox than a gigabyte:p

I have the ULTRA version of this board and sometimes it wont recognise the SATA drives when I start up and that is ANNOYING.

They are GREAT overclockers though:D

Khannie

Richard Dower wrote:

You guys are mental, Gigabyte are a PREMIUM mobo maker and my current board can reach 290FSB with ease!

I plumped for their high end board. Can't get it to post when above .... wait for it....... 210 FSB. Custom CPU cooler, divided ram, divided HT, Vcore upped, etc. etc. HIGHLY UNIMPRESSED. Probably never going with gigabyte again.

awhir

Khannie wrote:

I plumped for their high end board. Can't get it to post when above .... wait for it....... 210 FSB. Custom CPU cooler, divided ram, divided HT, Vcore upped, etc. etc. HIGHLY UNIMPRESSED. Probably never going with gigabyte again.

well all chips are also diffrent and can reach diffrent hights.

Kintarō Hattori

Gigabyte boards were great back in the Skt A days. When they brought out 939 boards we got a batch in the shop here - - - - every single one was faulty. We decided, hmnnn could be just a freak occurance, so we got another batch in a few weeks later of a different model, all faulty again. So we gave up stocking Gigabyte and went with Abit, never had a single problem with them, they had the lowest return rate of any motherboard we stocked.
In the last 6 months or so we decided to give Gigabyte another go, and while they are very feature packed, they just aren't exciting, they don't overclock very well and occasionally throw up some very strange problems, and we still get a few of them faulty. We built a €1500 computer for someone with a board and the flucker refused to output any audio through it's digital connections.

Khannie

awhir wrote:

well all chips are also diffrent and can reach diffrent hights.

When the motherboard is "warm", and I can get a post, the chip happily runs at FSB 240. The problem is getting a post from cold. Honestly 211 and it wont post reliably. 210, happy as larry. It's definitely the motherboard.

DemonOfTheFall

zuma wrote:

I have the ULTRA version of this board and sometimes it wont recognise the SATA drives when I start up and that is ANNOYING.
They are GREAT overclockers though:D

Bingo. On every epox board I've used I've seen issues with getting it to recognize hard drives at boot up.

It can take up to 10 Power on power off cycles for my board to not hang on hard drive detection. Weird thing is it can go a week or two with no issues at all on bootup then have a really bad day where it's nearly impossible to get it to boot.

I've wanted to rip the thing out and smash the crap out of it so many times. I'll be happy when I'm rid of it and have a DFI.

Richard Dower

I'm using a Gigabyte nForce4 Ultra mobo, K8NXP-9 with F9 bios, flawless SATA HDD and RAID 0 setup. In fact i am running TWO SATA optical drives on the nForce controller...zero issues.

To my mind people don't know how to set bios options up properly.

astrofool

These type of arguments will always pop up, same for hard drives, and same for RAM, processors, graphics cards, PSU's.

Anyone who works with computers will have had bad experiences with one brand or another, now on average some brands will have more people saying they're problematic than others, but every brand will have some problems. Do a poll on hard drives and it usually ends up: WD/Hitachi/Seagate/Maxtor, and someone will post saying Maxtor never ever give them problems, and swear by them.

Same goes for motherboards, and as you can see in this thread Richard Dower, alot of people have had problems with Gigabyte, hence won't choose them again, when they've had nothing but positive experiences with another brand, while you may have never had any problems (i've never had a problem with a Gigabyte either, but also never had many Asus/Abit/DFI/MSI problems and use them 90% of the time, building lots of machines).

That is why Q-Tec and to a lesser degress Thermaltake have bad names in PSU market, and what AMD has been up against in the server CPU market for years.

conzy

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Bingo. On every epox board I've used I've seen issues with getting it to recognize hard drives at boot up.

It can take up to 10 Power on power off cycles for my board to not hang on hard drive detection. Weird thing is it can go a week or two with no issues at all on bootup then have a really bad day where it's nearly impossible to get it to boot.

I've wanted to rip the thing out and smash the crap out of it so many times. I'll be happy when I'm rid of it and have a DFI.

Remember that batch of lanparty expert boards that decided 1.83v was the default vcore:D

And when you clear the Bios on some DFI boards it takes days of crazy bios clearing methods to get it to boot again?

and when the Sil3114 sata controller on my DFI NF2 ultra Infinity decided not to detect HDDs, and then just die?............



All motherboards have problems....

The epox is a great board if if you're on a budget and you want a great overclocking board and you dont mind "experimenting":D

Anyway, DFI FTW,I havent had a single problem with this baord and its keeping my 3700 at 3ghz rock stable:cool:

Richard Dower

So the point is, we all have an opinion and people's first hand experience dictate a choice.

I'm just worried y'all slating Gigabyte will affect any future sale of my hardware, tbh.

unklerosco

I still think i have your old S478 gigabyte mobo Rich... Still working away in the GFs pc.. Never gave me any trouble

Jammer

Gigabyte are ok, worlds ahead of ePox imo!

ATi released a press release today claiming their xfire will be optimized for the conroe platform, and will offer the "highest performing PC platform ever."

Interesting to see how they perform in everyday environments!

riptide

Baaaah. I'll just be happy with me IC7-Max 3. Whens 'roe out anyways. I here its July 23rd??

Richard Dower

Gigabyte haters...EAT THIS!

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2770&p=7

Kentsfiled = READY!

"Gigabyte outfitted its P965 motherboard with a 12-phase power design, designed to support Kentsfield. This board has already been tested to work with Kentsfield, although Gigabyte's competitors insist that a 12-phase power design is not necessary for Kentsfield.

You'll notice that all of the capacitors on the motherboard are similar to those around the CPU in that they are not standard electrolytic capacitors filled with liquid. All of the capacitors used on the Gigabyte board use a solid chemical compound designed to better withstand higher temperatures, thus preventing leaking or other capacitor related failures. The more expensive capactiors raise the price of the motherboard by a healhty $20. Gigabyte still only offers a 3-year warranty on this board, despite the technically more reliable capacitors"

Asus lies: "Gigabyte is simply trying out the more expensive caps on this motherboard, if the demand is high enough you may see a similar setup on high end AMD motherboards as well. Gigabyte's competitors insist that the more expensive caps aren't necessary across the motherboard and that this is simply a gimmick" - gimmik?..HAH!

DON'T HATE!

unkel

astrofool wrote:

I reckon he has shares in Gigabyte and Thermaltake

LOL

I wouldn't buy a mobo in a hurry without having read reviews. I have not seen a single review in the last 5 years or so where either a Gigabyte or an Epox motherboard won hands down in its class in terms of major features such as overclocking / stability. I've seen most of them won by Abit, Asus or DFI

I've owned boards by most of the main manufacturers and have been most happy with Asus and Abit, although I got majorly pissed off by Abit a while back when my S939 mobo couldn't handle a winnie (bought in same shop at the same time) without a BIOS upgrade. I didn't have a spare cpu at hand. Very embarrassing episode for Abit...