choice p965 board

[ziddey]

I've been digging through all the threads everywhere about p965 boards and overclockability. I've got the choices narrowed down to the biostar 965pt and the gigabyte s3. I'm looking to obtain about 2.4v to vdimm, and the ability to max my e6400 before hitting motherboard fsb walls. So it looks like 450 needs to be attainable stably, which it looks like either of these boards can do. I like how the s3 can go up to 2.4v in bios, and biostar can easily with non-permanent mod's. I'm assuming that the s3 is using c2 revision by now and new bios has d9 issues worked out, from what I gathered, no? Also, ds3 advertises the "rigid" caps for durability, but are they better in terms of performance/stability?

I'm really liking the lower price of the biostar unit, but it would require me to buy a lpt port to hook up to the pins, as well as parts for the vdimm mod, which would likely bring me up to s3 pricing anyway. I know I know this is a topic that's been more than beaten to death, but the results are always inconclusive, with each board having certain quirks. Any final words of guidance? I figure if I place the order tonight, I should have the board in hand on Tuesday if everything works out right. I really need to be returning this p5l-mx (945g matx).

[ziddey]

eh guess I bit on the ds3

[TaPaKaH]

I would go for either TForce (cuz of no D9 issues) or for P5B Deluxe

[StealthyFish]

I would go for either TForce (cuz of no D9 issues) or for P5B Deluxe

QFT

[T07N]

I would go for Tforce too. DS3 has issues they won't resolve.

[NickS]

P5B Del. I've worked with it and I've come to like it. :)

[ziddey]

Wait a second. I thought from that big gigabyte bios thread that there was a newer bios for the ds3 that resolves most of the d9 issues??

In all honesty, I don't mind the atx connector location of the biostar at all. In fact, I feel like in my setup, the atx plug in the ds3 would block my fan from flowing over the ram as well.

But hmm, biostar eh? Alright, guess you've all sold me then. Time to cancel the order with newegg and swap for the biostar. Thanks for setting me straight.

edit: I've got an e6400 so I don't really need to be pushing that high into fsb. It looks like the ds3 is good into 450, which is probably what I'd end up at anyway. I'm probably looking to move over to e4xxx in a few months anyway unless the outlook changes on things. Still, biostar here we come

Anyone got a link to an lpt header cable?

[ziddey]

For anyone wondering, I got my ds3 from newegg today. It's rev2 :)

[jon5]

I thought you were going with Biostar??!! Is the d9 problem fixed with the rev2 Gigabyte?

[ziddey]

haha I have no idea what happened. I somehow ended up going with the ds3, and so far am not regretting it at all. I haven't been around for the earlier ds3 days / bioses so I can't exactly comment on whether d9 issues are resolved or not. However, I can say that this was what happened to me:

Board posted up a-ok. Immediately, I bumped it up to 400fsb 110pcie 1.375v vcore 2.1v vdimm 1:1 5-5-5-15. Haven't configured anything else yet. Ran memtest for one pass at those settings and it was fine. Installed windows. Running orthos stable right now.

I've got a lot of stuff to do tonight so I probably won't get to real fiddling until tomorrow or later, but so far so good. Real real good out of box experience.

The northbridge heatsink got hot as hell so I sat a 120mm over it for the time being to flow air across nb and ram. Now it's cool to the touch.

As for cpu, I hadn't ever overclocked it before. I've made attempts with my old 945g board but due to the terrible nature of that board, I never got anywhere.

This board comes with f7 bios.

I'm just currently really really irritated about the ihs on my e6400. Back when I last installed it, I used a TON of as5 on both the ihs and bottom of the hsf. This time I figured I'd do it right. As a result of that, I was seeing idle at 65 and load at 79. Yikes! After taking it off, I noticed the only contact was a ring around the edges of the stock hsf. So I put literally around 2mm of as5 evenly in the middle of both the hsf and ihs. Now I'm idling around 51 and loading at 65-68. Temps are taken with coretemp. Still kind of ridiculous (and hsf still staying cool to the touch) but good enough for the time being. Time to order a better hsf now that I have a motherboard capable of doing work. Just wonder if I should lap the ihs or not. Kind of want to keep the warranty, but cpu's don't break. Ehh

[dnottis]

The DS3 still has a problem that resets the OC on a cold boot. Annoying.