A quick 1st look: GA-G33M-DS2R, mATX P35 mobo (pic heavy)

[__Miguel_]

I just had a go trying max FSB with my board, I can boot and stable @515MHz with onboard graphics...all on stock volts...and it's my crappy RAM that is stopping me.

I do run only one stick in single channle though, but anyway...amazing!

Dude, stable at 510MHz with onboard graphics and on stock voltages? JESUS!

That's one hell of a motherboard... Do try dual channel RAM, please, to check if it's just single-channel derived

Btw, care to bench both before and after the OC, just to see how much the IGP benefits from the increased memory speed? I'm guessing OC doesn't alter the core speed, though, and that in fact would explain the stability...

Cheers.

Miguel

[Clint]

Dude, stable at 510MHz with onboard graphics and on stock voltages? JESUS!

That's one hell of a motherboard... Do try dual channel RAM, please, to check if it's just single-channel derived

Btw, care to bench both before and after the OC, just to see how much the IGP benefits from the increased memory speed? I'm guessing OC doesn't alter the core speed, though, and that in fact would explain the stability...

Cheers.

Miguel

Yup, got it from the first shipment that was out...before releasedate even

I sold my Mushkin sticks that could do 1160Mhz on this board, now I have a single crappy Corsair that won't give me more than 1020Mhz.
I'm waiting for a RMA replacement of my 2x2GB kit, it won't even OC that far I guess...
I got a feeling it might even be a few more MHz in the board, and it is still on stock volts so it surely looks promising

I'm almost considering buying a couple of good Crucial 8500 just to max the board..

I can do some benches though with OC on the IGP and whatnot while I'm at it...

[__Miguel_]

Btw, what kind of cooling are you using?

I'm liking this board more and more each day. I think I'll wait a little more and see how the G35 ones fare, but I'm still SOOOO tempted to buy one of these...

Btw, for everyday use - and for a casual gamer -, what would you guys say the performance hit is of not using 1:1 memory timings, and 4:5 (lowest one this board seems to handle on non-1333 or 1066@F4a CPUs) in particular?

Also, how much could I expect to get from a couple of Team Elite 1GB DDR2-800 sticks?

Cheers.

Miguel


P.S.: Oh, I almost forgot. Congrats on the great OC, Clint.

[Clint]

Btw, what kind of cooling are you using?

I'm liking this board more and more each day. I think I'll wait a little more and see how the G35 ones fare, but I'm still SOOOO tempted to buy one of these...

Btw, for everyday use - and for a casual gamer -, what would you guys say the performance hit is of not using 1:1 memory timings, and 4:5 (lowest one this board seems to handle on non-1333 or 1066@F4a CPUs) in particular?

Also, how much could I expect to get from a couple of Team Elite 1GB DDR2-800 sticks?

Cheers.

Miguel


P.S.: Oh, I almost forgot. Congrats on the great OC, Clint.

Thanks!
I will do some benches and some screenshots tomorrow.

Cooling on CPU is a Scythe Minininja with two 92x92x15 Yate-Loon fans in push pull config, and on northbridge the Noctua NC-U6 cooler.
It's a perfect fit, only a millimeter between them.

As for memory, this board is amazingly kind towards memory...my Mushkin DDR2 800 cheapo sticks did 1160Mhz on 1.9 volts...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820146118
..and with this really cheap Corsair DDR2 800 stick I got 1030Mhz...still on stock volts @ 1.9volts...and not even warm do they get.

Best board I ever used, no question.

Normally I don't care much on a few more MHz as for the performance gain, but more for the bigger selection of CPU's (low multipliers) you can use with a good setup

[Clint]

Ok, as promised a few benches.

First one @ stock 266Mhz bus: (Both bus/chipset undervolted -0.15v)


Next one I tried directly @ 500MHz bus/chipset still undervolted -0.15v :


Finally I raised the voltage on the Ram up to 2.1v and bus/chipset + 0.1v:


520MHz is not too shabby me thinks..

It's quite obvious that the higher bus speed helps the IGP a lot

..gonna see later what gives when plugging in two faster modules, memory is on the edge now...still more in this awesome board

[BulldogPO]

Hmm, now I´m driving my HTPC with this mobo at 7x400 with Xeon X3210, gotta try soon if I could get it higher
Clint: Could you take photos of your bios settings?

[__Miguel_]

Very interesting results indeed. Still, that GMA3000 doesn't fly... lol

I'm only sad with the lack of divisors... I'd like to see an E4300 going to 333MHz without OC RAM (best ones I've got are a pair of Team Elite DDR2-800 1GB sticks...). Well, I'll probably settle for E4300@266MHz, since I'm using a mATX case with not too much space for coolers (without MAJOR mods, which I don't want to do), and I want silence before performance.

Btw, do you think an E4300 can hit 266MHz @stock?

Again, thank you for your experiments, Clint. Great machine you've got there!

Cheers.

Miguel

[nullface]

GMA3000? You mean X3100 right?

and to something totaly different, any news about GA-G35M DS2R

[Clint]

Hmm, now I´m driving my HTPC with this mobo at 7x400 with Xeon X3210, gotta try soon if I could get it higher
Clint: Could you take photos of your bios settings?

No working camer, butI can scribble down the key settings for that 500MHz clock for ya as soon as I have to reboot this thing

Very interesting results indeed. Still, that GMA3000 doesn't fly... lol

I'm only sad with the lack of divisors... I'd like to see an E4300 going to 333MHz without OC RAM (best ones I've got are a pair of Team Elite DDR2-800 1GB sticks...). Well, I'll probably settle for E4300@266MHz, since I'm using a mATX case with not too much space for coolers (without MAJOR mods, which I don't want to do), and I want silence before performance.

Btw, do you think an E4300 can hit 266MHz @stock?

Again, thank you for your experiments, Clint. Great machine you've got there!

Cheers.

Miguel

Well, my E4400 did 3.28Ghz on a 10 multi, did hit a fsb wall there though...dunno if related to CPU or board, sold it and bought this E6600 for the money

[Clint]

GMA3000? You mean X3100 right?

and to something totaly different, any news about GA-G35M DS2R

Well, I doubt it will perform much better than tthe GA-G33M-DS2R board, only thing is the DX10 IGP...but who whants DX10 for on board graphics??

..it's not that you can play games on it..

Also I believe it could be a DDR3 board?, and the DDR2 prices is so pleasantly low now in comparison so I'll stick with DDR2 for at least a good bit into next year

[__Miguel_]

GMA3000? You mean X3100 right?

and to something totaly different, any news about GA-G35M DS2R

Actually, neither one, I messed up . The GMA3000 was used on de Q96x era, and the X3100 is actually a DX10 part, only available for the GM695 and GL960 chipsets (for mobile CPUs). The G31, Q33, G33 and Q35 northbridges use the GMA3100, a GMA3000-derived IGP (but actually slower... ). The "X" GMA parts are DX9.0c or DX10 (driver-dependant but hardware-capable, I'm still waiting for full DX9.0c support on my laptop on Vista, let alone DX10...) parts, and have HD decoding capabilities, which the "standard" non-X parts don't have.

As for the good news, I'd rather hear about the GA-G35M-DS3R board, considering the lack of OC support from Gigabyte to the BIOS of the GA-G33M-DS2R... The "3" and up boards are actually OC-oriented, only differing on the available OC options in the BIOS (well, some of them also have other extras, but that's not the point here), so we should be much better than with a "2" board...

I'm already licking the P5E-VM HDMI from Asus, though. It seems very promising, and has all the right features...

Well, my E4400 did 3.28Ghz on a 10 multi, did hit a fsb wall there though...dunno if related to CPU or board, sold it and bought this E6600 for the money

You hit a wall at 328MHz FSB on an E4400 with that board? What kind of RAM did you use? I'm liking this board more and more by the minute...

Also, after reading the whole thread again, it seems the lowest strap available for 800MHz CPUs is the 200:333 (FSBDR). It is actually a chipset limitation, it seems the new 3x-series simply don't work with memory slower than 667MHz. That explains why 1:1 on 200MHz CPUs isn't available, and "2.66x" doesn't work all that well. Shame is that Gigabyte doesn't make more memory dividers available as soon as the new straps are reached (meaning 266:333 would become available when OCing a 800MHz CPU to 266MHz...), like Asus and other brands do...

Considering what I just said, OC'ing a 200MHz CPU to 266MHz would mean my Team Elite memory would only need to run at 900MHz MAX... I never tried it, but I think squeezing 100MHz more from 800MHz sticks shouldn't be all that hard, right?

Cheers.

Miguel

[oohms]

This board is pretty awesome... A bit of a battle to reach 400 fsb on my quad but i've only spent like 5 minutes trying to overclock it...

It does badly need the vdroop mod and additional mosfet cooling though.

[Clint]

..I'm already licking the P5E-VM HDMI from Asus, though. It seems very promising, and has all the right features...

You hit a wall at 328MHz FSB on an E4400 with that board? What kind of RAM did you use? I'm liking this board more and more by the minute...

Also, after reading the whole thread again, it seems the lowest strap available for 800MHz CPUs is the 200:333 (FSBDR). It is actually a chipset limitation, it seems the new 3x-series simply don't work with memory slower than 667MHz. That explains why 1:1 on 200MHz CPUs isn't available, and "2.66x" doesn't work all that well. Shame is that Gigabyte doesn't make more memory dividers available as soon as the new straps are reached (meaning 266:333 would become available when OCing a 800MHz CPU to 266MHz...), like Asus and other brands do...

Considering what I just said, OC'ing a 200MHz CPU to 266MHz would mean my Team Elite memory would only need to run at 900MHz MAX... I never tried it, but I think squeezing 100MHz more from 800MHz sticks shouldn't be all that hard, right?

Cheers.

Miguel

Yes, I have my eyes on the asus board as well...the vdroop is terrible on the Gigabyte boards...and Asus has really thrown in all goodies in bios you could wish, even the vdroop damper
2 things I don't like though, lack of that open 4x pci-e slot that gigabyte has (Crossfire on a mAtx is cool) and that 4 stories high usb rack that hinders my special cooling solution I got cooking..

As for your memory, they will almost certainly do 1000+ MHz on this board/chipset

[__Miguel_]

2 things I don't like though, lack of that open 4x pci-e slot that gigabyte has (Crossfire on a mAtx is cool)

With the kind of layout the board has, it is rather difficult to offer a 4x slot, open or not... The G35+ICH9(R) combo only has 6 PCI-E lanes on the Southbridge. Considering that the JMicron controller takes one of those lanes, the LAN controller takes another one (stupidly, IMO, since the ICH9 southbridges have an integrated and dedicated LAN Intel MAC, only missing the Intel controller...) and Asus wants to have two small PCI-E connectors, then it's impossible to have a 4x slot, open or not.

A 2x slot would be possible, but there are not that many 2x cards out there. A 4x slot would imply two PCI slots OR one unusable PCI-E slot, which is like shooting your own foot on a mainstream mATX board... Not to mention that, with that slot configuration, you would really have to bend your CF bridges... hehehe

The REALLY bad things about that board, for now, are the 883 Realtek codec (I mean, even EVERY new ASRock mobo comes with the 888 - with better sound specs -, and 889 is already available - and actually needed for Audio over HDMI...), the lack of use of an Intel LAN PHY (which has dedicated link already built into the Southbridge...), which leads to the lack of a "proper" PCI-E 4x open-ended slot and, since I'm being picky, the lack of an 8-pin CPU power connector

and that 4 stories high usb rack that hinders my special cooling solution I got cooking..

Hmmm, I wonder what that is... Though I have some ideas... hehe

As for your memory, they will almost certainly do 1000+ MHz on this board/chipset

That's good to know Thanks!

Cheers.

Miguel

[nullface]

Actually, neither one, I messed up . The GMA3000 was used on de Q96x era, and the X3100 is actually a DX10 part, only available for the GM695 and GL960 chipsets (for mobile CPUs). The G31, Q33, G33 and Q35 northbridges use the GMA3100, a GMA3000-derived IGP (but actually slower... ). The "X" GMA parts are DX9.0c or DX10 (driver-dependant but hardware-capable, I'm still waiting for full DX9.0c support on my laptop on Vista, let alone DX10...) parts, and have HD decoding capabilities, which the "standard" non-X parts don't have.

As for the good news, I'd rather hear about the GA-G35M-DS3R board, considering the lack of OC support from Gigabyte to the BIOS of the GA-G33M-DS2R... The "3" and up boards are actually OC-oriented, only differing on the available OC options in the BIOS (well, some of them also have other extras, but that's not the point here), so we should be much better than with a "2" board...

I'm already licking the P5E-VM HDMI from Asus, though. It seems very promising, and has all the right features...

You hit a wall at 328MHz FSB on an E4400 with that board? What kind of RAM did you use? I'm liking this board more and more by the minute...

Also, after reading the whole thread again, it seems the lowest strap available for 800MHz CPUs is the 200:333 (FSBDR). It is actually a chipset limitation, it seems the new 3x-series simply don't work with memory slower than 667MHz. That explains why 1:1 on 200MHz CPUs isn't available, and "2.66x" doesn't work all that well. Shame is that Gigabyte doesn't make more memory dividers available as soon as the new straps are reached (meaning 266:333 would become available when OCing a 800MHz CPU to 266MHz...), like Asus and other brands do...

Considering what I just said, OC'ing a 200MHz CPU to 266MHz would mean my Team Elite memory would only need to run at 900MHz MAX... I never tried it, but I think squeezing 100MHz more from 800MHz sticks shouldn't be all that hard, right?

Cheers.

Miguel

1 X3100 is not DX10, X3500 is.
2 GA-G35M-DS3R is ATX not mATX

Can someone with the board make a quick roundup, about the board?

[__Miguel_]

1 X3100 is not DX10, X3500 is.
2 GA-G35M-DS3R is ATX not mATX

1) X3100 IS a DX10 part. Please check your sources. Here. It can't get more official than that. X3100, X3500 and the future X4500 (on the G45 chipset) are all DX10-capable. Problem is, their drivers only let them work on DX9 mode (and not fully, for that matter...) for now.

2) Gigabyte naming convention for Intel chipsets is as follows:
GA - Gigabyte
G35 - indicates the chipset, and sometimes also the socket, in this case the G35 chipset
M - ALWAYS indicates a mATX part
D - indicates that is part of the "Ultra Durable" series
S - has SATA ports (this has become redundant since the mid-478 era; or it's the only symbol I don't know what means)
2~6 - indicates the level of "OC-friendly" features (and sometimes other features as well, like a more advanced IHS or improved sound codec) present on the BIOS
R - indicates the presence of a ICHxR Southbridge

So, though in fact the GA-G35M-DS3R does NOT exist (Gigabyte doesn't have G35 boards yet), and I don't know if it will ever exist, if it does come out, I'm sure it will be a mATX OC-friendly board.

Cheers.

Miguel

[nullface]

Nice and thanks.

Cant deside if i should just by the GA-G33M DS2R and E2140, and the later on get a Penryn to run on the G33M DS2R, or if i should wait and see what comes along.

I allready have 2GB Ballistix, but my NF-M2 nView died and im not gona get it back, so im stuck on my old 3700+ rig

What to do?

[__Miguel_]

For 800MHz CPUs, and since this board can't be tricked with BSEL mods, you need some SERIOUS memory to get a decent OC out of it. But if you go to a 1333MHz CPU later on, you'll have less problems, since 1:1 is available in the BIOS for those CPUs.

You can also check if the P5K-VM suits you.

Or you can wait. But you can ALWAYS wait on IT components, and something better or more interesting will always come along... It is you who have to decide when to stop waiting.

I do have to tell you, though, that the LGA775 socket will die sometime next year/early 2009, when Nehalem hits all the markets. It's a different architecture, and not backwards compatible. Interesting to see how much time the 775 socket lasted... Much more than any other I've known, despite the countless VRM changes since the first 775 P4s...

Cheers.

Miguel

[nullface]

I know they change to LGA1366, the only concerne i have is that the GA-G33M DS2R will get a bigger brother few weeks after i buy it, becours it is a rather old board now.

But if no other mATX boards for OC'ing are comming up then ill just go for it and the G33/P35, and get a penryn later on.

BTW; isent there a pin-mod for E2140 like 800 -> 1066 or 800 -> 1333, or is it just the same as for E4X00 series?

[BulldogPO]

Heh, I did get 966pts from 3DMark05 with that integrated X3000
http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=660502

And 2340pts from 3DMark03:
http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=660505

8656pts from 3DMark2001SE:
http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=660510

[__Miguel_]

I know they change to LGA1366, the only concerne i have is that the GA-G33M DS2R will get a bigger brother few weeks after i buy it, becours it is a rather old board now.

But if no other mATX boards for OC'ing are comming up then ill just go for it and the G33/P35, and get a penryn later on.

BTW; isent there a pin-mod for E2140 like 800 -> 1066 or 800 -> 1333, or is it just the same as for E4X00 series?

Hmmm... I find it odd when someone says a 6-month old design (not yet, even, because the first reports were right after lauch) is already "rather old"... That's about the time the board manufacturers take to optimize its performance...

As for the BSEL mod, from what I've read, all 800MHz CPUs (at least C2D-based) have the same layout, so the BSEL mod for 800 -> 1066 -> 1333 is the same (or should be). But be warned: this board does not allow BSEL mods (won't POST), and the lack of memory ratios for sub-1066MHz CPUs makes it hard to OC them without VERY FAST RAM.

Cheers.

Miguel

[nullface]

You sure it wont post with a pin-moddet CPU?

Got a li k or something to confirm?

[__Miguel_]

Here, here, here and here.

Not "real" links, but at least it's what has been reported so far (and in this thread).

Cheers.

Miguel

[nullface]

Here, here, here and here.

Not "real" links, but at least it's what has been reported so far (and in this thread).

Cheers.

Miguel

Argh F**K, just hoped to get a nice little super budget Conroe 1333 setup wich could be used real nice for future Penryn.

[BulldogPO]

BTW, are newer bioses any good? I´m still using that old F4a.