Quote Originally Posted by subtle View Post
Is this really the consensus? Does everyone agree with this?

I ask because I was on the verge of buying this board just now, however I've never dabbled in overclocking before. I really like the layout and appearance of this board, but these comments from jcool(who seems experienced and sounds as though he knows what he's talking about) have me worried that I may be making the wrong choice.

Would this board really not be as stable as say the base P6T in stock form or with a mild overclock? I plan to learn how to overclock properly, ideally over the next few weeks, but am worried that this board may be too much for a novice like me to handle right now. I'm really not too concerned with hitting crazy numbers though. A 3.6 or 3.8 would be fine with me. If that's the case should I really aim for the Asus board and would the DFI work fine as well?
Well first off, let me say I might have come on a bit too strong here, and I wasn't in the best of moods while posting this

Still, OCing DFI mobos will never be as easy as, say, Asus or Gigabyte, but sometimes you can gain that little extra on DFIs that you don't get elsewhere - IF you are prepared to tweak for some time (1 week min for max stable CPU/mem/etc clocks I'd say).

If you just want something that works and OCs great without a hassle, I can highly recommend the Gigabytes. I had 2 EX58-Extreme for customer builds so far, all you need to do even with 12GB of ram is set 5-6 settings in bios and it just works at 200 BCLK, stable as a rock. Haven't pushed these above a 200 BCLK due to lack of time, but they'd probably do more as well.

Now as to the x58 DFI, I am still waiting on my new evap head and CPU to arrive, so I can't really tell how easy/difficult it will be to OC it. According to the bios shots I have seen and to eva2000's postings I gather it's easier than it was on the X38/X48/P45 mobos (my X38 has 100-150 settings for ram tweaking alone )