Anyone have a Gigabyte ga-p35-ds3l?

d3phext

Junior Member
Feb 1, 2008
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Hello forum, I've been reading about nothing but overclocking on this forum and others for about eight hours now, and tweaking as I go, so I'll probably have a few other questions later, but a quick one for now to get me over a little hump.

I'm running 2x 1gb Crucial Ballistix PC8500 (1066) and an e6750, and this motherboard's FSB and memory standard seem to beg for this board. The standstill I've come to right now is that cpu-z is fudging my readings by reading the FSB multiplier at 6. All I've read indicates this is an affect of SpeedStepping, that it will bump up to 8x and "read right" when the processor is under load. And that's fine, I may want it later, but not right now. I can't figure out how to turn it (or its equivalent) off in the bios, and it's making my ratio read 5:8 at the stock timings of 5-5-5-15.

If anyone has this motherboard and knows how to set the bios for an accurate cpu-z reading, please reply! Any other advice or questions appreciated, but I'll be glad to save it for another thread.
 

DSF

Diamond Member
Oct 6, 2007
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Well, if you just want to confirm that your CPU will go up to its 8x multiplier under load, then run Prime95 in the background and take a look at CPU-z again.

If you want to turn the features off, they should be named "C1E Enhanced Halt State" and "EIST" or something similar. I have a P35-DS3L, and they're in the second or third menu down I believe. I don't feel like rebooting my PC just to check, but next time I boot up I'll try to remember to look for you. They shouldn't be hard to find though, if you just look for C1E and EIST.
 

d3phext

Junior Member
Feb 1, 2008
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Oh, thanks a lot. They were there in advanced bios settings.

Here's another one for owners of this board: what exactly is "performance enhance" [standard - turbo - extreme] actually doing?
And don't say "rtfm" - I've not only read it, I've taken a highlighter to it. Here's all the help it gives: (gotta turn your head sideways, sorry) (two pics)

:p
 

d3phext

Junior Member
Feb 1, 2008
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I've read most of the second link via some other thread. I'll have a look at the first. I'm having the most problems because these reviewers are all using 800 mhz ram, the numbers difference gets me every time, especially when multipliers enter the mix.

Right now I have the ram running 1:1 at its native timings, but, and it's a big 'but', it's running at 750 mhz to do so. That means my CPU multiplier is 375x8 for 3 ghz, and I really don't want to go any higher than 3.2 for a while. 2 as a ram multiplier seems to be preached as gospel - I've played with the multipliers without saving changes and got pretty close to where I want to be with a DRAM multiplier of 4, but is applying that a bad idea? 4 as a multiplier lets me put my bus speed at a range I'm much more comfortable with. Or should I give up on getting 1:1?
 

PolymerTim

Senior member
Apr 29, 2002
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Anandtech had an excellent overview of this recently as users are getting much better control over this particular feature in some of the new X48 boards coming out. I recommend reading at least pages 3 and 6. Essentially, the performance setting allows you to indirectly affect the MCH Read Delay (tRD). Assuming your MCH can handle it (often requires increased voltage to MCH) this can significantly reduce your memory latency. Now how this memory latency reduction affects your real world applications seems to be a very hotly debated topic.

Anandtech has been coming out with some really insightful gems lately, but they always seem to be buried in a product review. If you don't read most of the articles as they come out you would probably miss it. And even if you do read them, it can be hard to remember which review it was in and the search function on the main page is awful.
 

PolymerTim

Senior member
Apr 29, 2002
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Originally posted by: d3phext
Wrong thread. I think. :)

*bump*

Not the wrong thread, just more general info. If I understand correctly, the "Performance Enhance" you are asking about is specifically referred to on page 3 as "Common Performance Level". Check about half way down. Yes, this article is about an X48 board (as I specifically stated), but (as I also specifically stated) Anandtech has a tendency to mix general tech info into specific product reviews. So even though this particular review is about an X48 board, if you read it carefully, you will see that it explains what "Performance Enhance" you are asking about does and how this feature has evolved going from the P35/X38 boards to the X48 boards. In fact between 1/3 and 1/2 of the article is directly related to the evolution of the "Performance Level". This is what I meant by "really insightful gems buried in product reviews". Anandtech has been doing this a lot lately such as the review on the QX9650 with two lengthy pages going into great depth on the commonly misunderstood Vdroop problem/feature. I really think these should be separated out of the product reviews so they are easier to find.