Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 or Asus P5B Deluxe

[x3ro]

I think i've narrowed it down to these two:

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3

or

Asus P5B Deluxe

As far as the DS3 is concerned... Newegg has a DS3 and a DS3 rev. 1.3.... Which of those is the better?

Any help is appreciated!

 

[Terabyte]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat too sorta. For the DS3, you want rev 3.3, the newest one. What are the other options for good P965 chipset motherboards with good overclocking abilities?

 

[vailr]

The current ICH8 and ICH8R based boards still have some problems getting IDE drives to work, getting AHCI mode to work, and with certain memory sticks, failing to boot.
There's soon (about 4 to 6 weeks) to be an Intel Bearlake ICH9R chipset released.
Look for Gigabyte models:
GA-P35-DS3 and GA-P35T-DS3
http://www.computerbase.de/bild/news/16399/15/
More photos of Abit & Foxconn Bearlake boards:
http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardwar...bearlake-boards_abit_foxconn_gigabyte/
Asus and MSI boards:
http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardwar...e/2007/maerz/bearlake-boards_asus_msi/
Of these, only the Abit boards were smart enough to get rid of the legacy parallel port.

 

[Terabyte]

Grrrr......stupid technology changes too fast. Luckily, I will have only a SATA HDD and DVDRW. Which motherboards (with good oc ability) would you recommend now? The DS3 seems pretty popular.

 

[Cheex]

I have the DS3 3.3 and look at my rig in my sig. I think my memory is what is holding my OC back now. Everything about the board is rock solid.

I might be biased (never used an ASUS mobo), so I'll leave that to your judgment but my recommendation is that the DS3 3.3 is VERY GOOD.

 

[FreedomGUNDAM]

I decided to get the Gigabyte DS3 motherboard.

 

[brencat]

What are the other options for good P965 chipset motherboards with good overclocking abilities?

If you are not a novice, I'd also consider the Abit Quad GT and the new DFI Dark P965-S. Both have solid hardware and overclock really well but have some quirks - particularly the Abit. The DFI just came out and seems pretty fully featured for ~ $140. However, like most DFIs, there are tons of Bios options to navigate through...which can be frustrating to deal with if you are a beginner. Like vailr said...you could always wait a little longer for P35 too.

 

[x3ro]

I personally plan to build before 4-6 weeks out.

What is AHCI? I plan on using only sata hard drives and sata optical drives...

 

[vailr]

What is AHCI?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHCI

The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a hardware mechanism that allows software to communicate with Serial ATA devices such as host bus adapters which are designed to offer features not offered by Parallel ATA controllers besides higher speeds, such as hot-plugging and native command queuing. The specification details a system memory structure for computer hardware vendors in order to transfer data between system memory and the device.

AHCI is fully supported in the Linux operating system from kernel 2.6.19. Windows XP with Service Pack 2 supports AHCI, but many experience problems enabling it.

[edit] Common problems switching to AHCI under Windows

* Enabling AHCI in a system BIOS will spawn a 0x7B BSoD STOP error on installations of Windows XP where AHCI/RAID drivers for that system's chipset are not installed. Switching to AHCI requires installing new drivers before changing BIOS settings. Some later versions of Windows XP Service Pack 2 include limited AHCI/SATA support
* When attempting to install Microsoft Windows XP or a previous version on an AHCI-enabled system will cause the setup to fail with the error message "set up could not detect hard disk drive...". This problem can only be corrected by using a floppy disk with the appropriate drivers or by slipstreaming the appropriate drivers into the Windows XP installation CD.
* Enabling AHCI in a system BIOS with Windows Vista already installed will result in a BSoD if SATA has been running in IDE mode during Vista's installation. Before enabling AHCI in the BIOS, users must first follow the instructions found at Microsoft Knowledge Base article 922976
* Enabling AHCI or receiving a system with AHCI enable, will cause EPHD (Encryption Plus Hard Drive from PC Guardian) to error out when attemption to Hibernate out of Windows OS (such as Windows XP). The major aspect of this issue is that it can NOT be changed without reimaging/re-installing the entire system. There may be a root level fix not apparant on new (Circa April 2007) HP Compaq NC8430 laptops.

Microsoft Knowledge Base article 922976
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

 

[x3ro]

Bump