Mobo advice for a stable build

oscar6

Member
Dec 23, 2004
122
0
0
Proposed build:
Gaming PC, + multimedia + Home theater box
C2D e6750, PC2 6400 (1GB x4), ATI X1950XT 256

+ mobo (<$150, Onboard audio, PCI-e, no SLI needed, no onboard video needed)

I am looking for something very stable and reliable. I am thinking either a P35 or 965P board. I have read many reviews and see multiple issues so I have trouble making a good descision. I have been looking at the GIGABYTE 965P-DS3 for some time but about 20% of people according to Newegg reviews seem to have major issues. I've also read about issues with the Gigabyte P35 boards here on AT.

The Mobo's I've been looking at the most, not necessarily the right choices, include the following.
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3P
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R

I wouldn't mind going with another manufacture. ASUS. Intel. DFI. Etc.

Gigabyte P965
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...name=Intel+P965+Series

Gigabyte P35
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...&name=Intel+P35+series

ASUS P965
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...80+107171850&name=ASUS

ASUS P35
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...&name=Intel+P35+series

DFI P965
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...name=Intel+P965+Series

Intel P965
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...name=Intel+P965+Series

Intel P35
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...&name=Intel+P35+series


I just want Stable and Reliable. I may do some mild OCing in the future but based on previous PC usage patterns, this would never happen and I would just end up rebuilding in the distant future.

If you have a particular recommendation, please include BIOS version and reasons as well. I really appreciate the expertise on the AT boards.

Thanks all.

-O6

 

Miramonti

Lifer
Aug 26, 2000
28,651
100
91
I was looking for a reliable high quality board with the fewest installation/configuration/compatability problems (since I use it 100% for work), so I went with an Abit p35-pro board. To be totally honest, I've never had a better experience putting the computer together, which I did yesterday.

It was UNBELIEVABLY seemless, works great with my 4gb pc2-8500 crucial ballistix ram, my sata dvd drive, and my ide hdd's...didn't have to update the bios and used the cd that came in the box to install drivers and utilities.

I didn't even have a problem with the 81 winXp security updates installed all at once. :confused:

Also I brainlessly overclocked my e6850 from 3ghz to a very stable 3.8 and plan to go to 4ghz once I figure out more what I'm doing and have more time to do it. :eek:

People don't talk about the abit p35 boards here much, but they are missing the boat imo because they see that gigabyte wins a lot of benchmarks over asus and abit, altho its very fractional on almost all counts and has been totally worth going with Abit to have experienced no issues.

The cons for these abit boards...some don't like the jmicron ide controller (I don't know why tho), the firewire is slow (hopefully abit will fix it thru the bios) and the midrange ip35 board (non-pro) and the economy ip35-e board have a double boot issue that adds 15 seconds to the cold boot time. (There are a couple abit p35 thread that have more thorough user experiences tho.)
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Abit has a problem with their trackrecord of BIOS updates where Asus totally wins. Asus has 1T command rate incorporated into the P5K, while Abit only has it in a beta form. Their last major board only had 2 official BIOS releases. Thus alot of people tend to shy away from them. Also for the record the Ip35-Pro has some issues with the heatpipe cooler. It sometimes come without seating properly on the northbridge. Some users have had to re seat it and actually bend the heatpipes to make it sit flat.

Overall though all the boards are similar.

On the Jmicron IDE controller...if you are burning a DVD or CD while trying to do something else the CPU is hogged up and the system lags.

If you want stable get the Intel Badaxe 975x board. Or any board with a few bios revisions available will help iron out things.
 

bryanW1995

Lifer
May 22, 2007
11,144
32
91
For $150, it would be tough to go wrong with the p35 ds3p. it is just like the ds3r but has esata and 1394.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: bryanW1995
For $150, it would be tough to go wrong with the p35 ds3p. it is just like the ds3r but has esata and 1394.

yeah but it shares the same issues as the DS3R
 

Miramonti

Lifer
Aug 26, 2000
28,651
100
91
Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Abit has a problem with their trackrecord of BIOS updates where Asus totally wins. Asus has 1T command rate incorporated into the P5K, while Abit only has it in a beta form. Their last major board only had 2 official BIOS releases. Thus alot of people tend to shy away from them. Also for the record the Ip35-Pro has some issues with the heatpipe cooler. It sometimes come without seating properly on the northbridge. Some users have had to re seat it and actually bend the heatpipes to make it sit flat.

Overall though all the boards are similar.

On the Jmicron IDE controller...if you are burning a DVD or CD while trying to do something else the CPU is hogged up and the system lags.

If you want stable get the Intel Badaxe 975x board. Or any board with a few bios revisions available will help iron out things.

I'm not going to loose sleep over a lack of 1t setting, nor taking the heatpipe cooler off and using my own thermal paste, and reseating it. Mine weren't bent, but in either case, abit doesn't have the heat issues that asus has, even w/o the heatpipes. The chips run very cool even with very high fsb settings. Reg. the Jmicron controller, sounds good I'll watch that, altho personally I won't be affected much because I will be using this for work and it won't involve burning discs etc.

That said, why don't you get your Asus board first, and then you'll have a bit more first hand experience to say you had no issues and you'd recommend it to others. :p;)
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: jjsole
Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Abit has a problem with their trackrecord of BIOS updates where Asus totally wins. Asus has 1T command rate incorporated into the P5K, while Abit only has it in a beta form. Their last major board only had 2 official BIOS releases. Thus alot of people tend to shy away from them. Also for the record the Ip35-Pro has some issues with the heatpipe cooler. It sometimes come without seating properly on the northbridge. Some users have had to re seat it and actually bend the heatpipes to make it sit flat.

Overall though all the boards are similar.

On the Jmicron IDE controller...if you are burning a DVD or CD while trying to do something else the CPU is hogged up and the system lags.

If you want stable get the Intel Badaxe 975x board. Or any board with a few bios revisions available will help iron out things.

I'm not going to loose sleep over a lack of 1t setting, nor taking the heatpipe cooler off and using my own thermal paste, and reseating it. Mine weren't bent, but in either case, abit doesn't have the heat issues that asus has, even w/o the heatpipes. The chips run very cool even with very high fsb settings. Reg. the Jmicron controller, sounds good I'll watch that, altho personally I won't be affected much because I will be using this for work and it won't involve burning discs etc.

That said, why don't you get your Asus board first, and then you'll have a bit more first hand experience to say you had no issues and you'd recommend it to others. :p;)

Because I've read over 200,000 pages of posts the past week detailing every issue and every quirk of every p35 board out there. I'm just explaining what I've read about to everyone here.

1) you should never have to remove the cooling solution and reseat it

2) I haven't seen much in the way of heat issues from any board with a heatpipe cooler except the abit with poorly seated ones.


 

postmortemIA

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2006
7,721
40
91
I have had DP35DP by intel for a month now - it hasn't crashed even once. Super stable. IMO if you want assured stability go for intel. I see you already have fast CPU, so no need for o/cing.

Also DP35DP is legacy free, so only get it if you don't have PS/2 mouse or keyboard.

And DP35DP comes with best LAN controller ( intel gigabit) and arguably better sound solution (SigmaTel vs RealTek in rest)
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: postmortemIA
I have had DP35DP by intel for a month now - it hasn't crashed even once. Super stable. IMO if you want assured stability go for intel. I see you already have fast CPU, so no need for o/cing.

Also DP35DP is legacy free, so only get it if you don't have PS/2 mouse or keyboard.

And DP35DP comes with best LAN controller ( intel gigabit) and arguably better sound solution (SigmaTel vs RealTek in rest)

QFT, if you aren't going to overclock this is the best option.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: Fayd
i just bought an MSI p35 Neo2-FR :p

we'll see if it's stable :)

I haven't seem many people with this board. Mostly because the rediculous heatpipe system is in the way if you try to install a TR 120 or TT 120 CPU cooler.
 

Miramonti

Lifer
Aug 26, 2000
28,651
100
91
Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Originally posted by: jjsole
Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Abit has a problem with their trackrecord of BIOS updates where Asus totally wins. Asus has 1T command rate incorporated into the P5K, while Abit only has it in a beta form. Their last major board only had 2 official BIOS releases. Thus alot of people tend to shy away from them. Also for the record the Ip35-Pro has some issues with the heatpipe cooler. It sometimes come without seating properly on the northbridge. Some users have had to re seat it and actually bend the heatpipes to make it sit flat.

Overall though all the boards are similar.

On the Jmicron IDE controller...if you are burning a DVD or CD while trying to do something else the CPU is hogged up and the system lags.

If you want stable get the Intel Badaxe 975x board. Or any board with a few bios revisions available will help iron out things.

I'm not going to loose sleep over a lack of 1t setting, nor taking the heatpipe cooler off and using my own thermal paste, and reseating it. Mine weren't bent, but in either case, abit doesn't have the heat issues that asus has, even w/o the heatpipes. The chips run very cool even with very high fsb settings. Reg. the Jmicron controller, sounds good I'll watch that, altho personally I won't be affected much because I will be using this for work and it won't involve burning discs etc.

That said, why don't you get your Asus board first, and then you'll have a bit more first hand experience to say you had no issues and you'd recommend it to others. :p;)

Because I've read over 200,000 pages of posts the past week detailing every issue and every quirk of every p35 board out there. I'm just explaining what I've read about to everyone here.

1) you should never have to remove the cooling solution and reseat it

2) I haven't seen much in the way of heat issues from any board with a heatpipe cooler except the abit with poorly seated ones.

Then out of the 200,000 pages you counted :)roll:) you must have atleast read newegg's user reviews
where some people say the board runs hot, the bios's are buggy, and its picky about memory.
 

lopri

Elite Member
Jul 27, 2002
13,310
687
126
I would still go with the trustee Bad Axe 2 unless you need other features that are not available on that board. (such as 4 eSATA, dual ethernet, etc.)
 

Ozoneman

Senior member
Nov 15, 2005
222
0
0
Originally posted by: jjsole
I was looking for a reliable high quality board with the fewest installation/configuration/compatability problems (since I use it 100% for work), so I went with an Abit p35-pro board. To be totally honest, I've never had a better experience putting the computer together, which I did yesterday.

It was UNBELIEVABLY seemless, works great with my 4gb pc2-8500 crucial ballistix ram, my sata dvd drive, and my ide hdd's...didn't have to update the bios and used the cd that came in the box to install drivers and utilities.

I didn't even have a problem with the 81 winXp security updates installed all at once. :confused:

Also I brainlessly overclocked my e6850 from 3ghz to a very stable 3.8 and plan to go to 4ghz once I figure out more what I'm doing and have more time to do it. :eek:

People don't talk about the abit p35 boards here much, but they are missing the boat imo because they see that gigabyte wins a lot of benchmarks over asus and abit, altho its very fractional on almost all counts and has been totally worth going with Abit to have experienced no issues.

The cons for these abit boards...some don't like the jmicron ide controller (I don't know why tho), the firewire is slow (hopefully abit will fix it thru the bios) and the midrange ip35 board (non-pro) and the economy ip35-e board have a double boot issue that adds 15 seconds to the cold boot time. (There are a couple abit p35 thread that have more thorough user experiences tho.)

Sounds exactly like the experience I had when I set up my Gigabyte P35-DQ6. Isn't it great to have such easy setups?

 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: jjsole
Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Originally posted by: jjsole
Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Abit has a problem with their trackrecord of BIOS updates where Asus totally wins. Asus has 1T command rate incorporated into the P5K, while Abit only has it in a beta form. Their last major board only had 2 official BIOS releases. Thus alot of people tend to shy away from them. Also for the record the Ip35-Pro has some issues with the heatpipe cooler. It sometimes come without seating properly on the northbridge. Some users have had to re seat it and actually bend the heatpipes to make it sit flat.

Overall though all the boards are similar.

On the Jmicron IDE controller...if you are burning a DVD or CD while trying to do something else the CPU is hogged up and the system lags.

If you want stable get the Intel Badaxe 975x board. Or any board with a few bios revisions available will help iron out things.

I'm not going to loose sleep over a lack of 1t setting, nor taking the heatpipe cooler off and using my own thermal paste, and reseating it. Mine weren't bent, but in either case, abit doesn't have the heat issues that asus has, even w/o the heatpipes. The chips run very cool even with very high fsb settings. Reg. the Jmicron controller, sounds good I'll watch that, altho personally I won't be affected much because I will be using this for work and it won't involve burning discs etc.

That said, why don't you get your Asus board first, and then you'll have a bit more first hand experience to say you had no issues and you'd recommend it to others. :p;)

Because I've read over 200,000 pages of posts the past week detailing every issue and every quirk of every p35 board out there. I'm just explaining what I've read about to everyone here.

1) you should never have to remove the cooling solution and reseat it

2) I haven't seen much in the way of heat issues from any board with a heatpipe cooler except the abit with poorly seated ones.

Then out of the 200,000 pages you counted :)roll:) you must have atleast read newegg's user reviews
where some people say the board runs hot, the bios's are buggy, and its picky about memory.

First off anyone who reads newegg and makes a decision based on that is stupid. Second you're late. After a bit of digging and questioning of people with actual experience and my time over at XS reading about beta BIOSes I decided to buy the Abit IP35 Pro. It works fine. No problems
 

Ozoneman

Senior member
Nov 15, 2005
222
0
0
I find that looking every where I can to find out information is good. I use Newegg reviews for useful information, but I don't think I'm stupid. Those reviews are useful by seeing how many satisfied people there are for a particular product. What is wrong with that?

I'm glad your Abit works. So does my Gigabyte. These companies sell thousands of boards a month so I'm sure there are several thousand others that are satisfied with their Abits and Gigabytes too.
 

postmortemIA

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2006
7,721
40
91
Originally posted by: Ozoneman
I find that looking every where I can to find out information is good. I use Newegg reviews for useful information, but I don't think I'm stupid. Those reviews are useful by seeing how many satisfied people there are for a particular product. What is wrong with that?

I'm glad your Abit works. So does my Gigabyte. These companies sell thousands of boards a month so I'm sure there are several thousand others that are satisfied with their Abits and Gigabytes too.

It is wrong when they praise 24" TN monitor or Rosewell power supply, then you figure out most of them are buying monitor,power supply, or motherboard for the first time and they have no clue that &much& better stuff exists.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: Ozoneman
I find that looking every where I can to find out information is good. I use Newegg reviews for useful information, but I don't think I'm stupid. Those reviews are useful by seeing how many satisfied people there are for a particular product. What is wrong with that?

I'm glad your Abit works. So does my Gigabyte. These companies sell thousands of boards a month so I'm sure there are several thousand others that are satisfied with their Abits and Gigabytes too.

There are fanboys who post negative reviews on products they don't own. People who post reviews based on hype for a product they don't own. People who installed it, didn't know how to adjust settings and then badmouth the company for releasing the product.

That is what is wrong with newegg "reviews"

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
It is wrong when they praise 24" TN monitor or Rosewell power supply, then you figure out most of them are buying monitor,power supply, or motherboard for the first time and they have no clue that &much& better stuff exists.

Or they base their assessment on "I installed it and it works, wow great blah blah blah"
 

Ozoneman

Senior member
Nov 15, 2005
222
0
0
Well fellows, I've gotten some very useful information from Newegg. I've bought a lot of stuff over the years and I think I've made the right decision almost all of the time.

You need to use your judgment when you read some of that stuff as well as some of the stuff here. I think I've read some bias opinions here as well. You can't always believe everything you read. Over time you start learning how to sift through the BS or the bias statements.
 

Ozoneman

Senior member
Nov 15, 2005
222
0
0
Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

There are fanboys who post negative reviews on products they don't own. People who post reviews based on hype for a product they don't own. People who installed it, didn't know how to adjust settings and then badmouth the company for releasing the product.

That is what is wrong with newegg "reviews"

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
It is wrong when they praise 24" TN monitor or Rosewell power supply, then you figure out most of them are buying monitor,power supply, or motherboard for the first time and they have no clue that &much& better stuff exists.

Or they base their assessment on "I installed it and it works, wow great blah blah blah"

How do you know this stuff? Where did you get this information from? I'm sure there are probably some people that post stuff at Newegg that don't know what they are talking about, but I think that happens here too. Like I said, you need to sift through the stuff.

 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: Ozoneman
Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

There are fanboys who post negative reviews on products they don't own. People who post reviews based on hype for a product they don't own. People who installed it, didn't know how to adjust settings and then badmouth the company for releasing the product.

That is what is wrong with newegg "reviews"

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
It is wrong when they praise 24" TN monitor or Rosewell power supply, then you figure out most of them are buying monitor,power supply, or motherboard for the first time and they have no clue that &much& better stuff exists.

Or they base their assessment on "I installed it and it works, wow great blah blah blah"

How do you know this stuff? Where did you get this information from? I'm sure there are probably some people that post stuff at Newegg that don't know what they are talking about, but I think that happens here too. Like I said, you need to sift through the stuff.

You can tell...it's so obvious when people are lieing. If you put ANY and I mean ANY faith in a product based on newegg evals then god help you.

BTW: if I hate newegg evals why would I bother posting there? :roll:
 

Ozoneman

Senior member
Nov 15, 2005
222
0
0
God must have helped me then. I've done very well buying the right stuff. I've had very few problems over the years.
 

Ozoneman

Senior member
Nov 15, 2005
222
0
0
"BTW: if I hate newegg evals why would I bother posting there?"

Did I suggest you post there?

What I said was, like here you get some people posting some stuff when they don't know what they are talking about.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: Ozoneman
God must have helped me then. I've done very well buying the right stuff. I've had very few problems over the years.

Use forums like here or xtremesystems.org for better reports from end users. That's always how I decide what to get.