The Unofficial Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R P35 Board Thread

[Serj]

Ohhh sorry for the misleading sig, ill just take out the clock speeds and just leave the items, i figured it might help with the assistance im requesting.

also regarding the RAID drivers, would the one from the gigabyte CD work as vista drivers? and also if i install them, can i reinstall XP and have the RAID option enabled, or it only works on the OS its on? thanks in advance

 

[cleverest]

mrfatboy,

My too large original post in this thread explains my config in detail, but here it is again....

I have 5 IDE devices I need to connect....later on this will be changed to 4 when I change one of my hard drives (a smaller 120gb) IDE to a SATA drive, besides that I must have these devices...

this is exactly as follows:

(2) IDE hard drives (120GB and 400GB) (note: I also have one 200gb SATA hard drive that I have right now, partitioned for my OS/progs)

(3) IDE optical DVD drives (yes I need all 3 of them...two DVD readers and one DVD-+DL writer...the readers will read specific media the others will not read because I'm using hacked firmware to do this...so I need all 3 drives)

I would most likely have to kill the FW card if I get a sound card....this sucks...oh well....


- Brett

 

[5t3v0]

clervest, did you see my post? Dont bother with an add on card until you've tried the onboard. For most people it will be fine.

 

[5t3v0]

Originally posted by: Serj
Ohhh sorry for the misleading sig, ill just take out the clock speeds and just leave the items, i figured it might help with the assistance im requesting.

also regarding the RAID drivers, would the one from the gigabyte CD work as vista drivers? and also if i install them, can i reinstall XP and have the RAID option enabled, or it only works on the OS its on? thanks in advance

Raid drivers are same for Vista 32-bit & XP 32-bit. Not sure I understand your second question. Are you talking about the driver you load at XP install or after install? You only need to load drivers from the floppy if you're going to install the OS onto RAID. If you've installed XP on a single disk without the RAID driver then you can still install the main driver from the mobo CD after install & create a RAID for the non OS partitions.

Edit: Or maybe that's only Vista.

 

[mrfatboy]

Originally posted by: cleverest
mrfatboy,

My too large original post in this thread explains my config in detail, but here it is again....

I have 5 IDE devices I need to connect....later on this will be changed to 4 when I change one of my hard drives (a smaller 120gb) IDE to a SATA drive, besides that I must have these devices...

this is exactly as follows:

(2) IDE hard drives (120GB and 400GB) (note: I also have one 200gb SATA hard drive that I have right now, partitioned for my OS/progs)

(3) IDE optical DVD drives (yes I need all 3 of them...two DVD readers and one DVD-+DL writer...the readers will read specific media the others will not read because I'm using hacked firmware to do this...so I need all 3 drives)

I would most likely have to kill the FW card if I get a sound card....this sucks...oh well....


- Brett

ok, i might have a new solution for you You can buy an IDE to SATA convertor. They are $10 - $20. That would solve your problem

 

[Serj]

well i guess i wasnt sure if the raid driver was an OS exclusive or it stays on bios no matter what u install after. you pretty much made it clear that i need a floppy for XP, or possible installation of XP on a seperate drive, and use 2 other drives in RAID mode to install the driver. I got a 3rd HD so i will try it tonight, got nothing to lose.

another question, if i use 3 HDs and 2 of them go in RAID0 mode, is it more efficient to install OS onto the 3rd drive and use the RAID configuration for everything else?

 

[cleverest]

Originally posted by: mrfatboy
ok, i might have a new solution for you You can buy an IDE to SATA convertor. They are $10 - $20. That would solve your problem

Hate to ask you to do my homework, but do you have a product/link recommendation to give? Perhaps from newegg? I already ordered the card...but I might pick these up later....I would have to get 3 for my optical drives...

Or would be be better to convert my 2 IDE hard drives with them and only one optical drive? (leaving 2 optical drives on the one IDE port on the board)?

 

[cleverest]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
clervest, did you see my post? Dont bother with an add on card until you've tried the onboard. For most people it will be fine.

I'm glad to hear something NOT negative about the onboard....I'll give it a shot, just wanted to ready what options I could....

Thanks.

 

[5t3v0]

Originally posted by: Serj
another question, if i use 3 HDs and 2 of them go in RAID0 mode, is it more efficient to install OS onto the 3rd drive and use the RAID configuration for everything else?

It depends what you want your RAID for. If you want your OS & programs to load faster then put your C drive on it. If you keep your games on a separate partition & want them to load faster, then consider having OS on the single & games on RAID. If your RAID disks are big enough, you could create 2 partitions on it, 1 for the OS & 1 for games & use the single for data that doesnt need fast disk access.

I had my OS on the RAID & it was faster at loading but when I came to try to restore a backup of the C drive using DriveImage XML, it kept failing. After that, I decided to re-install the OS on the single disk, which I could restore, & use my RAID for games.

 

[mrfatboy]

Q]Originally posted by: cleverest

Originally posted by: mrfatboy
ok, i might have a new solution for you You can buy an IDE to SATA convertor. They are $10 - $20. That would solve your problem

Hate to ask you to do my homework, but do you have a product/link recommendation to give? Perhaps from newegg? I already ordered the card...but I might pick these up later....I would have to get 3 for my optical drives...

Or would be be better to convert my 2 IDE hard drives with them and only one optical drive? (leaving 2 optical drives on the one IDE port on the board)?[/quote]




check out this thread at new egg. BTW. You made the compraison between onboard audio and your Soundbaster card. The soundbaster card is far superior. For gaming and/or skype usage, video watching.

newegg ide to sata

 

[Serj]

i might do what u did at the end (OS on drive 1, games and others on RAID0)

does it make that much of a difference between:
1) 2 hard drives in RAID0 and everything on
2) 3 hard drives, 1 IDE mode and OS installed on it, and 2 RAID0 with other stuff on it

thanks

 

[SilentBobSpeaks]

Originally posted by: cleverest

Originally posted by: mrfatboy
ok, i might have a new solution for you You can buy an IDE to SATA convertor. They are $10 - $20. That would solve your problem

Hate to ask you to do my homework, but do you have a product/link recommendation to give? Perhaps from newegg? I already ordered the card...but I might pick these up later....I would have to get 3 for my optical drives...

Or would be be better to convert my 2 IDE hard drives with them and only one optical drive? (leaving 2 optical drives on the one IDE port on the board)?

They have the IDE to SATA convertors all over Ebay for around $10 U.S. I currently use them to control my IDE optical drives. Make sure you get the one that is angled at 45*, takes up less space that way.

 

[SilentBobSpeaks]

Question about Intel's Thermal Analysis Tool (TAT). Anybody here use is and is it accurate?

 

[SilentBobSpeaks]

For what it's worth, Norton Ghost works great at backing up a RAID drive. Just store the backups on an external drive!!! If your RAID boot drive fails, just reinstall OS, load Ghost, and re-load drive from backup. Everything is back just as it was before the crash!

 

[cleverest]

thanks for all the help guys...just one more question...does it give ZERO advantage to convert an IDE drive to SATA, performance wise? Sorry for the dumb question, I just wanted to be sure before I use these adapters I'm going to order on my 3 optical drives....

 

[cleverest]

Is there any advantage to using the 2-port IDE PCI ATA 133 card I ordered VS using the SATA adapters?

If not I'll have to seriously consider sending the PCI controller card back...

Here is a possible example of what I mean could be an advantage...but what the heck do I know...What if I connected one of my IDE hard drives to the Mainboard controller and my other IDE drive to the card (instead of Master/Slaving them both to the single port on the board)

I realize I risk limiting my PCI bandwidth, but I'm more concerned about HD performance...

Would that yield any performance gain?

 

[Serj]

IDE can only go at the speeds it is specified, even if u convert it to sata mode. thats pretty much saying if you put a nissan engine in a ferrari, it wont be a ferrari (i know cheesy example xD)

 

[mrfatboy]

@silientbob
TAT is off by 15C.


@cleverest
From what I have read on this forum, the SATA convertor WILL NOT dimishish your IDE drives speed. The SATA drivers are just IDE drives with a different connector.

 

[Serj]

Originally posted by: mrfatboy


@cleverest
From what I have read on this forum, the SATA convertor WILL NOT dimishish your IDE drives speed. The SATA drivers are just IDE drives with a different connector.

with a faster transfer rate

 

[5t3v0]

serj, putting the OS on the RAID will make a difference to load times if you reboot your PC a lot. I just did a comparison of my single drive & RAID using Sandra disk benchmark. Results are:

RAID
Drive index: 79MB/s
Random access time: 12ms

Hitachi SATA2
Drive index: 49MB/s
Random access time: 13ms

SilentBob, I dont have Norton & anyway the whole idea is to be able to restore the boot partition without installing the OS first. I can do this on a single drive using DriveImage XML & BartPE but not onto RAID even though I've loaded the RAID drivers onto the BartPE boot cdrom.

cleverest, go with the connectors & save that slot for your soundblaster. Going from lower bandwidth IDE to higher bandwidth SATA is not likely to lose you performance. In fact, going to SATA on this board opens up the option of RAID which will definitely improve your disk performance (see above).

 

[Serj]

thanks stevo that helps

 

[SilentBobSpeaks]

Originally posted by: mrfatboy

@silientbob
TAT is off by 15C.


@cleverest
From what I have read on this forum, the SATA convertor WILL NOT dimishish your IDE drives speed. The SATA drivers are just IDE drives with a different connector.

So, you're saying that Core temp is more accurate?? I'm running both side by side and TAT is only one degree higher.. Do you add those 15* to Core temp also?? Currently according to Core temp...my temps are 36/38 @ idle w/overclock to 3.4ghz. Keep in mind I'm water cooled!

 

[5t3v0]

Originally posted by: SilentBobSpeaks
So, you're saying that Core temp is more accurate?? I'm running both side by side and TAT is only one degree higher.. Do you add those 15* to Core temp also?? Currently according to Core temp...my temps are 36/38 @ idle w/overclock to 3.4ghz. Keep in mind I'm water cooled!

Both are as accurate. It's just whether they have the correct tjunction max as core temp is calculated as tj max - offset. Only coretemp 0.95.4 has the correct value (100c) for this cpu. Older versions of coretemp, TAT and speedfan all assume it is 85C, hence the 15C difference.

Edit: I've just noticed that even after adjusting for tjunction max, TAT is higher than both coretemp & speedfan, especially on core0.

 

[shimurlz]

My GA-P35C-DS3R is about to arrive on tuesday and i'm thinking about the BIOS. It probaly will have the F2 BIOS. Is it worth flash it to F4 Bios ? Or my mobo will die after a few days/weeks after the flash ? My mobo will be revision 1.1

 

[SilentBobSpeaks]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0

Originally posted by: SilentBobSpeaks
So, you're saying that Core temp is more accurate?? I'm running both side by side and TAT is only one degree higher.. Do you add those 15* to Core temp also?? Currently according to Core temp...my temps are 36/38 @ idle w/overclock to 3.4ghz. Keep in mind I'm water cooled!

Both are as accurate. It's just whether they have the correct tjunction max as core temp is calculated as tj max - offset. Only coretemp 0.95.4 has the correct value (100c) for this cpu. Older versions of coretemp, TAT and speedfan all assume it is 85C, hence the 15C difference.

Edit: I've just noticed that even after adjusting for tjunction max, TAT is higher than both coretemp & speedfan, especially on core0.

Well... I'm running the same version of Core Temp that you are (0.95.4) ...matter of fact I got the link from one of your post. My TAT and Core Temp run within one degree of each other??????