Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] By now, Intel's P35 chipset needs no introduction. It has boosted performance over P965 and brings a few new things to the table, my favorite being the S-ATA disable. In our reviews of ASUS' own P5K and P5K3, we were left impressed to say the least. Compared to our boards that utilize NVIDIA's 680i and Intel's 975x, the P35 cleaned house in near every test. If you are in the market to build a new PC and don't care for SLI support, then P35 boards are a good bet, unless you want to wait until X38 is launched later this year, which is supposed to be vastly superior to P35. Time will tell if that's actually going to be the case or not, but so far it's looking hopeful. As mentioned in our intro, once P35's NDA was lifted, motherboard manufacturers all over announced their new line-ups. ASUS themselves released a staggering seven P35-based boards and Gigabyte released five. MSI and abit also have great looking boards as well, a few of which we will be taking a look at in the weeks to come. Closer Look The board we are taking a look at today though delivers a newer concept, and one I still don't completely understand. Users who purchase the board will have the ability to choose between DDR2 and DDR3 memory, which can't be a bad thing, right? It means that consumers have a choice. From a marketing perspective, I see this being beneficial for those who have DDR2 now, but want to upgrade to DDR3 down the road. But even then, why upgrade to DDR3 when DDR2 is not lacking in any way right now? Far down the road when 4GB of DDR3 doesn't cost a limb, then perhaps it would be a great upgrade, but as it stands right now, there is no reason to set your sights on DDR3 unless you have found one of the few ways to utilize all of that excess bandwidth. Though the performance benefits of DDR3 are yet to be seen, the fact of the matter is, it's performance IS better than DDR2, primarily thanks to the faster frequencies. This is how it is, despite the fact that DDR3 has timings that make DDR2 fans weep. DDR3 is more efficient than DDR2, it's just that most people don't need to focus all of their attention to it. However, just because I can't seem to see the sense in such a combo board, others may disagree and have personal reasons why a board like this is ideal. If so, please let us know your thoughts in our forums. One might jump to the conclusion that because this is a combo board, it's price is going to be extreme. It's actually the exact opposite. This is more of a budget board than it is a high-end board, retailing for an average of ~$175. While not cheap per se, compared to the P5K and P5K3 boards we took a look at last month, which retail for closer to $230 - $250, it is. One thing can be said about Gigabyte's choice of box art... it's the best I've seen. Clean, professional and delivers all of the information one would need when fighting with themselves over a purchase decision. The board is part of the Ultra Durable 2 series, which means it bounces off the floor when dropped.* * Dropping board is a bad idea. Besides the expected manual, software and case sticker, Gigabyte doesn't go cheap on what you need. Included are four S-ATA cables, which include metal push tabs to secure it into the port and also for easy release. One IDE and one floppy drive cable is also included as well. In the top-right of the image you will see the required components to get an E-SATA setup running. Though not tested for the review, the installation appears simple. You will need to clear open a port in the back of your computer and install it there. You will then plug a 4-Pin Molex connector from this port in to an available cable on your power supply. The two black cables are used externally, one for power and the other for the connection. Next up, a look at the board and it's layout. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Closer Look] Gigabyte is well known for making some of the most colorful motherboards on the planet, and to some this is a good thing. To others, it's foolish. Me, I have no opinion, I just care about the performance. Overall the layout looks great, no immediate complaints. Everything is located in an accessible location, except for the hard drive IDE connector port. Though I don't have an IDE drive, I assume a hulking cable as such is going to look ugly when plugged in there. Common of budget motherboards, the P35C-DS3R has a 4-Pin motherboard connector, instead of the usual 8-Pin. This proved an inconvenience to me, because I already had an 8-Pin routed through the back of my Antec P182 case properly. Normally this is not a problem, because you can plug an 8-Pin into a 4-Pin since both connectors have a top row of +12v and bottom row of ground. However that proved impossible here, due to a component getting in the way. Another thing that also really inconvenienced me was the lack of 3-pin fan connectors. Besides the CPU fan connector, there are only two more, one beside the DIMM slots and the other beside the north bridge. I use a Corsair Nautilius 500 water-cooling system on the PC, and you are supposed to plug two connectors into fan ports on the motherboard. Here though, both fan connectors were out of reach, so it couldn't be done. I am unsure why there is such a lack of connectors, though I feel it must part of the budget experience. It's too bad though, as there is plenty of room for more. Like here for example. At the bottom of the board, a set of four USB connectors are clearly labelled. The P35 chipset introduced the ability for 12 USB ports off of it alone, and that's possible right out of the box here, as long as you have that many ports available. 8 S-ATA ports are readily available at the right-side of the board, situated directly above the lone IDE connector. The board also supports RAID, if you want to take that route. Although the P35 chipset supports Crossfire with ATI cards, it's not supported on this board because of a lone PCI-E 16x slot. In addition to three PCI slots are three more PCI-E 1x slots. I have yet to own a single PCI-E 1x component, let alone three. The southbridge has a modest passive heatsink, which will be enjoyed by those who like silent PC's. During testing, I did not find this to get hot enough to warrant a fan. Finally, the most interesting part of the motherboard. The red and yellow slots are for your DDR2, while the green are for DDR3. For DDR2 users, you will be able to use upwards of 8GB of ram, with 2GB modules. For DDR3, 8GB should be possible, but we have yet to see 2GB DDR3 modules, let alone 4GB. During installation, you have to choose between the two, neither can be used at the same time. Compared to the south bridge, the north bridge has a massive cooler, appropriately so since the NB will get far warmer than the SB. For hardcore overclockers, a fan would be recommended. There is sufficient space around the CPU socket for most coolers, I can't see it being a problem to install even the largest on the market. Note the fact that the PWM doesn't include any type of cooling whatsoever, not even a cheap passive heatsink. The board uses the ITE IT8718F-S chipset used for I/O purposes, and though blurred, there is also a small Realtek ALC889A, used for the boards 8-channel audio. On the back we find PS/2 ports for both Keyboard and Mouse, S/PDIF, parallel port, serial port, four USB ports, LAN port and finally, the audio jacks. Nothing is missing here per se, although on higher-end boards you would find an E-SATA and a second NIC port. As for the parallel port, the inclusion of that just confuses me, since it's userbase would be so low. There would be a better chance of a PCI-E 1x port being used. Here is a vertical view of the board to finish things off, since this is the way most people will be viewing it once it's installed. Unless you turn your computer upside-down. Before we jump into testing and performance reports, we will first take a look through the fairly robust BIOS. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=P35C-DS3R BIOS] On this page, we will take a quick walk through the BIOS to see what's being offered. First up is the main page, which won't be much of a stranger to anyone. The first page offers many of the basic options you'd expect, such as time, date and hard drive configuration. Two options I normally disable here are the Floppy 3.5" and the Halt On > No Errors. That way, it won't stall at boot time because I don't have a CPU fan plugged in (due to water cooling). Under Advanced BIOS Features we can arrange our boot sequence, disable the full screen logo, disable EIST, enable SMART and more. Integrated Peripherals offers USB-related options, audio and LAN enable/disable and also the RAID configuration. The following screens represent the power and PnP/PCI options, as well as system health. Of most interest to enthusiasts will be the MB Intelligent Tweaker section, which has every overclocking related option you will need. Here's where things became interesting for me though. It's been quite a while since I've used a Gigabyte motherboard, so I had forgotten about the CTRL+F1 trick at the BIOS main menu. For those unaware, what that does is unlock more than the usual options in the tweaking section, such as memory timings. Without pressing CTRL+F1, the selection is lacking. Everything here is pretty self-explanatory, except for the DDR2/DDR3 OverVoltage Control. The options within range between +0.1v up through +0.7v. Depending on whether you have DDR2 or DDR3 installed, the BIOS will set a different base voltage. For DDR2, it's 1.8v and for DDR3, it's 1.5v. So, by using the +0.7v option, you will be able to use 2.5v for DDR2 and 2.2v for DDR3, both of which are within the limits of sanity. Overall the BIOS isn't exploding at the seams with features, but everything important is there. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Testing Methodology, SYSmark 2007] Throughout all of our...

Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R

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Rob Williams