- Back to homepage
- Related articles
  Related articles

Gigabyte P965-DS3 Motherboard Overclocking Review

Motherboards/Intel S775 by KeithSuppe @ 2007-07-29

The Gigabyte P965-DS3 is arguably the very best 965-based overclocking platform available. Today were dusting off a Rev.1 board which has been replaced by the DS3 Rev 2.0 and 3.3 models. While the board is technically obsolete she´s almost identical to her siblings and they even share many of the same BIOS versions. There are a large number of Rev 1.0 boards at the heart of many systems; this overclocking article is for them and anyone considering a Gigabyte P965-DS3.

Introduction

P965-DS3

Madshrimps (c)

Gigabyte has been a major player in the motherboard and graphic card industries, often first to market with motherboards based on the newest chipsets. Their marriage to Asus lasted a few months and an instant oligopoly was formed although the newlyweds have retained their autonomy. Any ramifications at the consumer level albeit positive or negative, remain to be seen. Worst case scenario is complacency, once the competition is decimated you start doing things like extending pipelines rather then doing the R&D work. One thing is or sure both companies have literally transformed motherboard real-estate.

Cooling has become a top priority and we’re finding there's now more plumbing in the form of copper heat-pipes on your motherboard then in most This Old House episodes. Surly the business of recycling precious metals from discarded PCBs will see an increase in growth. Other changes include the use of solid state electronics resulting from the widespread counterfeit and eventual failure of capacitors which surfaced on the market several years ago. Other innovations were born by the mother of invention such as Gigabyte's U-Plus D.P.S. card.

Madshrimps (c)

As Intel processors were reaching the pinnacle of inefficiency, Gigabyte's U-Plus D.P.S. card could be dropped into a slot adjacent to the processor to remedy CPU power related system instability. The D.P.S. increased the number of power stages by three featuring its own aluminum mosfet heatsink with one of the first heat-pipes used on a motherboard. Besides a row of high quality capacitors the U-Plus card included power activity LEDs (as seen above in action).

P965-DS3

Madshrimps (c)

GA-P965-DS3 Rev. 1.0 Specifications:

Madshrimps (c)

P965-DS3 topology next ->

Comment from Rutar @ 2007/07/29

I digg their bios update utility too.

Comment from Kougar @ 2007/07/30

Nice review of my board, I own the Rev 1 version.

I would like to mention that no one should consider buying any 965P-DS3 unless it is the Rev 3.3 version, which ClubIt has long been selling for the same price as the other models. The Rev 2 added another much needed VRM module to the board to help provide CPU power. Three VRM regs alone is not enough for best results and vdroop. Rev 3.3 adds true FSB1333 support and changed some of the board trace layouts and cap placements to do so.

It is a little strange you had so much issue with your RAM using the F10 or later BIOS's, as I see you did set "Option 2" for the RAM DLL setting. I can say that the Rev1 DS3 did not give stable RAM voltages for me, any voltage setting over 2.1v was unstable with my Corsair ProMOS RAM. I tested the RAM again on a P35-DQ6, and it was stable at 2.15 and 2.2v settings, so clearly the DS3 cannot handle high voltage DDR2 well. Again is why I mention users should only look at Rev 3.3 boards, if not P35 boards instead. Also the DS3 would not support RAM clocked above 1100Mhz, however the DQ6 has no issues running the same Ballistix kit above even 1220MHz.

My top 24 hour Prime stable CPU overclock on the DS3 was 501 FSB x 7 = 3.5GHz, but nothing higher. Link (Sidenote, active NB cooling required) Dropping the CPU to a 6 multipler got the FSB over ~540FSB stable, but the board would finally throw in the towel a bit above that. Top OC required 1.475vCore to remain stable, compared to the 1.4375vCore my P35-DQ6 requires at the same exact overclock. It will also continue to overclock my E6300 to 3.8Ghz, but 540FSB is the absolute FSB ceiling of the P35-DQ6 at any CPU setting.

Comment from MakubeX @ 2007/07/30

The best thing is that the DS3 is dirt chap compared to other 695p OCing boards. However, at time I wouldn't get a 965p board, I would save up for a good P35, like the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R or DS3P. Still reasonably cheap and are also very good overclockers; plus you got support for Penryn.

All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.