View Full Version : Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R VS Asus P5K Premium WiFi
Which ones better and why?
Basically, I want THE BEST motherboard that is ideally lower than £75 inc. VAT and supports Q6600 CPU.
Please give ideas.
i only have experience of the gigabyte , but id rate it 9/10 . i have taken an e8400 to over 4.2ghz on this board. gigabyte have a good solid brand, as do asus so the choice is yours
wonderlust
25-02-08, 12:29
Have you considered the MSI P35-Neo2-Fr (#28015) £66.45 inc Vat
Heat Pipe Chipset cooling, IH9R "southbridge"
Mine clocks my q6600 @ 9x400 for 3.6Ghz (ymmv)
Thanks and thanks guys!
Any other suggestions... ???? Keep em coming.
ASUS P5KC AiLifestyle, Intel P35 chipset, 2xDDR2 + 2xDDR3 Slots,
Dual PCI-E for ATI Crossfire, Socket 775, ATX - what do you think of that?
(http://www.asus.com.tw/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=534&l4=0&model=1694&modelmenu=2)
are you planning on going crossfire ? or buying ddr3 to go with the mobo ? DDr3 is just not worth it yet IMO , so unless your planning on xfire or ddr3 id say it wasnt worth it
I echo the above, in that DDR3 is not something worth adopting at present.
Otherwise, the P5KC is a reasonable board. However if overclocking is your plan it does have a fair bit of VDroop. My personal suggestions would be:
Gigabyte P35 DS3L - Cheap and cheerful, overclocks well. Be aware that it has no onboard RAID support.
Gigabyte P35 DS3R - As above but with RAID support.
MSI P35 Neo2-Fr - For the money, this board has a brilliant feature set and I've recommended it for 5 builds so far. All have found the board excellent, but be advised you may need to update the BIOS for the board to boot to CD. One or two who I recommended this board to had this problem but a BIOS update to the latest fixed it. I don't believe that this is a problem with SATA optical drives though.
Many of the boards in this price range don't particularly stand out from each other. Most are stable boards with good feature sets. The above three are particularly popular options and between the three, I'd probably go for the Neo2-Fr for it's ATi Crossfire support and slightly better board layout but of course, not everyone needs/wants Crossfire and the quality of the board's layout could be debatable from person to person.
I don't need crossfire or SLI or DDR3 support.
yet I want a board that fully supports a Q6600 processor and OCZ 800MHz 2GB (2 x1GB) RAM.
I would like eSATA, don't ask why. Not essential..
Anythign spring to mind now? There's just too many...
If you're referring to the OCZ Platinum 4-4-4-15 stuff, I've had a friend or two that have had problems using this RAM with his Asus P5K. I realise that others have had no problem with this combination but I'd advise against it anyway.
If you want e-Sata, no crossfire or DDR3 my choice would be the Gigabyte P35 DS3R :)
wonderlust
25-02-08, 20:03
[quote=dynamo86;38039]
I would like eSATA, don't ask why. Not essential..quote]
at fear of looking like a fanbouy the MSI has 2 e-sata ports connected to the ICH9R
Okay and does tthe MSI P35 Neo-2-FR AND Gigabyte P35 DS3R support, to the full performance capabilities my Q6600 CPU?
ANd the RAM I have been offered is:
OCZ Platinum XTC 2GB Kit (2x1GB), DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400, CL 4-4-4-15
However, can't actually see the RAM on the website... Do you guys recommend I just stick with a normal brand like Crucial/Kingston/Patriot?
The OCZ kit is fine. I'd dare say that the Patriot PC2-6400 that Aria stocks would be a better overclocker but to be frank, you won't be pushing either past it's limits with a Q6600 overclocked or not. If you've ordered the OCZ, just keep it.
Be advised that with both this kit and most other performance kits, there is a small risk that the system will not boot with it initially as it's not picking up the right SPD's. Most performance RAM kits require you to manually set the timings and voltage in BIOS but all will ship with timings that will allow you to power the system up fine in the first place. Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
Wonderlust, in all fairness to you, for the money the Neo2-Fr does have the better feature set. It's just a matter of how much he'd use those additional features. The heatpipe setup on the Neo2-Fr might do a better job at cooling the Northbridge.
Dynamo, if you have no bias between either it's as trivial as flipping a coin really. They're both capable boards that should be fine with a Q6600.
Mul
The OCZ kit is fine. I'd dare say that the Patriot PC2-6400 that Aria stocks would be a better overclocker but to be frank, you won't be pushing either past it's limits with a Q6600 overclocked or not. If you've ordered the OCZ, just keep it.
Be advised that with both this kit and most other performance kits, there is a small risk that the system will not boot with it initially as it's not picking up the right SPD's. Most performance RAM kits require you to manually set the timings and voltage in BIOS but all will ship with timings that will allow you to power the system up fine in the first place. Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
Wonderlust, in all fairness to you, for the money the Neo2-Fr does have the better feature set. It's just a matter of how much he'd use those additional features. The heatpipe setup on the Neo2-Fr might do a better job at cooling the Northbridge.
Dynamo, if you have no bias between either it's as trivial as flipping a coin really. They're both capable boards that should be fine with a Q6600.
Mul
yeah I agree , boards these days seem to pretty closely matched . Not like back when amd was king
Quite right. Without meaning to derail the topic I remember the days of my Opterons and Athlon 64's with my DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra D, hitting 350-365HTT, next to unheard of on most other boards at the time :)
I haven't yet bought the RAM, no.
The thing is, I'm buying the parts and giving them to someone else to fix up for me. I'm not hugely technical and as I need the comp. right now, I don't have time to experiment.
I take it OCZ is "performance" RAM and will have to be introduced to the BIOS manually, right? What about Patriot RAM? And once this RAM is set in the BIOS, during first build, I won;t ever have to worry about RAM settings ever again, right? I hate the BIOS.
MoBo wise, if they're both tied for performance, I'll go with the "better" brand - MSI or Gigabite?
Another Q: To keep costs down, i really don't want to spend huge amounts of money on a GFX card that I won; really be utilising to its full potential.., Therefore, I think I'm just going to opt for the Asus Extreme 8600GT 512MB Silent PCI-E (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/PCI-E/nVIDIA+GeForce+8+Series/Asus+Extreme+8600GT+512MB+Silent+PCI-E+?productId=28044) - What say you?
Thanks guys and sorry for any non-MoBO questions that I've included - I know this is the MoBo forum...
What exactly are your needs in terms of gaming? If hardly at all, any silent graphics card would do. However, I wouldn't spend £82 on an 8600GT. Considering that the Radeon HD 3850 is just £4 more, it doesn't make sense. My suggestion would be to opt for the cheapest GeForce 8600GT 256mb that you can find if gaming isn't a huge issue, such as
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/PCI-E/nVIDIA+GeForce+8+Series/nVidia+GeForce+8600GT+256MB+DDR3+PCI-E+?productId=29821
----------------
Both the Patriot and the OCZ require manually entering the Timings and Voltage in BIOS. This will only need to be done once and that's it. What I do know though is that someone I know could not get their Patriot RAM to work properly with their MSI P35 Neo2-Fr first time and had to buy some cheap RAM to get the board to boot so he could enter the right voltage, save settings then put the Patriot stuff in. Like I said, it can happen with performance kits. I suppose, the person who's building your system won't have a problem handling that though?
If in doubt, it might be worth just picking CAS5 Latency 1.8V RAM to avoid any hassle. At the end of the day, the difference between the two kits wouldn't be noticed.
It's tricky for us to really say which board is better. The MSI has a better feature set but I don't often hear the P35 DS3R being cranky with RAM.
Okay, and whats the diff. between:
Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R socket LGA775
AND
Gigabyte P35 DS3R
AND
Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R socket LGA775
MOBO: And you say the MSI board has a better feature-set? In what ways?
RAM: I'm pretty sure the guy building my machine knows how to install performance RAM.. I'll make sure he does, and if not, I'll stick with good old kingston RAM.. I guess.
GFX: Well, here's the thing. I don't game often.. But I don;t want to limit my machine so that I can't EVER play a decent game, shall my mood change one day.. I want it to be scalable to an extent.. So something in the middle-range graphics dept. if you see what I mean... Also, does branding of GFX cards make a huge diff.?
Thanks
(Almost there)
The "EP" series has features at a hardware and software level that is related to Energy Saving if I recall correctly. Also I believe that depending on the revision of the plain P35 DS3R's sold at Aria, they may be capable of it too. The EP35C also has two DDR3 banks.
The P35C-DS3R is like the EP35C DS3R but without official Energy Efficiency support but again depending on the revision that Aria sells, it may still support it. This board also has two DDR3 banks as well as the four DDR2 banks.
The P35 DS3R is like the P35C DS3R minus the two DDR3 banks. Quite frankly you're unlikely to need the two DDR3 banks.
Go for whichever is cheapest out of the three.
Right, okay, so I have now, two MoBo's, the MSI 2-FR and the GB P35 DS3R. Remind me please, because I can't seem to find the post, what the MSI has (feature-wise) over the GB??
With regards to your GFX advice, I will go for an ATI Radeon Saphire 3850 HD card.. If that is compatible with the two MoBo's? I always assumed Radeon cards were for AMD machines and geForce for Intel machines...
No, they are completely compatible, only SLi and X-Fire are limited to certain chipsets.
As above ^^. ATi cards work fine in Intel setups.
Both boards have
Quad Core and upcoming 45nm CPU support
DDR2-800 and 1066 support
SATA II
up to 12x USB
e-SATA
P35/ICH9R chipset
The MSI board has the following features that the Gigabyte doesn't
Heatpipe cooled Northbridge and Southbridge
ATi Crossfire (run two ATi cards of the same model together for an increase in performance) support in 16x/4x mode
Arguably a slightly better board layout
That is basically it.
Okay perfect!! It's all so much more clear now, thank you ever so much guys!
I'm going to be buying it all tomorrow so just couple really small Q's.
e-SATA - So far, I've only come across one or two cases that have a port hole for e-SATA;... Am i right in thinking that if the case doesn't have a port fore-SATA, then having e-SATA on the MOBO is useless?
Cases - How comes all the cases I've seen are SO huge? And i thought my old HP pav was big! What cases do you guys use? I like the Antec Sonata III, the Gigabyte iSolo and the Coolermaster Elite 330 Black. But they're all huge lol. Any recommendations out of those?
Sound card - Neccessary? I only listen to music (not religously) and mostly watch DVD's..
CPU cooler - Neccessary?
PSU - What sort of wattage would I be looking at for low noise and high power? Given my PC specs thus far.
For an ATX case, you can't really get any smaller than an Antec Sonata III. I have the Sonata II which is in effect the same case but with a different front bezel and honestly, the case is rather small. Out of the three, my personal choice would be the Sonata III. Also comes with a rather robust Earthwatts 500W PSU as well. :)
If you're after a case that's any smaller than that, you'll have to go Micro ATX.
Nowadays onboard sound is quite good. You should be fine
CPU Cooler wise, I'm personally not fond of the Q6600's stock cooler. They use the same cooler on all fully fledged Core 2 Duo's and Quads (except on 45nm ones where they're half height!) and are a bit loud. They do the job fine but they're not great if you want a silent PC. My personal suggestion would be a cooler along the lines of an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, bare minimum.
PSU - The Sonata III comes with a good PSU. Otherwise, any quality 450W or higher PSU. Good options include the Corsair VX 450W and the OCZ StealthXstream 500W, although the OCZ lacks in quite a few cables. If you don't go for the Sonata, my PSU of choice for that system would be a Corsair VX 450W or better.
As for the e-SATA, if the case doesn't come with one, I believe the Gigabyte board comes with a PCI style backplate with USB ports and and eSATA ports. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
And do I want a SATA or SATA2 HDD/CD/DVD
Gotcha,
-scope out an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler
-----So I could get the OEM version of the Q6600 and get my own cooler?
-Stock Sonata III PSU or get Corsair VX 450W (was intending to get that anyways)
PS. Could anyone kindly link me to the Radeon 3850 GFX card - I can't find it on Aria anymore..
OKAY, I have it! Prices n' all!
Here goes:
MOBO: MSI P35 NEO2-FR - £66.46
CPU: Intel Q6600 OEM - £150.27
CPU COOLER: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO - £14.63
RAM: Patriot 2GB PC2-6400 C4 Extreme Performance (2 x1GB) - 35.19
GFX: ATi Radeon HD 3850 512MB PCI-E2.0 - £105.69
CASE/PSU: Antec Sonata III with 500w PSU - £75.14
TOTAL - £519.02 inc. VAT
Wha do you think? My only concerns are the GFX card (is it better than a GeForce 8600?) and the stock PSU that comes with the case.
Thanks for your help and I appreciate your reviews!
Twist in the tale - I just noticed this nVidia 9600GT 512MB (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/PCI-E/nVIDIA+GeForce+9+Series/nVidia+GeForce+9600GT+512MB+PCI-E+?productId=30589), which is wickedly reviewed here (http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1293/nvidia_geforce_9600gt_512mb_g94_tested/index.html). - Bear in mind the tested version was overclocked..
If you guys are keen on it, I'd probably be better of reconsidering my MoBo.. Not really ideal to have a CrossFre MoBo with nVidia GFX, should I wish to go SLi in the future, which i doubt, but you know.. You never know..
If you have no problem with paying the extra £11 to get the 9600GT, it seems to be the better performer anyway so that's fine.
As for the Crossfire board and nVidia card, personally I wouldn't bother with an SLI board. I think you'll find that generally it makes more financial sense to opt for single graphics card configurations, considering that by the time you may want/need another 9600GT they could well be close to being replaced and not every game will scale well with SLI. I.e.- two cards very rarely means double the performance.
Both the HD 3850 and 9600GT are considerably better than the 8600GT, by quite a long way. I don't believe it's worth spending more than £50-55 on an 8600GT when cards like the HD 3850, 3870 and 9600GT are around. They should also be fine with the 500W earthwatts unit.
The specification looks very good all in all. I'd just like to reiterate that the person building your pc may need an el-cheapo stick of DDR2 to get the P35 Neo2 and Patriot to boot together initially.
And yeah, personally I would opt for a SATA Optical Drive and HDD if you don't have one.
Mul
wonderlust
26-02-08, 18:05
The Patriot situation seems to be resolved the shipping boards seem to be using Bios 1.5 or later which does not have this issue.
If you are unlucky enough to get a board with an older bios, follow the instructions on the Main Aria site (under reviews of the board) they work.
Right, that's good to know then. All the boards that were shipped to the people I recommended them to, came with 1.2 if I recall correctly.
In which case, I see no reason not to choose the Neo2-Fr over the P35 DS3R :)
Mul
wonderlust
26-02-08, 20:18
My 1st came with 1.4 (dead using Msi's win bios flash) had issues but using another stick of ddr667 got it up and running.
2nd board came with 1.5 worked from day one, still purring away inside my case :P
Still considering the MSI board, does it support RAID?
What do you guys think of this performance vs cost wise?
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i13/thedynamix/newsys.jpg
Cheers
wonderlust
26-02-08, 20:53
Yes it supports raid,
The P35-Neo2-FR is the same board as the P35 Platinum
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3169&p=1
The only difference is no Firewire and no fancy SPDIF outs, which to me made it a no brainer. At the time it was a £130 board for half the price!
Even the Bios are the same, Including the specialist performance bios as supplied by MSI
I forgot, does the MSI NEO2-FR support SLi or CrossFire - just out of curiosity?
I'm so stuck between the MSI NEO2-FR and Asus P5N32!
SORRY, i remember, it supports CrossFire!
That's the thing - If I choose an nVidia card, it doesn't make sense to go with a CrossFire enabled board...
Like I said though, SLI simply doesn't make sense for the majority of users. 9 times out of 10, when you need more performance in the graphics department it makes more sense to get a single faster card because SLI will not give you double the performance and quite potentially next to zero performance increase in more CPU intensive games. As far as a single card goes, an nVidia card won't perform any worse on a board designed for ATi Crossfire. I have a GeForce 7900GS in an ATi made (and AMD funded..) Crossfire motherboard and the performance I get is no less than on an nVidian board.
The Intel P35 chipset is the superior chipset for future upgradability to 45nm Quad Cores as well as overclocking. You may be saying now that you're not overclocking ever, but it's nice to have the option. The Neo2-Fr is also cheaper :)
I see where you're coming from! I just tohught it would have been more handy to get a SLi board if using nVidia and vice-versa. Doubtful that I'd EVER use SLi, but still..
So honestly, is the MSI NEO2-FR better than the P5N32? I'd be more inclined to go with ATi if I were to get the MSI...
wonderlust
26-02-08, 21:53
One of the bid Techie sites (can't remember which one) did a review along the lines of is it better to have an nvidia card in an nvidia board, ati in ati etc,
The out come was it made no difference, IIRC the Nvidia was faster in the ati or intel can't remember which:redface:
In any case, the difference in performance from chipset to chipset (assuming all northbridges in question will electrically supply 16x speed to the slot, which both the P35 and nForce 650/680 will in single card configs at least) is hardly distinguishable, if distinguishable at all :)
Right so there is no problem with an MSI NEO2-FR supporting an Asus nVidia 8800GT?
And you guys defeinately prefer and recommend the MSI NEO2-FR over the Gigabyte P35 DS3R and Asus P35 P5N32-E SLi Plus ???
Just to confirm!
Yes and Yes :)
Furthermore, just to give you a reason not to get the P5N32-E Plus, it is a bit of a bodged board in that it uses the 650i chipset instead of the 680i and to compensate for the lost PCI-Express lanes, is fitted with an nForce 570 northbridge as a southbridge. Not a stability issue or anything but overclocking is known to be a bit limited on this board.
Then, i think it's settled, MSI with nVidia 8800GT it is!
Slightly concerned about he BIOS updates etc and the RAm incompatiblity.. Any notes on this?
just go for it , you will love whatever you get !
these (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=161618&page=18&highlight=msi) guys agree with us, lol! They swear by this MSI, definately going to get it!
Just seen this (http://forums.aria.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3410) thread about sme complaints regarding the MSI Neo2-FR... Little apprehensive.. Any reassurance? I mean, if thise would happen to me, I'd be screwed... I'd have no idea how to resolve such a problem lol.
It sounds like the well known Double Boot that P35's and some P965's have. Once you've booted for the first time, it isn't really a common occurance and so long as you don't go into BIOS changing things often, double boot's don't tend to happen.
Whichever board you go for, there will be someone out there that has a slightly buggy board. Quality control can never get it 100% right and it applies to any board, be it a MSI P35 Neo2 Fr or an Asus P5N32-E.
I know a fair few people with this board now and no one's having problems as such.
I hear ya. Still convinced and definately going to go with it now. MSI with nVidia 8800GT.
solidsteve
04-03-08, 19:48
i still say go with the gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
and just to though something else in the mix the new nVidia 9600gt runs on the same level as the 8800gt at a smaller price
:)
i still say go with the gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
and just to though something else in the mix the new nVidia 9600gt runs on the same level as the 8800gt at a smaller price
:)
hmmmmm not really , the 8800gt is a good bit faster
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R board is excellent value for money and supports a vast array of processor chips. I've installed a number of these boards for family and friends and apart from 3 boards failing on initial power up I've had no problems. I run an Intel E8400 Processor with the full 8Gb DDR2 PC6400 memory onboard, using nvidia 8600GTS, 1Mb graphics card and play new released FPS games at 1680 resolution (no overclocking). Game play doesn't stutter and average frame rate during game play with "World In Conflict" is 64fps, peaking out at 81fps, drops to 49fps with FMV with abundant screen explosions.
All-in-all a very good board at a resonable price, you can also get the same board but with AMD chipset support.
The iCool windows based software is rubbish with a constant error message being displayed everytime it loads up initially. There is supposed to be a "fix" available but when applied the same problem reappears. iCool lets you overclock your machine whilst in Windows, overclocking is determined by a number of steps preprogrammed into the software. Basically don't install the program just let the onpoard BIOS control the system voltages and fan speeds, and if you need to overclock, reset your BIOS settings before gaming.
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R board is excellent value for money and supports a vast array of processor chips. I've installed a number of these boards for family and friends and apart from 3 boards failing on initial power up I've had no problems. I run an Intel E8400 Processor with the full 8Gb DDR2 PC6400 memory onboard, using nvidia 8600GTS, 1Gb graphics card and play new released FPS games at 1680 resolution (no overclocking). Game play doesn't stutter and average frame rate during game play with "World In Conflict" is 64fps, peaking out at 81fps, drops to 49fps with FMV with abundant screen explosions.
All-in-all a very good board at a resonable price, you can also get the same board but with AMD chipset support.
The iCool windows based software is rubbish with a constant error message being displayed everytime it loads up initially. There is supposed to be a "fix" available but when applied the same problem reappears. iCool lets you overclock your machine whilst in Windows, overclocking is determined by a number of steps preprogrammed into the software. Basically don't install the program just let the onpoard BIOS control the system voltages and fan speeds, and if you need to overclock, reset your BIOS settings before gaming.
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=6&id=2273
Familiar? :lol:
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