GigaByte GA-P35-DS3P Motherboard

GA-P35-DS3P Motherboard

Strengths: well built, firewire port, posted on first try

Weakness: audio, memory voltage, overclocking

I used the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P Motherboard (Rev 1.0) in my first PC build. I have used PCs for a long time and upgraded hard drives, RAM, graphic cards, etc but this was the first time putting together a PC from scratch. I chose this Gigabyte motherboard because of Gigabytes reputation, solid components, overclocking potential and the fact that I wanted onboard firewire/1394. I was able to put...
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I used the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P Motherboard (Rev 1.0) in my first PC build. I have used PCs for a long time and upgraded hard drives, RAM, graphic cards, etc but this was the first time putting together a PC from scratch.

I chose this Gigabyte motherboard because of Gigabytes reputation, solid components, overclocking potential and the fact that I wanted onboard firewire/1394.


I was able to put this motherboard in an Antec P180 case with Intel E6750 CPU, CoolerMaster Hyper TX2 cooler, 4x1 GB Patriot Extreme RAM, Western Digital 750 GB HDD, Evga 8800 GTS 320 MB GPU, Corsair 620 HX and Sony NEC 7170 Serial DVD+/-RW.


The computer posted and I installed Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit without a problem.


After the initial excitement of building my first PC wore off, I decided to tinker a bit. First I wanted to lower the timings for my RAM. The Patriot RAM supports 4-4-4-12 timings at 2.1 volts. [To get to the RAM timings and other advanced settings press CTRL-F1 at the BIOS main menu and then go the appropriate screen.] I manually changed to setting to 444-12 from 555-15 and upped the RAM voltage to +0.3v (default voltage is supposed to be 1.8v). Well I got errors in MemTest. After trouble shooting one pair of RAM and then the other pair, i eventually lowered the voltage to +0.25 and everything worked fine. Don't know if its the motherboard or the RAM or the combination of the two... but I have read that this board does overvolt the RAM.


Then I attempted my first overclock of the CPU. Wanted to go from 2.66 GHz to 3.2 GHz which seemed within the E6750's capability according to other info I read on the net. Well I changed the FSB from 333 to 400 (did not change the default vcore voltage) and ran some stress test using Prime95 and received no errors. Everything looked good with the overclock --- except when I ran some benchmark tests... my graphics scores were cut in half in the benchmarks and during testing in games. I have not been able to trouble shoot this problem -- could be the CPU, could be the GPU, or the power supply or the motherboard or some BIOS setting. So I'm back to stock CPU speed.


I know real PC enthusiasts don't use onboard audio but I was under the impression that onboard audio had come a long way and the DS3P included a great Realtek audio chip. Can't say I'm really happy with the sound quality. There is constant hum from my speakers when playing games (used the speakers from my previous PC - Dell (Altec Lansing) ADA995 5.1 surround sound speakers). There is no hum when no audio is playing. But when audio is playing, there is a hum even when the speakers are muted or when headphones are plug in. I have tried updating the drivers using the audio drivers at the Gigabyte web site and at Realtek's web site but didn't get any better results (sometimes worse results). so I finally have bought a Creative SoundBlaster X-fi Xtreme Gamer sound card but have not installed it yet (it had a $30 rebate so it was under $50 and supposedly Creative has got better Vista drivers... I haven't installed it yet so we'll see.)


[Note I have Rev 1.0... There is a Rev 1.1 out there that changed the heatsink on the northbridge... and there is a Rev 2 which removes the Serial and Parallel ports in back and adds 4 more USB ports.]

By cheapfrag - Jun 2, 2008