Conroe Buying Guide: Feeding the Monster
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on July 19, 2006 6:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6
Basic Features
The Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 was one of the most talked about and hyped boards at Computex 2006. We were excited when our test sample arrived. After getting through all of the marketing spin on the box and included documentation we found a board that provided everything but the kitchen sink (we believe that to be on the bottom of the board). While the list of options is definitely impressive along with the general look of the board, it is performance that counts in this market sector. Did it deliver? The answer is yes and no, as we will discuss shortly.
The board features 12-phase power, an all solid capacitor design, an impressive silent heat pipe system, Dolby Digital Live and DTS support, eight SATA 3Gbps ports, and a very good layout considering the sheer amount of options on this board. Our one gripe is the Crazy Cool plate on the back side of the board underneath the CPU socket. While we noticed this option worked as well if not better than the ASUS Stack Cool 2 system, the plate is just thick enough to rule out the usage of several aftermarket cooling systems that require the use of a back plate. Granted, some quick and minor modifications to the attachment screw lengths worked in several cases, but for a high end board Gigabyte should expect the user to upgrade the retail CPU cooling system.
Basic Performance
Gigabyte did indeed deliver excellent performance with this board. In fact, the overall performance of the board placed it squarely in the top of our roundup. The board exhibited excellent performance and stability throughout our testing regimen while providing a certain amount of gee whiz discussion amongst the staff members when first noticing the board. What is even more amazing is that this performance occurred with a board that was not running on all cylinders at the time. We had several issues that were solved with a constant stream of BIOS updates, but there was one that neither us nor Gigabyte could overcome.
The board would at various times simply refuse to accept a voltage change in the BIOS with a guaranteed lock up when changing the DRAM voltage. After changing various voltages either together or in a singular manner, the board would enter a reboot cycle that could only be stopped by turning off the power and clearing the CMOS. We were finally able to change the CPU voltage that allowed us to overclock the board to our reported results. However, we were not successful in truly finding the limits of this otherwise impressive board. The initial street pricing of $269.99 also has us concerned. After testing with other CPUs and memory, we ruled out BIOS issues and believe our board to be faulty. We have a new retail board on its way that will hopefully fix the issue.
Overclocking
Even with the aforementioned BIOS issues, we were able to clock this board to an impressive 376FSB. Gigabyte has sent us test results with a new B2 stepping 6 X6800 showing a fully stable system running at 6X498 with the current D27 BIOS. The board ran extremely cool during our overclocking tests indicating a well engineered heat pipe system, although the area around the CPU would need to be actively cooled if a liquid cooling system is utilized. During testing for the maximum FSB clock we ran into the BIOS issues and were not able to extend past the reported 376FSB due to our inability to set the MCH and FSB termination voltages. The only other noticeable drawback in overclocking this board is the lock on increasing the CPU multiplier when utilizing the X6800. We look forward to providing a full review of this board in the near future.
Basic Features
| Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 | |
| Market Segment: | High-End/Enthusiast |
| CPU Interface: | Socket T (Socket 775) |
| CPU Support: | LGA775-based Pentium 4, Celeron D, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo |
| Chipset: | Intel P965 + ICH8R |
| Thermal Design: | 12-phase power Fan-less Heatpipe Cooling Crazy Cool for OC All Solid Capacitor Layout |
| Bus Speed Support: | 1066/800/533MHz |
| Bus Speeds: | 100 to 600 in 1MHz Increments |
| Memory Ratios: | Auto, 2, 2.5, 3, 2.66, 3.33, 4 |
| PCIe Speeds: | Auto, 90MHz~150MHz |
| PCI: | Fixed at 33 |
| Dynamic Tuning: | C.I.A. 2 - Disabled, Cruise, Sports, Racing, Turbo, Full Throttle |
| Core Voltage: | Normal, .68750V to 2.37500V in 0.00625V increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier: | Auto, 6x-11x in 1X increments if CPU is unlocked |
| DRAM Voltage: | Normal, +.025V to +.775V in +.025V increments |
| DRAM Timing Control: | Auto, 9 Options |
| FSB Termination Voltage: | Normal, +.05V to +.35V in +.05V increments |
| NB Voltage: | Normal, +.05V to +.75V in +.05 increments |
| Memory Slots: | Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 8GB Total |
| Expansion Slots: | 1 - PCIe X16 1 - PCIe X4 (X16 physical connector) 3 - PCIe X1 2 - PCI Slots 2.3 |
| Onboard SATA/RAID: | 6 SATA 3Gbps Ports - Intel ICH8R (RAID 0,1,1+0,5,JBOD) 2 SATA 3Gbps Ports - JMicron JMB363 (RAID 0,1, JBOD) |
| Onboard IDE: | 1 Standard ATA133/100/66/33 Port (2 drives) JMicron JMB363 |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394: | 10 USB 2.0 Ports - 4 I/O Panel 6 Headers 3 Firewire 400 Ports via TI TSB43AB23 - 1 I/O Panel 2 Headers |
| Onboard LAN: | Gigabit Ethernet Controller Marvell 88E8053 |
| Onboard Audio: | Realtek ALC888DD HD-Audio 8-channel CODEC Supports Dolby Master Studio including Dolby Digital Live |
| Power Connectors: | ATX 24-pin, 8-pin EATX 12V, 4-Pin Molex |
| I/O Panel: | 1 x Serial 1 x LPT 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x PS/2 Mouse 1 x RJ45 1 x IEEE-1394 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 2 x S/PDIF (Optical + Coaxial) 8-Channel Audio I/O |
| BIOS Revision: | AWARD D27 |
The Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 was one of the most talked about and hyped boards at Computex 2006. We were excited when our test sample arrived. After getting through all of the marketing spin on the box and included documentation we found a board that provided everything but the kitchen sink (we believe that to be on the bottom of the board). While the list of options is definitely impressive along with the general look of the board, it is performance that counts in this market sector. Did it deliver? The answer is yes and no, as we will discuss shortly.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
The board features 12-phase power, an all solid capacitor design, an impressive silent heat pipe system, Dolby Digital Live and DTS support, eight SATA 3Gbps ports, and a very good layout considering the sheer amount of options on this board. Our one gripe is the Crazy Cool plate on the back side of the board underneath the CPU socket. While we noticed this option worked as well if not better than the ASUS Stack Cool 2 system, the plate is just thick enough to rule out the usage of several aftermarket cooling systems that require the use of a back plate. Granted, some quick and minor modifications to the attachment screw lengths worked in several cases, but for a high end board Gigabyte should expect the user to upgrade the retail CPU cooling system.
Basic Performance
Gigabyte did indeed deliver excellent performance with this board. In fact, the overall performance of the board placed it squarely in the top of our roundup. The board exhibited excellent performance and stability throughout our testing regimen while providing a certain amount of gee whiz discussion amongst the staff members when first noticing the board. What is even more amazing is that this performance occurred with a board that was not running on all cylinders at the time. We had several issues that were solved with a constant stream of BIOS updates, but there was one that neither us nor Gigabyte could overcome.
The board would at various times simply refuse to accept a voltage change in the BIOS with a guaranteed lock up when changing the DRAM voltage. After changing various voltages either together or in a singular manner, the board would enter a reboot cycle that could only be stopped by turning off the power and clearing the CMOS. We were finally able to change the CPU voltage that allowed us to overclock the board to our reported results. However, we were not successful in truly finding the limits of this otherwise impressive board. The initial street pricing of $269.99 also has us concerned. After testing with other CPUs and memory, we ruled out BIOS issues and believe our board to be faulty. We have a new retail board on its way that will hopefully fix the issue.
Overclocking
| Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Overclocking Testbed |
|
| Processor: | Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Dual Core, 2.67GHz, 4MB Unified Cache 1066FSB, 10x Multiplier |
| CPU Voltage: | 1.525V (default 1.2V) |
| Cooling: | Tuniq Tower 120 Air Cooling |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GameXStream 700W |
| Memory: | Corsair Twin2X2048-PC2-8500C5 (2x1GB) (Micron Memory Chips) |
| Hard Drive | Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM SATA2 16MB Cache |
| Maximum OC: (Standard Ratio) |
376x10 (3-3-3-9) 3760MHz (+41%) |
Even with the aforementioned BIOS issues, we were able to clock this board to an impressive 376FSB. Gigabyte has sent us test results with a new B2 stepping 6 X6800 showing a fully stable system running at 6X498 with the current D27 BIOS. The board ran extremely cool during our overclocking tests indicating a well engineered heat pipe system, although the area around the CPU would need to be actively cooled if a liquid cooling system is utilized. During testing for the maximum FSB clock we ran into the BIOS issues and were not able to extend past the reported 376FSB due to our inability to set the MCH and FSB termination voltages. The only other noticeable drawback in overclocking this board is the lock on increasing the CPU multiplier when utilizing the X6800. We look forward to providing a full review of this board in the near future.
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Vidmar - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
One thing that really bugs me about some of the MB manufactures is that some never state the exact number of PCIe lanes that are actually available on that second PCIe 16x slot. Some do some don’t. Some state it while in SLI/Crossfire mode but not when in non- SLI/Crossfire mode.Right now I’ve got an nForce 4 SLI board that has two PCIe 16x slots, but when in non-SLI mode they are at 16x and 2x respectively. When in SLI mode they are both at 8x respectively.
The problem with this is that (at least on this board) you cannot install anything but a video card in the second PCIe 16x slot when in SLI mode.
I’ve got an PCIe 8x SCSI raid card (LSI 320-2e) that I’m trying to use in the second PCIe slot at 8x, but this board won’t even acknowledge that its there while in SLI mode. And when running in non-SLI it only runs at 2x and becomes a bottleneck for this workstation.
So if its possible to provide some details as to what exactly a board can do on the second PCIe 16x slot in both normal and SLI/Crossfire mode, that would be most helpful!
For example on the ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe in your review it doesn’t state this information either way. But on the Intel 975XBX you do have that information.
So what does the second PCIe slot run at in non-Crossfire mode on the ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe?
Also do you happen to have a SCSI PCIe card you can test in the second slot (or any PCIe card for that matter) and see if the BIOS can recognize the card while in SLI/Crossfire mode? That too would be helpful for people who don’t care about multiple GPUs, but want to create large array workstations.
Thanks!
PS: nice article.
supremelaw - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Excellent points! Constant change is here to stay :)On our ASUS P5WD2 Premium with i955X chipset,
we are now faced with that very same problem:
we don't need 2 video cards, because we do
mostly database development. And, we want
to dedicate the second "universal" x16 slot
to a high-performance PCI-E RAID controller.
(Santa Claus is going to bring me an x1900
PCI-E video card anyway, and that should
easily last me for another 20 years, min!)
Our consultant highly recommends the Areca model,
but it only performs best in x8 mode. On the
other hand, our ASUS User Manual states that
the second "universal" x16 slot can only run
in x4 mode, maximum.
That limitation was a single line of text
in that User Manual, but it is not mentioned
in any of the other specs for our motherboard.
His recommendation: switch to a server motherboard,
so we can use the Areca RAID 6 controller (not a bad
idea, actually).
So, I think we'll have to settle for the Promise
PCI-E model EX8350, which is also limited to x4 mode,
but it now supports RAID 6 too.
It only took about 4 hours of research to confirm
this limitation, however :)
Such specs should be better documented, for sure!
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/">http://www.supremelaw.org/
Missing Ghost - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
I find it weird that the pcie card does not work in 8x mode. I see no reason why it wouldn't work...the sli pcb that you flip around only redirects the lanes AFAIK.vhx - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Too bad the motherboards cost more than a decent Conroe processor. Kind of sad to see the features lacking until you get into the $250 price ranges. You can spot an AMD AM2 motherboard with the same features for around $130ish, which makes this 975X chipset rediculously expensive compared to the newer AM2's. The TForce P965 looks like a great alternative for the price, although based on the 965P. Hmm upgrading to Conroe will be more expensive than I thought.... /sigh. What to do.Gary Key - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Wait, that is right, wait until the motherboard suppliers are in full production in August. There will be a large variety of motherboards available by the end of August that will make up the $50~$150 range with chipsets from the 945P to nF570SLI being sold. We will also start seeing the G965 boards in late August for those that want a mATX form factor, decent graphics,and the ability to upgrade later. If you need a board now, it will cost you. ;-)
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Not to mention getting the Core 2 CPUs. :) I would expect prices to drop significantly within a month or so.
jonp - Saturday, July 22, 2006 - link
Jarred,Please say more about your comment on pricing.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3377">http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3377
says:
Thanks, Jon
multiblitz2 - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
I was waiting for the 965 as HDMI/HDCP-support is a must have for my new HTPC. Does 975 support this in the same way as the 965 ?araczynski - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
great article!looking forward to additional mobo's appearing (and more importantly - prices dropping) beforei build my next rig.
i personally refuse to pay over $150 for ANY mobo, no matter the features. but i do realize that the initial price gouging is to milk the early adopters. i figure by early october prices should be just right for all the nice toys.
araczynski - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
i know this is a dead horse, by why in the world can't these manufacturers make models that throw out some of these legacy 'extras' they keep putting on the boards?onboard sound, parallel ports, floppy connectors, etc...