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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WynX - Monday, August 21, 2006 - link
Great article!!!Really waiting for the nforce 5 series (to be mature too).
wheelconnector - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link
Heyon the review here it says that the 975xbx can support ddr2 800MHz memory speeds, but anywhere else that I've checked, claims that the board only supports speeds upto 667MHz. Can the board take 800MHz out of the box? or will I have to mess around with it to accept the RAM?
thanks a lot
LeeKay - Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - link
I hope u still have your mushkin XP2-8000 (redline) and never sent it back.Here is my hardware.
--------------------
P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe / P5B Deluxe.
Asus Silent tower CPU cooler.
E6600 Processor.
2x1GB Mushkin Redline DDR2 1000Mhz / 2x1GB OCZ Platnium 800MHZ
2x 150GB Raptors,
1x Seagate 300GB Drive,
Powerstream 600Watt PSU
2x EVGA 7950GX2
Coolermaster Stacker.
Plexter SATA 755 Drive
Liteon IDE drive
Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Creative Labs X-Fi Extreme gamer.
Here is my problem..
P5N32 SLI SE DELUXE
I put 2 sticks of ram in the system with the video card will not post. I have to remove one stick of ram and leave one stick in B1 or B2. It will not boot from a cleared bios with a stick in A1 or A2. I then have to go in the bios and set the memory below or at 800Mhz for it to post with 2 sticks of ram in it. Even then when I put the two sticks in and go to the bios it shows only 1024MB or system ram. But the post screen clearly shows 2048. There is nothing wrong with this memory. It ran fine with the P5B motherboard.
When using the OCZ it posts no problem but again shows 2048MB at post and in bios and the OS only shows 1024MB Avalible.
Asus Tech support is the worst in the world. They instantly tell you its a faulty board this and that. But its not its the bios I am 100% sure it is.
Could you Anandtech please setup a test bed with the 0121 bios and try it. If it has no issue could you please try 0204 revision and then tell me. I have the same motherboard revision as you show in the picture.
Thanks in advance.
Bugs66 - Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - link
I see more and more older boards with Core 2 Duo support. Such as the Asus P5PE-VM which is 865G, AGP, and DDR400. I am very curious how performance is hit using the older chipset. These boards are great for folks who do not want to toss their RAM, video card, etc unless there is a huge difference.Thanks for the great writeup.
trajan - Saturday, July 29, 2006 - link
The article mentions these will be coming out soon for socket 775/Conroe. Anyone know when? I've been surfing around for hours trying to find info on it. I know NVidia has made the NForce 500s for Intel but none of the board manufacturers lists any info at all.Just trying to decide if I should go ahead and get the ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe (I want to run SLI) or if it's only a short wait for something better.. !
Thanks
rallyhard - Monday, July 24, 2006 - link
Thanks for the great review.I was going back and referencing some information from it today and noticed that in the P5W-DH Deluxe Basic Features table, you have the number of IDE ports listed incorrectly as one. There are actually two ports, one provided by the JMicron JMB363, and the other from the ICH7R southbridge. I got that info from the Asus website.
Is that the other IDE port over below the last PCI port?! If so, that's rediculous.
But this is one of very few Core 2 Duo supporting motherboards that I've seen that have 2 IDE ports, so I might just have to get it.
Gary, I look forward to the upcoming review you mentioned earlier in these comments of the Biostar motherboard with the VIA VT6410 controller. IDE performance continues to be important to me, and will for quite some time with the investment I've already made in hard drives. NEVER AGAIN will I get burned by an under-reviewed, underperfoming chip like the IT8212F!
Thanks again for your quality reviews.
thedjvan - Sunday, July 23, 2006 - link
I am very impressed with this guide, looks like a lot of hard work went into it!I have a question though. I am using the release of Conroe as an excuse to build a whole new system. After reading your guide in addition to others, I've decided on the E6700 and the DFI board (as I don't plan on OCing much, if at all).
However, the video card I had chosen is a X1900XTX, as I have read many bad reviews on the 7900 series having assorted problems with heat and other issues.
Now, having read this, I see that Conroe isn't playing nice with my chosen vid card, possibly due to driver issues. My question: Have you guys received any word from ATI, or has a new driver been pushed out yet that brings its performance up to par where it should be? There's absolutely no reason the Nvidia card should be blowing it away, especially on HL2 and other typically ATI friendly games.
If not, should I forget the ATI card and take a chance on one of the Nvidia cards, or simply go with the ATI card and hope they push out new drivers soon? The AMD/ATI aquisition further complicates the situation... I somehow doubt they'd do any favors for intel based systems.
thedjvan - Sunday, July 23, 2006 - link
No edit button :(I meant a X1900XT, not the XTX version. I'll keep my $100, thanks :)
thedjvan - Sunday, July 23, 2006 - link
Sorry, one more quick question. Is the Zalman CNPS9500 compatible with the Conroe?Gary Key - Sunday, July 23, 2006 - link
Yes...works very well by the way. ;-)