Author: William Henning
Editor: Howard Ha
Publish Date: Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
Originally Published on Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com)
Article Link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/ga-p965-ds3/
Copyright Neo Era Media, Inc. - please do not redistribute or use for commercial purposes.
Back in July, we reviewed the Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 motherboard - and found it to be an excellent performer, and very good overclocker.
Today, we take a look at a lower cost version, the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, and I can't help but wonder how it will perform. Given its lower cost, you might think it will not perform as well - however the intervening months have given Gigabyte time to tweak their production and their BIOS. Not to mention the fact that the DS3 has become something of a darling in the overclocking community with a reputation for being an amazing bang for the buck - so we figured we'd take a look at what could potentially be a killer board.
The GA-965P-DS3 supports:
That's enough marketing talk, here is the full specification table:
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The Board
Like its bigger brother the GA-965P-DQ6, the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 has a nice clean layout. Unlike the DQ6 however, the DS3 doesn't feature a fancy network of heatpipe cooled heatsinks, but it does use very innobtrusive passive coolers that look pretty darn good.
As the more budget oriented board in Gigabyte's P965 family, the bundle is fairly basic, as you can see below, you get:
As shipped, there is a BIG sticker on the motherboard to remind you about the all solid capacitor design.
I liked the clean, uncrowded layout.
Below you can see the nice clean SATA / IDE layout, and the heatsink on the southbridge.
Below you can see the DIMM sockets, color coded for dual channel identification, as well as the large copper heatsink on the Northbridge.
You know... between the heatsinks and the solid state capacitors, this board just might be a good overclocker :)
Note the solid state capacitors.
Three PCI slots, three PCIe 1x slots (although one would be blocked by a video card with a large cooler), and one PCIe 16x slot. Pretty good expansion capabilities here!
On the back I/O panel we see the familiar PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, as well as our old friends the parallel printer port and serial port (that are probably not long for this world), for USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, SP/DIFF and optical audio as well as conventional analog audio connectors... pretty much everything you would need!
Ok, that's great... but how's the BIOS?
I am glad you asked...
The BIOS
The GA-965P-DS3 uses a pretty vanilla Award BIOS.
As you can see, all the usual suspects are there, with the left hand side showing the seven available sub menu's.
The last one is the interesting one...
The Stantard CMOS page lets you configure the IDE/SATA devices, date, time, floppy etc.
You can obviously drill down to control the access mode of each SATA/IDE device, as well as check out its geometry.
The Avanced BIOS Features page lets you configure the boot order, CMOS password and some processor features such as SpeedStep and VT.
The Integrated Peripherals screen lets you control the on-board peripherals - SATA, USB, LAN etc.
The power management screen configures hibrenation, wakeup events, and what happens on power loss.
The PnP/PCI screen allows some control over interrputs; perhaps it should have been merged with the integrated peripherals screen?
As some of you are aware, there was a rash of problems with 965 (and some other) chipset based motherboards not booting with some high performance memory modules.
This problem was caused by the BIOS defaulting to 1.8V or 1.9V for the DDR2 voltage supply - which is woefully inadequate for high performance memory modules - for example our excellent Corsair TwinX PC8500 modules require 2.3V!
In the past, it used to be common for BIOSes to just say OK/Fail for voltages, and I'm afraid that Gigabyte still does this for memory voltages. Even worse, they do not explicitly state on the M.I.T. page that the base memory voltage is 1.8V - so unless you look at the PC Health screen (shown below) and notice that it says "DDR18V FAIL" you won't know exactly how to set the precise voltage your modules may need. I WANT TO SEE ACTUAL VOLTAGES! Show me "1.8V" or "2.3" or whatever the voltage is at; Pass/Fail does not cut it for enthusiasts, especially since different DIMM modules have different requirements and tolerances for what voltages they will run at.
The "Fail" reading on DDR18V is a good example why this is a bad way to display memory voltage. Presumably it failed because I am driving the DDR2 memory with a +0.5 "overdrive" (when I should be able to pick "2.3V" for DDR2 voltage) - that is needed by these 2.3V DIMM's.
Now we get to the interesting part!
If after entering the BIOS you go straight to the MB Intelligent Tweaker, you might be disappointed.
Sure, it lets you control the FSB frequency, PCIe frequency, and memory multiplier (I LOVE simply setting a memory speed multiplier relative to FSB instead of meaningless 533/667/800/Auto that changes at the BIOS's whim!)
Gigabyte should give us a simple way to pick the DDR2 voltage from 1.8V...2.5V in 0.05V steps, similar to the way it lets you overvolt the processor. The methodology of overvolting by percentage or a voltage offset that that they use is very reminiscent of the old school Gigabyte mentality that is slowly giving way in the past year or more, but unfortunately this current BIOS still has this type of design.
The FSB, MCH and CPU voltage control are well done. If this was all there was to it, it would still be a decent overclocking BIOS.
BUT THAT IS NOT ALL!
Some of you may not be aware that Gigabyte has a hidden "expert" mode for their tweaking functionality!
If you press "CTRL-F1" before entering the tweaking menu, you will get a LOT more choices!
You can set the main memory timing parameters
You can set the processor multiplier - it unlocks downwards!
You can enable the "Robust Graphics Booster"
Now that's better!
I was very pleased to see that the BIOS unlocked the multipliers downward; there are significantly more expensive boards that don't do that - unfortunately, I could not get the chip stable at FSB frequencies over 455MHz, so being able to use a lower multiplier did not help in this case, but it might in yours.
With the hidden fields turned on, the GA-965P-DS3's BIOS becomes quite good for tweaking!
Test Setup
Hardware for testing of the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3:
The Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 will be duking it out with several other Core 2-compatible motherboards:
Unfortunately when we benchmarked the ASUS P5B Deluxe WiFi we were still using an E6700 for all motherboard testing; since then we've decided to switch to the E6400 as it seems to be a bit easier to go to higher FSB speeds with it, so we can not compare directly compare to the P5B for every benchmark as some were not run for the E6400 processor review on that board.
Benchmarks Used
For now, here is a listing of the tests performed:
Video drivers used were NVIDIA ForceWare version 84.97
Business Winstone
The GA-965P-DS3 comes out right in the middle for good old Business Winstone.
It would come out higher, as the only board that beat it was an Intel 975X based - it beat both 965P boards it was pitted against, and it tied one of the 975X boards!
Not too shabby that.
Multimedia Winstone
Not surprisingly, the 975X based boards take a noticable lead here and the GA-965P-DS3 manages to beat the MSI 965P.
WinRAR
That's right people, you are not seeing things. The 965 based Gigabyte board is beating two 975X based boards!
RightMark Memory
The GA-965P-DS3 places respectably in the Real Read test of RightMark; right in the middle of the pack.
The Real Write results are all quite close, but the DS3 does not do as well here, taking fourth place.
For latency, the DS3 is again back in the middle of the pack.
Do NOT ask me how RightMark computes bandwidth, because after never placing first in the individual tests, the Gigabyte 965P-DS3 manages to take first place for bandwidth!
Sandra
Once again, the GA 965P-DS3 places in the middle of the pack.
HDTach Results
Other than the MSI 965P the SATA results were very close! The DS3 did have a low CPU utilization here.
The Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3 wins the parallel ATA race - though not by a significant margin.
Surprisingly, the DS3 also wins the USB race, although only by using the highest percetage of CPU of the field.
MPEG2
Multi-threaded TMPGenc encoding... the 975X chipsets have an edge, but the Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3 does quite well!
XviD
With Xvid, the AW9D has the best result, and the DS3 turns in a relatively lacklustre performance.
LAME Encoding
For MP3 encoding, the GA 965P-DS3 is right in the middle of the pack!
RightMark Audio
2D
For 2D rightmark audio, the DS3 has the second worst CPU utilization result.
3D
For 3D hardware sound, the DS3 redeems itself; as a matter of fact the MSI looks suspiciously low; perhaps an unusual driver?
3D EAX
The DS3 does extremely well here, it is only beaten by the MSI 965P, which again looks surprisingly low.
Call of Duty
The Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 comes in first here!
Surprisingly the 975X boards are noticably behind; perhaps the 965P works better for PCIe 16?
Comanche 4
For Comanche, the DS3 still does well, but finishes second to last in a close race.
Doom 3
My old favorite... Doom 3.
The Gigabyte DS3 takes second spot here, beating two 975X boards, but losing to the MSI 965P
Halo
Here the GA-965P-DS3 takes first place again!
Granted, the lead is not huge, but teh DS3 DOES beat two 975X based boards - again.
Jedi Knight
Second place for Jedi Knight is not too shabby, again beating the 975X boards.
Unreal Tournament 2004
VERY close race for UT, and placing second by less than one fps is not bad at all!
Overclocking
Look, I am not going to beat around the bush.
The Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 is an EXCELLENT overclocker!
As a matter of fact, it has slightly beaten out our previous champion, the indominatable Asus P5W DH for highest stable overclock!
As you will see from the charts below, we managed to reach a stable maximum speed of 3.64GHz on air cooling! As a matter of fact, 3.72GHz was *almost* stable; a bit better cooling and it would have been the new record.
For these results, we show E6400 best overclocked results on the respective boards, plus the stock Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 result and the OC'd DS3 result are highlighted.
Ok, first let's take a look at some synthetic benchmark resuls.
RightMark
The Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 obviously loses in Read bandwidth to the superior memory controller in the 975X boards, but it does do very well for a 965 based motherboard!
Surprisingly, the DS3 has the top Write bandwidth! Well done.
You do get something for your money with the 975 chipset - generally 975X based boards get lower latencies than 965P based boards, although the excellent Abit AB9Pro does VERY well on the latency test.
Pretty good performance for the DS3 for overall bandwidth - but it obviously does not win.
Sandra
We see pretty much the same thing we saw with RightMark; the Gigabyte DS3 does well, and the AB9Pro does even better - especially considering they both beat some 975X based boards!
WinRAR
The Gigabyte 965P-DS3 is right in the middle of the pack here.
Doom 3
In the Doom 3 test, the DS3 is surprisingly close to the top!
Productivity Overclocking
Business Winstone
Oh my!
Please note, I do NOT recommend overclocking your business desktops, but look at that Winstone result!
Same story for Content Creation!
(In case you are wondering why there are not more results... generally we do not re-run our whole suite at the highest stable overclock we achieve; however in a few cases when the other OC results are good, and we have the time, we do run the full suite.)
LAME MP3
My my my my... that is actually a pretty large lead.
TMPGEnc
The DS3 does well here too.
Xvid
And once again, great results for the DS3
Gaming Overclocking
Let me make this short and sweet.
Except for the unexpectedly low stock speed Comanche result, the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 does quite well at gaming.
Please note all the gaming tests were run at low resolution so as to make certain we will not be showing GPU limitations; we wanted to see CPU effects on gaming, and this way we can simulate an essentially unlimited speed GPU.
Ok, so how did we get this excellent overclocked result?
Introducing some new benchmarks
There always comes a time when the existing benchmark tools are no longer sufficient. This is one of those times.
Our old friend, Sandra 2004 is simply not up to providing reliable, repeatable results with the newest high speed multi core processors. We are therefore adding Sandra 2007, and will be phasing out running Sandra 2004 over the next few reviews. It has served us well, but it is time to update it.
As we are updating Sandra, we've also added a few more sandra benchmarks - so for now, instead of just processor and memory bandwidth, we will also include MMX, memory latency, and inter-core bandwidth.
We have also been getting a LOT of requests to start using Quake 4 for benchmarking; therefore from this article we are adding Quake 4 to processor, memory and motherboard benchmark suites. We are considering retiring our old faithful Doom 3 - but that decision is not final yet.
Quake 4
Quake 4 turns out to be well suited (when run at low resolutions) to show the potential effects of higher speed processors assuming that the GPU's are not the speed limitation - which we do, by running at low resolution. These tests were run with "multi cores" enabled; and future reviews will show more results as we build up our database of results.
We show a 57.1fps gain (50.7%) from a 70.9% increase in processor speed. That's pretty good scaling!
Sandra 2007 CPU Tests
We can see a very clear advantage for the overclocked setting; as a matter of fact we get a 45.5% increase in integer performance, and a 45.1% increase in floating point performance.
Sandra MMX Tests
I thought with Intel and AMD continously tweaking their SSE/SSE2/SSE3 circuitry, we should try running the MMX tests again.
Here, we showed quite strong scaling, with an 84.8% improvement in integer SSE performance, greater than the increase in clock rates, therefore some of the gain must be from additional memory bandwidth at the higher speed.
Sandra Latency Tests
Here we are combining showing the DDR2 latancy as well as the inter-core communications latency.
The increase in core speeds from raising the FSB from 1066MHz to 1,820MHz data rate, combined with an 800MHz to 910MHz increase in DDR2 speeds, results in almost 8% reduction in DDR2 latency; and results in a whopping 31% reduction in inter-core latency!
Sandra Bandwidth Tests
Here we take a look at not only the memory bandwidth, but also the inter-core communications bandwidth.
The memory bandwidth results are quite comparable with our old friend Sandra 2004, but the inter-core results are a new development.
Integer memory bandwidth improved 36.5% when I overclocked the processor, and floating point bandwidth improved by 40%!
The most important gain however was in inter-core communication, we got a whopping 53.2% increase there, or more than two thirds of the core frequency increase. Very impressive.
Conclusion
As you saw from our results, we were able to slightly exceed our previous record of 3.60GHz set on the outstanding Asus P5W DH - an amazing feat given that the Gigabyte GA-965P sells for $183 whereas the P5W DH Deluxe sells for $285 - a noticeably lower price! Of course this handily beat our results with the P965 based Abit AB9Pro, and the Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi, our previous 965P Core 2 Duo overclocking champs.
3.64GHz on a 965P with air cooling. I like it.
Reaching a stable overclock with a 455FSB is not easy; we've only managed to do it once before with the Asus P5W DH Deluxe which was able to reach a stable overclock with a 450MHz FSB - so 455 is doubly impressive. We could actually go into windows at up to 470MHz and post even higher, but frankly, I am only interested in stable overclocks that can endure our stress tests and complete benchmark suite.
As always, there were four parts to the successful overclock:
In order to run at 3.64GHz we:
The Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 is fantastic overclocker, and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 is an amazing overclocker, with the combination giving us an unbelievable bang/buck ratio!
Basically, what we come down to is this:
Do you want to overclock?
Are you on a budget?
Grab an E6400 and a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3.
Cheaper than our previous stable overclocking champion, and a bit faster to boot, you REALLY can't go wrong with it.
What can I say. I liked this board so much I am giving it our "Overclockers Choice Award"!
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Specification (from