Gigabyte's S775 Motherboard lineup

[ddrueding]

Intel's C2D chips seem to be the way to go for the foreseeable future, and Merc has turned me into a believer of Gigabyte's combination of stability, features and price.

Newegg.com currently features 19 motherboards made by Gigabyte for the S775 platform.

GIGABYTE GA-8I865GME-775-RH-AS LGA 775 Intel 865G Micro ATX

Has AGP and not much else for under $50

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35

Has the latest P35 chipset (which I assume is a good thing) for only $130

GIGABYTE GA-N680SLI-DQ6 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI

Is the most expensive by far.


Are any of these real winners? Losers? Do any stand out?

 

[ddrueding]

From what I've heard, DDR3 isn't outperforming DDR2 at the moment. True? If so, it seems the GA-P35-DQ6 is the board to get at present if money isn't an issue.

 

[Mercutio]

I have a couple of the P35s on order but you'll probably get yours before I get mine.

The "DS3" and its lesser "S3" brother, in both "G" and "P" varieties, are generally good for me, though not the best Gigabyte motherboards I've ever used. My main complaints are that there's no way to permanently set the overclocking options to "on" in the BIOS, and that the VRM components around the CPU get really, really warm on all of them; the motherboard can literally be more of an problem for overclocking than the CPU or RAM!

I do tend to prefer the DS3 for its solid caps, but I'm not entirely sure they're really needed. My older Gigabyte boards with electrolytic caps don't seem to have issues. Still, it's only $15.

The Intel boards I buy (946GZis) also have solid caps and are significantly cheaper than Gigabyte's mainstream 775 products. For a non-enthusiast build I'd certainly look at that board.

In my opinion, the two interesting features on the DQ6 are the heat pipe for northbridge/VRM cooling and its integrated sound (like the X-Mystique, it does Dolby Digital Live). I've only gotten to play with two DQ6s and they couldn't push a C2D any more than a plain old S3 or DS3. Unfortunately, neither of those systems were mine, so I didn't get to examine them for any lengthy amount of time. I suspect the pipe helps but I also suspect it's not $100 worth of help, which is why I haven't bought any for myself.

I will say that at least with XP and Server 2003, switching between i965 and nvidia 650/680 is pretty much painless as long as Windows wasn't using nVidia's PATA driver. Experimenting doesn't seem to be a big deal.

I *think* Gigabyte advocacy started with Tannin, not me, and that was all the way back on SR.

 

[ddrueding]

...My main complaints are that there's no way to permanently set the overclocking options to "on" in the BIOS...

I'm a bit confused by this. Do you need to re-enter all your OC settings every time you reboot? Voltage, Freq, Mult, etc? What about RAM timings? That could be a real PITA.

 

[Bozo]

I'm a bit confused by this. Do you need to re-enter all your OC settings every time you reboot? Voltage, Freq, Mult, etc? What about RAM timings? That could be a real PITA.

No. When you enter the BIOS, you press F1+Ctrl to show even more BIOS options. But, you have to manually enable these extra menu settings every time you enter the BIOS.
The actual BIOS settings are permanant.

I just purchased the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard. So far it has been great. It accepts DDR2 or DDR3 (but not at the same time) so you can use any DDR2 memory until the DDR3 comes down in price.

Bozo :joker:

 

[ddrueding]

Ok. Thanks Bozo. I knew about the Ctrl+F1; it's been there for years. Was it Coug that said DDR3 wasn't as fast at the moment?

 

[CougTek]

Current DDR3 modules have high latencies and that make them no faster than high-end, but still cheaper DDR2 memory sticks.

DDR3 = next year. This year, you'll pay the big price only to get small results.

 

[CougTek]

Was it Coug that said DDR3 wasn't as fast at the moment?

Now Coug says : ""Don't waste your money".

 

[ddrueding]

The N680LSI-DQ6 does look interesting. But isn't the 680 an older chipset? How does it perform?

 

[CougTek]

The performance is good but the that chipset is a real grill (because it dissipates a lot of heat).

 

[ddrueding]

With that many features I'm not surprised.