Well, since ya asked for it! I bought a GA-P35-DQ6 to replace my trusty Rev 1 DS3. Used hyperlinks since the images are huge.
Firstly, the P35 chipset is the equal of Nvidia's when it comes to RAM overclocking... my DS3 couldn't do anything with RAM over 1100MHz without generating errors in Memtest, which was norm for the 965P chipsets. The same Micron D9 Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 RAM will now OC to
1220MHz @ 2.4v fully Memtest+ 1.7v stable. Or, I can run it at 4-4-4-12 timings at 1068Mhz at 2.35v, which my DS3 could not do either. These are not maximums, simply settings I've attempted to date so more can be eked out of them. I was not willing to go over 2.4vcc either.
The electricals on the Rev 1 DS3 simply couldn't take the stress/load above a 3.4GHz OC well. This P35-DQ6 is not even getting more than warm with a 100% overclock going, and voltages on everything from the CPU to the RAM are rock solid and strong. I was expecting to need extra fans, but the "heatpipe towers" on the DQ6 is hardly getting above room temp, and only slightly warm in several places. I have no plans to switch it out for the aftermarket chipset coolers I have... even the fins on the VREG modules are staying only slightly warm and not hot as I expected.
E6300
GA-P35-DQ6
2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2-1067MHz
PC Power & Cooling 750watt Quad Silencer
Foxconn 8800GTS 320mb
Swiftech Apogee GT + MCP655 & Koolance EHX-1050BK
501FSB x 7 = 3.5GHz @ 1.43v
24 hour Orthos Blend stable
http://i111.photobucket.com/al...hanur64/DQ6/24run2.jpg
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534FSB x 7 = 3.73GHz 100% overclock @ 1.56v
DDR2-1068Mhz 4-4-4-12
Stable for 9 hours and counting... my last run was stable for exactly 8 hours and 57 minutes before I got a rounding error, so another minor voltage increase to 1.56v seems to have taken care of that.
http://i111.photobucket.com/al.../373overclocktake2.jpg
Love the board, vdroop is a constant 0.015 just about. Completely unlike the DS3 I can change the voltages and see them change linearly, whether it is RAM or the CPU voltages. Some critiques though... I can tolerate the lack of a 1T vs 2T setting, but no TRC setting either? Oof. ASUS gets a win there easy.
A bigger issue is that this Crucial Ballistix RAM was NOT STABLE at stock settings... I can start Coretemp and crash the system at the hardware level
at will, even though it was more than stable enough to install Windows XP. To remove that instability I had to use the
"Option 2" setting even at stock, even if manually setting the RAM voltages first. The Gigabyte DS3 I owned was exactly the same. Only using "Option 2" will Coretemp NOT BSOD the system on the spot and Memtest will then not detect RAM errors. Just a simple fix for anyone that knows about it, but a big issue for those that don't and think their system is stable. Keep in mind that I ran Orthos for 17+ hours without issue at stock on my DS3, but starting Coretemp could still BSOD the system half the time until I changed to Option 2. It seems absurd, but Memtest seems to confirm that it is not just an issue with Coretemp itself. This whole problem only seems to affect Micron D9 modules operating above 1,000Ghz... I want to say 1,030Mhz and higher is where Micron D9 RAM must be set to Option 2, but that's just a rough estimate. I only have this one D9 kit to test with, all my other RAM is Corsair ProMOS and doesn't have any issues as it runs out of clocks at ~1ghz even.
Edit: I'll add that I am still using the shipping F4 BIOS. I expect things to only improve as they gradually release updated BIOS's... As Anandtech said, this shipping BIOS is a far, far far, cry from the F1 BIOS of old on the DS3, and even much better than the F4 BIOS. This is a mature board. My biggest regret... is that it is not a GA-X38-DQ6.
There does seem to be a FSB wall over 540FSB, I attempted to OC to 3.8GHz but it was requiring drastic voltages and still was just barely stable enough to load windows. Dropping the multiplier to 6 and kicking the FSB up met with identical results. My old DS3 could actually hit a higher FSB of ~550 on a 6 multiplier... so there is still lots of fine tuning that can be made with this BIOS.