*** Official Gigabyte P965-DS3 Thread ***

[imported_neloX]

Few Quick questions. Does the S3 have the exact same Micron D9 problems as the DS3? Are DS3 and S3 BIOS's the same, i.e. can you flash them both with the same BIOS? If they do have the same Micron D9 problems, and if the next DS3 BIOS release fixes it, would it mean that they would also put out a fix for the S3?

Thanks.

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks redhawk56. Any probs? Do you have them on the Intel connectors or the Jmicron (purple)?

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Thanks redhawk56. Any probs? Do you have them on the Intel connectors or the Jmicron (purple)?

You cant run raid on the ICH8 on the DS3. You have no choice but to run it on the jMicron ports.

I would say it runs very well. It was simple to configure and besides loading the F6 drivers with a floppy (that always cranks me up), it was very smooth. I do a lot of video processing and it really shows up the speed differences there.

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks much, redhawk56. I actually did RTFM four weeks ago when I built the system... but I forgot about the no-raid on the ICH8. That's too bad, actually. It would be nice to have RAID capability on both.

 

[ROcHE]

Originally posted by: ir0nw0lf
[
Some of the manufacturers like Realtek embed several brand specific extras in their drivers. In this case, I'm pretty sure there is some Giga-byte branded stuff in the Realtek drivers from Realtek's site that are being installed. Pretty much nothing that you can do about it.

I wish I could remove them. The control panel is different in Vista and much better IMHO.

 

[MichaelD]

Here's another question. Assuming I forget about the RAID array, and just go with single drives:

Is there a performance difference b/t the ICH8 controller and the JMicron? I.E. if I have two HDs, and am copying b/t the two, would there be a performance diff b/t having both of them on the ICH8 or one on each controller?

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Here's another question. Assuming I forget about the RAID array, and just go with single drives:

Is there a performance difference b/t the ICH8 controller and the JMicron? I.E. if I have two HDs, and am copying b/t the two, would there be a performance diff b/t having both of them on the ICH8 or one on each controller?

There is a huge difference and I don't even have to test it to tell you that. The ICH8 wont even run in Native Sata mode. That means no AHCI and no NCQ and your Sata drives will run in IDE emulation and look like IDE drives to windows. I have one Sata I drive on my ICH8 and the speed is deplorable. That isn't Gigabytes fault by the way except to the extent that they could have put in an ICH8R controller. But that would have made the board much more expensive.

So we get to live with our trade offs LOL!!

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: redhawk56

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Here's another question. Assuming I forget about the RAID array, and just go with single drives:

Is there a performance difference b/t the ICH8 controller and the JMicron? I.E. if I have two HDs, and am copying b/t the two, would there be a performance diff b/t having both of them on the ICH8 or one on each controller?

There is a huge difference and I don't even have to test it to tell you that. The ICH8 wont even run in Native Sata mode. That means no AHCI and no NCQ and your Sata drives will run in IDE emulation and look like IDE drives to windows. I have one Sata I drive on my ICH8 and the speed is deplorable. That isn't Gigabytes fault by the way except to the extent that they could have put in an ICH8R controller. But that would have made the board much more expensive.

So we get to live with our trade offs LOL!!

Thank you. So what's your recommendation? I'm currently running my system drive off the ICH8 and get pretty decent performance out of it. Would you suggest putting the system drive on the JM?

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Originally posted by: redhawk56

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Here's another question. Assuming I forget about the RAID array, and just go with single drives:

Is there a performance difference b/t the ICH8 controller and the JMicron? I.E. if I have two HDs, and am copying b/t the two, would there be a performance diff b/t having both of them on the ICH8 or one on each controller?

There is a huge difference and I don't even have to test it to tell you that. The ICH8 wont even run in Native Sata mode. That means no AHCI and no NCQ and your Sata drives will run in IDE emulation and look like IDE drives to windows. I have one Sata I drive on my ICH8 and the speed is deplorable. That isn't Gigabytes fault by the way except to the extent that they could have put in an ICH8R controller. But that would have made the board much more expensive.

So we get to live with our trade offs LOL!!

Thank you. So what's your recommendation? I'm currently running my system drive off the ICH8 and get pretty decent performance out of it. Would you suggest putting the system drive on the JM?

That is where I have mine. My Raid0 volume is my system volume. Gigabyte will post new drivers for the jmicron pretty soon too. There are new ones available for it. Ii'm not sure if it was on here or on another forum that I got them yesterday and they work nicely.
My burst speed is 230 MB/s......Random access is 12.8 ms.......average read is 96.4 MB/s

Now keeping in mind these were $40 drives, I think that is decent.

 

[MichaelD]

:shocked:

What program are you using to bench your HDs? That RAID0 array is on the JM, correct? Those are SCSI class speeds, if they are indeed correct.

That average read speed is damn good for two of any non-SCSI drives.

<--has had a RAID-0 array of two 15K rpm SCSI drives on a U320 controller


I'm thinking of getting two Seagate 7200.10 series 320GB drives and striping them for an OS volume. I make Ghost images and backup email and mydocs every 72 hours, so I don't give a damn about data integrity. Speed is where it's at.

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
:shocked:

What program are you using to bench your HDs? That RAID0 array is on the JM, correct? Those are SCSI class speeds, if they are indeed correct.

That average read speed is damn good for two of any non-SCSI drives.

<--has had a RAID-0 array of two 15K rpm SCSI drives on a U320 controller


I'm thinking of getting two Seagate 7200.10 series 320GB drives and striping them for an OS volume. I make Ghost images and backup email and mydocs every 72 hours, so I don't give a damn about data integrity. Speed is where it's at.

HDTach is what I use. Here is a screen shot. HDTach Results

Yes it is on the JM. You cant' have raid on the ich8. There is an echo in here LOL!.
The drives actually show up in device manager as scsi drives. But of course they are Sata II.

 

[redhawk56]

ANother thing to take into consideration. If you use the express recovery from GB, it won't work on a Raid Volume.

 

[MichaelD]

Nice, redhawk56. I don't use that Expressrecovery or any bundled-type programs for backup/recovery. Ghost is where it's at, plain and simple.

I will have to try the OS drive on the JM controller; right now, it's sitting unused. Thanks for your replies.

 

[stogez]

I didnt read all 35 pages but can someone answer one simple question. Are there any other difference between the 965P/965G DS3 other than the onboard video? Looking to order one to go with the E6300 and since they're the same price just wanted to make sure. If one isnt better than the other then I'll be getting the 965G-DS3

Thanks

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: stogez
I didnt read all 35 pages but can someone answer one simple question. Are there any other difference between the 965P/965G DS3 other than the onboard video? Looking to order one to go with the E6300 and since they're the same price just wanted to make sure. If one isnt better than the other then I'll be getting the 965G-DS3

Thanks

Are you interested at all in overclocking? If you are, you need to choose the 965p over the 965g. If you are interested in higher end performance and overclocking, then the DQ6 would be a better choice. There may be some physical differences in the board also. To get the actual intel specs on each chipset, you could visit the intel site. To compare the GB specs, their website has a comparison tool.

 

[stogez]

Definitely interested in overclocking. Thats why I wanted to know the differences. I tried comparing the two but didnt see any major differences other than the video.

 

[redhawk56]

The CPU power and capacitors are much more substantial on the 965p-ds3 compared to the 965g. But generally you won't be able to overclock on a board that has integrated video, even if you aren't using the integrated video.

Personally if I were making the decision now, I'd buy the 965p-DQ6 over the DS3. It is much better than the DS3 and has the advantages of the ICH8R southbridge. That gives you much better performance on your Sata drives even if you dont intend on using raid. That board also has much better cpu power components. It also has a higher pricetag but I would judge that to me money well spent in the long run.

The one other thing to take into consideration is the CPU that you intend to use. I don't know how much I believe it, but some say that the 965 chipset is better suited to overclocking the E6300 and E6400 and the the 975 chipset is better for the E6600 and above. The benchmarks I have looked at do not really substantiate that but it is a pretty commonly held opinion.

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: neloX
Few Quick questions. Does the S3 have the exact same Micron D9 problems as the DS3? Are DS3 and S3 BIOS's the same, i.e. can you flash them both with the same BIOS? If they do have the same Micron D9 problems, and if the next DS3 BIOS release fixes it, would it mean that they would also put out a fix for the S3?

Thanks.

I cant tell you for sure. Gary can better answer this.

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: Pollock
YGPM.

And for the record: DVD Decrypter

I lost track of whether you had any luck after I saw that post on page 35 of someone with the same problem who resolved it. Did you see that and did it help you? It was around 2:35am on page 35.

 

[Arbitrator]

Hi,
I've updated BIOS from F4 to F7 and lost the ability to control system fan speed. Just runs full speed now.
Anyone else notice this, is there a work around?

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: Arbitrator
Hi,
I've updated BIOS from F4 to F7 and lost the ability to control system fan speed. Just runs full speed now.
Anyone else notice this, is there a work around?

Two questions:

What software were you using to control the fans under bios F4?

What are Fan speed control method and Fan Speed control mode set to in the bios health screen? These two options get changed to defaults every time you load fail safe defaults and optimized defaults. They may also get changed when you update bios. I just dont remember.

 

[Arbitrator]

No 3rd party software at all, just the options in BIOS under PC Health.
The speed of the CPU and SYSTEM fans were controlled by the relevant temp sensors.

I enjoyed having a very quiet machine and wondered why the control now only applies to CPU only?

I have tried Auto, Legacy & Intel QST, all give same result...sys fan running at full pelt.

 

[redhawk56]

Originally posted by: Arbitrator
No 3rd party software at all, just the options in BIOS under PC Health.
The speed of the CPU and SYSTEM fans were controlled by the relevant temp sensors.

I enjoyed having a very quiet machine and wondered why the control now only applies to CPU only?

I have tried Auto, Legacy & Intel QST, all give same result...sys fan running at full pelt.

I never noticed anything changing with my cpu fan control from one to the next. I had water cooling on for a few weeks and i'm waiting for a replacement pump now so I have my heatsink cooler on there now. It controls it nicely.

I never had my system fans controlled because I have antec tri speed case fans that I control. But I did plug in a 80mm that I have pointed at my northbridge and the only way I've found to control it is with speedfan and it is pretty challenging to get it set up right.

Maybe Gary can help you with this and pass it along to GB.

 

[yiranhu]

Originally posted by: Arbitrator
No 3rd party software at all, just the options in BIOS under PC Health.
The speed of the CPU and SYSTEM fans were controlled by the relevant temp sensors.

I enjoyed having a very quiet machine and wondered why the control now only applies to CPU only?

I have tried Auto, Legacy & Intel QST, all give same result...sys fan running at full pelt.

I have the F7 bios. I noticed that if you use the Voltage control, my stock fan speed changes between 1620 RPM to 1750 RPM (almost no change). But if I use PWM (which from principle is a more robust controlling algorithm), the CPU fan speed ranges from 1000 RPM to 1750 RPM.

The only problem I have with this is that I can't specify the thermal settings that determines what RPM should be used. I like my CPU nice and cool so I want the fan to be at 1500 if it is above 35C (i.e. core temp ~ 45). But I can't control it except via easytune, which is pretty stupid.

Do you guys know of a way to do something about this? Does version 8 bios come with something for this?

 

[rainypickles]

Originally posted by: yiranhu

Originally posted by: Arbitrator
I have tried Auto, Legacy & Intel QST, all give same result...sys fan running at full pelt.

The only problem I have with this is that I can't specify the thermal settings that determines what RPM should be used. I like my CPU nice and cool so I want the fan to be at 1500 if it is above 35C (i.e. core temp ~ 45). But I can't control it except via easytune, which is pretty stupid.

Do you guys know of a way to do something about this? Does version 8 bios come with something for this?

speed fan to the rescue!
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

get the regular version, then register and grab the beta. it will detect your fans and cpu temps. you can setup temperature threshholds to determine when the fans ramp up or shut off or somewhere in between. its great!

to use this software, fan control in the bios must be disabled (not qst, auto, legacy)