Originally posted by: koitsu
Something worth noting about this board (or rather, the BIOS)...
Numerous CPU features appear to not be available or enabled due to whatever Gigabyte is doing in their BIOS. I compared RMClock results with a friend of mine with a P5B + E6400. The differences are notable.
So I got my P5B board today, and I'm fairly impressed, but there are some issues which I cannot deal with. Here's the page of the post (assuming this URL works...), explaining my experience with the P5B and the god-awful Realtek NIC:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...did=1908392&STARTPAGE=21&enterthread=y
That said, I went ahead and rebuilt the DS3 system (also cleaned dust out of the case, made sure there weren't any obvious traces scratched on the DS3 mainboard, applied different thermal paste this time (instead of using Intel's stock, using Arctic Silver 5), and cleared the CMOS via the jumper). I left ALL of the DS3 BIOS options for power save features and the like (C1E and all) enabled.
Lo and behold, RMClock began showing appropriate things in blue! Rebooting and toggling them in the BIOS also was reflected in RMClock later. So I'm left thinking I didn't load defaults when I upgraded from F4 to F5 to F6 (when/one of those, can't remember! ). We all know what that can do...
Now, EIST, TM1, TM2, and CxE are all blue. Core Clock fluxuates between 1600MHz and 2400MHz (depending on load), and the FID multiplier also fluxuates respectively between 6x and 9x.
Core Temp is 41C, but I have my case open. To compare this to the P5B, it's disheartening -- I was seeing 33-34C on the P4B. That's disturbing, and makes me wonder if the monitoring stuff on one of the boards simply isn't right (the P5B or the DS3). My external CPU and system temperature remained about the same on both boards (meaning no drastic changes there).
It's very unnerving that the core temperatures differ by such a large amount on the *same CPU* simply based on what motherboard you're using...
So now it's time to rebuilt the rest of the box (software-wise) and run FFXI or WoW for awhile to see if it'll crash with C1E enabled. I sure hope not. I really like my DS3. :-(