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

[ThePiston]

take all of your non-essential peripherals out (sounds cards, firewire cards, etc) or remove them (USB stuff like printer, etc). leave in only video card. your bios is probably fine if you have never gone into it.

 

[Trixie21]

I tried that also, taking out the non-essentials. Still no luck. I've also tried substituting different RAM too, just in case. No luck with that either.

 

[Trixie21]

I've tried both the 32bit and 64bit discs, so either both are bad by some odd chance or something else weird is going on here. Windows XP installs just fine, and runs fine as far as I can tell.

The reason I thought it was the motherboard is because I found this post online.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=42870

Is there any compatibility issues with the P965 chipset or the ICHR8 southbridge? I did have the Asus p5B-E and that seemed to work fine. (It did die on me though)

 

[culebracut]

Have you seen this?
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/FAQ_Model.aspx?ProductID=2321

It indicates its necessary to update the eprom for the lan chip on the motherboard. I tried it but I have not had a chance to reinstall Vista, however. I did try Windows XP (I wanted to dual boot) and the XP lan driver no longer works. So I'm hoping to just go with Vista, but I won't know untilll this weekend. In the worst case, I was just going to disable the onboard lan and put in an ethernet card.

If someone knows about a driver for the Marvell lan chip (after the eprom upgrade) let me know. The irony of this is that I had Vista running great with the old config (eventually I got past the hang) but I shrunk one of my disks (new Vista feature) and it no longer booted. Oh well.

Let me know how it goes.

 

[mgutz]

Originally posted by: Raikku
Is this good mobo, especially if we compare this to other affordable mobos?

If not, then what is better?

As the other person said, it depends on what you mean by "good". If you google for "conroe database" and look at all the successful overclocks with proven stability, this is the board of choice for overclocking on air. And for value, it can't be beat.

It's not without its quirks however. I had a serious problem with cold booting meaning it refused to start after a power down. And when it did boot, I had to go into the BIOS and set the overclocking parameters again. I wish I had easier access to the CLEAR CMOS because I did it often. And this is with the latest 3.3 rev and F10 bios. I was seriously considering RMAing it. I then bought a decent power supply (Corsair 520W) and also moved my SoundBlaster X-fi card to a different pci slot as someone suggested. Not sure what fixed the problem but it's OK now. I should have started with a good PSU from the beginning but I was stubborn. I'm happy with it but be warned this thing is quirky as hell. Note, it's never been unstable once I got past the boot issue.

I would buy it again even with all of this. Much better than the Abit I had and about 30% cheaper than an Asus board that will not give you any better performance.

 

[Trixie21]

Originally posted by: culebracut
Have you seen this?
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/FAQ_Model.aspx?ProductID=2321

It indicates its necessary to update the eprom for the lan chip on the motherboard. I tried it but I have not had a chance to reinstall Vista, however. I did try Windows XP (I wanted to dual boot) and the XP lan driver no longer works. So I'm hoping to just go with Vista, but I won't know untilll this weekend. In the worst case, I was just going to disable the onboard lan and put in an ethernet card.

If someone knows about a driver for the Marvell lan chip (after the eprom upgrade) let me know. The irony of this is that I had Vista running great with the old config (eventually I got past the hang) but I shrunk one of my disks (new Vista feature) and it no longer booted. Oh well.

Let me know how it goes.

Ok, just got done trying that....still freezes at the same point. Any other ideas??

 

[culebracut]

Vista has a memory test utility, but I'm not sure how to run it before or during an install, only after. If it reports any errors than that might be a place to look. The other option would be to disable to on board lan

 

[ThePiston]

Hey guys, I just got my Rev 3.3 and some 1000Mhz ram. what do I need to do differently now with this setup?

 

[imported_focus]

Did notice on the .tw site, the Vista versions of the motherboard utilities, like Easytune, but not in the DS3 utility area, but rather on the pulldown support -> motherboard -> utility. I have not tried any of them yet, I need to get a good disk imaging tool verified first.

 

[Rodamus]

I'd try the following things if you haven't already:

0. Set the Memory speed from Auto to "2". On Auto it picks some insane divider (only when you manually set the FSB speed) that just won't work. That way your ram will be running in spec.
1. Set PCI-E bus frequency to 100 (default PCI-E speed) instead of Auto
2. Disable USB legacy support and use a ps/2 mouse and keyboard for testing.
3. leave ram and system voltages at auto.

If that doesnt' work overclocking (which may be the problem because of insane heat you're getting) try underclocking. If you can't underclock some settings are a no go. Drop your CPU multiplier down by one. That and maybe you can get your temperatures down until you can get some better cooling on your CPU. I don't claim to know what will burn up your cpu or not but I'm assuming Intel decided to throttle the CPU back for a reason right around there.

Instead of unseating your video card all the time to get at the battery, use the reset pins right next to it. What I did was take an old fan, cut off the fan part and keep the wire and cable header and plug it into the reset pins and reseat your video card on top of it. When you want to reset your bios just power it up and touch the wires together. When done resetting, keep them apart or put electrical tape over the wire. Much easier.

I tried your suggestion and now I'm running at 3.0 (334*9). Before that I couldn't get it past 220 FSB. I think setting the memory speed to 2 did it for me.

Thanks!

 

[ThePiston]

Does anyone know the real numbers for MCH and FSB voltage, (ie, 1.4, 1.5v, etc)?

 

[brandonr23]

Well, I've been lurking through this thread for months now, and I finally finished my build.

P5N-E SLI
E4300
FREEZER 7 PRO
2GB PNY OPTIMA 667
7900GS
SUNBEAM 550W MODULAR PSU
320GB WD HARD DRIVE


I've flashed to 0401 and am installing Windows now.

I hope to get a decent OC out of it, wish me luck!!!!!!!!

 

[Neyo]

After reading everything in this thread two times, I have to say thank you to all the people on this board. I just finished my build, and because I was prepared, it went trouble free.

Now, I do have an issue now that everything is installed. I am using an Ultra X-Connect Vs 600 watt power supply. I had it in use in my old system since January and it was the
most stable power supply I have owned. Now in the new system, everything is stable after running many torture tests. The problem is that Speedfan and Motherboard Monitor
are showing that the 12V rail only has .7 volts. The bios PC Health screen show that the 12V rail is OK. All the other rails are right where they should be. I am wondering what is
causing it to be reported this way? I am not sure if it is only being reported wrong, or if I have a bigger issue. As I said, the system is very stable and the bios shows that the 12v
s OK.

E4300 Stock
DS3 Rev 3.3 (BIOS F10)
Geil PC 6400
HIS 1950 pro
Ultra X-Connect VS 600W PSU

 

[Yaemish]

I just installed Vista 32 Bit while my SATA2 drives were connected to the Jmicron (non raid) ports. File transfer speeds were terrible disk to disk. I switched to the Intel ports and my speeds have gone up a little, but only to the SATA150 range. Do I need to do a complete re-install of Windows to get SATA300 performance or is there something else I can do?

 

[yiranhu]

What's terrible? SATA150 range is very good. Raptors only work at SATA150 speed and it's hell of alot faster than the SATA300 drives.

 

[Yaemish]

HD Tach is saying that 186 MB/Sec burst speed. In Vista is is showing 30 MB/Sec max during transfers. SiSoft Sandra is comparing the drive to a SATA150 in terms of performance.

Update; these are my results with HD Tach

OS Drive ST3120811AS
Random access 17.2ms
Average Read 49.3 MB/s
Burst Speed 201.5 MB/s

Second Drive ST3250820AS
Random access 13.3ms
Average Read 68.9 MB/s
Burst Speed 214.6 MB/s

Both are Seagate Barracudas, different sizes but they are the same. The device manager shows them as ATA devices, should they say SATA? I also wonder if it may still be a Vista thing. I'll have to ghost my Vista install and try the same test under my XP image.

 

[zzspots]

Apologies, I posted this as a separate thread yesterday by accident, but I'm
hoping someone here can verify whether or not the DS3 has WOL problems.

I've searched everywhere and tried everything I could think of
to get my DS3 to wake up but it just refuses to work.
Now, I do notice the networking light at the back of the board
doesn't light up when it's off, so maybe I have a defective board?
I'm using a Sonata II power supply.

Can anyone please confirm they have wake-on-lan working?
Thanks.

 

[leonardosf]

I bought the GA-965G-DS3 2.0 to replace my old board from 1999. I installed it and the board wouldn't boot. The problem was that the board didn't come with the small cover on the power supply connector. Therefore, my 20 pin power supply wouldn't work. It needed a new power supply with the 24 pins.

Page 19 of the instruction booklet say, "If you use a 24-pin ATX power supply, please remove the small cover on the power connector on the motherboard before plugging in the power cord; otherwise please do not remove it." My board never came with the small cover that was needed for the 20 pin power supply that I was using. I bought a new power supply that has the 24 pin connector and the board worked perfectly.

It took me a week to figure this out as I thought it was a bad CPU, then maybe my memory was bad, then I thought the motherboard was bad. All for a stupid little cover that never was included with these motherboards.

Bottom line, make sure you have the 24 pin power supply.

 

[JJordan]

Still running stable but only at 2.7 GHz. Get errors in Orthos at 3Ghz.

A more generic motherboard type question - firewire. I have an internal PCI Firewire card and it has one "internal" port. I would like to connect it to the front of my case which has a port, but the internal port is a regular firewire plug while the front ports are a small square pin type plug with about 8 wires (4 to a side). Do they make something to plug into the firewire port and then to the rectangle plug for the front ports (some kind of adapter) or do they make an inexpensive internal card that has the risers on it for front ports already. I need the front port MUCH worse than I need ones on the back where you cannot reach it.

Edit Having asked the question, isn't this what I need to use? IEEE 1394 CABLE 1' - 6 PIN M TO 2X5 M

 

[vailr]

Originally posted by: leonardosf
I bought the GA-965G-DS3 2.0 to replace my old board from 1999. I installed it and the board wouldn't boot. The problem was that the board didn't come with the small cover on the power supply connector. Therefore, my 20 pin power supply wouldn't work. It needed a new power supply with the 24 pins.

Page 19 of the instruction booklet say, "If you use a 24-pin ATX power supply, please remove the small cover on the power connector on the motherboard before plugging in the power cord; otherwise please do not remove it." My board never came with the small cover that was needed for the 20 pin power supply that I was using. I bought a new power supply that has the 24 pin connector and the board worked perfectly.

It took me a week to figure this out as I thought it was a bad CPU, then maybe my memory was bad, then I thought the motherboard was bad. All for a stupid little cover that never was included with these motherboards.

Bottom line, make sure you have the 24 pin power supply.

The "small cover" is nothing more than a paper-thin sticker covering two of the motherboard's PSU connectors. It's only function is to keep the dust out.

 

[hpfanatic]

I am having the same exact problem. My new Maxtor 500gb SATA300 drive spec's out as the same as a SATA150. I have two 250gb ATA133 drives on the IDE connector and they all come out to about the same speeds. SciSoft Sandra says the Maxtor drive is not set at the fastest mode. I have written Gigabyte for what settings to use to get the SATA300 speeds. When I installed Vista, it didn't ask for a driver, it just saw the drive right away, so I am thinking that might be the problem.

Originally posted by: Yaemish
HD Tach is saying that 186 MB/Sec burst speed. In Vista is is showing 30 MB/Sec max during transfers. SiSoft Sandra is comparing the drive to a SATA150 in terms of performance.

Update; these are my results with HD Tach

OS Drive ST3120811AS
Random access 17.2ms
Average Read 49.3 MB/s
Burst Speed 201.5 MB/s

Second Drive ST3250820AS
Random access 13.3ms
Average Read 68.9 MB/s
Burst Speed 214.6 MB/s

Both are Seagate Barracudas, different sizes but they are the same. The device manager shows them as ATA devices, should they say SATA? I also wonder if it may still be a Vista thing. I'll have to ghost my Vista install and try the same test under my XP image.

 

[lucky9]

First thing I did was take that piece of you know what and throw it in the trash. I have no clue as to why it was there at all. It couldn't have kept the contacts from oxidizing. And it looked incredibly cheap. :disgust:

As I run Linux almost exclusively I disabled the JMicron chip because it isn't supported by my favorite distributions current kernel (2.6.15-27-64-smp)....I haven't missed it at all.

I'm just a little out of sorts over having to boot into WinXP just to update the BIOS. That's the main reason I still have a legal copy....
actually I think I have two. :Q
Don't even know where the other one is!

 

[hpfanatic]

I have gotten mine figured out part way. Gigabyte was no help. They just said the SATA drives are setup automatically, and sometimes SATA300 doesn't mean they work at SATA300 speeds. ???? Gave me a link to some drive spec's at Tomshardware.

Found out my Maxtor 500gb SATAII from Newegg comes with the jumper set at SATA150 as default. Took the jumper off and now my drive spec's out as higher then a SATA150, with a burst rate of 245MB/s. SciSoft Sandra still shows it as not being set at the highest speed mode. Capable of UDMA6 but shows as UDMA5.

 

[vailr]

Originally posted by: lucky9

I'm just a little out of sorts over having to boot into WinXP just to update the BIOS.

No need to have Windows, in order to flash the bios. There's a built-in bios flash utility inside of the bios. It's listed in the menu at the bottom of the screen.

 

[carey8]

Im having alot of trouble flashing through windows.
Its all peachy untill i restart which it then restarts and freezes on the Logo.
I then have to re-start.

After that it boots a couple times, then goes back to the Default BIOS, the F4 version.
Trying to flash through @BIOS, into F10.

Any help appreciated.