X-bit labs

Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R Mainboard with Universal Memory Controller (page 5)

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 08/02/2007 | 05:18 PM ]

BIOS

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard was tested with the BIOS version F4b from June 12, 2007.

The BIOS of our mainboard is based on Award micro-code. It has pretty traditional looks and structure. The list of features you can access through BIOS Setup is also standard.

As for the options that might be of interest to overclocking and fine tuning fans, all of them are placed into a special section called MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.).

Here you can set the processor clock frequency multiplier and FSB frequency in the 100-700MHz interval with 1MHz increment. Also you can enable dynamic CPU overclocking depending on its workload at a given moment of time (C.I.A.2).

The BIOS Setup of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R also offers a tool for graphics card dynamic overclocking called Robust Graphics Booster.

You can set the memory frequency using the FSB:Mem divider, like on all other Intel P35 based mainboards. If you use Gigabyte P35C-DS3R with DDR2 SDRAM you get access to the entire range of dividers that do not depend on the selected FSB speed. It includes the following ratios: 1:1, 5:6, 4:5, 2:3, 5:8, 3:5 and 1:2. If you install DDR3 SDRAM, the list of supported dividers will be reduced down to four: 5:6, 2:3, 5:8 and 1:2. Selecting dividers in the BIOS Setup is very conveniently organized: you can see the resulting memory frequency, that also depends on the FSB speed, right when you set the divider.

There are two more parameters here that deal with memory subsystem configuring. Performance Enhance option allows selecting the most suitable profile for the memory timings: Standard, Turbo or Extreme. High Speed DRSM DLL Settings allows improving the system stability in some cases, according to the manual.

As you can see from the screenshot above, you cannot set memory timings manually. Other BIOS sections also do not offer this option. This is a typical drawback of Gigabyte’s BIOS Setup. Timing settings are hidden in a secret area that can be accessed only if you press the undocumented combination of Crtl+F1 on the main BIOS page. After that you will see the corresponding settings next to the DDR2/DDR2 SDRAM frequency settings.

The adjustable parameters with their corresponding value intervals are given in the table below:

All these settings can also be set to Auto, which makes the system configuring process much easier for not very experienced users.

As for the voltage adjustment, the board offers the following settings:

Nest to the processor Vcore adjustment option there is a useful field reporting the nominal processor voltage.

Note that all voltages except the processor Vcore are set in relative values. Their absolute values are carefully hidden: you can’t find them even in the system monitoring section.

As you see, instead of the actual voltages, Gigabyte engineers decided to use the “OK” and “Fail” indicators. It is another drawback that we can point out in the BIOS Setup of this board.

If the mainboard cannot start with new parameter settings, it will automatically reset everything to defaults. This way you will hardly ever have to use the Clear CMOS jumper.

However, to ensure that overclockers do not have to reset all the parameters every time Gigabyte allows saving the settings profiles. Although these profiles will still be erased if you use perform hardware Clear CMOS.

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R also features Q-Flash utility integrated into the BIOS. it allows updating the BIOS without loading the operating system.