by Doors4ever
10/30/2006 | 06:02 PM
Core 2 Duo proved the biggest triumph so far. This summer computer users have finally got a very fast, relatively economical and perfectly overclockable solution, so that the time has come to say no to the previous generation processors getting more and more outdated. I asked a few computer users in a hardware store what processors they have just purchased. Guess what? – Athlon 64… Celeron D… Athlon 64 X2… Sempron… Pentium 4… What was the matter? Were there no Core 2 Duo processors in this store? There certainly were. But why didn’t anyone we asked buy them? Why would anyone buy different processor models and overclock them if the Core CPU is often faster even in the nominal mode? It turns out that Core 2 Duo CPUs face numerous obstacles on the way to the end-user, and their price is definitely among the primary factors.
Overclockers usually go for the youngest processors in the family. This is totally correct approach, as the CPUs within the same processor family would normally overclock up to the same frequency, but the youngest models cost less and provide higher performance at the given frequency thanks to higher FSB speed. However, in case of Core 2 Duo processors this tendency didn’t work that well any more.
In order to overclock the youngest Core 2 Duo E6300 CPU with the x7 clock frequency multiplier, you need a mainboard that would work stably at 500MHz FSB frequency and DDR2 SDRAM that would hit 1000MHz speed. Solutions like that are quite expensive, besides, the CPU will cost you another $200, which is quite a lot. Especially, since 100% overclocking is not guaranteed at all. You have much better chances to overclock successfully the Core 2 Duo E6400 with the x8 nominal frequency multiplier. In this case you can hit the same 3.5GHz frequency with about 440MHz FSB speed. The mainboard and memory are more likely to run stably in these working conditions, but the CPU like that will cost you $240.
As for finding the proper mainboards for experiments like that, it is also a challenge. I will not discuss i975X based mainboards that may cost over $300. From the overclocking prospective, Intel P965 based mainboards are much more suitable for us. ASUS and Gigabyte were among the first ones to roll out their respective P5B and GA-965P mainboard families and these solutions are already available in stores. Although these mainboards cost around $250, even the best value model you can find will sell for about $200. Not a cheap product at all, isn’t it?
So, it looks like you will have to spend at least $400-$500 on a mainboard and CPU, and then you will also need memory, HDD, DVD or DVD-RW drive, a graphics card… by the way, if you are building a gaming system, then it is the graphics card that will affect the overall performance level most of all. Therefore, from the gaming prospective it would make much more sense to get an AMD Athlon 64 or X2, Intel Pentium D or Pentium 4 on CedarMill core and overclock them as much as possible. You can easily find a 100-150-dollar mainboard for this task. And you can spend all the money you save here on a much more expensive $300-$400 graphics solution. As a result, a gaming system like that will be much faster than a Core 2 Duo based system you can get for the same buck.
Well, we have just answered our question asked above. Although Conroe based CPUs are already selling freely, far not everyone has them inside their systems and users still often prefer previous generation solutions.
Cheaper Intel processors are scheduled to come only next year, so for now you’d better give up the idea of getting an Intel CPU with Core microarchitecture for $100-$150. As for the mainboards, they definitely deserve your special attention. Of course, you can easily get an i945 or VIA P4M890 based mainboard with Core 2 Duo support for something around $70-$100, however, you can forget about any overclocking in this case. Our dream product in this case would be a sub-$150 mainboard that would allow successful overclocking of Core 2 Duo processors, i.e. a solution based on Intel P965 chipset. Luckily, mainboards like that are already hitting the store shelves.
Today we are going to introduce to you one of these products – Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard.
The first mainboard on Intel P965 chipset we tested in our lab was MSI P965 Neo-F, however, its features turned out limited by the manufacturer: the maximum FSB frequency was only 333MHz, and there were no options allowing to increase the CPU Vcore and Vchipset. Overclockers will hardly be interested in this mainboard. And sometime ago we came across Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard. But how good is it for overclockers? The package tries to answer this question:
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard belongs to the so-called S Series. The mainboards from this series are designed not only for Intel processors, but also for AMD processors. The symbol of this family is a letter “S” with the digit “3” hidden in it. S3 family incorporates three notions: Speed, Smart and Safe, and each of them includes a few parameters. For example, “Safe” category includes BIOS saving and restoring technologies, while “Smart” category offers BIOS reflashing tools and allows simplifying the boot-up device on start-up. However, being overclocking fans we are certainly most interested in “Speed” category, that allows adjusting frequencies and voltages, which is exactly what an overclocker might need.
At this point we stumble upon another important question: why Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 is much less expensive than Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 that looks very similar at first sight? Gigabyte’s official website offers a very convenient tool for mainboard features comparison. If we compare S3 and DS3 mainboards side by side, we will discover that the only difference between them is the model of the network controller: Marvell 8056 Gigabit LAN by S3 mainboard and Marvel 8053 Gigabit LAN by the DS3 mainboard. I don’t think this is enough to justify the $40 price difference. Let’s take a look at the specifications then:
Specification | |
| Processor | Supports Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core 2 Duo / Intel Pentium D processor Supports 1066/800/533 MHz FSB |
| Chipset | Northbridge: Intel P965 Express Chipset Southbridge: Intel ICH8 Marvell 8056 Gigabit LAN Controller GIGABYTE SATAII controller Realtek ALC883 8 Channel Audio Codec |
| Memory | Supports DDR2 800/667/533 memory Dual Channel architecture support up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots * Due to standard PC architecture, a certain amount of memory is reserved for system usage and therefore the actual memory size is less than the stated amount. |
| Expansion Slots | 1 x PCI Express X16 slot 3 x PCI Express X1 slot 3 x PCI slots |
| Form Factor | ATX form factor, 305 x 210mm |
| Internal I/O Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX power 1 x 4-pin ATX 12V power connector 1 x floppy connector 1 x IDE connector 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors 1 x CPU fan connector 1 x system fan connector 1 x front panel connector 1 x front audio connector 1 x CD In connector 3 x USB 2.0/1.1 connectors for additional 6 ports by cables 1 x SPDIF In connector 1 x power LED connector |
| Rear Panel I/O | 1 x PS/2 keyboard port 1 x PS/2 mouse port 1 x SPDIF Out connection (coaxial+optical) 1 x parallel port 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports 1 x serial port (COMA) 1 x RJ-45 port 6 x audio jacks (Line In / Line Out / MIC In/Surround Speaker Out (Rear Speaker Out)/Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out) |
| H/W Monitoring | System voltage detection CPU / System temperature detection CPU / System fan speed detection CPU warning temperature CPU / System fan failure warning CPU Smart Fan Control |
| Other Features | Supports RAID 0, 1, JBOD (GIGABYTE SATA 2) Supports @BIOS Supports Download Center Supports Q-Flash Supports EasyTune 5 Supports Xpress Install Supports Xpress Recovery2 Supports Vertual DualBIOS |
| Remark | Due to different Linux support condition provided by chipset vendors, please download Linux driver from chipset vendors' website or 3rd party website. Due to most hardware/software vendors no longer offer support for Win9X/ME. If some vendors still has Win9X/ME drivers available, we will publish on website. |
Even having studied all the spec sheets, we cannot discover any other differences between Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 and GA-965P-DS3. Ok, let’s take a closer look at our mainboard, maybe we will get to the roots of things later in our review.
The mainboard uses a three-phase processor voltage regular circuitry built with pretty up-to-date components. However, there are huge capacitors right next to it and later on one of them will cause us some trouble during Tuniq Tower 120 cooler installation. And here is this dramatic difference between the two boards: DS3 mainboard model doesn’t use these huge capacitors. All capacitors there are small and boast better characteristics.
The chipset North Bridge is cooled down with a massive heatsink. Unfortunately, its cooling area is not big and efficient enough, so if you raise the chipset North Bridge voltage during overclocking, it will heat up quite noticeably.
Strange as it might seem, but the heatsink on the chipset ICH8 South Bridge also gets quite hot. By the way, the South Bridge is responsible for operation of four Serial ATA channels, which connectors are of bright yellow color.
There is a strange Gigabyte SATA 2 controller that is responsible for Parallel ATA and two additional SATA channels. If you take a closer look at the drivers on the accompanying CD disc, you will discover that it is a JMicron controller, most likely JMB363, remarked by Gigabyte. JMicron controllers are more and more frequently used on mainboards these days, because Intel decided to completely give up Parallel ATA support in its chipsets.
The back panel of the mainboard looks almost ideal. The good old COM and LPT ports are there, together with the full set of contemporary connectors and ports including the coaxial and optical SPDIF.
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 comes with a very modest accessories bundle including only the absolutely necessary items, such as HDD and FDD cables, two SATA cables, I/O shield, a CD disc with the software and drivers, a user’s manual, colorful quick installation poster in different languages and boxed cooler installation guide. As for the additional freebies, we can only mention a Gigabyte sticker. However, a small list of accessories like that is absolutely normal for a budget mainboard and hence cannot be regarded as a drawback.
All in all, the mainboard makes very good impression: the connectors are all very conveniently located and color-coded. Too bad that there are only two fan connectors. One of them will be used for the CPU cooler, and the remaining one should better be used for the additional chipset cooling. Moreover, it is not very conveniently located: right between the memory slots and the FDD connector. And where shall we plug the case fans into? So, looks like they were trying to save a few cents here, although the result is tremendous inconvenience for the end-user…
The BIOS of Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard is based on Award code. The mainboard we tested features an older version F2 of the BIOS, so in this review we will look at this particular BIOS version. By the way, if you press F9 in the first screen, you will get the system info page:
It is very convenient that almost everything an overclocker might be interested in can be found on MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) page:
Gigabyte wins another point for the very convenient FSB frequency input: you can just type it in with a keyboard. However, you can also look through the available list using Page Up and Page Down keys.
The memory frequency should be set using multipliers:
However, you won’t need to use a calculator to get the final frequency value, if you set, for example, 437MHz FSB and 2.66 multiplier. The end frequency will automatically appear in the Memory Frequency line.
As for the voltages, Vmem may be raised by up to +0.6V above the nominal with 0.1V increment, the voltage on the PCI-E bus can be increased by 0.1V. FSB OverVoltage Control and (G)MCH OverVoltage Control allow raising the corresponding voltages by 0.3V with 0.1V increment. I didn’t notice any improvement of the overclocking potential in case the first parameter was adjusted, while the second parameter is definitely very important: it allows increasing the voltage on the chipset North Bridge.
However, I was mostly impressed with the mainboard’s abilities in terms of processor Vcore adjustment. CPU Voltage Control parameter allows changing the processor core voltage from 0.5125V up to 1.6V with 0.0125V increment, and after that you can set it to 1.8V or even 2.0V! Wow, that might be a little bit too much… It is very convenient that the information line is always reporting the nominal processor Vcore, so that extreme overclockers didn’t get carried too far away.
We have listed almost everything. Except for the memory timings adjustment. In fact, this parameter is also available on the same page, however, you cannot see it by default. If you want to get access to all parameters of the Gigabyte mainboard, you should press Ctrl+F1 when entering the BIOS. In this case MB Intelligent Tweaker page also shows you memory timings adjustment options.
We didn’t detect any performance increase resulting from adjusting the Memory Performance Enhance parameter that is set to Normal by default, but can be reset to Fast or Turbo. As for Robust Graphics Booster parameter, that is responsible for automatic graphics card overclocking and can be set to Auto, fast and Turbo, we didn’t check its efficiency today. Graphics card overclocking with this tool as well as automatic CPU overclocking with C.I.A.2 utility do not offer that much of a range, so we decided to leave them out this time.
All other pages of the F2 BIOS version of Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard look pretty traditional. And all we can do here is just complain to Gigabyte that their PC Health Status also retained its traditional looks with no real voltage values displayed.
Here you can also set the CPU fan rotation speed with the help of FAN Speed Control Method and FAN Speed Control Mode.
I believe that you are wondering why we are discussing the older F2 BIOS version while there was the new F6 BIOS already available at that time? The problem is that I couldn’t reflash the BIOS.
This is actually very strange because Gigabyte has been using integrated Q-Flash utility for quite some time now. Everything is very simple. You activate it by pressing F8, and then you can either keep the current BIOS version or update it. As for the evident drawbacks, I believe they should move from FDD only to USB-Flash support already.
However, this time I couldn’t even save the current BIOS version, I couldn’t type in any symbols for the file name, although the keyboard was working just fine in both: the BIOS and the Q-Flash utility.
I decided to give up the idea of storing the old BIOS version and reflash the new one right away, but I faced another problem. Having read the file, the system threw me back into the main window of the Q-Flash utility. Restarting the system didn’t help. So, I decided not to take any more risks and to deal with the F2 BIOS version. And it was a smart decision as I found out later on.
We ran the tests in an open stand that was configured as follows:
During CPU overclocking the mainboard worked almost impeccably. In case of over-overclocking we didn’t use Clear CMOS, not a single time: the board would restart on its own. The only inconvenience in my humble opinion, is that the mainboard wouldn’t stop after restarting and offer to reset the wrongly adjusted parameters, it would continue booting the operating system.
Another problem occurred when we tried to adjust the memory timings. When we set CAS Latency 5.0, all utilities would still display CL 3.0. And the problem was only with the way the system displayed the parameter value, because the CL was really set to 5.0, and not 3.0. If it had been that low, the CPU overclocking would have been seriously limited, as at about 1GHz frequency the memory cannot work at CL 3.0, and in our case it worked just fine. With other memory timing settings, as well as for CL 3.0 or 4.0, the value was displayed correctly. At CL 6.0 the mainboard wouldn’t boot.
So, how did the overclocking go? Everything turned out excellent! When we increased the voltage on the chipset North Bridge by 0.2V and the processor Vcore up to 1.45V, the system worked stably at 500MHz FSB! We tested the system for stability with S&M utility and a couple of Prime95 running in parallel.
We couldn’t get beyond that: at 510MHz the mainboard wouldn’t start and the frequency would drop down to the nominal values again. And at 505MHz FSB the OS would boot but the system wouldn’t pass the stability tests. In fact, it doesn’t mean that the mainboard cannot work at over 500MHz FSB frequency, maybe we exhausted the processor overclocking potential. So far the overclocking record for this CPU was set with ASUS P5B Deluxe/ WiFi-AP mainboard and equaled 493MHz FSB.
Well, the preliminary results have been obtained and they are simply excellent. Now we should check out how this mainboard would work with a new BIOS version. It is especially interesting because they promise improved overclocking opportunities with Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400 CPUs.
We reflashed the BIOS with the new F6 version from Windows with the help of @BIOS utility. It is very simple to work with: you can save the current version of the BIOS, and then reflash the BIOS from any storage device or upload from the manufacturer’s website.
The new version didn’t bring us any new features. The only thing that changed was different arrangement of the parameters in groups and the BIOS became more colorful: there appeared colored and blinking optioned.
For example, the higher memory voltages are now highlighted:
However, now you can increase the FSB frequency to 700MHz instead of 600MHz – Gigabyte has always been in love with unrealistically high limits.
The issue with incorrectly displayed CL 5.0 setting (that was reported as CL 3.0) has been corrected, however the overclocking features of the mainboard have turned somewhat worse, despite our expectations. Now it stopped starting after 505MHz FSB, worked not very reliably at 500MHz FSB, so that we managed to get it to run stably only at 495MHz FSB.
Well, if it hadn’t been for the strange issue with BIOS reflashing we would have never found out how terrific Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard could be for overclocking. By the way, when we refalshed the version F2 back, we no longer experienced any issues with the Q-Flash utility. We got our great overclocking options back as well as the issue with incorrectly displayed CAS Latency setting :)
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard is not free from a few drawbacks that we have already mentioned in the article. Among them are some issues with the BIOS, not quite informative PC Health Status page, not very convenient restarting in case of over-overclocking, very few fan connectors on the PCB. Moreover, some of these issues will show only if you have been using this mainboard for a while. For example, I couldn’t boot from USB-flash in any of the available modes. However, these drawbacks are not that critical and are compensated by the relatively low price of the solution (Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard is currently selling for around $150) and unprecedented overclocking potential.
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 mainboard is the first real step towards popularization of Core 2 Duo processors, after the actual launch of these processors, of course. We highly recommend overclocking fans to pay due attention to it. As for the worsening of the overclocking potential once you reflash the new F6 BIOS version, you can always try the other versions as well as wait for the new corrected BIOS modifications that will surely come out. I am sure that Gigabyte engineers are aware of all the issues and, judging by the number of already released versions, are working hard on eliminating them.