Thinking of getting Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L. Any good?

nutty88 · 21 Jan 2008 at 14:42

I'm looking to replace my Asrock 4coredual-vsta with a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L. I was wondering if the Gigabyte was any good. The main reason for getting a new motherboard is that the Asrock won't go higher than 275mhz FSB with my Core2Duo E4300 and that the PCIE runs at 4x. I hoping that getting the Gigabyte will mean a better overclock and that my 8600GT runs at 16x.

Cob · 21 Jan 2008 at 15:57

It's supposed to be very good and easily worth the money. Being based on P35 it should have no issues overclocking your E4300 to its limits, and will run your 8600Gt at x16.

rpstewart · 21 Jan 2008 at 16:04

Not sure if it's relevant but the DS3L is one of the few current boards which doesn't support any kind of RAID setup for the disks, there are also only 4 SATA ports - might be plenty for you, might not.

Morrey360 · 21 Jan 2008 at 16:06

thinking about gettin this board aswell but with the q6600 does it clock quads well?

Topitoff · 21 Jan 2008 at 16:25

All the Giga-byte boards will run your CPU and gfx fine and get good OCs.
If using only 2 sticks of RAM, you only want 4 SATAs and no RAID the GA-P31-DS3L is the budget choice - runs my E4400 @ 3Ghz (333x9).

GA-P35-DS3L just uses P35/ICH9 chipset, it's no quicker than the P35.

For 6 SATAs with JMicron RAID on 2 then GA-P35-DS3

For intel RAID you will need then GA-P35-DS3R

BTW all these boards only have 1 IDE channel

Hope this helps

nutty88 · 21 Jan 2008 at 17:09

Thanks for all the replies. No RAID isn't really a problem as the moment. The same with only 4 SATA ports. The GA-P35-DS3L seems to suit my needs for the moment. There's that many different boards I want to make sure I don't get a rubbish one.

madmanrizzla · 21 Jan 2008 at 19:14

hi make sure the revision of the board you are getting is on the supported CPU list on the manufacturers website! i just bought a new board because my ds3p wouldnt support quad when on the box it said it did!!

BUFF · 22 Jan 2008 at 03:49

the other normal alternative to the P35-DS3L is the abit IP35-E.

steve258 · 22 Jan 2008 at 03:53

Put an upgrade together for my friend and it's brilliant - overclocked his E2180 to 3.3Ghz (330x10).

clv101 · 22 Jan 2008 at 22:11

Am I right in thinking the P35-DS3L doesn't have 6-phase power, also only has a single "4-wire" power connector for CPU? This means more power through fewer wires - when overclocking then mean the boards power handling abilities might not cut it.

How stable an overclocker is this board?

Ah yeah - here's where I read it:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/ga-p35-ds3l_9.html#sect0