I've been torn between which board to get for a while now. It's going to partner a Q6600 G0, 4 x 1gb Corsair DDR2800 CL4, 4 x SATA 500gb 7200.10 Seagates, 2 x SATA DVD Writers, in a P182 case with Scythe Ninja Plus RevB, and basic video card (nVidia 7600 or similar sub £50). I also have 10 x external firewire drives. I'm only intending to overclock to around 2.8 to 3.2 ghz. Software to be run is Adobe Photoshop and Creative Suite, Sony Vegas, Microsoft Office, Filemake Pro, ProShow Gold, Windows XP Pro (maybe in 12 months time Vista). The Asus has from my searches the most praise and the most complaints . . . confusing hugh . . . but particularly some concerns with the SATA still present from the P5K Deluxe. I like the features on the Asus, and it sounds the easiest overclocker, and most friendly to setup. But I wonder if the Gigabyte is the better option, assuming it's more reliable (mainly regarding SATA issues, heat, power consumption). The asus wifi is not essential to me, nor the extra ethernet connector. The gigabyte sata is a little more flexible. I'm unlikely to use RAID, but might plug 3 drives up on a raid 5 if I were 100% confident with it. Any thoughts and views appreciated. Regards, AK
Personally I would go for the P5K Deluxe, my motherboard (P5N-E SLI 650i) allows 3.8ghz overclocking on the q6600 and it isnt GO stepping, for that I would say it, however mine wasn't the deluxe edition, then mine hasn't went anything serious in heat issues but it is only a week old, might be the thing. Just make sure you get a PCI-E card, was to dumb to do that myself. Don't know much about the Gigabyte however
Any other thoughts would be welcome ??? Now that the other bits I wanted are in stock I am ready to order, just as soon as I make my mind up on the motherboard. X38 was a thought, but I suspect it's a month till a ready supply exists, and then another month or two for the odd issue to be ironed out with bios updates etc. So I am inclined to think P35 is the better option for me currently. I get the fealing it's only a small percentage of P35 P5K Premium's that are having (user complaints) issues. And they seem to be SATA related, often effecting the OS install. Seems Seagate 7200 (9 or 10 - 1.5gb or 3gb) drives are the least effected, and perhaps samsung and wd the most effected. As I use seagates mainly, it's perhaps one less concern for me. Some (perhaps) wild claims suggest the P5K Premium won't work with Vista 32 for example. And then a poster says it won't run XP either . . . . in this day and age I find it amazing if that were true . . . . it must surely be a smaller issue like cable, drivers, incompatiability with disc drive etc. I still think the Asus is the better overclocker, both for performance and ease (simpler bios). The Gigabyte seems more complicated in setup options . . . but far higher percentage of satisfied users on newegg and other sites. The motherboard will be paired with; P182, Q6600 G0, Corsair 4x1gb 6400 ddr2 800 CL4 memory, Corsair HX 620 PSU and likely a Asus or Gigabyte 7600gs passive video card (it seems dx10 is only needed for vista games, not vista aero) Windows XP Pro 32 bit initially, Vista in a years time maybe
I personally just splashed out on a P35-DS3R, it hasn't come yet so I can't give my opinion but from what I can gather on the interwebs it generally can overlock a bit further than the DQ6, and all you lose out on are crossfire and the extra heatsinks. Crossfire I'll never use and it doesn't look like you will, the heatsinks are nice but I didn't think are worth the extra £40ish. I might be wrong but I think the DS3R has the same number of SATA ports as the DQ6.
Seems to have a bit of a problem with voltage drops on quad core processors though, alot of the people on XS are volt modding them to get them to oc reliably but that seems to be a prob on alot of p35 boards
true. in that case, i would personally go with Gigabyte, unless you really need the builtin Wi-fi thingy
there are 2 different factors involved though 1) what you set in BIOS you don't actually get but something probably 0.02/0.03V less- the hardware monitoring reported value is pretty much spot on though so it's easily compensated for. 2) Yes, there is definitely some vdroop with a quad - probably about 0.05V on average (some are better, some are worse). Personally 0.05V doesn't unduly worry me but the Vmod is easy if it does.
