Gigabyte P35-DS4

Anyone have this board? Thoughts?Comments? Pros?Cons?


I ask because i am looking to get a new mobo and I am not sure out of the Gigabyte P35-DS3P or Gigabyte P35-DS4.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...mList=N82E16813128067,N82E16813128064&bop=And

Any help in which way I should lean would be greatly appreciated.

Some (all?) of the Gigabyte P35-DS models have an interesting feature where if you plug anything into the x4 slot, all of the x1 slots are disabled. I don't know if this is an inherent problem with P35 or just a Gigabyte thing. I specifically remember it coming up on the DS3 variants, but don't remember if DS4 was also affected.

In any case, the gigabyte manual PDF's mention it in passing.

If it turns out I'm wrong about this I'd definitely like to know because the boards look great otherwise.

I have the P35-DS4 rev.2...

I have the P35-DS4 rev.2 matched with a Xeon 3220 quad, EVGA 8800GTS, Rosewill RCX-Z775-EX 92mm 2 Ball PWM CPU Cooler and an Anteck 182 case in which I modified (drilled and tapped to move it over a bit) the base hard drive caddy to allow for 2 120mm intake fans in the front. Have OCZ2N1066SR2GK memory running at 1066, 2.05V. I wanted this thing to run cool and quiet (it does), and the board controls the CPU fan well, generally keeping it at low speeds. System is not overclocked, and I have not played with that much, though BIOS will let you do it.
About the board, BIOS does not give you actual memory voltage, only the offset from 1.8V base. I put in the latest f9 BIOS, I think its the best, no longer need to futz around to see all the overclocking options. There is a ton of memory settings (and others), none are explained well in the manual if at all. There are 6 intel SATA plugs and 2 Gigabyte SATA controlled plugs. I have 5 of the 6 intel SATA in use now in standard mode (no raid), works well. I have read here that if you go raid, use the Gigabyte plugs, that they are faster. Tons of USB, firewire and even the onboard audio I think is good. Also has serial and parallel connectors, but no cables included for those.
I like the board, this was a build from scratch and it booted to DOS (from floppy) on first power up. Have not had ANY BSOD. Running XP. For an intel processor, I think going with intel chipset is best bet, though this is not capable of SLI(?) I think. My Xeon chip has worked well even though it is not on the "CPU Support List" for this board. I'm happy with my purchase, though it is a bit pricey.

No, you shouldn't use the gigabyte ports for raid, there is alot of people complaining about random hdd-lag when using them in raid.
The intel-ports are way better as it has the intel matrix raid thingy (ICH9R). I'm using it atm with three 7200.10 drives, works great!

And i think this board is just what i expected, and i got nothing to complain about at all, yet.
It has alot of feautures in the BIOS for overclocking and other general settings.

About using the pcie 8x and that it would disable all the pci-e 1x ports, is nothing i've heard of, nor seen anyone else say anything about. Actually this is the first time i've ever seen anyone state that.

The onboard high definition audio is great, better than my old sound blaster live 5.1 sound card that i used to have, hehe. Basically saying that there is no need for me buying an internal sound card in the future.

Why i bought this board is because i wanted to test something new. I've been all into asus-boards before. And i'm not dissapointed with this one!

Oh well, a bit tired. If there is anything specific you wanna know about this board, just ask and i'll tell in my point of view.

thanks sk1llz, i really do appreciate your feedback.

Looked it up, the manual says it on page 12 (see "Note 2" at the bottom of the page):

GA-P35-DS4 Manual pg10 said:

2 x PCI Express x16 slots
(The PCIE_16_1 slot supports x16; the PCIE_16_2 supports x4.)

Click to expand...

GA-P35-DS4 Manual pg12 said:

(Note 2) When the second PCI Express x16 slot (PCIE_16_2) is in use, the three PCI Express x1 slots become unavailable.

Click to expand...

Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges, but on the RAID issue, I had previously read this article...
http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/mtron16/index.html
which mentions using the Giga2 controller instead of the Intel Matrix ICH for fast solid state storage memory transfer...

I have a revision 1

The good:
Its a basic MB, (simplistic BIOS) that just works well without any fuss.

The bad:
Not a lot of dividers to chose from.
Voltages are displayed not as final numbers. (have to use CPUz to figure out whats going on)
I keep forgetting how to change memory latency

There should be atleast 6 dividers if not even 8, i think it's more than enough, like any other MB. Nothing missing out here!

About the voltage, yeah can be a bit annoying for a start, but i actually like how it's set up. Easier to know how much overvoltage you're actually putting on! Stock DDR-voltage is the only thing you gotta know really. 1.8v ofc.

Just had to reply to that