Can someone explain to me why you would want anything more than a 965 chipset?

spagnitz said:

Gigabtye p35-DS3L is 1x16

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the DS3L only has 4 SATA ports unfortunately...

The DS3R on the other hand....iiinteresting...although i swore off Gigabyte years ago when i had a KT266 chipset board with Dual BIOS. The thing was a pain in the arse to overclock

well one big draw back i havent seen mentioned is the forced divider at 400mhz. while the later top end 965 boards like the quad gt you could manuallly set this divider. with others you couldnt so you took a hit in performance. with p35 this same divider didnt get forced till 500mhz fsb. the very reason i switched from 965 to p35 was cooler running chipset and no forced divider at 400mhz fsb. though with my ab9-pro i never ever could get the board to go higher then 380mhz fsb....

Check out the DS3P with 6 Sata and 2 extenal satas with power jack.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128067&Tpk=GA-P35-DS3P

Hmm....decisions decisions...i've decided that this P965 has to go - it hits a wall at 370Mhz FSB and will not go any higher (no FSB voltage adjustment either), so a P35/45 it has to be.


Question is, which one that fits my criteria of 1 PCIe16x slot, 6+ SATA and Firewire...

both will have that, just need to wait for P45 to come out....
if you want P35 and can find it look for the Abit IP35 has all that...sorry i dont know which gigabyte or asus boards have that.

MadMan007 said:

I think the chipset itself determines 45nm support, P35 and up have it, P965 and 975X don't they just can have 1333MHz FSB CPU support at the option of the board maker. 1333MHz FSB != 45nm support. Feel free to correct that with linkage but to me that's the biggest improvement, plus the quad oc'ing. Most of the other things like DDR3 and 6-drive RAID arrays are more niche or overly expensive even for us.

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Just to correct this, 1333MHz FSB support does = 45nm support, at the board maker's discretion. ASUS has bios v.1226 posted for the P5B Deluxe that supports Wolfdale 45nm processors. It's a beta, but works.

I think the OP is correct in that for many people with a 965 board such as myself, there is nothing to gain from upgrading the mobo. Exceptions are those who really want a quad + lots of memory.

The 965 is no slouch. I am tempted to order an 8400 and test it in my Abit Quad GT which was one of the best 965 board in its time next to the DFI Dark 965-s

No one has mention the ability to change the tRD or PL (performance level). This can be really nice for those who are benchmarking champions as you can alter this on newer chipsets (P35/X38) but not on the P965. It used to do it automatically on older chipsets.

I've been looking for a new mobo myself. I decided that I'll look at something else if I ever hit a FSB wall on this thing. I won't buy a CPU without a 9x multi so I don't think that'll happen anytime soon. Otherwise I have no need to upgrade chipsets.