Has anyone got a gigabyte rev. 3.3 yet?

[drtesseract]

I going to buy a new e4300, DS3 system but don't know how long i should wait to buy the rev3.3? Anyone know anywhere that stocks them (UK)?
And is there much point waiting for rev 3.3 (for futureproofing)?
Thanks

 

[zjohnr]

I just bumped into the description of the GA-965P-S3 (rev. 3.3) while browsing the gigabyte website. It still has a "coming soon" qualification next to it, so I doubt they are available for retail yet.

I'm wondering if this is finally the board I've been frickin' waiting all these months for. Have you seen any preview or review of this board yet? It looks like one reason folks would be very interested in this updated board is because Gigabyte says it will "natively" support a 1333 FSB. That definitely doesn't suck.

World's First Natively supported 1333MHz FSB

GIGABYTE Rev 3.3 P965 Series motherboards were designed to take full advantage of the blistering performance inherent in the new generation Intel Core™ 2 Duo processors featuring 1333MHz FSB.

As 1333MHz FSB is natively supported, no overclocking is need to unlock the performance benefits of these powerful processors. The GIGABYTE Rev 3.3 P965 Series motherboards also feature flexible memory support options in the BIOS, greatly extending the overclocking potential of the boards, especially when using a 1333MHz FSB processor. With memory multiplier settings including x2.0, x2.5, x3.33 and x4.0, users who overclock will be able to see a marked improvement in memory performance, with even slight overclocking reaching a more than 5% increase in performance.

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy dinosaur

 

[zjohnr]

FWIW, here's some other odds 'n ends from a quick Google.

A link to an Interview with Rockson of Gigabyte United at www.vr-zone.com

A link to a thread on AnandTech about the interview above.

From a quick glance it seems the new mobos are expected at the "end of the month". Not sure which month though. :roll: There was also an interesting post from Gary Key (an AnandTech editor?) with this: "LOL, we are under NDA for that information and the board testing ..."

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy dinosaur

 

[zjohnr]

Posting this here since I don't know of better place to put it. (I tried searching for other gigabyte rev 3.3 threads, but currently the Forumz search only lets me see 1 page of results and I didn't see anything pertinent in that 1 page).

FWIW, here is a link to a review on www.tweaktown.com of a rev 3.3 motherboard: Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 Rev 3.3 Motherboard – Native 1333MHz FSB and more

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy dinosaur

 

[kotoko]

Thanks. I too am waiting for this to release, I would like to try out the 2.5x ram multiplier and see how that goes

 

[Pax2All]

Over at anand there are people saying ClubIT had some of the 3.3 boards. I just looked and dont see anything, but one of the posters emailed ClubIT and got verification prior to ordering. Might be worth a shot.

 

[zjohnr]

Over at anand there are people saying ClubIT had some of the 3.3 boards.

The site www.clubit.com is currently (as in today, Friday, only) selling the Gigabyte DS3 rev 3.3 for $130 shipped. The sale price is nice, of course, but what made me pull the trigger on this was that ClubIT actually commits to the rev 3.3 version number in the product description. Nothing ticks me off more about newegg.com and other sites than the fact that you have to "just take your chances" about what version of the board you're going to get when you order from them. So even if you miss the sale, you might still want to consider clubIT. (Or not ... not trying to be an advert for them ... just reporting what I saw ).

FWIW, I just placed my own order. I first started looking for a Core 2 Duo system back on Oct 23 of 2006 with the words ... now totally ridiculous in hindsight ... "I don't want to spend much beyond $300". Ah, what a naive fool I was. What a maroon! What an ignoranimous!

Feels strange to finally. after four months of dillying and dallying, commit to something.

I decided to pay the extra $25-30 and go with the DS3 over the S3 partially because of the solid caps. (Hey! I have as much right to be gullible and get sucked in by empty marketing hype as the next guy!) But it was also because when I compared the S3 and DS3 BIOS updates and revisions, it seems that Gigabyte focuses more attention on the DS3. And I definitely want attention! Keep those updates rolling at me!

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy dinosaur taking a big step into the modern era

 

[Pax2All]

Congratulations I am wavering between this board and the 650i Sli boards. I'd love to see Gigabyte get off their duff and release the 650i board they've got. I don't know if my current MB will last that long though . I do firmly beleive in solid caps since I have a cap problem with my MB. I just cant get past the hacked IDE setup....why mess with something so simple Intel????

 

[zjohnr]

I just cant get past the hacked IDE setup....why mess with something so simple Intel????

I agree with you on that. By getting the Gigabyte DS3 I'm doing something I was sure I was never going to do ... buy a motherboard with a slapped on JMicron PATA workaround. I still don't know if Gigabyte has gotten all the bugs worked out of their PATA setup. But my impression was that the problems arose when trying to activate RAID on the JMicron. Since this is something I don't ever expect to do, I should be OK.

Initially I had high hopes for NVIDIA's 650i Ultra chipset. But I've waited and waited and still ... nothing. As long as Gigabyte feels they can guarantee a 333MHz (1333MT/s) FSB with the 965P chipset, I figure why not go with it? I may never actually use it, but at least I'll have some possible options.

As for making due with the lack of PATA connections on the motherboard, I've got two workarounds. I picked up a Promise Ultra100 TX PCI IDE controller on ebay for $15 shipped. I'm using it now in my current antique system and have been very happy with it.

I've also got a PATA to SATA adapter dongle that I plan to try to use to connect my PATA hard drive with my Windows install partition on it to one of the DS3 SATA ports. Hoping that works for me, but if it doesn't I've got the PCI controller card as a fall back.

I still wish Intel hadn't been an ass about dropping PATA support from their chipsets. The arrogance with which they unilaterally decide what the rest of us will or won't do is particularly galling. But so long as they don't decide to kill off the PCI bus with their next chipset, I think I can learn to live with the PATA mess they've stuck us all with. :roll:

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy dinosaur

 

[Pax2All]

lol
The workarounds are always fun. I was thinking of using this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812189122
to turn my larger IDE drive into a backup while I work from a SATA drive. Mind you I'm not inclined to use their power adapter. I would mount my drive in the tower, power it via my PSU, and route the cable out the back to where I could plug it in whenever I needed

 

[papi4baby]

Well my replacement RMA DQ6 is coming in on tuesday guys, i'll let you know what it is.
P.S. In one interview i read too, it says that the ver 1 and 2 will also support FSB 1333 with a bios update. But i am not sure if that is correct.

 

[zjohnr]

P.S. In one interview i read too, it says that the ver 1 and 2 will also support FSB 1333 with a bios update. But i am not sure if that is correct.

Yes, I'm sure it sorta would since people have reported being able to overclock their DS3 as far as 500MHz ~= FSB 2000MT/s. But I wanted the rev 3.3 to get whatever minor hardware changes Gigabyte supposedly made to help make FSB 1333 more consistently attainable. I figured it would be possibly more "stable" ... whatever that means.

Occasionally you'll hear someone quip about how their DS3 already does FSB 450 (or whatever) so what's the big frickin' deal about slapping a lame little FSB 1333 label on the box? The big deal would be that they are dealing with only their one board ... or 20 or 100 or whatever relatively "small" number of boards they've had experience with. Gigabyte has to dealing with defect rates for their entire manufacturing line. It's a different statistical scale and something they couldn't pull off without tweaking something on their boards however slightly. At least that's my opinion.

Frankly, I'd be really happy and count it a win if the rev 3.3 turns out to have 3 instead of only 2 fan connectors on the board.

-john

 

[zjohnr]

I was thinking of using this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812189122
to turn my larger IDE drive into a backup while I work from a SATA drive. Mind you I'm not inclined to use their power adapter. I would mount my drive in the tower, power it via my PSU, and route the cable out the back to where I could plug it in whenever I needed

Hmmmmm, seems a fair bit of work ... mounting and powering it with your case ... all to get only USB 2 transfer speeds. If the drive is already going to be mounted in your case why not just connect it to your motherboard?

If you are out of PATA connections you could try using a free SATA port with this PATA to SATA adapter dongle. It's worked for me with PATA hard drives but has not worked with my DVD burners. (Which is strange. Going to have to revisit that when the DS3 motherboard shows up). To connect just a hard drive you'd probably be OK at least from my experience with it. (How old is the PATA hard drive? ATA-66? ATA-100? ATA-133?)

Somehow I ended up with 4 different external PATA drive cases. Two of them are USB 2 only. The other two are USB 2 and Firewire 400. I don't know what is different about how Firewire moves the data, but it is definitely a lot faster than USB. I really should get around to selling those USB only external drive cases on ebay as I never use them ...

I never worried about using the power which came with these external drive cases. Only problem I've had with them is remembering to label the adapters so I could tell them apart and remember which case they are supposed to be used with.

-john

 

[Pax2All]

Thanks for the link. If it works for your board then I'm on it. USB 2.0 (480mbs) is faster than first gen 1394a firewire (400mbs) but if you can get second gen 1394b firewire you rock at a rate of 800mbs 8)

 

[zjohnr]

Thanks for the link. If it works for your board then I'm on it. USB 2.0 (480mbs) is faster than first gen 1394a firewire (400mbs) but if you can get second gen 1394b firewire you rock at a rate of 800mbs 8)

OK, I'll let you know what my luck is with the DS3 and the PATA to SATA dongle after I (hopefully) get it up and working. It'll be at least a week since the board is shipping from the West coast ... and I still have to buy the E4300 and some DDR2 memory. :roll:

About USB 2.0 vs Firewire 400 ... that's the strange thing. On paper you'd think that USB 2.0 would be faster. But if you actually run a benchmark like HDTach then it turns out the Firewire 400 beats USB 2.0 by approximately a factor of 2 IIRC. Apparently it's a variation on the old "It's not how big the bandwidth is, but how it's used" line.

-john

 

[Pax2All]

LOL! It figures with the USB 2.0. Thanks for the help. I can wait one more week if it means hearing whether that adapter works out.

 

[papi4baby]

well is official newegg is shipping the DQ6 3.3, just got mine today, and if runing fully without a hitch, came with F9 bios. Was shipped on the 14th.

 

[Pax2All]

LOL It's official. I ordered the rev 3.3 DS3. Though it would've been great if Gigabyte had given me the choice of ordering their 650i board, it's really a relief to finally look forward to finishing my build.


Weee gets the 2.5X memory multiplier my precioussss.....yessssss my precioussss...not those nasssssty filthy hobbitses.......

 

[papi4baby]

LOL It's official. I ordered the rev 3.3 DS3. Though it would've been great if Gigabyte had given me the choice of ordering their 650i board, it's really a relief to finally look forward to finishing my build.


Weee gets the 2.5X memory multiplier my precioussss.....yessssss my precioussss...not those nasssssty filthy hobbitses.......

:lol:

 

[IAmATeaf]

About USB 2.0 vs Firewire 400 ... that's the strange thing. On paper you'd think that USB 2.0 would be faster. But if you actually run a benchmark like HDTach then it turns out the Firewire 400 beats USB 2.0 by approximately a factor of 2 IIRC. Apparently it's a variation on the old "It's not how big the bandwidth is, but how it's used" line.

-john

The reason why firewire is faster is that it was designed from the outset to provide for higher throughput wheras the speeds quoted for USB2 are the theoretical burst speeds ie it can't sustain those speeds for any length of time.

 

[Pax2All]

.....We dwarves are sprinters........very dangerous over short distances.....

 

[Pax2All]

Any word on if that dongle works? My MB and CPU are due in today but I will be working over the next two days and wont be able to put my build together until Thursday If worse comes to worse I suppose I could just get another SATA II hdd. One thing I don't plan on doing is messing with the jmicron drivers for RAID or the purple ports. My DVD burner will be on the PATA port and SATA drive(s) on the orange intel ports. Too many people are still having issues with those evil purple ports.

 

[zjohnr]

Any word on if that dongle works?

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you, Pax2All. I got the rev 3.3 DS3 board on Friday, set it up on a work table Saturday and have been tinkering with with it on and off since then. Just trying to get a feel for it before I commit to making it my main system.

I've done a couple of XP repair installs to a clone copy I made of my XP partition to a spare Maxtor 8MB, 200GB ATA-100 drive I have. I used DriveImage XML to clone the partition onto the Maxtor. (As image utilities go, DriveImage XML is not so great. It's very limited and often requires you to completely start over from the beginning if you want to change anything when setting up an operation. But it's also freeware which covers a lot of sins ).

I have two PATA to SATA port converter dongles. This SiI3611 based SYBA converter and this generic SiI3811 based converter. I used both with the Maxtor ATA-100 drive on both the yellow Intel ICH8 SATA ports and on the purple Gigabyte/JMicron SATA ports without any problems. Granted, all I've been doing so far is mostly just installing windows and occasionally running HDTach. If there are any other (free or readily accessible ) tests you'd like to me to try, just ask. While I've still got my DS3 in "workbench mode" I'm willing to try just about anything since I don't have to worry about mucking anything up.

The two differences I've noticed between the two adapters are that the Syba has the nice plastic housing but uses the older SiI3611 chipset. I never really worried about the SiI3811 dongle not having the plastic casing before. But while playing around with it this time I noticed at times when I hit the power switch the PSU would come on and immediately shut down.

I suspected that the open contacts on the back of the adapter were shorting out against the metal case of the hard drive and tripping the circuit breaker in the PSU. I worked around that to my satisfaction by placing a piece of thick paper (like a business card) between the back of the SiI3811 dongle and the hard drive. After starting to do this I have not seen the PSU shut down on me again. So with that caveat I guess I'd still recommend using the adapter with the newer chipset since it costs a little less and I think/guess it would work with a wider range of devices.

My DVD burner will be on the PATA port and SATA drive(s) on the orange intel ports. Too many people are still having issues with those evil purple ports.

As I mentioned above, I haven't seen any problems when using either the JMicron PATA or SATA ports on the DS3 in basic IDE mode. However I did notice some "glitches" when I enabled AHCI on the JMicron ports. They didn't have anything to do with the converter dongles, but they were annoying ... to me at least.

I tried AHCI mode because I wanted to see if I could get hot plugging to work ... and it did. And I didn't have any problems accessing my drives or data in AHCI mode. However, activating AHCI did prevent access to the SMART information which is a pain in the butt. (No way to view the drives temperature).

The other very strange thing was that I was I enabled it, I was not able to turn AHCI mode off. Here's what happened. After turning on AHCI mode in the BIOS, I started windows and installed the JMicron driver. I did some testing, noticed everything worked fine. So I rebooted and entered the BIOS and switched back to vanilla IDE mode on the Gigabyte/JMicron SATA ports. When Windows came back up I noticed the SCSI/RAID item in the Device manager still had GBB36X controller installed. :? So I uninstalled it, rebooted, and Windows immediately detected the "new hardware" and re-installed the GBB36X controller driver for the purple ports.

Not sure what's up with that. Still looking into it. But if you only intend to use the yellow Intel ICH8 SATA ports, you it won't matter to you.

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

 

[Pax2All]

Thanks for the reply. I'm currently at work and my build is at home still yet to be assembled. I went ahead and ordered a second Sata II drive and it should be here Thursday just in time for me to put my build together.
Question: Did you install the RAID driver and then leave it in IDE mode? If so, did this put your PATA optical drive into PIO mode? I had read of this issue in multiple forums but it was in reference to older board revisions.
Thanks again for the input

 

[zjohnr]

Question: Did you install the RAID driver and then leave it in IDE mode? If so, did this put your PATA optical drive into PIO mode?

There are three settings for the Gigabyte/JMicron purple ports in the F10 BIOS: IDE, AHCI, and RAID/IDE. I believe the same driver is used to support both the RAID/IDE mode and the AHCI mode so, yes, I installed the driver. But I have only tried the the first two modes, not the last one, RAID/IDE. And I believe the problems you are talking about were noted when the last setting was enabled.

That said, I'm not sure how to determine what transfer mode the optical drive is using. Can you recommend a utility I could install which would detect this? (I'm always interested in finding out as much as I can about what is actually happening on my system. )

Out of curiosity ... is the second SATA drive intended for general data storage or did you get it just to hold backup data?

Also curious about what your plan to migrate your system is since I expect to be doing that in a few days if everything goes well with the DS3's burn-in. Are you going to install Win XP onto the SATA drive and then migrate your settings using the Win XP "Files and Settings Transfer Wizard" over your network? Or are you going another route?

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur