I've ordered the GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 (rev3.3) Mainboard.

I'm trying to decide what the best drives are for this board - IDE or SATA. Have read of some problems with SATA drives, but don't know. If anybody has this board and could offer some advice, I'd appreciate it.

I'll probably do a CD/DVD Rom and a second CD/DVD Burner. Speed is not as important as reliability and noise. Any recommendations?

I'll also put in a FDD.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827152079







there ya go Barnes

Nice looking combo drive. It's SATA, and I'm wondering if anybody with that DS3 has any advice.

I am using the DS3 with a SATA hard drive and DVD writer, as well as an old PATA (what you call IDE) drive. No problems so far. I also used my old PATA DVD writer for several months before I got the SATA drive, and it worked fine as well.

I have heard a few vague implications of people having problems when connecting drives to the addon JMicron drive controller, but have never experienced any myself.

The JMicron chip controls the purple SATA ports, used for RAID, and the PATA ports, if you have any older drives to connect. Like I said though, I ran for several months with two PATA drives and never had any trouble.

Hope this helps.

Just make sure your PSU has some separate SATA cords or buy an adapter ahead of time. My PSU came with 2 SATA BUT they come from ONE cord---and you can't reach the hard drive AND the DVD-R with the one cord.

I am firing up my system for first time tonight---hope it POSTs....

I had trouble getting it to do RAID with the PATA port in use. Something you want to make sure of is to get the newest drivers for the Jmicron controller and if possible slipstreaming them into your XP disk before you install.

Why slipstreaming? Can't you load updated drivers without having to slipstream?

Yes, you can. When you start the install process, there is a prompt that tells you to press F6 to install a SCSI or other disc controller driver. At this point you can tell it where to look for the new driver.

Slipstreaming would save you the trouble of doing this, but that's the only reason to bother with it.

I'm not using RAID - and the only JMicron drivers on the Gigabyte site are RAID drivers - so I'm guessing I don't really need to install them.

I actually have not used the JMicron SATA ports, only the PATA ports. I never installed any special drivers for them. The SATA ports may require them, especially if you are running them in AHCI mode. I'm not completely sure.

I'm not using RAID - and the only JMicron drivers on the Gigabyte site are RAID drivers - so I'm guessing I don't really need to install them.

If you use the purple ports you need the drivers installed. And get the newest drivers from Jmicron not gigabyte, never get drivers from the motherboard makers website unless you can't find them elsewhere, they are always out of date.

Pretty sure they don't NEED them unless you are doing RAID, but having the newest ones is a good idea. And the orange ports don't work in AHCI mode BTW, if you turn AhCI on for the orange ports your computer won't boot.

Do you have the GB DS3?

I have the S3 which is the DS3 with regular capacitors instead of solid capacitors.

How do I get the SATA2 Drivers to load when installing Windows? Can you give me a link ... are these the ones?

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support [...] uctID=2456

Go here: http://www.jmicron.com/Driver.htm

Extract the files and put the files in the floppy32 folder (or the floppy64 if you are installing 64-bit OS) onto a floppy. When you start installing XP down at the bottom it will say something to the effect of "Press F6 to install extra drivers", hit F6 and it should detect the drivers in the floppy drive and ask if you want to install those.