Hi,

Got the gigabyte motherboard listed below, along with 4gb of ram from OCUK

Ga-p35c-ds3r rev. 1.1
OCUK (m-ram/ elixir sourced own brand) PC8500 1066MHz CAS 5-5-5-15 ddr2

The motherboard only allows 800mhz ram speed native, so I am technically trying to overclock to allow 1066 ram to work to proper speed, i suppose. I have 4x 1gb sticks and I am using a core 2 duo e6850 processor at the stock speed 333fsb, 9x multiplier, everything set to auto/ normal in bios (version f2).

The computer runs fine with the 4gb at vanilla 800 ram speed (1.9v ram), and even works fine with 2gb at 1066 (1.9v ram). The problem I am having is that the computer will not boot past the windows vista start up screen (gets stuck at this point) with the bios set so that I am running 1066 ram speed with 4gb of ram. In order for the system to work (and be stable) I have to set it to 1000 and leave it at that (2.1v ram). This is ok as far as I am concerned but it would be nice to get the ram up to spec if possible. Does anyone have any suggestions that might help?

Advice appreciated,

Chris

im looking to do the same thing with mine, i got crucial balistix ddr2 1066 ram, and my ds3 will only run it at 1066 at 1.8v, i want to try and get them running at their rated speed of 1066 at 2.2v, but i also dont want to accidentally fry something in the process ^.^

I have similiar setup as you except Q6600 G0 running at 333x9 for 3gz and 4 x 1mb of Crucial Ballistix 8500. In the M.I.T section I have my System Memory Multiplier (SPD) set at 3.2 and that gives me 1066 speed.

Dave

How do all of you like your P35"C"-DS3R boards? I've been trying to choose between the P35-DS3R and the P35"C"-DS3R boards, but I've been seeing some issues posted on the net with the "C" version. Have any of you seen problems and if so, what were the problems and how did you resolve them?
Thx.

I would steer clear of any Gigabyte P35 boards, especially the 'C' model. There are major issues from instability, unexplainable reboots, poor bios and poor overclocking. If I could return mine I would, but I ordered mine 6 weeks before the Intel price drop, so I am stuck with it. But read through this forum and others and you will see the issues everyone is facing. The review sites that gave this board such colorful reviews definately did not have the retail boards that are available to us now. The last Gigabyte board I had, all the caps leaked, and told myself never to buy this brand again. I wish I listened to myself.

Dave

Cannot agree more with dave_99. There are many issues concerning bios and reboots problems with P35. (Please see my other post of DS3P).
I can only enter bios with an OLD PCI CARD.... Crazy isn't it?
Then i installed everything and plugged in my 2600xt. Now it is working but i still cannot enter bios with my PCIE card.. The dealer will not change it and have to take to Gigabyte to fix it...


6750
P35 DS3P
ADATA 1G x 4 Extreme Edition
Gigabyte RX26T256H
WD 320YS
2TheMax 500W Power Supply

Which P35 board would you guys recommend then?

I went to the Gigabyte site and I can't find any info on how to update your BIOS. The company only seems to support their revision 2.0 products. There is a utility @BIOS but Gigabyte only offers it for the rev. 2.0 DS3R board and not rev. 1.0. That alone turned me off but I don't see too many alternatives. I don't want an ASUS board as their P35 boards produce too much heat.

Which P35 board works best for a Quad Core Q6600 and DDR2 1066 RAM but doesn't have too many issues?

@BIOS is working fine for me with my R1.1 P35C-DS3R.It's here on the Gigabyte site for R1.x:-
http://www.giga-byte.co.uk/Support [...] uctID=2551
Must say not had any problems with the P35C version at all.

look dude... usually 1000 is really the bottle neck and you have to be lucky to get to 1066... if all rams can go to 1066 they don't have to sell ddr2 1066 rams... hope you understand how they earn money. if you're lucky, you'll get to it but i'm not suggesting

Bit late with this but for Canuck1. Returned my GA-P35C-DSR3 as I was getting re-booting problems. Bought an ASUS P5KR and it's been running fine for a month.

I have to disagree with many posters here. I am running the P35-DS3R with my Q6600 at 3.2Ghz and everything went smooth, great, and without any hicups at all.

The P35-DS3R is a fantastic board with great overclocking potential. The P35C board is newer and I have read some more issues with them but my biggest peeve with that board is that it only supports 4GB of DDR3 ram. I'd rather have 8GB of DDR2 ram than 4GB of DDR3 memory, which is why I just went with the P35 board.


You have to understand that Gigabyte's P35-DS3R is a VERY popular board. So you will see more posts with problems on it because so many people have it. Just remember for every problem post you see about it, there are very many happy people, like me, that have it and haven't had any problems.


Here's some specs, Q6600 w/ G0 stepping, P35-DS3R, 4GB DDR2-800 memory. Load temps on my CPU = 52C, Idle = 32C. That is just fantastic for the Q6600 and give credit where its due, the TR Ultra-120 Extreme, Antec 900, and my few case fans I added help with this temp. But the mobo is stable at a decent VCORE to allow the low temp. I have no complaints!

Deuce - This thread wan't about overclocking the CPU. I believe the OP wanted to run his memory at 1066 - 1:1 with the FSB, which this board does not support. He's been doing pretty well to overclock the memory to 1066 with 2GB. And it may well be that his board simply may not be able to run 4, 1GB DIMMS at 1066.

Also, I have to concur with some of the other posters - My own Gigabyte P35 board had to be RMA'd due to memory issues.

I am running this board with a 6850, I returned it to stock settings but was able to OC at 3.6 stable. I personally don't have any major problem with it but from what I have read on different forums, there are a lot of issues with that board. One that seems pretty common to many peeps is that that board seems to over volt the ram by itself. If you add like +0.3 volt to set the voltage to the manufacturer requirements, you'll notice using programme like speedfan and such that it reads 2.2 volt. From my reading, it seems also that this over volting is not a reading error but was tested with instrument. Even though, I don't have major issues with my board, I am starting to doubt my choice and should have gone with my first idea which was an Asus board.

The problem with this board though is that the BIOS default is 1.8v with steps of 0.1.
I have RAM that is 2.1v rated so I would have thought that 0.3v in the BIOS would have pushed the power upto 2.1. Luckily I chose to step up by 0.1v intervals because after putting the BIOS up to 1.9v via the 0.1v step Everest and Speedfan tell me that my RAM is running at 2.26v. God knows what it would have been if i'd gone straight to 0.3v increase. Combine this with the vdroop problem and there are major power stability problems.

Could some of those various issues and problems be due to using old BIOS versions? Did anyone take their board into a reputable computer shop to confirm whether it's the board or some other explanation?

marniecrat, I'm not even looking at Asus P35 boards since the majority produce too much heat for my liking. I got a Q6600 and even thought it's G0-stepping, I would like to limit any heat production to just the cpu and graphics card and not add any extra unnecessary heat. The Gigabyte and Abit boards consistently rate at the top in producing the lowest amount of heat among P35 boards. Asus has a good rep and they are consistently good at benchmarks, though .

Just installed a new Q6600 G0 to ga-p35c-ds3r rev 1.1 F7 bio.
When I open my task manager it only show two cores!
I am using XP Sp2. Does anyone come cross this problem before? If there is a Fix?
Now my Q6600 is running as E6600 with 8mb of L2 cache
Thanks for anyone who can help on this.

I reinstalled Vista Ultimate 32 and 64bit. without any window update, it still only show two cores in task manager. CPU-z shows 2 cores too. However, it did find 8mb of L2 cache!