another motherboard reccomendation...sorry!!

beatts

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Jan 15, 2008
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hi,
sorry to bore you with another person asking for the best motherboard, but ive tried looking around and its been a while since i bought one, so am a little hazy on the new chipsets and dont want to pay for something i dont need.

my existing board is a gigabyte GA965p-DS3 and i had the old core 2 duo conroe 1.8. i also had (still have) 4; 512mb sticks of ddr2 800mhz coirsair xms2 (totaling 2gb), i wanted a quad core cpu so took advantage of the fact my board will take the kentsfield q6600 g0 which is going cheap. i overclocked my old core 2 duo cpu so was going to do the same for my new quad core, i bought some new ram as well, i got the dominator 1066mhz twinx, x2 2gb sticks (4gb in total). when i put the q6600 and dominator ram in my ga965p-ds3 it wouldnt boot, after a while i tried my old 800mhz ram, it worked fine. so ive established my board wont work with the dominator ram. if i want it to work i need to buy a new board.

this is where your advice comes in please :ange:
i need a board with good overclocking (as good as my old DS3, and as simple to do)
will support my kentsfied q6600 go. (no need for 45nm support as the next upgrade wont be for a while and ill just buy what ever new tech is out then, but if it has it it doesnt matter)
will support my dominator 1066mhz ddr2
has x1 pci express slot (no need for sli or crossfire as i wont use it)(i currently have a 8800gt, soon to get a 4870x2)
has x3 pci slots, for xfi gamer audio card, tv card and wirless lan card.
raid 0 for my x2 500gb sata drives
for below £100, cheaper the better as its an unexpected upgrade.

if anyone could point me in the right direction id be very gratefull, ive been looking for a while but there is always 1 feature missing from the board im finding, ie overclocking wise, raid, amount of pci slots etc

thanks for any help in advance :D
:ange:
 
Your gigabyte GA965p-DS3 should support your Corsair PC28500 just fine if you go in to BIOS and set the voltage to Mfg. specifications, 2.1v @5-5-5-15. Should be good at PC26400 speeds and above. Any P45 MB would suit your MB upgrade needs as you described.
 

beatts

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with the 1066mhz sticks in it shows the first page on boot, my processor and speed, then allocates memory then freezes. it wont get to bios.
 
Well, if you would like to use your Corsiar PC28500 in the 965 board, try one DIMM in slot 1 and go in to BIOS and set the voltage to Mfg. specs, 2.1v. PC28500 is nothing more than higher clocking PC26400 (which your 965 uses). RAM is backwards compatible. Here is your MB (not sure exactly which revision you have, this is Rev 1 I believe) and see the PC28500 Crucial ballistic being listed near the bottom of the page as 'compatible'.

http://crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=GA-965P-DS3%20%28rev.%201.0%29

If you are looking at the Intel chipsets, a P45 chipset should suit your needs well. You are welcome.

BTW, I listed Crucial's site showing PC28500 because the site is easier for me to bring up. I realize you have Corsair PC28500.
 

beatts

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i tried again with the pc2 8500, and it seems that it works with 1 stick (either one) but not with 2, my voltage settings only have normal, +0.1v, 0.2+ etc
im thinking it may be me running vista 32bit. but surely it would still boot into bios as o/s hasnt started up yet. thanks for your input, i thought that it wasnt compatible, seem ill just have to trouble shoot. to find the problem. thanks again Badge
 
Try one DIMM in slot 1 and get in to BIOS. Bump up the RAM voltage to 2.1v, timings to 5-5-5-15 and set the speed to 800MHz. Hopefully they work for you. I'd get the new P45 MB anyway.
 

kite212

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idk why it wont boot with both sticks, it still should, but regardless of what ever board you get, make the jump to x64. i will never use a x86 os ever again
 

beatts

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:ange:
i tried overclocking the board last night, managed to get 3.6ghz stable on the processor but memory wouldnt rise above 850mhz, even with cpu at stock speeds..

i read around and i was using f13 bios and apparently that causes some overclock problems, so reflashed to f12. i used qflash and it said it was sucessful and verifyed sucessfull. turned my pc back on and the scanning bios image from harddrive comes on and hangs. it wont even get to bios. so now my board is nuked :pfff: looks like the p45 board will have to be bought. when i look for one that has 1066mhz memory support and raid they also have crappy crossfire also taking away a standard pci slot. i need 3 pci slots. if it has everything that i want its usually a crappy looking board with poor cooling for the northbridge and bad overcloking.. any recommended ones?