RodneyJM

After playing with the BFG 680i mobo, its time for Gigabytes version of there top of the line P35 series motherboard adventure.

Board came with F3 bios but is now flashed to F4 bios using Gigabytes Qflash system which is practically identical to Asus EZ flash.

I'm not going to elaborate with pictures of the motherboard and packaging extras, there are plenty of photos of this all over the web by now. But one thing I did find challenging to install when setting up with air cooling is the installation of the Thermaltake Big Typhoon cpu cooler with all the Gigabyte Heatpipes on this motherboard. Another option could have been to remove all the heatpipes and just gone with the straight Big Typhoon installation but I like a bit of a technical challenge so soldiered on..

I could have gone with my Thermalright Ultra 120, but wanted to see if it could be done with the Big Typhoon first up. Well, the good news is, yes it can be done but not with the stock nuts and bolts that come with the Big Typhoon. Had to get special bolts and nuts before it could be mounted properly. No small feat when you live out in the country like me atm.







Mounting the backplate proved problematic with Gigabyye copper HS bolted to the rear of the cpu area. I could have removed this as is mentioned in the handbook, but just wanted to see the effects of the cooling solution I have first to see how effective or not it is. The motherboard with the Big Tyhoon installed is not exactly on the light side.





Now that its installed the following hardware setup is configured:

> L626 E6600

> Thermaltake Big Typhoon with Thermaltake 120mm "smart" fan

> 2 x 1Gb Corsair PC9136C5 Dominators with Dominator cooling fans

> BFG 8800GTX O/C edition with Thermalright HR-03

> Creative XFi Fatal1ty sound card

> 1 x 750Gb Seagate ST3750640A

> 2 x 750Gb " " " " installed onto the onboard "Gigaraid" controller in Raid-0 120kb stripe configuration

> Thermaltake 750W toughpower PSU

> Cooler Master Stacker original case with Thermaltake 120mm "smart" fan for exhaust instead of original 120mm fan. This case is also fitted with the optional coolermaster "crossflow" fan to cool motherboard SMDs

> Windows XP Pro x86 with all available updates & hardware drivers, & my favourite utilities eg. Registry Mechanic, Perfect disc, CCleaner and 3rd party security software. None of these extra programs will be disabled in the background to give a more realistic view of the daily overclocked performance for this system. In my opinion this gives people a better idea of real world performance.

None of the above listed hardware or software components have been cherry picked, they are just " off-the-shelf " retail purchased.

Benchmarks will follow in due course, but still experimenting with motherboards dividers and rams settings at the moment.

oohms

Haha nice mounting there

Hopefully this board will see the same awesome ram clocks that the P5K's are seeing

RodneyJM

That would be nice, but at the moment its a fussy board with changing ram timings and proving challenging to say the least.

eva2000

love the piccies

What camera you use ?

changing ram timings ?

RodneyJM

Thanks eva2000, using Fujifilm S9500.

Yep, changing ram timings apart from SPD and board is very very sensitive to boot again after tweaking of this. Using timings and Vdimm I know work on 680i board and P965 is different on this board. Could be immature bios or Intels beta release of chipset drivers?? Its likes to boot with 5-7-7-24 nealy all the time no matter what divider I use....

Have to experiment and play more. But will also be doing HD benchmarks using Gigaraid controller which appears to be Silicon Image device. But will be first time in ages I'm booting & benching with single SataII HD...

oohms

Interesting... sounds kinda like the gigabyte 965 boards in some ways

Have different bioses changed ram overclocking much?

RodneyJM

I can't say cause' this is the first bios I've been checking this board with, that is F4.

Board is very fussy about fiddling with ram timings atm. I could only tweak the timings with 4-5 @ 9x400Mhz... odd as that sounds. Could be my Corsair DDR2 sticks but won't know untill others bench with similar platforms. I don't have other 2 x 1Gb DDR2 sticks atm to use. So SPD timings or what the board considers SPD with my Corsiar Dominator PC9136C5sticks in most cases is a very loose 5-7-7-24 . Any fiddling with timings and the board just refuses to boot but will reboot with default cpu clock settings...



But first up I wanted to check the Vdroop on this board as it is a major concern to overclockers. Also, gave me the chance to check the cooling power of the TT Big Typhoon with TT 120mm smart fan because I am not sure how it will play out with all those heatpipes crammed around the cooler not to mention the copper heatsink still attached to the back of the cpu area as pictured in the above screenshots from my first post.
I'm happy to say that it sits nice and stable and never a hitch with over 4 hours of small ffts @ priority 3 custom setting 8ffts to 32ffts. This is despite still being connected to the net and other utility programs sitting in the background.



Then after being satisfied with that, I ventured into dual 32mb superpi runs just to see what dividers and if I could - ram timings that I could change. Well, I was very limited in this area of ram. Jumping in at 9x366Mhz FSB, did'nt want to play around with lower FSB as the performance with very loose DDR2 SPD timings is just plain pathetic, but hey even with 5-7-7-24 366Mhz FSB or higher its still pretty pathetic.. .

These are the ram timings options that we have on this board:


Divider options:





















First time ever I could run dual SuperPi 32Mb runs with my L626 E6600 at 9x430Mhz! something I could never do on Asus P5B-E WiFi or DFI 975X boards, but crappy DDR2 timings spoil score. When I setup H20 cooling on this board soon, I can confidentaly say dual 32Mb @ 4.00Ghz will be possible from this cpu thanks to this boards fantastic cpu power delivery.



Single 32Mb run just to test FSB stabilty



Can't wait for proper eg, non-beta chipset drivers for P35 platform from Intel to be offically released and better bios from Gigabyte....hurry up guys!

dinos22

nice going so far

gigabyte is err i don't think i'd buy them any more particularly after reading about RAM issues and some of the other quirks

Asus P5K was great out of the box and things work great........

but it's interesting about power delivery and the fact you can run dual 32M higher than other mobos (how much higher??)

you are very confident about dual 32M @4Ghz and i've gotta say that is in no way an easy task even with my killer E6700