965 or 975 for Core Duo 2?

[Vokofpolisiekar]

This is probably an over used topic, but can someone tell me which would be better, 965 or 975 for a Conroe cpu? Pricing isn't an issue, nor do I have specific needs.

The 975 had an alteration after April 2006, which allows it to handle the Conroe CPU - so it feels a bit suspect. With 965, I'm not sure what to expect.

If anyone can lift the veil for me, I'd be much obliged!

 

[kye3k1]

Isn't the motherboard you are looking for a 775 socket? You just have to make sure it supports conroe though and not to get it mixed up with older versions. The conroe boards still supports older 775 CPUs though.

 

[Vokofpolisiekar]

Thanx for the reply. Maybe some m/b vendors will use iniative on the 965 and include pata connections - i hope so, cos i'm not aware of any other way to connect a dvd drive....

 

[1Tanker]

Thanx for the reply. Maybe some m/b vendors will use iniative on the 965 and include pata connections - i hope so, cos i'm not aware of any other way to connect a dvd drive....

It's far from ideal, but you could use an ATA controller card.

 

[Action_Man]

Apparently theres problems with SATA optical drives being the default drive with XP or so BenQ claim. I'd imagine this won't be a problem with Vista so hopefully with vista we'll see the death of legacy sh!t like PATA and floppies.

 

[pausert20]

The alteration you refer to is the transition from VRM standard 10.0 (or maybe it was 10.3) to 11.0 standard. Effectively, the pre-Conroe ready 775 socket MBs adhered to a VRM standard that the lowest supplied voltage was too high to support Core 2, thus they need to rev the standard and re-work the boards to allow lower supply voltage.

Here is a link on how you can convert a pre-conroe board to a conroe capable board by simply adding a resistor in the right spot:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=99298

Other than allowing lower supply voltages and refresh the bios code nothing else changed, there is nothing suspect to be concerned about.

Having said that, the 965 chipset is a great chipset advantage is that it officially supports DDR2-800. My beef with the 965 is the lack of PATA ports for optical drives, so I myself will opt for the 975 or the ATI RD600.

Jack

From what I have heard, the ICH8 on the 965 motherboards does have a PATA controller in the silicon but they would need to increase the package size to bond out the connections. This is causing most if not all motheroboard vendors to look for a seperate PATA controller. Intel is using a Marvell PATA controller on all of their 965 boards except their pico BTX boards which don't have the space to actually put one down.

 

[BaronMatrix]

This is probably an over used topic, but can someone tell me which would be better, 965 or 975 for a Conroe cpu? Pricing isn't an issue, nor do I have specific needs.

The 975 had an alteration after April 2006, which allows it to handle the Conroe CPU - so it feels a bit suspect. With 965, I'm not sure what to expect.

If anyone can lift the veil for me, I'd be much obliged!

I would definitely go for a 965. it was designed for Core 2, and only certain revs of 975 will work.

The 965 boards are due to ship with Core 2 so there will be some around. The problem maybe a shortage of chips for awhile in retail.

 

[RichPLS]

The chips are already listing on sites as in stock...

http://www.eastluna.com/hardware/details.php?id=1954

 

[gOJDO]

ATi RD600.

 

[Vokofpolisiekar]

Jeez - talk about upgrade headaches..... Thanx for all the input!!!

I've also found a liking in the 965 - seeing that it's designed for Conroe. Now I have to wait for August (Conroe only ships to S Africa then).

Good luck to all the France and Italian supporters!!! With Brazil out, I'll have to flip coins on whom to support....

 

[lbax]

Jeez - talk about upgrade headaches..... Thanx for all the input!!!

I've also found a liking in the 965 - seeing that it's designed for Conroe. Now I have to wait for August (Conroe only ships to S Africa then).

Like you, I have taken an early interest in the capabilities of the 965 chipset. I am very interested in the reviews/benchmarks that I expect to be published shortly. The memory controller of the 965 appears to have the potiential of outperforming the 975X.

I hope to see more sophisticated power/heat/noise management functions in the 965.

 

[The_Abyss]

One of the most important items people have forgotten is the death of AC97 onboard sound with the 965. I can't belive it took so long.

 

[mickeddie]

If the 965 mobo has an IDE interface slot what happens when you plug in your PATA devices to it? Will the optical drives just not work?

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

I'd go for the 975...

 

[mickeddie]

Having said that, the 965 chipset is a great chipset advantage is that it officially supports DDR2-800. My beef with the 965 is the lack of PATA ports for optical drives, so I myself will opt for the 975 or the ATI RD600.Jack

What does it mean to "officially" support DDR2-800? Won't a 975 support it? Is that the only advantage of the 965 over the 975?

I really do not know a lot about the intricate details with mobos, but I thought the PATA port was on the mobo where the cable from the IDE device plugs into it. This is not correct?

 

[jaguarskx]

Having said that, the 965 chipset is a great chipset advantage is that it officially supports DDR2-800. My beef with the 965 is the lack of PATA ports for optical drives, so I myself will opt for the 975 or the ATI RD600.

Jack

Well, it seems that I will not buy a 965 mobo since all my drives are PATA. Oh well, what a shame especially since most of the optical drives for sale are still PATA, not SATA.

I'll replace a couple of older hard drives with SATA HDD later this year or early next. It's probably time to finally retire my IBM "Deathstar" 75GXP that I had since 1999; still works flawlessly. I'll definitely trash my last remaining Maxtor drive; I hate them simply due to my experience with them.

 

[mickeddie]

Your info about the blue and orange IDE connectors...is this on 965 chipset mobos or 975?

I asked this question before but will re-word it. With a 965 chipset mobo, will the IDE (pata DVD) work at all? I will be just moving my SATA hard drive from my current system to the new one I will build so I do not need to install the OS (but I will most likely have to do a reinstall so I guess I will STILL have to boot off of the DVD drive).

Other than supporting DDR2-800 RAM what other advantage does the 965 offer over the 975? With the Broadwater NOT supporting dual GPU's or PATA devices how much of a difference does the memory issue make?

 

[kamel5547]

Apparently theres problems with SATA optical drives being the default drive with XP or so BenQ claim. I'd imagine this won't be a problem with Vista so hopefully with vista we'll see the death of legacy sh!t like PATA and floppies.

Hmmm, thats sounds suspect as that is not a problem with any of our SATA Sony DVD writers. Maybe its a BenQ specific problem?

 

[mickeddie]

The P965 chipset is attempting to do away
completely with PATA IDE connectors.

Last question and I am done with this (for now). Since the 965 chipset is trying to do away with PATA ide connectors, won't the BIOS's in all of the 965 mobos have full support for SATA optical devices?

 

[stim]

BUT ... here's the rub: you can NOT plug
a standard PATA CD or DVD optical drive
into one of these IDE ports and attempt
to run Windows Setup from that optical drive,
because the machine simply does not have
the required device driver installed in memory
at that point in the install process.

It seems really silly to me that the motherboard manufacturers wouldn't think of that problem. Isn't there a way that they can add the necessary driver support for their non-native IDE connections to the BIOS?

With the ASUS board that you are talking about there is a native IDE connection, so it's not a big deal if you can't install the OS from a CD-ROM drive plugged into the non-native IDE connection -- all you have to do is plug your CD-ROM drive into the native IDE connection to install the OS. I just don't see why adding BIOS driver support for the non-native IDE connection would be a priority for ASUS.

However, there is no native support for the IDE connections on the 965 chipset, so I would think that it would be a huge priority to add BIOS driver support for the non-native connection.

Am I missing something? Is it just not possible to add BIOS driver support for a non-native IDE connection?

 

[pausert20]

Your info about the blue and orange IDE connectors...is this on 965 chipset mobos or 975?

I asked this question before but will re-word it. With a 965 chipset mobo, will the IDE (pata DVD) work at all? I will be just moving my SATA hard drive from my current system to the new one I will build so I do not need to install the OS (but I will most likely have to do a reinstall so I guess I will STILL have to boot off of the DVD drive).

Other than supporting DDR2-800 RAM what other advantage does the 965 offer over the 975? With the Broadwater NOT supporting dual GPU's or PATA devices how much of a difference does the memory issue make?

To answer your 975 mobo board question on DDR2 800. The 975X chipset on all of the 975 mobo boards officially does not support DDR2 800. I have an Intel Bad Axe motherboard based on the intel 975X chipset. It has memory reference timings in the Bios to support DDR 2 800 so even though it does not officially support DDR2 800 it can.

As for your question on differences between the 965 and the 975 chipset here you go. These are for the Intel 975 Bad Axe board and the new Intel 965 Lemont board

Chipset Feature D975XBX DP965LT
Dual PEG Slots (Crossfire) Yes No
# USB Ports 8 10
Memory Support (Native) DDR2 667 DDR2 800
Max Memory Load 8 GB 8 GB
Overclocking (Feature depends on Board Manufacturer)
Yes Intel No Intel
ICH (RAID) Yes (ICH7) No (ICH8)
PCI Slots 3 3
PCIe Slots 1 x4 3 x1
Separate PATA Controller No Yes
Separate RAID Controller Yes No

 

[1Tanker]

Your info about the blue and orange IDE connectors...is this on 965 chipset mobos or 975?

I asked this question before but will re-word it. With a 965 chipset mobo, will the IDE (pata DVD) work at all? I will be just moving my SATA hard drive from my current system to the new one I will build so I do not need to install the OS (but I will most likely have to do a reinstall so I guess I will STILL have to boot off of the DVD drive).

Other than supporting DDR2-800 RAM what other advantage does the 965 offer over the 975? With the Broadwater NOT supporting dual GPU's or PATA devices how much of a difference does the memory issue make?

To answer your 975 mobo board question on DDR2 800. The 975X chipset on all of the 975 mobo boards officially does not support DDR2 800. I have an Intel Bad Axe motherboard based on the intel 975X chipset. It has memory reference timings in the Bios to support DDR 2 800 so even though it does not officially support DDR2 800 it can.

As for your question on differences between the 965 and the 975 chipset here you go. These are for the Intel 975 Bad Axe board and the new Intel 965 Lemont board

Chipset Feature D975XBX DP965LT
Dual PEG Slots (Crossfire) Yes No
# USB Ports 8 10
Memory Support (Native) DDR2 667 DDR2 800
Max Memory Load 8 GB 8 GB
Overclocking (Feature depends on Board Manufacturer)
Yes Intel No Intel
ICH (RAID) Yes (ICH7) No (ICH8)
PCI Slots 3 3
PCIe Slots 1 x4 3 x1
Separate PATA Controller No Yes
Separate RAID Controller Yes No

No overclocking options on the 965 Intel board?.... Yuk :?

 

[pausert20]

Well, all Intel motherboards can do 3% overclock of the FSB but nothing like the Bad Axe can do. The Bad Axe Bios has support for 1333 FSB along with a 25 or 30% overclock on top of that. The SuperPI record was set using a Bad Axe motherboard. One of the -304 rev boards. I think all of the old board revs would now be out of stock since they did the cut back in April to add support for Conroe on the boards going forward.

The Bad Axe is considered an Enthusiast board and the Lemont is considered a gamer board. Those are Intel Definitions.

 

[Action_Man]

Apparently theres problems with SATA optical drives being the default drive with XP or so BenQ claim. I'd imagine this won't be a problem with Vista so hopefully with vista we'll see the death of legacy sh!t like PATA and floppies.

Hmmm, thats sounds suspect as that is not a problem with any of our SATA Sony DVD writers. Maybe its a BenQ specific problem?

I wasn't aware that sony had any, could you link me to them?

 

[1Tanker]

The Bad Axe is considered an Enthusiast board and the Lemont is considered a gamer board. Those are Intel Definitions.

Most gamers i know, want to overclock, the line between enthusiast/gamer has to be very thin, and Intel must know this. :?