Gigabyte's P35 motherboards and boot cycles

[bildo123]

corsair is good memory but out of curiosity do you have any slower DDR2 that you could throw in there for testing?

I beg to differ, I had one stick RMA'd a year later and a fairly new(less than 3 months) SD chip randomly die. I left a comment about this on NewEgg and the RAMGuy responded mentioning an RMA. I'm halfway through the process and everything is rolling along in a timely fashion. I would give customer support/care a 5/5 but about the product, well no comment on that

 

[Underclock]

Shadow703793, did you get to do your tests?

i'm hoping the P35C board i'm going to buy does well with Team Elite 800 memories i'll put in them. i've seen people say it's the "C" boards, it's the Crucial memories, it's the "over 800 memories", it's "bad OC", etc. so i'm hoping for falling in the minimum traps possible.

Do you know what the "E" in the GB's "EP" boards stands for?

if anyone found any more cause/effect combos in the CB boards, please advise!

tks.

 

[Shadow703793]

^ EP stands for Energy Saver Profile. Yes, the problem seems to be with RAM natively higher than DDR2 800 only (so far). I have tested this on P35-DS3R/P35-DS3L/P35-DS4. I used Crucial Ballastix DDR2 1066 and Crucial Ballastix DDR2 800 and some Corsair ValueRAM DDR2 667. Each 1GB test was tested with Memtest86+. The Ballastix 1066 needed to be under clocked to DDR2 800 speeds with a voltage increase then it failed Memtest86+ in ~30min on the DS3L and DS3R, and ~50min on the DS4. Both the Ballastix DDR2 800 and the Corsair DDR2 667 passed with out any problems; ran Memtest86+ stable for ~6hrs on all boards. I recommend you stay away from the EP based and the P35C chipset based motherboards, many seems to have problems with those boards, esp. when OCing. Just stick to plain vanilla boards (ie P35-DS3R)

 

[Dunkel]

How did you solve the problem about the black screen (no signal input) but all the fans come on? I get one beep then nothing. I tried pulling the battery and all the other trouble shooting things.

Please advise.

 

[Underclock]

Great, Shadow703793, huge thanks for your input!
i'll be avoiding those EP and C boards then!

but just how much of an energy saving does that system provide? i mean, i like the idea of things saving energy and all, but what would i be saving, in practice (do other brands, like Asus, offer anything similar?)?

tks.

 

[Underclock]

(why can't we edit the messages....)

it seems that the non-EP versions can also have the EP functionalities with the 2.1 rev. so i guess buy an EP and shut the thing down or update a non-EP to 2.1 and then shut it down again does basically the same, right?

so i shuold just focus on avoiding the C boards? or updating to rev 2.1 is "dangerous" altogether?

 

[geofelt]

The c boards are combo ddr2 & ddr3. Not a good choice

 

[darkguset]

Gigabytes feature an autoreboot feature in case your overclock fails, so instead of clearing the CMOS with the jumper, you wait until it reboots a few times until it finds the appropriate settings for your PC to boot. Hence i believe that most people with the "endless" reboot are just people who failed to overclock properly, usually by not providing enough voltage, OR trying too tight timings for their RAM. I own an GA-P35-DS3P and it is awesome. So far i only had to use the CMOS clear once! And i own the board for a year, and yes it is overclocked since day 1 and i still play with it sometimes. Simply, if i screw up, all i have to do is wait for a few reboots and it comes back to life by itself! No more opening the case and trying to reach for the jumper!

In general, solid overclocker board, good layout, very happy customer! hehe...

 

[rsetter1]

I recently built a new system with a Ga-P35-DS3L, E6750, 2x2gb G-skill DDR2 800 @1.8v. etc
I have installed XP x64 and Vista without any problems.
I read of all the problems people were having and it seemed like the common problem component was ram at higher speeds than 800 and elevated voltage on the ram.

 

[Shadow703793]

^Exactly what I was saying.

 

[Shadow703793]

Great, Shadow703793, huge thanks for your input!
i'll be avoiding those EP and C boards then!

but just how much of an energy saving does that system provide? i mean, i like the idea of things saving energy and all, but what would i be saving, in practice (do other brands, like Asus, offer anything similar?)?

tks.

(why can't we edit the messages....)

it seems that the non-EP versions can also have the EP functionalities with the 2.1 rev. so i guess buy an EP and shut the thing down or update a non-EP to 2.1 and then shut it down again does basically the same, right?

so i shuold just focus on avoiding the C boards? or updating to rev 2.1 is "dangerous" altogether?

Yeah, I would personally disable EP, It really doesn't matter if you get a EP board or not if you disable it you should be fine. Imo, sacrificing performance and/or stability to save like $6-20/year is not worth it. Using SpeedStep would be a better and safer option than EP. Like some one said before no need for DDR3 so keep away from "C" series boards too.

 

[fbm211]

I took shadows advice several weeks ago and I havent had any problems with my P35-DS4/ballistix1066 memory since.Before that I had 2 sets of the ballistix 1066 fail after 10-12 days.I manually set the ddr2 overvoltage to +0.35v (On a side note HWMonitor reports it at 2.22v and easytune5 reports it at 2.15v).So my new build has been running stable and I am considering Ocing the e8400 to 3.6 this weekend after I read up on the p35 oc guides.

 

[apache_lives]

@OP: Those Rebooting cycles are mostly related to the RAM. For some reason Gigabyte P35 (not the X38s and other chipsets) boards seems to have issues with certain kinds of RAM, esp. RAM (natively higher) than DDR2 800. There also seems to be problems with Vista and Gigabyte P35 boards. But, so far I have not run in to any problems with any P35-DS3x boards, except that Crucial Ballastix DDR2 1060 RAM had some problems (the RAM was good).

My main rig has a Gigabyte EP35-DS3P, 4x1gb Corsair XMS6400 C5's and im running Vista X64 - No issues to report, it replaced my P5B Deluxe Wifi/Ap which had cold start issues.

Set things up correctly - manually set speeds and ram voltages/timings (still worked 100% with defaults)

Currently at 3.42ghz with 1.4v, the rest is stock - easy oc

 

[Shadow703793]

^Exactly. You have good DDR2 800 RAM and 80% of the DDR2 800 RAM (Ie. Crucial Ballastix) can be OCed to 1066Mhz easily.

 

[Underclock]

all things considered, i'm choosing a GA-EP35-DS3P.
it's an EP, but the non-EP with rev 2.1 are essentially EP, and these must be easier to find in the market.
it seemed a lot like the DS4 without some DTS stuff which i won't use.
i eventually narrowed down to these two cause i like the silent pipes thing
*loves silent*