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Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P

Back into the Intel Fold

by Josh Walrath

            Some years back I had the chance to review quite a few Gigabyte products.  This was primarily in the early Athlon days when socket 462 was new.  Products such as the GA-7DXR based on the AMD 760 DDR chipset were ruling the roost in terms of features and overclocking potential.  Around that time though, it seemed like Gigabyte was starting to step away from producing true enthusiast boards, and there was a distinct drop in product quality.  I had some bad luck with a couple of boards, and other reviewers I knew started to back away from Gigabyte.

            Gigabyte is not one of the top three motherboard producers in the world for no particular reason.  They bounced back from these quality issues and started focusing on performance, overclocking, features, and quality.  Soon we were able to see the results with motherboards like the GA-7NNXP which was one of the first 6 phase power systems on the market.  They also applied these technologies to products based on the i865 and i875 motherboards for Intel chips.  Overall Gigabyte regained their reputation through a lot of hard work and some very nifty products.

            Now we are onto the next generation of boards featuring the latest chipsets from Intel (and soon from AMD).  Gigabyte has produced a lineup of P35 based boards that should cover every market quite nicely.  From the $100 board to the $250, Gigabyte has tailored each design to fit the budgets of nearly every system builder and enthusiast.

The P35 Chipset

            With the introduction of the latest 1333 FSB Core 2 products, Intel needed an update for the aging (but still potent) 965P chipset.  This chipset would be the midrange, non-integrated offering for current and upcoming Core 2 products.  While the 965P has been shown to be able to overclock to the 1333 level without many problems, Intel needed a rock solid chipset that would satisfy the motherboard guys and OEMs and would run without issue or extra effort at the new FSB speed.

Everything nicely packed by Gigabyte.  They always seem to do a good job with their bundle.

            DDR-3 support is also another major feature of the new chipset Intel would produce.  While DDR-2 is now the dominant memory technology, Intel is pushing for the adoption of the latest memory technology.  Intel also needed backwards compatibility with DDR-2 though, as it is extremely in-expensive but still quite fast.

            Add onto all of that the need for a new southbridge that will handle fast SATA throughput, as well as keep the RAID features of previous chipsets.  Throw in a few more USB ports and some PCI-E lanes and an integrated Intel 10/100/1000 MAC, and we all get the idea of what Intel is trying to accomplish.

            The P35 and ICH9R chipsets were released early this past summer and their success has been pretty phenomenal.  Clocking higher and integrating more features, yet pulling less power has allowed it to replace the very popular 965P chipset nearly overnight.  The only major complaint most users have with the P35/ICH9 combination is the lack of a parallel ATA port, which is still the dominant interface for optical drives.

            Another interesting feature of the P35/ICH9R is the division of PCI-E lanes.  The P35 northbridge has 16 x PCI-E lanes for graphics use, while the ICH9R features 6 PCI-E lanes that can be divided up as seen fit.  This allows AMD’s CrossFire technology to be supported, but only with one 16X and one 4X connection.  Another downside to this setup is that the two graphics cards have to use the 2 GB/sec DMI connection between the north and southbridge chips.

Next:  The GA-P35-DS3P

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