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Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P

Back into the Intel Fold

by Josh Walrath

The GA-P35-DS3P

            As I had mentioned earlier, Gigabyte has made some huge strides in terms of quality over the past few years.  Now they are pushing that even further with their latest series of boards.  Their Ultra Durable 2 philosophy is based on three primary innovations in motherboard design.

            The first is the use of Low RDS(on) mosfets.  These power components are specially designed to reduce the switching resistance for faster current charging and discharging.  Because of the lower resistance, these chips run significantly cooler than the standard mosfets most manufacturers use.  These chips are more expensive, but we all know that heat can be a killer when it comes to motherboards.

Taking out the center cardboard portion reveals the motherboard.  Note the cardboard/sponge piece that keeps the heatsink from getting too terribly bent during shipping and handling.

            The second is the use of Ferrite Core chokes.  Standard chokes are typically made of iron, but these Ferrite chokes are a combination of iron plus other metals to improve electrical performance.  Gigabyte claims that these chokes have 25% better electrical retention than standard iron core chokes.  This again makes the power circuitry much more efficient, which in turn lowers heat again.

            The third and final feature of the Ultra Durable 2 specification is the use of all polymer caps throughout the design.  Some years back there was the big issue of exploding caps.  This was due to a very bad batch of electrolytic fluid being sold to Taiwanese capacitor makers.  This was apparently a case of industrial espionage gone wrong, where the secret Japanese electrolytic recipe was stolen and sold to another firm… but the recipe was incomplete and flawed.  Loads of this stuff was sold to many common capacitor makers, which then made their way to motherboards and other components.  The fluid used in these caps would work for a while, but due to the incomplete/flawed recipe they would release hydrogen gas over time.  After a while the pressure of the hydrogen gas would cause the capacitors to deform and often break.  This of course caused the capacitor to fail, and the motherboard soon followed.  Using a high quality organic polymer capacitor (solid cap) insures that the motherboard will not suffer from bulging caps, and these solid caps can also handle much higher temperatures and have a tendency to last about 3 to 4 times longer in use than traditional liquid electrolytic capacitors.

            The board also has some very nice features above and beyond the Ultra Durable 2 standard.  It is one of the first boards to use the new 8 channel Realtek AL889A high definition audio codec with a rated S/N ratio of 106 dB.  Though it is doubtful that an integrated motherboard audio solution will actually reach those kinds of numbers, it is a significant improvement over older codecs.

Even with the extra protection, the northbridge heatsink was visibly off-center.  Some easy pressure helped to get it more upright, but did not cure it entirely.

            Gigabyte also included unofficial support for running DDR-2 memory at 1066 MHz.  DDR-2 800 is still the highest “standard” memory speed, but many modules can overclock to 1066 MHz and beyond.  Gigabyte gives the users the option of running these modules at 1066 while still keeping the bus speed at the standard 800/1066/1333 levels.

            The board has the standard 24 pin ATX plug, but for users with higher end power supplies it also features the dual 4 pin/8 pin 12V CPU power plug.  It also has another 4 pin molex connector to provide more power to the dual 16X PEG slots (one 16X electrical, the other 4X electrical) when used in CrossFire mode.

            Gigabyte has included a third party SATA/PATA chip to give an extra 2 SATA ports as well as one PATA port.  Since the ICH9 series does not feature PATA support, this has been a major headache for a lot of users and OEMs as most optical drives are still PATA based.  To get around this manufacturers have been using these 3^rd party chips to add PATA support.  As of this fall we are finally seeing a very good selection of SATA optical drives at good prices, so the extra PATA port is not nearly as important as it once was.  With this 3^rd party chip, the board features a whopping eight 3 Gbps SATA ports.

            USB support is also very important, and the P35 chipset delivers in spades.  A total of 12 USB 2.0 ports are available to the user.  Four are located on the back plane, while the other eight can be accessed through internal headers.  Gigabyte does not provide an external header for use in the PCI slots, so most users will be stuck with 6 USB ports (4 provided on the back, two more provided with the front header on their case).

            E-SATA is provided by an external bracket that can be attached to either the ICH9R SATA headers or the 3^rd party chip.  The data and power cable arrangement on this header is actually quite nifty and works really well.  For those that do dally in E-SATA, this is a very easy and fast system to work with.

            IEEE-1394 is integrated into the board, but it is of the more mundane 400 mbps variety (a) and not the 800 mbps chip (b).  Two headers are provided on the board, while one Firewire port is on the backplane.

With everything unpacked we see how much stuff Gigabyte typically includes with their motherboards.

            While the ICH9R chipset has an integrated Intel Gig-E MAC, Gigabyte did not apparently feel like using this.  Typically with integrated MACs a physical layer chip is used to enable that functionality.  Instead, Gigabyte chose to use a separate PCI-E based Gig-E chip from Realtek (RTL 8111B).  This does take up one PCI-E lane, which means that 5 more lanes are used between the rest of the PCI-E slots.  When a second graphics card is inserted into the physical PEG slot, then it deactivates the rest of the PCI-E 1X slots.

            Gigabyte paid a lot of attention to cooling on this particular board, and both the P35 and ICH9R chips are covered with copper heatsinks.  The Silent Pipe cooler on the P35 is quite hefty and keeps the chip very cool.  The primary difference between this board and the higher end model is that no heat pipe connects the two coolers, and the power circuitry on this board is not cooled.  Also of note is that 1/3rd of the power delivery circuitry (6 mosfets and 6 chokes) on this board are missing from the top end model.  This should have a very minimal effect on overclocking ability, and it certainly helps to keep the overall price down on this board.

Next:  Box and Bundle

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