pauldovi

The XBX2 was a great motherboard in its time. However, the 975X chipset really struggles with quad cores and high FSB's. The DX38BT will be out in the coming months (or weeks, no one is really clear on the launch date), with a high price tag and exclusively DDR3 support. I am sure it will be a good motherboard, but I can't really justify recommending it. For now, I highly recommend P35 motherboards like the GA-P35-DS3R. If you are on a budget (which doesn't seem the case), you really can't beat the GA-P35-DS3L which lacks RAID support, but other than that is a very good motherboard.

A lot of people buy Nvidia motherboards incase they go SLI, which rarely happens. The only case that I recommend Nvidia in is if you are certain you are going SLI.

Good luck!

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Leeo D

This is one of the most interesting threads I have ever seen.I hope you guys get to the bottom of this soon. I just got a secondhand P5B deluxe wi/fi with e6600 for $200Aus. Waiting for a psu and then I will get started.

CL3P20

I dont mean to rain on the parade..but this has been out there for a while now. Specifically in regards to the 965 chipset and the P5B-Dlx.

*Using clockgen should be limited to setting FSB to get around a FSB hole....ie- If you have to boot at ~360mhz or ~450mhz...then you should use clockgen to jump past this section, into an area of better performance. From my experience using clockgen to go much past 400mhz requires extra voltage on the NB [ie-1.55v] to maintain stability...even then, depending on if you are on a stock multi..it can cause issues.

~375mhz and a 9x multi has provided faster results for me, over using 400 x9, or 10x.

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TheNix

has anybody tested this with the x38 chipset? i was running 3.65 with a 405fsbx9 and ram speeds @1044, now with 457x8 and rams at 1098 i get over a gb more in speed, would that be attributed to just the increased fsb speed and the small increase in ram speed? test was ran for memory bandwidth in sandra, 7200mb/s for old clocks, and almost 8300 with the new ones.

CL3P20

405mhz = a crap range for the nb latency set

The improvement you saw, is just from the speed of the mem controller and NB bumping up out of the bottom end of the strap.

once you break past ~440mhz, the FSB starts to overcome the 'loose' timing set used..and gain back some bandwidth.

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Ishaichi

I was previously under the impression that I wanted to jump into the next bootstrap, so 405 was better than 395, for example, if the NBS was 400... Now I like to run my RAM low latency rather than High clock; if we use the analogy at the start of the thread.

My question is: Do I want to get as close to the BS without going over, or do I want to just cross the bootstrap?

AND... I have a P5K Premium that allows me to adjust the bootstrap... do I want to screw with that or just use the predetermined values???

Any P5K Premium advice is appreciated, feel free to mail. Great Thread

CL3P20

the P35 chipsets, do not change the NB latency when the boot strap reset's....they just keep scaling upwards with the speed. In other words..it will not matter on a P35..the higher the FSB..the better the mobo performs.

*These latency 'resets' are visible using the "Latency" test that comes with CPU-Z.

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Goontron

Great thread you guys have going here.

I need some help getting my overclock back on my P5W DH after I updated my bios from 1305 to 2406. The reason I did this is because I installed 2 more GBs of ram for a total of 4. My setup before the extra ram and bios update was 400x9 with ram @ 800 4-4-4-12. 1.45 Vcore with 2.10 ram. Ran 24/7 for over 14 months now watercooled.

With the latest bios and 4gb's, I can't get it to load windows, memory dumps just as it starts to load @ the above settings. Im running now just fine @ 400x9 with ram @ 600. How can I get all 4gbs to run at 800? timing? voltage? a different bios? Any help would be great

Cheers

CL3P20

Looser timings and increased voltage on the NB...

If 4-4-4-12 is stock..then try 4-4-4-15 and increase the voltage about .5v ...since there are sooo many IC's now [w/ 4gb's] you have a wider 'tolerance' factor...Meaning, just with that many IC's..the chances that all of them will handle the same load/settings is very low. Not to mention that much RAM puts stress on the NB..as now it has twice the memory to address.

Adding voltage to the NB and changing the timings slightly will help..add voltage to the RAM, when all else fails.

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TwoDigitz

Ive got an MSI 975x mobo but i put it in my daughters machine now which is a good machine with an E6600, 2GB of Patriot Extreme, 580w Hiper and an iCute pink case.

I had these bits left over from an upgrade and realized that the board and CPU are obsolete, they are not produced anymore and nobody is buying them so id rather keep them and give them to my daughter and now she has a good system.