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Gigabyte P35-DS3R Intel Bearlake Review
The Intel BearLake chipset, also known as P35, is about to dawn upon us. We already see boards starting to pack the retail shelves. It is a mid-range chipset solution to replace the 965P chipset, with support for both DDR2 and DDR3 Memory. DDR3 Memory is still expensive, and there are even boards out that will support both RAMs to make the transition a lot less expensive at one shot. Today, we take a look at the Gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard... one that I snuck from a retail outlet! I was pleasantly surprised at it's overclocking in particular...
Of course, I just had to try out Kentsfield Quad-Core overclocking on this motherboard. Many motherboards out there are having a tougher time overclocking the Quad-Cores, a lot of times not even able to break 400MHz FSB on the processor. Using similar BIOS settings, I hit way over 400MHz FSB on Kentsfield, 472MHz FSB in fact!
Not as high as the FSB mileage on Conroe processors but 472MHz FSB with a Quad Core is still mighty mighty fine! Very fine! I was very impressed!
Even Memory seems to overclock really well on this motherboard, close to DDR2 1300MHz!
A very few select 965P motherboards overclock Memory this well, this P35 is definitely in the same league.
I was happy with the 6-phase power implementation over the processor and I wanted to test how well it was built to withstand load and particularly, the stability in voltage. So I applied quite a bit of load and monitored CPU Core Voltage real-time with my Multimeter. You can read your actual VCore here:
| Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 @ 510 x 7 = 3570MHz @ 1.6v BIOS | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 @ 400 x 9 = 3600MHz @ 1.6v BIOS | |
| Idle | 1.57v | 1.57v |
| Load | 1.56v | 1.55v |
The 2 configurations of moderate and heavy. To load, I used 3D mark 06 CPU Test to load all onboard cores of processors. Results were assuring, the droop from idle to load is very very minimal, 0.01v in moderate load cases, and 0.02v in heavy load cases, very sturdy power here!
It was great to see a value-for-money board overclock my QX6700 Quad-Core to such a height stably:
Overall, I was very very happy with the out-of-box overclocking capability of the motherboard. Either it's the new P35 chipset, or Gigabyte's implementation of it. My guess is a bit of both. FSB wise, it is a God-sent, with both Dual-core and Quad-Core reaching death-defying heights. Plus the fact that the 6-phase power for CPU is very stable. The limit preventing higher FSB overclocks does not seem to be Chipset voltage. I can do the same with a little lower chipset voltage. Even a voltage mod up to 2.0v chipset voltage did not get me higher FSB. A note about the board at 2.0v chipset (MCH) voltage: the heatsink cooler on the Northbridge is warm but with a fan over it, it does not get scorching at all, even at 2.0v! Also, just to test out the ultra-durable tag-line of the DS3, I ran it for a whole day at 2.0v chipset voltage, 1.8v FSB voltage and 1.4v at Southbridge voltage, and it was still running good, same FSB mileage and stable as well. Overall, this board is just so ready for overclocking, out of the box!
