Thread: Gigabyte ga-965p-ds4 motherboard.

The key characteristic of GB's GA-965p-DS4 CPU board is the chipset, but not inevitably in the way that you may anticipate. When Intel established its superb Core Two Duo processor, it was coupled with the I975X/ICH7R chipset which proceeded so well and gave you 4 SATA slots and PCI Express as good as support for DDRII-533 memory.


But time moves on, so Intel has established the 965p/ICH8R and yes, we familiar it's an simpler number, but honestly, it's novel. 965p supports quicker DDRII-667 storage but doesn't boost PCI Express function so don't expect to function a couple of Radeon X1950 XTX graphics cards in CrossFire any time soon. The ICH8R Southbridge just supports 6 SATA slots, but this is at the expense of IDE which is dropped, while the audio has been upgraded from 'AC97 to HD.


Take entire that both and the GA-965p-DS4 creates exact sense. The most striking characteristic is the passive cooling system that connects both component of the chipset and the energy-efficient regulation hardware. Core 2 Duo doesn't requirement a great conduct of energy but it has to be the right kind of energy so this CPU board is close-silent in operation. Well, the board itself is silent and the CPU is happy with a rather cooler so the just source of noise will be the graphics card.




On the I/O panel you receive 4 USB 2.0 ports, Single Firewire, Gigabit LAN and a entire range of audio connectors adding digital coaxial and visual.


Moving bottom the board we have the PCI Express 16x slot and under that is what seems as similar some other 16x slot, but looks are misleading. This port really supports 4 PCI Express lanes and if you selec to link in an expansion card you'll search that the 3 PCI-E 1x slots are unfit. At the foot of the board are two formal PCI ports.


In line with the PCI-E Fourx port are the 6 native SATA connectors, colour-coded in orange, as good as some other couple of ports that are coloured purple to appearing that they are on a break controller. The conclude is that GB has been forced to include an IDE controller to permit us to employ a DVD writer, as SATA examples are fabulously thin on the ground, and the 2 SATA ports arrives at as a bonus. Who, you may wonder, could perhaps want 8 SATA ports? We have no view. Likewise we are puzzled by Intel's conclusion to ditch IDE support.


In our function trying we utilized a 2.66GHz E6700 processor with TwoGB of Corsair 8500 storage, a Sapphire Radeon X1900 XTX graphics card and a Western Digital Raptor 150GB hard drive and the GB functioned cleanly, however it was no excellent than parallel CPU board that utilize the elder 975X chipset, which goes out us somewhat mystified.