Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P and GA-P35-DQ6 Differences

Hello,
I am looking at the GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3P and the GA-P35-DQ6
motherboards trying to determine why one costs considerably more than
the other. Can anyone please explain the differences?

TIA

 

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products...ComparisonSheet.aspx?ProductID=2532,2533,2625

Download the respective manuals to compare physical layout for each
motherboard.

 

I downloaded both User Manuals and nothing really seems to jump off
the page. The GA-P35-DQ6 lists extra tuning parameters, but the other
board seems to list them in the BIOS section. The web page you
suggested shows very little differences that I can see. One has a few
more USB 2 ports on the back connector while the other uses a bracket
to add up to the same number. I guess I was expecting a big difference
for such a large price disparity.

Thanks for your reply.

 

This is a tough one. I looked at the pictures here.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128047 (GA-P35-DS3P)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128046 (GA-P35-DQ6)

The DQ6 seems to have 12 coils to the 6 coils on the DS3P. As near as I can
tell, both designs are six phase, and since the PCB board blanks are virtually
the same, there doesn't appear to be room to make a twelve phase regulator. So
what does twelve coils buy ? Very little.

Both seem to be using the solid caps.

The DQ6 has two ESATA conversion brackets for PCI slot covers, compared to just
one for the DS3P.

The big difference, is the copper colored plumbing on the DQ6.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2999 (DQ6 cooling)
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/chipsets/intel/p35-launch/gigap35dq6rearL1.jpg

The DS3P has next to no plumbing, but the sinks that are on there, will
still restrict fitting other stuff in the computer.

If I was making the choice, I'd have a hard look at my video card choice,
my aftermarket CPU cooler (blows down, blows sideways, exhausts mainly in
one direction, and so on), before deciding whether the Gigabyte cooling is
going to work well with my other component choices. If you were fitting a
Tuniq Tower, for example, you may need to assemble a lot of pictures of the
products, to figure out whether there is room for it or not.

I wasn't able to find the BIOS chip(s). There is a chance they are soldered
to the board, and I much prefer to see them socketed for easy removal.

Paul

 

Thanks alot for the detailed analysis Paul. I kept thinking there must
be some major difference in the chipsets or the such to justify the
large price difference. The cooling advantages do seem interesting,
but I have never overclocked in the past. It sounds interesting, so
I'll have to debate the worth of it before choosing. I haven't even
considered a video card choice at this point in time.

 

The choice of motherboards is now a moving target. Many of the P35
boards have been altered to rev2.0 specs in recent days. I have
noticed that the serial and LPT ports have been removed from the back
panel connectors and at least the LPT port is now, optionally, an
extra cable. Also there are four fewer USP ports (two USB headers)
available for connection from the motherboard. I had seen a photo
which showed interference between a PCI card and one of the USB
headers.

If the Silent-Pipe heat sinks on the DQ6 appeal to you but you don't
like the price (like me) then an option might be the P35-DS4, also now
at rev 2.0. A couple of items have been removed from the DS4 such as 2
eSATA connections instead of 4 on the DQ6, Dual bios instead of Quad
bios, GIGABYTE Crazy Cool Technology (the heat panels underneath the
motherboard). I guess this means not quite as serious an overclockers
board as the DQ6. This didn't deter one reviewer of this board:

"Overclocking is ridiculously easy. I set voltage control to auto, the
memory multiplier to x2.0 and then worked my way up from 266Mhz all
the way to 430Mhz. My Core 2 Duo E6320, which is rated at 1.86Ghz, is
running stable at 3Ghz. The RAM is at 860Mhz @ 4-4-4-12. When I get my
Thermaltake Typhoon VX, I should be able to hit 3.2 GHz at least, and
maybe even 3.5 GHz."

 

You must have already made a choice, but I would like to say why I opted for DQ6.

I had a DS3 mobo and flashed a wrong BIOS by accident causing the mainboard's death Nothing could help to turn the mobo into a working condition as the BIOS has been corrupted, it won't start even letting you fixing it with another flash.

After a little reaserch, I found this DQ6 to have really 2 physical BIOS which gurantees no death to the motherboard ever due to BIOS flashing fault and I am seriously happy with the performance of this board. I intentionally malflashed the BIOS with a wrong one to test it's protection and it definitely worked as it predicted.

Now am using GA-P35-DQ6 with Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 at 2.66 GHz with 2 GB Transcend AXE DDR 2 RAM (1066 MHz) with ThermalTake PSU = EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE