Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P - motherboard - ATX - iP35

Advantages: Great performance, unbelievable overclocking, high quality
Disadvantages: Large Vdroop, Easytune temperamental, IDE socket placement may cause problems

...I recently wrote a review for the Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4L board. I wrote of how the board seemed excellent, but the two I used broke within a week, for no apparent reason. This board is another storey. The installation was very easy, especially as the board is slightly thinner than standard ATX boards, which allows more room to work in. All the connectors on the board are in sensible positions. The only problem I encountered was that the IDE socket gets in the way of one of the PCI cards - it fits, but it's a bit of a squeeze. The BIOS offers all options you would expect, including RAID and NCQ setups for the 8 SATA ports provided. It is when it comes to overclocking that this board excels. My FSB will run at at least 450MHz, 117 higher than the stock 1333Mhz. There are various voltage options, including CPU, memory, northbridge... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Fast FSB and support for DDR2 at 1066MHz
Disadvantages: Only IDE support for one HDD and one CD-DVD drive

...I swapped to this from a slightly older Asrock 775i65GV, because the Asrock had only an AGP slot and no PCI-E - which I wanted for a decent graphics card. I also wanted a P35 based board for future upgrade to a quad core and in the meantime to use my existing 3.00 GHz P4 dual core. The board supports 64 bit processors, which Linux makes use of, but XP Pro doesn't. There are 5 SATA connections, but only one IDE so there is only support for one HDD and one CD-DVD drive. I got a Sapphire Radeon HD2600 Pro to go with it and now all my games run smoothly with every option turned on, including Next Gen and full screen anti-aliasing (VSYNC only slows it down and I don't need it with the DVI digital input anyway). Tomb Raider Legend looks really good, but takes too long for good game-play at maximum resolution. The BIOS can be updated... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Great quality, uGuru software - The best! Good speeds. Nice mb lights.
Disadvantages: Doesn't work 100% with uguru clock. Works but doesn't save menus.

...The Abit IP35 Pro is a nice well built motherboard. It might not look really 100% amazing but that's because Abit put there quality into the parts themselves. Coming from a previous owner of a new Gigabyte board at the same price of this I can tell you the Gigabyte is just not worth looking at compared to this. Glad I got it exchanged for this! Abit's Uguru software is amazing it just makes you want to stick with Abit for the rest of your life, well it's made me! It has everything you could ever want for overclocking or just making sure your investment will be safe from voltages/fans failing/heat/clock speed. You can change everything and with great ease, even within Windows it's self!... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful