Directory  Reviews Motherboard Reviews |
| Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 Review |
|
|
|
Page 7 of 7 Conclusions
Editors Note: The lack of memory timings, and absolutely no mention of memory timings in the BIOS or manual made us decide to dig deeper. After copious googling around, we discovered many other people encountering the same unexplainable issue.
Digging deeper however we finally ran across a post on Anandtech's forums, by one of the forum moderators, indicating the boards memory timings magically reveal themselves in the BIOS "IF" you hit CTRL F1. We went back through Gigabyte's manual, both the printed edition and the downloadable .pdf looking for a mention of this, and found nothing. While we're now relieved to have found memory timing adjustments, we're still left wondering why Gigabyte doesnt reveal these directly in the BIOS without keystroke wizardry. Joe Shmoe enthusiast is gonna take one look at the BIOS and be pissed off, and not sit and experiment in the BIOS with wacky key combo's or google the universe to discover this strangely hidden undocumented setting. Since we discovered this towards the tail end of this review, we're not revisiting our benchmarks and altering the results at this point. We merely wanted to give Gigabyte a benefit of the doubt and make sure we weren't missing something obvious before we posted the review. Thank god for Anandtech's Forum's here. Regardless of the outcome, Gigabyte needs to rectify this, as this is utterly pointless being so undocumented and obscure.
Scott Opinion: Gigabyte's GA-965P-S3 mainboard is a decent and serviceable basic mainboard. It's price won't break the bank, and might leave you some additional funds to buy other components and get the system you want built at the price you can afford. Still, I have to wonder what in the heck Gigabyte was thinking when they released this board's BIOS. Wacky BIOS settings aside, it's a good serviceable mainboard, that can get you a decent system and a decent overclock with very little money.
Nigel's Opinion: The S3 is a less expensive version of the DS3 and will please the overclocker on a budget. Both motherboards are identical, give or take a few components. The lack of solid state capacitors on the S3 is a disappointment, but then again, it would be the DS3 if it sported them. The BIOS issues we encountered were unwelcome, and Gigabyte needs to do a better job of documenting how to access BIOS features. We did a search for “memory timings” in both the S3 and DS3 manual and came up empty. All in all, it's a great deal for a P965 motherboard as long as you can handle the confusing BIOS and complete lack of documentation. This is something Gigabyte needs to address.
{mos_sb_discuss:7} Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           
Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.12 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Live and learn. ;D
