Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Motherboard Review

By jason

Introduction

Gigabyte has been a major player in the motherboard industry for quite some time. They have consistently had good performing boards that are feature rich and very user friendly. They also have a recent string of success with their 965 series of boards and the overclocking crowd. Gigabyte could have easily set back and rested on their success with the 965 series of boards, but instead they decided to make things even better. And better came in the form of the 965P-DQ6 Rev. 3.3 motherboard. Did Gigabyte really need to do this? Did they need to update an already aging chipset? They think so, but the question is whether the consumer is going to think so. So, without further interruption, let’s look at the Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Rev. 3.3.

Let’s take a look at the specs:

BIOS
  1. 1 4 Mbit flash ROM
  2. Use of licensed AWARD BIOS
  3. Supports Virtual Dual BIOS
  4. PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.3, ACPI 1.0b.
Chipset
  1. Northbridge: Intel P965 Express Chipset
  2. Southbridge: Intel ICH8R
  3. Gigabit LAN Controller (Marvell 8056)
  4. Realtek ALC888DD Channel Audio Codec
Processor
  1. Supports Intel Core2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core2 Duo / Intel Pentium Extreme/ Intel Pentium D processors
  2. Supports1333/1066/800/533 MHz FSB
Internal I/O Connectors
  1. 8 Serial ATA 3Gb/s connector
  2. 1 UDMA ATA 100/66/33 connector
  3. 1 FDD connector
  4. 3 USB 2.0/1.1 connectors (support 6 ports)
  5. 1 audio pin header (support 8-Channel)
  6. 1 S/PDIF In pin header
  7. 2 IEEE1394 connector
  8. 1 Chassis Intrusion connector
Rear Panel I/O
  1. 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
  2. 1 RJ45 port
  3. 1 COM port
  4. 1 LPT port
  5. 6 audio jacks
  6. 1 IEEE1394
  7. 1 Optical SPDIF OUT
  8. 1 Coaxial SPDIF OUT
  9. PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse
Expansion Slots
  1. 2 PCI Express X16 slot(x16, x4)
  2. 3 PCI Express X1 slots
  3. 2 PCI slots
Memory
  1. Supports DDR2 800/667/533 memory
  2. Dual Channel architecture support up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots

* Due to standard PC architecture, a certain amount of memory is reserved for system usage and therefore the actual memory size is less than the stated amount.
Form Factor
  1. ATX form factor, 305 x 244mm
Unique Features
  1. Durability Enhanced- All Solid Capacitor Motherboard
  2. Silent Pipe Cooling
  3. Over-clocking Enhanced
Remark

  1. Due to different Linux support condition provided by chipset vendors, please download Linux driver from chipset vendors’ website or 3rd party website.
  2. Due to most hardware/software vendors no longer offer support for Win9X/ME. If some vendors still has Win9X/ME drivers available, we will publish on website.

This is a remake of the Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Rev 1. So what are the differences? Well, here is a quick run down and comparison:

Model GA-965P-DQ6(rev. 3.3) GA-965P-DQ6(rev. 1.0)
CPU Type Socket 775 Socket 775
FSB 1333/1066/800/533 1066/800/533
Chipset Intel P965 Express Chipset Intel P965 Express Chipset
Memory type Dual Channel, DDR2 800/667/533 Dual Channel, DDRII 800/667/533
Memory socket DDR2 *4 DDRII *4
Max. Memory 8GB 8GB
Graphics interface PCI-Express x16 PCI-Express x16
PCI-Express X16 (X8) 2 2
PCI-Express X1 (X2,X4) 3 3
PCI 2 2
ISA slot 0 0
AMR/CNR 0/0 0/0
VGA N/A N/A
RAID Function SATA RAID 0,1,5,10 Yes
LAN Marvell 8056 Gigabit LAN Controller Marvell 8053*1
Audio HD Audio (Realtek ALC888DD) ALC888DD
Codec channel 8 8
IDE ATA 8* Serial ATA 3Gb/s / 1*PATA 8 Serial ATA2 (ICH8R), 1 PATA
USB 1.1 Same as USB 2.0 Same as USB 2.0
USB 2.0 10 (6 by cable) 4
DualBIOS Yes (QuadBios) Yes (QuadBios)
PCB size 30.5*24.4 CM 30.5*24.4 CM
Form Factor ATX ATX
IEEE 1394 3 1394a

As you can see, probably the biggest difference between the two boards is the fact that the rev 3.3 board now officially supports 1333 FSB. There are a few other changes, such as the on-board audio solution and the Lan controllers used.

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