Can we stop recommending the DS3?

S

SentToSchool

Gawd
Joined
Jul 31, 2005
Messages
997
Everytime I come to this forum, I see people recommending this board left and right to newbies. Sure it overclocks decently but it's nothing special. There are better boards for the price. I am on my second DS3 and it's still giving me cold boot issues. I can't go above 2.8Ghz stable on my E6300 with any volt and any bios but I've taken this chip to 3.5Ghz stable with an Asus P5b-E.

I don't even bother overclocking past 2.8Ghz anymore because I get a cold boot every single time. My first board, I flashed the bios to F10, tried overclocking, cold boot issue stayed forever. RMA'd it and got a a 3.3 and the cold boot issue is even worst.

Besides the cold boot issues, there are many more. Just look around forums.

So please people, STOP RECOMMENDING it to newbies. It's a waste of money and time to RMA it.

Yes, I realize that some of you have had success with the board but really, there are better boards out there with better stability.
 
People have had great success with the board and you're telling people not to recommend it based on their personal sucess but you're recommending against it because of your personal bad experience. A little hypocritical dont you think? It does have it's quirks but for the inexperienced, it isnt a bad board and at least you dont have to deal with Asus Customer Service if you have a DS3.
 
Please dont say nothing about customer service. I rma my gigabyte board 3 weeks ago and i havent got it back yet. Cold boot problems and most of all it wouldnt boot in dual channel.If the board I get back is worst than the board I sent back:mad: That will be it for me and gigabyte.
 
yeah I heard the DS3 boards sucks but everyone is still recommending it. I need a new motherboard and I have my eye on the Asus P5B-E or the DFI Infinity P965 (if it ever comes in stock)
 
I so whole-heartedly agree. I got the DS3 hearing good things about it too, but I got shafted by crappy QC at the factory, and they still have not given me a RMA #.

I mean, it couldn't even run my E6420 at *stock* so there goes the OC'ing.

I <3 my P5N32E though.
 
I took one look at the DS3 and it looked cheap (in quality), so I did more research and settled on the QuadGT and man was I ever glad I made that move. P965 until even better manna falls from Intel heaven.
 
Well mine has worked almost flawlessly for six months, so now what? (I made a post about having problems the other day, but it was my own dumb fault)
 
Um, I don't make recommendations based on what others write on this forum. I was recommended this board and am very happy with it. Now what?

You only ever hear mostly negative experiences online anyways as that is where people go for help.
 
blendingnoise said:
...You only ever hear mostly negative experiences online anyways as that is where people go for help.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. There are two general types who come to forums like ours. 'Squeaky-wheels in search of grease' (i.e., those who need assistance), and then there are those who come to debate matters of gravest importance in the hardware realm. :rolleyes: Granted the latter usually set off as the former, and that's when they receive such recommendations. As for quality, no one is saying they all suck. But enough bad parts are going out the door that people are beginning to mirror each other's experiences and share notes. Asus is currently in exactly the same position. Gigabyte-United, the whole Asus-Gigabyte joint-jerk that was dissolved recently was canceled because it was screwing both brands product lines.

Hmmm, joint venture, both brands trying to market too many variations of boards, both brands getting too high of a percentage of bum stock in circulation. So I'm sure any DS3 that was produced before or after the venture is a good board, but during...? Waiter? Check, please.
 
They recommend it because it's cheap. I had 2, they are junk. Last one ate a stick of ram then fucking died. RIP POS.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOARD!!! :D
 
gchanjam said:
People have had great success with the board and you're telling people not to recommend it based on their personal sucess but you're recommending against it because of your personal bad experience. A little hypocritical dont you think? It does have it's quirks but for the inexperienced, it isnt a bad board and at least you dont have to deal with Asus Customer Service if you have a DS3.
Click to expand...

I said there are people who have had great success. But that's just some. When you consider the success/failure ratio, it's not worth it.

Maybe my first board was personal and maybe the second board was personal too but when you get people all over the web complaining about problems with several boards like myself, maybe it's not us, it's the board.

There are people who don't have the board but still go around recommending it like there's no tomorrow. This needs to stop.
 
Normally I would disagree but, with the DS3, these things have issues im sorry. I cant help but laugh when I see some newbie post another new thread with a "What is wrong, I have blah blah blah issue with my DS3 rev.3.3." Apparently they missed the memo on the board sucking. Theres so many problem threads across many forums, I dont see how people dont realize it sucks yet. Even if there were no issues with it, from what I understand, the Rev3.3's overclock even worse than the earlier ones. For that alone, I would never recommend it.

I feel for the people who buy the board based on others recommendations. Ive seen quite a few people that have had to RMA the board 3-5 times before getting one that even remotely works. Thats just ridiculous. After the time and extra shipping costs of RMA'ing, the board ends up costing probably the same as the Abit quadgt or DFI infinity, which are far superior boards anyways. If anyone is looking, those new Abit Quadgt's and DFI infinities seem to be the win.

I have never owned the board, I am very glad I talked to many peeps who had before I pulled the trigger. Went with the DFi infinity which will be here next week. :p
 
I have a DS3 Rev 2, and it's been running flawlessly at 438FSB since October. You have to have everything set just right or you get the coldboot bug. It takes a lot of trial and error.
 
Sloth said:
I have a DS3 Rev 2, and it's been running flawlessly at 438FSB since October. You have to have everything set just right or you get the coldboot bug. It takes a lot of trial and error.
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I, too, found that you have to set everything up *EXACTLY* right or the board won't boot. If you go over the limit of the board, you're out of luck. You'll have to set the jumper and pray that it doesn't stay at cold boot permanently.
 
My Rev1.0 was great for 6-7 months running at 3.2-3.33Ghz - and then I believe it ate a stick of RAM!

I ended up RMA the motherboard because I thought the motherboard died (all symptoms looked like a motherboard problem), but I recently found out it took out one of my RAM sticks.

I now have a Rev3.3 (did a cross-ship RMA with Newegg after I thought the sent me back the motherboard not repaired) and it seems alright. I haven't had any boot issues but then again I'm only running 333x9 with one stick of RAM running at stock speed.

What setting are you two above referring to that need to be exactly perfect?

The nice thing, this thing is quiet under load, unlike my Rev1.0 which would have a squeel coming from it. But I read the Rev3.3 doesn't overclock as well because it has more vdroop. Oh well, I was going to pull back on the overclock this summer because of the warmer weather. I wouldn't mind testing for sure, but I don't feel like risking any more problems at the moment.
 
I have had this board for about 3 months now, and it works flawlessly. I have to say, I havent really overclocked it much (yet) so it hasnt had a reason to conk out on me. So far this board is working great with the setup below.

It has several great uses, and for $116USD (what I paid for it at the time) it was a steal.
 
http://www.motherboardpro.com/displayProductDocument.hg?productId=6&categoryId=1

DFi 965S seems to be in stock. 140 dollars w/ free shipping. :) I'd buy, but I just have no experience with this retailer and I might be able to get an AW9D-Max for less from some other guy :) .

Anyway, I do agree. I don't own a Gigabyte Ds3, but from the things I've heard, I personally would not buy one. I picked up an IB9... cold boot issues are a pain in the ass. And when you overclock, you can never figure out if the computer is even going to turn on with the cold boot bug. I never thought I'd say this, but I think I found another motherboard that's almost on par with my P5LD2.... I'd stay away from any motherboards with cold-boot problems unless they're really THAT good.

But on the topic of recommending people parts. I wouldn't recommend ANY asus motherboard either. Yeah, they overclock well, but from stories i've heard, they're not worth it. Asus has been making a bunch of low quality motherboards (in terms of reliability, not overclocking). I've heard stuff from chipsets deteriorating in a matter of a couple of months to caps actually blowing off the motherboard. There are better boards out there for less... and you'll save yourself all the shit you'd have to go through if you bought a DOA or crap motherboard.
 
I believe you forgot to read the [H]Enthusiast review of the DS3.

I have 2 of them, Rev 1.3 flawless performance of an e6300, Rock steady at 3.1 Ghz.
Rev 3.3 has an e4300 currently folding like mad at 3.0Ghz all day long without a hiccup.

I am not a god of overclocking by any means. I have found this board to be A) inexpensive,B)stable as a rock and C) a very good overclocker.

I will continue to recommend this board to anyone, as I have had nothing but wonderful performance. If you abuse things they will fail. If you are patient they will treat you well.
 
I bought the DS3 for several reasons. One of the biggest ones was three useable PCI slots. I need them for the soundcards in my signature. I also wanted to have a core 2 duo machine and at the time there weren't a whole lot of choices. If I had it to do over again, I would buy an Intel board. My next board will be an Intel board. I am planning to switch to just two soundcards, so I'll only need two PCI slots then. I have had really good luck with my DS3. I did have a very minor rebooting problem, but it was cleared up by relaxing my RAM timings. This is my first Gigabyte board and I have personally been very happy. People like to talk about how great ASUS is, but my last two ASUS boards had something defective right off the bat. If my DS3 lasts at least two years, then I'll be happy. I don't plan on using this machine for more than two years anyway. My next machine will probably be a workstation class machine because I want some type of SCSI hard drives for my audio work. I would love to be able to play back 128 24/96 mono audio tracks at one time, and I don't think I'm going to get there with SATA to be honest.

I will go so far as to say that my DS3 has been the most stable board and easiest overclock I've ever had. I don't feel the need to upgrade the bios past F7 because F7 supports quad core and I'm buying one once the price drops below $300. As long as temperatures stay under control my system is rock stable. It did reboot itself one time when it got really hot in my place because I forgot to turn on the air conditioning. I am not currently cooling the NB and I probably should, but my CPU cooler gets in the way and I don't feel like messing with it.

I feel like I should say that I've had this machine running since October 2006 with only very minor issues here and there. 36 hours Orthos stable and I run folding 24/7. It has also been perfect with my audio program. I have logged about 160 hours recording people with no problems at all. I should also say that I have a rev 1 board and feel no need to upgrade to a later build at all. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I just had to chime in when someone says that something sucks that is obviously working so good for me.

I have absolutely 0 tolerance for instability in my hardware. If I would've had a problem with the motherboard it would've been returned for a refund and I would've bought something else. Period. I don't have time to endlessly troubleshoot defective hardware, and in my professional opinion, the DS3 I have is not defective hardware at all. Another cool thing is that Vista installs all the drivers automatically (except my soundcards).

My opinion is that if something gives you so much trouble, you should send it back and get something else. My time is valuable and I don't want to spend endless hours troubleshooting, it was fine when I was learning computers early on, but now that I'm pretty knowledgeable, I look at it as a waste of time to be honest. I will let my techs troubleshoot, but most clients want results, not endless troubleshooting. I am a small business owner, so my view on this may be different than others. I am seriously considering getting my next computer pre-built. Simply because I can't afford to be down. I can get my distributor to build me a machine with the parts I want for about $50 more than what I would pay on Newegg. It would be worth $50 to not have to worry about getting a bad part. I used to love building machines, but I no longer really have the time. I'm just afraid of getting a bad part from the egg and then being down for a period of time.
 
Never had any issues with mine... very easy to overclock and runs rock stable as well. Couldn't ask for a better board, especially being a P965 launch motherboard.
 
magoo said:
I believe you forgot to read the [H]Enthusiast review of the DS3.

I have 2 of them, Rev 1.3 flawless performance of an e6300, Rock steady at 3.1 Ghz.
Rev 3.3 has an e4300 currently folding like mad at 3.0Ghz all day long without a hiccup.

I am not a god of overclocking by any means. I have found this board to be A) inexpensive,B)stable as a rock and C) a very good overclocker.

I will continue to recommend this board to anyone, as I have had nothing but wonderful performance. If you abuse things they will fail. If you are patient they will treat you well.
Click to expand...

just curious but any reason why you have the more expensive chip in the cheaper board and vice versa?
 
I have rev 1 of this board from last September (F3 bios). At first it bugged me a lot, lots of quirks and little things that got under my skin. But as the bios updates progressed things began to look good. Stable as a rock now with the F10, my X-fi issues (that have plagued other mobos as well) are completely gone. I'm very satisfied with it overall and am convinced I got the best mobo I can for the money. ;)
 
I had a rev. 1 board that took my 6600 to 3.2Ghz or so. I moved to a P5W and moved my the DS3 to my brother's computer. My only problem was with the chipset cooler. I guess as long as it's stable it's no big deal, but I just didn't like how hot it got.
 
Glow said:
just curious but any reason why you have the more expensive chip in the cheaper board and vice versa?
Click to expand...

None. I just had the e6300 set-up first and use it alot for photos and music and I dont want to bother it by changing out MBs, besides it runs like a champ.

The "cheaper" set-up with the Rev 3.3 was just due to timing, the e4300 was released and I got a sale price from mwave on the Rev 3.3. The 4300 set up is for folding big SMP units.

My cheap-ass ASUS P5nSLI board refused to take a BIOS upgrade, so I had to go looking for a board to fold with, the 3.3 was available so.......bingo.
 
I freaken agree with this thread!

Before switching over to the p5b-deluxe and p5n-e boards for my customer builds, FOUR of the FIVE boards I sold to customers came back for random reasons... :eek:

It's much better now with some BIOS updates though. It wasn't ready for prime time when I was offering it I guess, but the returns were for hardware failures, all that required an RMA.
 
For every single post you see that says "x board" is great for overclocking, I can show you a post that says it sucks. And vice versa.

The DS3 is a very good board for lots of users, as are other boards.

So YES, the DS3 can still be a reccommended board.
 
TheRapture said:
For every single post you see that says "x board" is great for overclocking, I can show you a post that says it sucks...
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OK, Rapture. The Abit AB9 QuadGT. Dig me up three posts on this board that say it, using Bios 1.0.B06 - Bios 1.3, sucks at overclocking. The post, not your interpretation. You on, my friend? ;)
 
I spent way too much time with the DS3 also...the cold boot issue was always there no matter what combination of BIOS settings (and BIOS versions) I had. I would have a hard time recommending it because if this.
 
Check my sig for my DS3 and other components. My system is rock solid and has been from day one. I'd recommend the DS3 any day of the week.
 
If this wasn't a good board overall, and popular, this thread wouldn't even existing;

I'm happy with Rev.'s 1.0 and 3.3; just 3.2 overclocks. That is where alot of us end up 24/7 any way.
 
magoo said:
I believe you forgot to read the [H]Enthusiast review of the DS3.

I have 2 of them, Rev 1.3 flawless performance of an e6300, Rock steady at 3.1 Ghz.
Rev 3.3 has an e4300 currently folding like mad at 3.0Ghz all day long without a hiccup.

I am not a god of overclocking by any means. I have found this board to be A) inexpensive,B)stable as a rock and C) a very good overclocker.

I will continue to recommend this board to anyone, as I have had nothing but wonderful performance. If you abuse things they will fail. If you are patient they will treat you well.
Click to expand...


True,I think it very heavily depends on the revision you have.early ones are great,over 2.0+ is bad to horrible.
 
So you had success with it, but can you still see people in this thread writing it off? It's not a good success/failure ratio. So for those of you who want to recommend it, please be thoughtful and think of how there is as good of a chance that someone will have failure with it as success.

Thank you. I care about newbies and innocent builders.:)
 
Manny Calavera said:
True,I think it very heavily depends on the revision you have.early ones are great,over 2.0+ is bad to horrible.
Click to expand...

Funny, I'm sure you know that 6 -8 months ago, people couldn't wait for new revisions; what goes around comes around. All the revisions are good.

And, does that mean the 1.3 qualifies?

We always have high expectations w/ the release of every new board, and rarely are they perfect; take a gander at the DFI 965P-S posts, about the squealling, alarms going off, re-boots. You can go back in recent history and find a grocery list of complaints. But, now that I've said this, I have absolutely no idea what this means. Pardon me.
 
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