Gigabyte ga-ep45-ud3P motherboard

MightyDiomed said:
So, with this being a crossfire supported board, would it be retarded to get a GTX 260 for it? Or, should I just save up for x2 4870s?
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A GTX 260 would do fine with this board. A single 4870x2 would perform great as well. For crossfire 2 4850s or 2 4870s would also do well but the 4870x2 would not be bandwidth limited now or ever. However I seem to remember reading, and I think it was at tweaktown that because the Pcie slots run at x8 x8 with crossfire, running 2 4870x2's was not advisable due to bandwidth problems BUT from my own reading of that review it looks like only resolutions above 1920x1200 seem to be effected by this so if you game below 2560x1600 you should have no problems. Of course if you game below that I can see no reason for 2 4870x2 cards anyway.

EDIT: I found the article

Intel P45 Vs. X48 Crossfire Performance

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html
 
jzodda said:
A GTX 260 would do fine with this board. A single 4870x2 would perform great as well. For crossfire 2 4850s or 2 4870s would also do well but the 4870x2 would not be bandwidth limited now or ever. However I seem to remember reading, and I think it was at tweaktown that because the Pcie slots run at x8 x8 with crossfire, running 2 4870x2's was not advisable due to bandwidth problems.

EDIT: I found the article

Intel P45 Vs. X48 Crossfire Performance

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html
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thanks for the link, looks like no crossfire for me but I wasn't planning on crossfiring anyways :)

Great board, mine should be here any minute... or is it? I am gonna go check right now :D


LOL I heard a loud thump :rolleyes: UPS guy throwing the box at my front door.

O well box is in perfect shape but he came right after I typed this message hehe.
 
Great board, mine should be here any minute... or is it? I am gonna go check right now
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I beat you :D Mine got here at 10:45am

I am saying goodbye to my Abit board as I type this. The board looks and feels very solid to me. No strange placement of anything so far. I like the stock cooling on this board also for the price paid. For instance the P5Q-Pro is a nice board but you have to move to the deluxe to get better NB and mosfets cooling. On this board the cooling is excellent and the board is a good price.

I don't see a clear cmos switch like on the abit board so its back to the bad old days for that with the jumper or removing the battery but can't have it all.
 
Coming from a P965 board I have to admit all these new bios settings are somewhat intimidating. I have never seen so many options. If I figure out what half of them mean I will be doing well :)

Of note the bios reported my E0 8400 as a FSB 266 CPU instead of 333. So I had to fix that. It also auto set my ram to 5--5-4-12 1.8V instead of 5-5-5-15 2.0-2.1V

Also the 4870x2 is making my case very hot since usually it loads into windows and I get fan control. The default bios fan setting of like 26% is making the system like an oven. Before I start to overclock my first priority will be to install rivatuner to get that fan speed up, power down for 10 minutes to cool the case down and then start my journey north of 4.0 Ghz :D

Vista 64 installing right now.
 
How are things going with your board? I just ordered from Egg today... Will stick my existing E8400 in it till my Q9400/Q9450 come in (cant decide which one to nab)... How is it stability wise with Vista64. Any other input that you care to add or suggestions? Ill be happy to list my own once I get the board in hand.
 
Skids1 said:
How are things going with your board? I just ordered from Egg today... Will stick my existing E8400 in it till my Q9400/Q9450 come in (cant decide which one to nab)... How is it stability wise with Vista64. Any other input that you care to add or suggestions? Ill be happy to list my own once I get the board in hand.
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Haven't done any real testing yet beyond installing the OS. I am still trying to read as much as I can about all these new bios functions. I will do more testing over the weekend and report back.
 
Where are you reading on the new bios functions? The manual or some website?
 
Skids1 said:
Where are you reading on the new bios functions? The manual or some website?
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For me since I am coming from P965 many of the new values are unfamiliar. Since the bios on this is almost identical from what I have seen to the GA-EP45 Extreme I have gotten a lot of info here:

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/reviews/7548-gigabyte-ga-ep45-extreme-living-review.html

also general info from threads on Xtreme Systems forums.

I am testing with memtest86 right now. So far at stock vcore I have gone down to 6 multi and have been testing the mem limits 5mhz FSB at a time. So far I am at 450 FSB. This mem on my P965 crapped out at 460 FSB so I want to see how much higher this new NB can go with it.
 
I am finding out that I love the board and this CPU but I am not in love with my memory. In the old setup still listed in the sig I could do 456 FSB stable and up to around 462 FSB in testing. Now I am limited up to 449 FSB with this new motherboard. At 449 FSB I was not stable though and even playing in the bios it would reboot. At 448 and under I have 100% stability.

Now the good part. I am at 4005mhz (445x9) at the following settings:

Vcore 1.25 (at load vdroop to 1.184 but stable)
VTT (in this MB called CPU Termination) 1.10
MCH= 1.10
CPU PLL 1.5

My E0 8400 has a vid of 1.25

So I am at 4000mhz at basically stock settings in bios. Orthos small FFTs is chugging along now with load temps at 48c reported in Real Temps and Core Temp, which is lower then on the old board. I am actually thinking of seeing how low I can undervolt and remain stable since to me this is remarkable.

Now I tried everything to get the memory stable past 448. Raised DDR voltage over spec, set MCH as high as 1.60, timings to 7-7-7-20, performance level to 10, Trfc to 68. Nothing would move it that next step. Yet a few FSB below it at 445 everything runs at stock voltage. Isn't that something?

So this board is obviously a winner. I just need different memory as this stick won't clock high FSB.

I noticed something odd. If I turn on something called Xtreme Memory Profile in bios (whatever that is) I get the .5 multi with an E8400? But if I disable this feature the half multi disappears.

One thing I am missing also from the Abit board is the voltage readouts. Uguru did a great job. This Easytune 6 only gives me the vcore and none of the others. Since I know auto settings can over-volt I wish they would have included the others.

I think I will get better memory that can do higher FSB, as even these are rated for 1000mhz and so at 445FSB they are only doing 890mhz and even on the old setup would not go much higher then 920.

Also when I was playing around with high NB voltage (1.6) it was very hot to the touch and if you put memory sticks in the first 2 channels the end stick almost touches NB. So one stick was running hotter then the other one. I moved them to the outer Dimm slots and it runs somewhat cooler now.
 
thanks for the input, I have basically the same setup, but don't have time to put the new board in lol.

Same cpu coming in the mail, same memory, and of course same board...
 
New Bios F5A

http://www.savefile.com/files/1844049

I just ordered new memory so I can try to go higher FSB

CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)

After MIR Its $79 and comes with a memory fan :)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145197

Even though the old memory won't go higher FSB its running faster mhz then on the old board after I did some tweaking. At performance level 8 and at FSB 445 I have it running at 1068 mhz 5-5-5-15 where it never was able to go before. Still testing though, memtest made it though 2 passes so far.

Still playing around, now with LLC enabled and its very good on this board. Zero upward spikes in a 1hour OCCT test. It had a few downward spikes in the hour test. Until the new memory comes I have settled on Vcore 1.26, VTT: 1.22, Mch 1.26 @445x9 (4005mhz). It just did 20 passes of IntelBurn test without error.

In the thread about reaching 670 FSB on extreme there is some advice on how to get higher FSB by playing around with the Clock Skews, so that will be next for me. Its possible that I just got a board that won't do a high FSB as not all are created equal. If that's the case I will RMA and get a new one :) During the OCCT test I opened the case the NB and memory sticks were only warm to the touch, not hot like before.
 
Well got the new board setup. It actually detected my old raid drives and booting into windows. Decided to install the drivers and see what it can do. So I rebooted, Cranked the FSB to 400 and set my multiplier to 8. BINGO! 3.2 on a Q6700 as 400fsb.

Been running prime95 for the last 3 hours, no errors. Gonna let it go a bit longer, then do some stress testing with videogames to make sure everything is fine when sending data over the PCI-E bus. If everything looks good, time to reinstall windows tomorrow.

This board seems like a dream. Not sure if I'm gonna shoot for more or stay where I am. I'm pretty happy with 3.2 ghz @400fsb 1:1 for day to day use.
 
There must be something chemical in the brain of a man and a motherboard. WHen i first saw this listed on the Egg, just by the look of it, i though to myself, "This is the board". No questions.
 
Not sure if I'm gonna shoot for more or stay where I am. I'm pretty happy with 3.2 ghz @400fsb 1:1 for day to day use.
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Come on this is [H]Must go higher and higher! ;)

I bet you can push that puppy to 3.6 without breaking a sweat
 
I just ordered a Q9550 to go with this board... have GSKILL 8500 ram already.... *sigh* now to await its arrival.
 
DDR2 800 will work just fine.

Core i7 will not work in any current motherboard. The chips are a completely different socket/architechture.
 
great, so i can still use my existing memory, but will it bottleneck this setup

Above Mobo-GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P
CPU- Q6600
GPU- ATI 4870

And any idea on the price of the i7 chips? willthey be MUCH better than current chips. because i want to upgrade my current rig and sell what i can while i can. what i mean is, the above mentioned, if i buy those parts will i just be wasting money or should just wait for the i7? and i dont want to spend alot, which is why i like the above setup i made instead of probably really expenssive i7's
 
no it won't bottleneck your setup... unless your memory can't overclock much which would bottleneck your overclock....

Anyways I am 8 hours 4ghz orthos stable on blend and small ftt with minor voltage changes at 445...

The vdroop with LLC enabled is very nice, it stays at 1.232 for 4ghz load/idle.
 
aZn_plyR said:
The vdroop with LLC enabled is very nice, it stays at 1.232 for 4ghz load/idle.
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Same. In bios though I set Vcore 1.268 but in windows all vcore reporting is 1.23v with LLC enabled of course. Vtt 1.22 and mch 1.30. Primed now 16 hours straight at 445x9. Highest CPU temp reported was 52c, mostly at 50c load. There are guys over at Xtreme having problems with the voltage readings. One guy sets vcore to 1.33 in bios and in windows reports it as 1.23- Thats way too large a variance for sure.

Tomarrow the new memory comes and so tomarrow night I have to start over again :eek:
 
The new memory seems to have done me some good. I am testing at the 6 multi and just passed 520 FSB memtest 1 full pass. Lets see how close I can get to 600 FSB and later I will post screens of my 24/7 and my extreme bench settings :)
 
I haven't tried any higher with the memory yet, just settled at 4ghz for now.

I am over 9 hours othros stable with pretty much the exact same settings as you but with 1.220 mch.

Just got a new monitor so haven't had much time tweaking this board.
 
Memtest just completed a few passes of test 5 at 540 FSB

Now I am fully sold on this board :D

Just did 2 passes at 550 :)

You know I had some much trouble getting to 500 FSB then when I switched to the 333 strap instead of the 400 strap, for whatever reason it has been unstoppable.
 
Just ordered one tonight. Its going to replace my DS3L which has a fried network chip. Hopefully I'll get it before the weekend. I'll give my impressions soon.
 
wow finished a few passes at 560 FSB lol

this is getting exciting. O well I can't get into windows at this speed. Time to tone it down.
 
Shirp said:
I also picked up this board coupled with a e8500!
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Me too, the egg has a nice combo deal on the board and processor. I'm considering putting 4 gigs of memory in, even though I'm running XP Pro. Any suggestions? I know the board supports DDR2-1333, but will it really be worth it? Oh, and yes, I'll probably bump up the GPU in the near future. TIA.

Edit: Not really planning on OC'ing much if at all.
 
Here is a possible template. Loving this board. With some tweaking I have been posting at over 600 FSB and booted into windows at 570 FSB. I have had to do lots of tweaking though. I tried to use Auto settings and it booted into windows at 540 FSB but I don't advise it. You should have seen how high it over-volts things.

Anyway I think this will be my 24/7 as its good clocks at low voltages. One other note. LLC works great on this board. In multiple OCCT 1 hour tests not ONE voltage spike. Well done Gibabyte.

EP45-UD3P F5a

E8400 467x9 2x2GB 2.40B (333 strap) 1121 DDR2, PL8, LLC enabled

467x9cmk2.jpg
 
I just received this board yesterday and will install to replace my GA-965P-DS3. The UD3P looks awesome and I'm glad it's full size versus the 965P. I'm hopeful for some good overclocking and from what I have read, it looks promising.

I wished Gigabyte wouldn't use white for the PCI slots. I know it's standard but every board I've seen with the white PCI slots eventually turn yellow and the 965P was no exception.
 
TitaniumZX said:
I just received this board yesterday and will install to replace my GA-965P-DS3. The UD3P looks awesome and I'm glad it's full size versus the 965P. I'm hopeful for some good overclocking and from what I have read, it looks promising.

I wished Gigabyte wouldn't use white for the PCI slots. I know it's standard but every board I've seen with the white PCI slots eventually turn yellow and the 965P was no exception.
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you can buy different coloured slot covers for the ram / pci slots..thats what i stick on the ugly coloured ones on my boards :D
 
Anyone know if I cant fit a XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 on this board and how the clearance works out?
 
nightwalker said:
you can buy different coloured slot covers for the ram / pci slots..thats what i stick on the ugly coloured ones on my boards :D
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You know any good sites that have those? Does the Egg have em'? I'm not even sure what you'd call them.
 
I just received mine from the Egg. I am going to try a Q6600 and see what I can do with it. Anybody paired this with a Q6600? What kind of results did you get /
 
LRD said:
I just received mine from the Egg. I am going to try a Q6600 and see what I can do with it. Anybody paired this with a Q6600? What kind of results did you get /
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Let us know how it goes with the Q6600. I'm planning the same setup with some DDR2-1066. If you can, post the settings of your overclock. Thanks!
 
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