Gigabyte P35-DS3P vs. Asus P5K?

D

DogFace

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Jun 8, 2007
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Building a brand new PC... and trying to decide between these MBs. I want to purchase a MB using the P35 chipset.

  • P35-DS3P, $179
  • Asus P5K-E/WIFI-AP
  • Asus P5K vanilla, $139

I'll be using a good set of DDR2 800.
SATA HDs
8800 GTS 320 Mb

I don't want to spend more than the $179.
Don't need RAID.
Don't need SLI/Crossfire.
I don't see any prices for the Asus P5K-E yet... the P5K Deluxe seems to be going for > $200.

I'll overclock - but I'm not a hardcore clocker.

Your thoughts are appreciated.
 
DS3P has better onboard sound, but the Asus boards seem to have about 1cm more space between the CPU and the RAM slots. I would get the DS3P because it is based on the DQ6 and should not have the cold boot problem that plagued the P965 DS3 boards (hopefully).

The P5K cost more but will not really give you much more performance because you won't be running the board at extreme levels. The Gigabyte boards use screws to bolt down the northbridge and should provide better cooling.

If the gigabyte board does not have enough space because you have a large HSF and will be using 4 sticks of RAM, then you should get the P5K and buy a sound card. The P35 DQ6 is very expensive.
 
Fry's B&M had the P5K-E on sale for $199 two days ago.

fry's.com has it for $249

the P5K-E is a very nice board, but overpriced in my opinion. same as the P5K Deluxe but with less extreme cooling and only 1x NIC. why doesn't ASUS lose the stupid wi-fi adapter and gives us useful features at a decent price? this board also has 3x PCI slots.

the P5K could be an excellent board, but ASUS has neutered it by using the ICH9 southbridge with only 4 + 1 internal SATA ports. also with 3x PCI slots and 6x rear USB.

the P35-DS3P looks like a solid board with a similar electrical layout to the DQ6 (except for only have 6 phase power vs 12 phase for the DQ6). it has 6 + 2 internal SATA ports. the silly Gigabyte team only included 4 rear USB ports. there are 8 additional USB headers on the board though, but with no included PCI bracket. if you have extra parts laying around, this should not be a problem. only 2x PCI slots.

since you won't be going extreme, you could also consider the P35-DS3R. uses an aluminum cooler instead of copper in the DS3P. same sound chip. no SLI but 3x PCI slots. 6 + 2 SATA

For overclocking, the ASUS boards will hit extreme levels, probably hitting 600Mhz FSB. The Gigabyte DS3P around 550Mhz. the DS3R doesn't seem to be breaking 500Mhz yet, but may possibly do it with some bios tweaks.

i'd prefer to get an ASUS if money were not an issue, but as it is, i'm just not happy with the feature set and cost of their products. ASUS engineers are the best, but their product/marketing team is more concerned with putting out bling bling features and neutering their low end boards in order to maximize profits.

the gigabyte boards pretty much have the features i want at attractive price points. personally, i'm willing to give up the extreme overclocking of the ASUS boards.
 
Ya, but people need to realize it needs to be enabled, not left at default "auto". I notced the vdroop when doing benching, I was all "what the hell, I heard these were good about that". Went into BIOS, enabled, tested, BIG difference.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm putting together a spreadsheet comparing all the p35 boards... and will post when it's ready.
 
thx for offering to share that spreadsheet. may i suggest Google docs? it's very easy to publish/share/update this type of data.

let us know if you need help filling in any empty cells. one tid bit i had to dig for is that the ABIT IP35 Pro uses the Realtek ALC888 codec.

another decent site to pick up mobo specs is at hardware.info. Though the site can be a little off sometimes and doesn't have every board in its database.
 
Okay, I'm converting my existing spreadsheet over to Google Docs. My first time... so let me know how I can make this work better. I published it, and tried to set everything to "public" - even the editing.

Once I know this is going to work, I'll dump the rest of the info in.

Can you test this and let me know if you can access it and edit it?

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pkbu6ico9GjOjFKWR6AmgCw

Thx,
Dog
 
I replaced a DS3 (not DS3P) by the Asus P5K vanilla and I find the Asus board to be superior.
Overclocking is more stable. In fact, my whole system seems more stable now.

BTW, the P35 is a better investment since it should be compatible with Penryn and DDR2 1066.
 
i can view the doc fine, but the only way to allow others to edit is to invite them as collaborators.

In edit mode, go to the "Share" tab. Make sure that Invite People "as Collaborators" is ticked. You can also tick "Collaborators can invite others". enter the email address of people you'd like to invite and click the button to invite them.

i'll PM you my email address as a starter.
 
RadXge said:
I replaced a DS3 (not DS3P) by the Asus P5K vanilla and I find the Asus board to be superior.
Overclocking is more stable. In fact, my whole system seems more stable now.

BTW, the P35 is a better investment since it should be compatible with Penryn and DDR2 1066.
Click to expand...

it's good to hear that you are happy with your P5K and prefer it to a P965 board. however, if you read the initial post, we are only comparing P35 boards here.
 
thanks for sharing the spreadsheet. looks good!

you did a pretty thorough job. i made a couple slight changes to the IP35 Pro though.
 
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