Pros and Cons of 965 vs. 975

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NulloModo

Supreme [H]ardness
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Hi,

So apparently both of these chipsets can support Conroe depending on the board. The 975 is older, but higher end, and the 965 is newer, but designed to be the midrange chipset. What do you lose and gain going with either one? The only things I am aware of is that 975 has Crossfire support (doesn't really matter to me, I would never use more than 1 graphics card), and the 965 has some faster memory thing (which I don't really understand). Are there other differences?

If someone could help explain which is better and why, I would be much obliged. Also, is it safe to assume that any 975/965 board that supports Conroe will also support Kentsfield?
 
The 975 does not have native DDR2 800MHZ support. The newer boards have it, but its more of a overclock than native support. 965 does not have dual GPU support and no PATA.
Both will support Kentsfield.

I personally went with the 975X board as its more mature and has Crossfire support.
 
D4hPr0 said:
The 975 does not have native DDR2 800MHZ support. The newer boards have it, but its more of a overclock than native support. 965 does not have dual GPU support and no PATA.
Both will support Kentsfield.

I personally went with the 975X board as its more mature and has Crossfire support.
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I think I will go for a 965 board as I dont really see myself with crossfire. I am just waiting for a couple review before I commit to the P5B.
 
A pro of the 965 is it's cheaper :). I think once prices settle down, the average 965 board will be in the $120-150 range and the 975 will be in the $170-200 range.
 
So does the 975 have any benefit other than crossfire? (PATA support seems to be standard on all 965 boards via 3rd party chips)
 
The higher end boards (feature wise) use the 975X. So if you need all the extra firewire, dual gigabit lan, 2 16x slots (crossfire, etc.), you'll probably need a 975X board, but even some high end 965 boards have those features, but cost as much as the 975X board (case in point the PW5 DH and P5B deluxe are both $250+).
 
the 965 has 10 usb ports and 6 on board sata2 ports. there is a legend that the ich8 controller has lower latencies than the ich7, but testing has not shown this to be true. also, the 965 gets rid of that pesky ide stuff. 965 does not support upward multis on the 6800, the 975 does. there has been some decent fsb speeds on the 965, but so far the 975 overclocks better. eventually, the chipset and bios of the 965 will mature, but by then you will be able to get nvidia nf5 intel boards and whatever it is that ati is trying to get out.
 
The 975X motherboards overclock a little better and run a little faster as well. If you absolutely must have Cross Fire then a 975X motherboard is the only way to go.
 
The 965 has a better memory subsystem so you get better memory performance, the ICH8 gives lower CPU usage. 965 is also cheaper.
 
965 DS3 has been taken to 500FSB x 8 multi.... it would seem 965 is the better overclocker.
 
vanilla_guerilla said:
the 965 has 10 usb ports and 6 on board sata2 ports. there is a legend that the ich8 controller has lower latencies than the ich7, but testing has not shown this to be true. also, the 965 gets rid of that pesky ide stuff. 965 does not support upward multis on the 6800, the 975 does. there has been some decent fsb speeds on the 965, but so far the 975 overclocks better. eventually, the chipset and bios of the 965 will mature, but by then you will be able to get nvidia nf5 intel boards and whatever it is that ati is trying to get out.
Click to expand...

Well, IDE support is a plus. Both of my hard drives and my CD-RW drives are IDE.
 
Hamateer said:
965 DS3 has been taken to 500FSB x 8 multi.... it would seem 965 is the better overclocker.
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i thought it was 7x499. and yes, that guy, who has that particular board, somewhere in china, (probably at the gigabyte factory) has a board that gets good fsb. but it doesnt get good clock speeds. and doesnt get anywhere near that fsb at any other multiplier.
 
It runs at 8 x 500 for 4ghz as well, 9 multi will only go to 380 supposedly. I hope its a bug that can be fixed. There are a few people with those boards getting similar results in that thread...
 
NulloModo said:
Well, IDE support is a plus. Both of my hard drives and my CD-RW drives are IDE.
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I would be amazed to find a 965 based board that didn't have an IDE connector on the board. Most manufactures are adding IDE controllers since, like you, most (99.99%) of people still use IDE. Now... you may have a hard time finding a board with 2 IDE ports but then again there has only been 1 native IDE channel on intel chipsets since 915. If I were you... I would pick up a SATA drive to boot with since I wouldn't want to boot from an external controller. An 80gb Boot drive would be cheap as hell.
 
Yeah, I'm pretty sure EVERY current 965 board has at least 1 IDE input. As far as I know there are only 1 or 2 SATA DVD drives out there, so they pretty much have to unless they expect everyone to pick up one of those SATA/IDE converters.
 
I like the fact that my Abit AB9 pro 965 board supports asynchronus dual channel ram meaning I can use two different size ram sticks for dual channel. My eyes bucked out my head when i read that in the manual.
 
marcusj3000 said:
I like the fact that my Abit AB9 pro 965 board supports asynchronus dual channel ram meaning I can use two different size ram sticks for dual channel. My eyes bucked out my head when i read that in the manual.
Click to expand...

im not doubting abit, but i am just thioking about it logically, and it seems to be more of a gimick than an actual usefl feature.
as soon as you run to the end of the smaller ram stick, then all you have is regular ddr2, not dual channel anymore...
while useful, is probably more harm than good since having regular ddr2 vs dual channel willl actuially slow you down.

back OT,
I do wonder if boards like the asus p5b delux and the gigabyte ds6 will cost less than 200

Edit

if you look at the current top of the line offers from Asus and Gigabyte for the amd, the 590 line, they both are around 200.

so i doubt that the 965 will go down past that for major boards like those.

Also, the bios for the 965 bards is not mature yet, so there is room for improvement.
in th end i think that what will determin what to get will be done based on Xfire or SLI needs.

965 has more SATA and USB and other stuff, and supposedly a better memory controller (this has been shown to be false for now) while the 975 is older and has better BIOS and Xfire SLI
 
marcusj3000 said:
I like the fact that my Abit AB9 pro 965 board supports asynchronus dual channel ram meaning I can use two different size ram sticks for dual channel. My eyes bucked out my head when i read that in the manual.
Click to expand...

975X does that, and so does nForce4
 
If you guys ever go to xtremesystems they ran the Asus P5W DH against the Gigabyte 965P DS3 against each other, stock and overclocked.

The DS3 won in 9/10 benchmarks with the only exception being the overclock 32MB SuperPi time. I guess it has something to do with overclocked chipset latencies.

Anyway, if you not interested in SLi I don't see why this board doesn't win out over the 975 chipset.

Besides its $100 less than the ASUS and edges it out in all performance benchmarks.
 
I think I still might seek out a 975 board. I am not ready to give up my two IDE hardrives and my IDE CD-RW at the moment. If optical drives that support SATA native start showing up on the market (as opposed to the IDE drives with a controller chip to convert them that are around now) I might change that choice, then I could live with one EIDE port.
 
NulloModo said:
I think I still might seek out a 975 board. I am not ready to give up my two IDE hardrives and my IDE CD-RW at the moment. If optical drives that support SATA native start showing up on the market (as opposed to the IDE drives with a controller chip to convert them that are around now) I might change that choice, then I could live with one EIDE port.
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You do realize that there is only 1 IDE port on ICH7 right? Most of those boards with 2+ IDE ports use external controllers. Just thought you should know that.
 
Poncho said:
You do realize that there is only 1 IDE port on ICH7 right? Most of those boards with 2+ IDE ports use external controllers. Just thought you should know that.
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Well 1 IDE port can support two drives that is all I need,
 
Sc0ttFern said:
If you guys ever go to xtremesystems they ran the Asus P5W DH against the Gigabyte 965P DS3 against each other, stock and overclocked.

The DS3 won in 9/10 benchmarks with the only exception being the overclock 32MB SuperPi time. I guess it has something to do with overclocked chipset latencies.
Click to expand...
Is this the test you refer to?
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108077

So it might be true 965 memory controller is better suited for the Conroe? It also manages the Conroe power saving features better. Some motherboards overclocks the 975 so that might be the source for the 975 = low latency.
And since I finally get rid of PATA I guess I'll get this and try run it at 400fsbx8 and ram 1:1.
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4
E6600 stepping 5
OCZ2P8002GK
 
Rare1 said:
I think I will go for a 965 board as I dont really see myself with crossfire. I am just waiting for a couple review before I commit to the P5B.
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The P5B is maturing quite a bit, and supposedly the board can be made to reach a 550MHz FSB. (According to ASUS)

Obviously not all of them can do this, but you should be able to ballpark it. Unfortunately when I did my testing I used a Pentium Extreme Edition 3.73GHz, and not a Core 2 Duo. Even so I was able to reach a fairly impressive overclock with the P5B and the 3.73EE and get it stable over 4GHz.

I had problems with the wireless, but I think that was due to the computer I was trying to connect to for testing and not the P5B itself. Otherwise it worked really well.
 
it's a tough call being that each of them are OVERPRICED--!--lwith the 975x being evermore so.

i'm tempted to get a foxconn or biostar 965p --but the biostar is a no-show for the market . and the current bios for the foxconn are lacking full support for ocing .

there are several 975x mb that i'm also considering but they seem to have a overall lower fsb and more expense . but at the same time offer a bit more flexability and SOME of them have two ide's--which would be helpful .the p5w looks about right--but its just too much $$$ for me.

as far as overclocking i think the 965p series has an edge here . although a decent 975x should be able to do over 400fsb which will be more than enough when the 4300 comes along. and is usually enough for most other core 2's ATM--

i think that people are a bit too fixtated on the motherboards-- things like the ram- PSU and finally the CPU itself are also major deciding factors in any overclock .

when kyle was testing the biostar tforce 965 he had two core 2's and one overclocked much higher than the other --on the exact same system . i think the slower one could only do about 3.3 or so --so if you happen to get a great chip--then 500fsb means something --but if you get an avg cpu--then 400 or even a little less--will be all thats required cause the cpu is the limiting factor any way--rather than the MB.

i think what it reallly comes down to is if you need the extra stuff--like dual pci-e get the 975's--if you don't then save some $$ and get the 965s

i think the 965s can support crossfire but you need one with dual pci-e--and then there just as pricey as the 975's--lol--if ati's chipset was here i think i would try one instead though--lol
 
JSF35rhino said:
it's a tough call being that each of them are OVERPRICED--!--lwith the 975x being evermore so.

i'm tempted to get a foxconn or biostar 965p --but the biostar is a no-show for the market . and the current bios for the foxconn are lacking full support for ocing .

there are several 975x mb that i'm also considering but they seem to have a overall lower fsb and more expense . but at the same time offer a bit more flexability and SOME of them have two ide's--which would be helpful .the p5w looks about right--but its just too much $$$ for me.

as far as overclocking i think the 965p series has an edge here . although a decent 975x should be able to do over 400fsb which will be more than enough when the 4300 comes along. and is usually enough for most other core 2's ATM--

i think that people are a bit too fixtated on the motherboards-- things like the ram- PSU and finally the CPU itself are also major deciding factors in any overclock .

when kyle was testing the biostar tforce 965 he had two core 2's and one overclocked much higher than the other --on the exact same system . i think the slower one could only do about 3.3 or so --so if you happen to get a great chip--then 500fsb means something --but if you get an avg cpu--then 400 or even a little less--will be all thats required cause the cpu is the limiting factor any way--rather than the MB.

i think what it reallly comes down to is if you need the extra stuff--like dual pci-e get the 975's--if you don't then save some $$ and get the 965s

i think the 965s can support crossfire but you need one with dual pci-e--and then there just as pricey as the 975's--lol--if ati's chipset was here i think i would try one instead though--lol
Click to expand...

Apparently the 965P can support Crossfire according to the front page article about the new Catalyst 6.9 drivers adding Crossfire support to the 965P. Though I don't know of any motherboards that have the appropriate PCIe lane configuration to allow maximum performance. Boards like the P5B have a x16 x x1 or x4 lane configuration which isn't ideal.
 
Dan_D said:
Apparently the 965P can support Crossfire according to the front page article about the new Catalyst 6.9 drivers adding Crossfire support to the 965P. Though I don't know of any motherboards that have the appropriate PCIe lane configuration to allow maximum performance. Boards like the P5B have a x16 x x1 or x4 lane configuration which isn't ideal.
Click to expand...

I think the Gigabyte DQ6 has the same setup as the P5B in that regard also.
 
kirbyrj said:
I think the Gigabyte DQ6 has the same setup as the P5B in that regard also.
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I think you are right. I know the DS3 won't do it either.
 
BUFF said:
even the new MSI 965 that touts Crossfire is X16, X4, X1
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I think you can do it, but I think both cards become limited to the speed of the slowest PCIe slot the graphics card resides in.
 
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