hey, at least it wasn't a 975X motherboard review

(referring to the 2900pro review)

Nice review but why you didn't overclock the new Intel CPU Core 2 Extreme QX9770..

A good way to support heavy CPU-coolers is to drill holes in chassi plate behind motherboard CPU support holes and fasten the cooler with screws and nuts to the chassiplate. Between motherboard and chassi plate suitable shims under CPU for support. With Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 and Crazy Cool it was no need for shims. I love the Crazy Cool idea.

No Nvidia SLI support yaaaak

Great Board well reviews but still expansive at my place

Did this motherboard support upcoming Nahalem chipset?

What are you supposed to do with 2 Gigabit ethernet connections? I have been surfing for the answer, but can't find an answer. Will paying for two DSL internet accounts to use 2 MOBO ethernet connections really improve Internet speed?

iv been trawling the web on comments on the gigabyte x38 and this review was one of the better unbiased ones and very informative, still i belive the x38 is the way for non-ovreclockers, ihope so has iv just bought one
£160 from misco

If I have two options: Abit IP35 Pro or GA-X38-DQ6 (the reviewed borad), which would you recommend. No other choices, only this two. I will overclock a Q6600 in it and will have 2x2GB RAM with a 8800 GT card. I need stability and silent work. Thank you! ;)

would love to know how the onboard sound works with Windows Vista

This review did not address a very important (and in my opinion, crucial) shortcoming of the Gigabyte X38 motherboard. It does NOT, by default, enable Gen2 speed (5Gb/second) on the x16 slot. If you insert a Gen2 capable graphics card into its x16 slots (either one of them), it ALWAYS comes up in Gen1 speed (i.e. 2.5Gb/second). Gigabyte does its customers a huge disservice by deliberately choosing to suppress one of the X38's most important selling points. Why would Gigabyte do this? Because its engineers don't believe that the X38's Gen2 interface is robust and beyond reproach? Or is it because they think they don't want to expose the Gen2 capability until the PCI SIG releases compliance tests for Gen2 chipsets and endpoints?

Either way, Gigabyte is dishonest about their claims on "Gen2 support". It says so loud and clear on the box packaging. But their system BIOS does not yet allow this speed - even the latest version of sBIOS posted on their website does not expose Gen2. Remember when disk drive companies got sued because they didn't clearly explain what "megabytes" and "gigabytes" meant? Maybe Gigabyte will get a call from a money-grubbing American lawyer one of these days and they will wise up. Doing business in the US requires that you dont' run afoul of these scumbag lawyers, so consider yourselves warned, Gigabyte.

I have Q6600 (2,4Ghz) with scythe Cooler, Gigabyte x38 DQ6, and memory 2x 1Gb Adata Vitesta 1066Mhz. After overclock runs at 3,3Ghz but,when i increase FSB pc not start on windows. i want to get maximum speed at 3,6 with out problems!Can you tell me how??

Very nice review Ilya!

You point out the smallest details that I rarely find in other reviews.

It seems to me that you do your job as a reviewer with a lot of passion. You actually get involved with the review sample's every aspect and explore every bit and share them with the reader. Of course one of the main reasons that your reviews have this level of quality is that you posses the needed knowledge to perform such reviews.

I also like [H] reviews and how they mention details and point out first hand findings in their reviews.Both you guys don't follow the cookie cutter scheme that most do.

Thanks!

Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the OC'ing tips, I've been having problems since doing a BIOS update. So I'm going to let the BIOS set voltages under Auto setting and see if I can get the old performance back.

Best 3Dmark06 score that I managed to get while OC''ing (old BIOS) the CPU was 10564.
But this is only a E2140 running at 3.2Ghz with standard cooler and ATI Rad' 3850, I was happy and should have not upgraded the damn BIOS.

So here's my tip for anyone else building the same, don't upgrade the BIOS unless you really have to.

Me again, Can anybody help? PLEASE!

I've got a problem that I'm sure nobody will answer for me but here it is anyway.

I've overclocked the CPU to 3.2Ghz with a 400 bus speed, 8 x multiplier giving 1600Mhx rated FSB.
It's nice and stable have run Prime95 and 3Dmark06 no problems at all and with only a slight increase in CPU voltage to 1.264.

My problem is that I can't get past this point, I don't mean because of stability I mean if I increase the bus speed to 420 so memory goes up to 840 the BIOS will save the settings and boot into winXP 64bit but CPU-Z and other progs report the old 3.2Ghx with 400 bus and so on. If I re-boot into BIOS the new settings are there but it's just not showing any increase in windows or on benchmarks.
If I push it further to 450 bus it fails to boot, so something is changing but not in CPU-Z or windows.

I once had an increase from 3.2Ghz to 3.24Ghz by using 410 bus speed but now that doesn't show up either.

I've hit a wall or something but I just can't see why it won't boot into windows showing the increased CPU speed.

Please any help will do, I'm stuck.

Cheers.

in the benchmarks table you wrote ASUS MAXIMUS FORMULA but the value reported are exactly those you wrote in the P5E review, identical! I guess you ment to write P5E instead of Maximus Formula. Thou these are quite the same thing it's impossible to me two different mobo's can perform exactly the same way, even two exemplars of the same model.