Hello I live in the U.K and want to buy a Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3 Motherboard. My problem is I can't find a supplier that has the Revision 3.3 as stated on this Gigabyte page.

http://www.giga-byte.co.uk/Product [...] A-965G-DS3

(above page covers the Revision 2.0 and 3.3)

http://www.giga-byte.co.uk/Product [...] A-965G-DS3

(above page covers the Revision 1.0 board)

so.... what are the differeces between the 3 different revisions? I can't see any. Is the standard Bios the only difference? If so can I put the latest BIOS directly on a Rev.1 board? or should I update the bios in steps?

p.s This motherboard is for my girlfriend so you will be helping two people here! And the poll question was invented by my girlfriend too.

As you can see on this comparison page below:

Comparison table

The only thing I can see that differs from the other 2 versions is that rev. 3.3 has a max FSB @ 1333 MHz and the other 2 has only a max of 1066 MHz. I think that if something goes wrong with a BIOS flash there is a backup-default BIOS on a write-protected memory on the board that will kick in if any misshappenings should occur.

Regarding the BIOS flashing, you should be able to download the latest and flash it right onto your motherboard. Keep in mind! make a backup of your stockbios first! before you flash it with the latest one. I took a backup of mine just in case, and then flashed to (what was then the latest version = F6) and it works like a charm, I did notice that there is a version F10 out and so I reflashed my mobo with it but when I started to overclock my comp it started acting wierd so I went back to F6 (although I found out now later that I was just adjusting a little bit too much when I overclocked it once I had flashed it with F10).

You shouldn't have any trouble with flashing the latest BIOS onto your mobo but still... make a backup of your stockbios (can't stress that enough ) so you have something to go back to in case something should go wrong.

/t-m00re

Briliant thank you what a useful resource if I could afford a 1333MHZ bus CPU and memory I could also afford the car I want!

Now I am concerned that I wont be able to boot the board with a E4300 as that requires a F5 BIOS! I don't have an another S775 CPU to get it to boot to flash it. So can I flash the board "blind" with a floppy and a key combination?

I don't think you should be too worried about that your computer won't start, because rev. 2.0 as I can see in the BIOS section for that mobo it probably starts from version F6 and then you are okay. Although if you buy a rev. 1.0 (I think/hope) they will have already flashed it to the latest BIOS version, hence you shouldn't have the "problem" of the computer not booting up.

I'm not 100% sure but I think that you could start and hopefully get into QFlash during POST, and maybe it will say that your CPU is a noname brand or something like that until you have flashed your BIOS to the latest version. Then you will need to have the latest BIOS file on a floppy, also have a blank floppy that you insert (once inside QFlash) and make a backup of your stockbios before flashing the new one.

/t-m00re

Yeah, hope so, turns out my girls PC had a voltage strike (Washing machine blew up)and after that it has been playing up! i tested the ram and had loads of errors after startup!

Strange thing now that i have the PC here is that the mem is fine using memtest!?! (The HDD is faulty though) I've put some new mem in it and am running it overnight to see if it's stable.

As for the BIOS i know what you mean but when it's own money you get nervous! I fix PC's part time (dont we all!)

Must go bed it's nearly 5 now.

OMG i've just seen Top gear a British program the presenters went to the Disunited States and they got harassed by redneck's and sued cos they gave a car to a chriatian charity with the year described wrongly!

I suggest Downloading the Torrent of it and then giving it to the tourist board!

Anyway am waiting for the delvery of my kit so will keep you posted!

I hope that everything goes as planned I'll be waiting for your victorydance here then

/t-m00re

Hi I'm back!

(Long post this) Ok so i got the parts today and my girlfriend is also coming round. (I pick her up at a bus stop so I dont have to drive all the way). So jobs in rough chronalogical order were

1, Prepare case for big day Cut the front fan blockages with a dremel

2, Install fans and postion them so that the cables are at least tidy-er than normal

3, Keep Girlfriend amused with Cheescake (Must have dope inside)

4, Unpack and marvel how it remids me of a 2003 P4 board from gigabyte and how I still use it for my familys PC so they use the web.

5, Read the instructions a few times so i am familar with the (for me) new S775 CPU

6, Nervously take out the unwanted MB standoff's and put them in correct places (I use 6 in this Case/MB combination)

7, (The bit i hate) Install the board (never sure what to hold) and hear it scrape as it clicks into place into port bracket

8, screw in screws to Standoffs and at this point some of the standoffs use different threads (Some HDD/Case style and some ODD/Floppy style)

9, Connect stuff like the 24-pin PSU and 4-pin 12V connector (Was expecting an 8-pin)

10, take chip out of packing (I got the retail one to avoid first-timer mistakes) The TIM is already applied to the bottom of the Retail HSF to make life easier and pressed home the four pins (Would prefer nuts and bolts)

11, Installed memory (2x 512MB for dual channel)

12, hooked up just PWR on front panel connector and turned on wall voltage and PSU voltage and pressed the big red button....... Beep (The nicest sound in the world) (Normally I never suceed in doing a first time boot as the memory slots are dusty)

13, Bios version is F4 so updated that using floppy to F7)

14, Post's again phew!

15, loaded optimised defaults

16, posts again so started fiddling

17, Notice that you can have the onboard GPU as well as PCI-e card so great for multi monitor setup

18, Notice all sorts of other options

19, Use my new VIA VT6421 card to control the ODD because my 642 had a boot rom I can select the drive directly in the BIOS (if i use CD-ROM I get nowhere)

20, XP disc boots and installs... BSOD sh1t. Turns out you have to install the F6 driver even though was only using drive to install windows.

21, Install F6 driver and all is well and XP installs just fine!

22, Loaded the supplied CD to install Drivers and this completes sucessfully

23, Installed Autopatcher, Spyware Blaster, Spybot Search and Destroy all okay plug in network cable to update above and all is well

Spent rest of day playing with it and seems okay except for using Easy tune 5 to get a 20% increase whch killed the onboard NIC! a reboot and turned off O/Cing sorted it!

Was running a 10% O/C and now Memtest reports errors <if I use the Test All Memory AND Bios-All options>. Windows Memory Diagnostic (From UBCD 3.4
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ reports no errors.

I ran Prime 95 for about an hour (earlier today) and it was okay so dont know why memtest failed. I'm hoping that memtest is just too old for DDR2 or maybe the 965???

Gonna run more tests (maybe Prime 95 overnight) and hope for the best otherwise will just start RMA'ing!

P.S the Bios version is REV 1.0