I have heard stories about GA-EP35-DS3L not being able to OC like GA-P35-DS3L due to its energy saving feature...some say if you just don't install it you'll be fine...others say the the board won't let you change voltage no matter what...anyone got a real answer?

I too have heard that the voltage won't stick or something with the GA-EP35-DS3L. I'd wait for bios updates or newer revisions if I were you.

EDIT: And you shouldn't turn on the Energy feature when OCing. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] -ep35-ds3l

I have the EP35-DS3L board and I was able to change cpu and memory voltage with no issues. I didn't install the energy saver software, if that makes a difference.

From reading around, it seems like people have this issue even without installing the 'E' (energy saving) software.. it should then behave like the older P35 board but apparently some boards have a BIOS bug that causes the voltage settings to reset... either immediately or after a power down even a few days later.

some claim this is because your OC is not stable. Others say it is a bug in the board..

I'm just confused.. the EP35- DS3L and DS3R seemed like great boards at great prices for a Q6600.. now I'm thinking of waiting for a fix or maybe an Asus p5K (still with an Intel P35 chipset I think)..

I would highly recommend the Asus P5k-e, if you can afford it. OCs quite high, wide OCing options, and it's quite accurate on pin pointing the exact settings, unlike the Gigabyte boards.

had my GA-EP35-DS3L overclocking my e8400 for a week now, with no problems.

There is a beta bios (F5C) out an around that fixes the voltage problem, it isnt on gigabytes sites yet but should be soon, it fixed the higher vcore remembering issue on the 2 boards i have.

^Link?

Here is a link to the Beta BIOS.

http://rs219.rapidshare.com/files/ [...] 35ds3l.zip

I have the GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R board also and have Easytune6 but have no idea what to do with it. It seems that if this board supports a higher FSB speed why is it set at 300 mhz? I have the E8400 intel chip.

This is my rig which I built last weekend. My only problem is my sound. At first only the front headphone jack put put sound. Now after a driver update, only the rear does. I have a headphone jack on my Logitech speaker system so it isn't much of an imposition at present. --

1 ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - Retail
1 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
1 SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B - OEM
1 Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Home Premium for System Builders Single Pack DVD - OEM
1 XFX PVT88PYSF4 GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
1 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400 - Retail
1 Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1800 MCE Kit 1128 NTSC/ATSC/QAM/FM TV Tuner Card w/MCE
1 Antec Sonata Plus 550 Black/ Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 550W Power
1 GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard - Retail

1. Don't EVER use EasyTune.
2. E8400 can be OCed to 3.6Ghz with a 400FSB with out OCing DDR2 800 RAM.

Why not use easytune? How else can I control my fan speeds?

Ahh... I see. It should have read "Don't use EasyTune for OCing". You can also use SpeedFan to control fan speed.

I have a GA-EP35C-DS3R, built up the rig about 6 wks ago. I get a 20% OC easily (e6850) using the Easy Tune software, I usually disable the energy saver software if I plan to play games otherwise I just leave it alone. I like the easy tune, Its not necessary to reboot to get OC'd from a default bootup. If Im not gaming theres no reason to be OC'd. I am running Vista/64 Ultimate with no problems.

I highly recommend you DO NOT USE EasyTune. You will run in to problems down the road. (ie. voltage problems,etc)

I don't know if the board I got is defective or my processor just can't handle ANY OC (seems highly unlikely that I can't even bump the FSB by 1Mhz) but whenever I try to OC, the system starts to post and then reboots setting the clock speed of my processor back to stock speeds. I've tested with different RAM to eliminate that from the pool of possible problems and still get the same results. At this point, I'm about ready to send the board back for RMA.