BIOS Setup

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mainboard uses BIOS based on Award code. We can’t help pointing out numerous changes that Gigabyte engineers made when adapting the BIOS for this particular mainboard series.

Let’s skip the first sections with standard system configuring features. We suggest going straight to the PC Health Status page.

Surprise! Instead of the meaningless “OK” that usually stood for voltage settings on previously reviewed Gigabyte mainboards, we see specific values. Finally! Unfortunately, we still lack the chipset voltage and controlled 5V voltage, but hopefully we will see them soon in new mainboard revisions. Moreover, the mainboard allows monitoring system temperature and CPU temperature alongside with the rotation speed of four fans. By the way, unlike Asus mainboards that can no longer adjust the CPU fan rotation speed if it is connected using a three-pin connector, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mainboard does it easily.

Now let’s move on to the next section that very conveniently contains all the processor and memory overclocking settings. It is called MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.). The specs were telling the truth: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L does boast very good options for overclocking.

FSB frequency can be adjusted in the interval between 100 and 700MHz; PCI-E frequency – from 90 to 150MHz with 1MHz increment. To set the memory frequency you can use one of the following multipliers: 2.5, 3.0, 4.0, 2.0, 2.4, 3.2, 3.33. You won’t need to calculate the resulting memory frequency, because this value is displayed in the Memory Frequency info string. The processor frequency is also displayed in the corresponding CPU Frequency info string. You can access memory timings adjustment only by pressing Ctril-F1 in the main BIOS menu. This is one of the few drawbacks that this solution inherited from the older Gigabyte mainboards.

Note that the list of supported parameters is quite broad. The parameters may be adjusted selectively and not all together, and the informational column will display the current memory timings. These are another three points in favor of Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L.

As for the mainboard’s ability to change voltage settings, they are also quite decent. The memory can receive up to +0.7V above the nominal with 0.1V increment, which is actually even too much for DDR2. PCI-E OverVoltage Control, FSB OverVoltage Control and (G)MCH OverVoltage Control parameters allow increasing the voltages of PCI Express, FSB and chipset North Bridge by 0.3V with 0.1V increment. The CPU can receive any voltage between 0.05125V and 1.6V with an extremely small 0.00625V increment. Those of you who have some extreme cooling systems at their disposal will be able to raise the Vcore even higher by setting it to 1.8V or even 2.0V.

But these are not all the advantages of Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mainboard. By pressing F11 you can save up to 8 full settings profiles, and by pressing F12 – load any of them.

I would like to specifically mention that you can give each profile a brief description. The unused profiles are included into a sort of a stack used to automatically save the current BIOS settings after successful POST pass and recording the number of successful startups for each. This is very helpful, because Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mainboard doesn’t stop after CPU over-overclocking, just like its predecessors. All settings, even the system time, get cleared in this case, and the board boots with the default settings. automatic settings saving allows you to easily get back to the last known successful configuration, even if you forgot to manually save it.

In conclusion I would only like to add that the built-in Q-Flash utility that can be launched by pressing F8 now reads not only floppy disks, but also flash drives. So, you can easily and quickly reflash the BIOS if necessary. We wish they would also report the info on the BIOS version reflashed and the previous version, but this is also just a friendly suggestion on our part, not a drawback.

I assume you would agree that the BIOS of Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mainboard looks very convenient and thought-through, boasts pretty good options for system configuring and advanced overclocking friendly tools. Our next part will be devoted to the practical implementation of all these features.