Help required: Choosing a decent P35 MoBo for use w/ OSX, Asus P5KC or Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R? Or...? Options

[3phemeral]

Update: I've ordered everything. I settled on the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 but am still to receive it. Other parts as mentioned.
Yet another update: I've received everything i ordered [but the graphics card was damaged -> RMA] and everything runs smooth, including OS X. After a bit of fiddling about, everything on this board seems to be working: SATA by turning on AHCI in bios, IDE [natively], sound [ALC889A, for fix for this, read on], ethernet with the realtek patch, ... The only thing i have not tried yet is firewire [yet this is listed under System Profiler] and eSata, but i don't even have the eSata bracket installed... Even sleep is working [w/ 10.4.10, 8.10.1 kernel] which i find great! Very pleased with this board If you ever need any help on getting anything working on this board [besides sound, hehe], just ask away
Yet another update 2 [to be updated]: Sleep not working anymore. Don't know if it's a hardware/bios/software change. I'll investigate them all when i've got more time. The latter seems most likely, but also most complex to investigate.

[original post starts here]
Hey all,
I'm looking to put together a new PC. My main issue is the motherboard. The 2 I have my eyes on are both P35 boards [for future 45nm CPU support] w/ DDR3 RAM support, although the latter isn't too important: The Asus P5KC and Gigabyte's GA-P35C-DS3R.

Which of these would you recommend? What kinda problems would i be looking at trying to install OSX on either boards? And getting LAN, ... to work?
I'm aware that the ALC889A audio controller on the Gigabyte has no OSX support at the moment, while the ALC883 on the Asus should work.
Other motherboard suggestions are welcome, but i would like a board w/ a P35 chipset.

The rest of the specs will be something like this:
CPU: C2D E6750 [to be overclocked ]
RAM: 2GB 800/1066 MHz RAM, yet to chose which specific one.
HDD: 500GB Samsung SATAII Spinpoint(?) most likely
GPU: Still to decide. Most likely some 7600GT
DVD: Still to decide.
Already have: Antec Sonata II case w/ Corsair HX520W modular supply and Zalman CNPS9700 CPU cooler.

Thanks in advance!!

[cyclonefr]

I have the P5K and i'm happy about this one. Great perfs, great for o/c.

But the P5KC doesn't use ALC883, though the chip it uses works with Azalia (Stereo sound only, no input).
LAN should work fine if it's a RealTek like with the P5K-E or Deluxe. Plain P5K as the one I have uses some Attansic chipset that won't work with OSX.

[3phemeral]

I have the P5K and i'm happy about this one. Great perfs, great for o/c.

But the P5KC doesn't use ALC883, though the chip it uses works with Azalia (Stereo sound only, no input).
LAN should work fine if it's a RealTek like with the P5K-E or Deluxe. Plain P5K as the one I have uses some Attansic chipset that won't work with OSX.

P5KC and P5K boards seem identical after comparing the Asus specs page on both cards, except for the 2x DDR3 RAM slots on the P5KC. On the Asus forum i found that they have the same network card [or at least an Attansic :/] 

A working mic would be REALLY nice, i do use skype from time to time, but i gues

 i could dual boot [with Ubuntu, of course] for that  I have a D-link Gigabit card [DGE-528T, something like that... after fixing dev ID and using RTL patch it works flawlessly] in my current PC which i can transfer to my new one. I saw someone had network working on their P5K-E, so may go for that, but i think the card is about €30 more expensive, and i won't be using the WiFi feature...

Thanks for your reply, i'll look around a day or two more before making my final decision...

Any further suggestions/comments are more than welcome.

[Synaesthesia]

Very few motherboards have working mic/audio-in so don't hold out for that. Rather go for a cheap usb sound solution...The alc883 for one has input working, as far as I know, but that's all I can think of.

[3phemeral]

Thanks for your replies Cyclone and Synaesthesia... I ordered myself a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 in the end, the Asus P5K/P5K-E seems difficult [or excessively expensive] to get by here... I've heard that everything works on this card [not natively, but wasn't counting on that] except for the sound, as previously mentioned. I'm looking into several possible solutions for this, i should have something sorted in a few days, or maybe i'll wait till i actually have it + i'll be booting windows mostly the first while, i'll be overclocking and benchmarking, etc, so i've got a bit of time... or then again maybe not, i mean, it's windows after all :/

[peterg]

Thanks for your replies Cyclone and Synaesthesia... I ordered myself a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 in the end, the Asus P5K/P5K-E seems difficult [or excessively expensive] to get by here... I've heard that everything works on this card [not natively, but wasn't counting on that] except for the sound, as previously mentioned. I'm looking into several possible solutions for this, i should have something sorted in a few days, or maybe i'll wait till i actually have it + i'll be booting windows mostly the first while, i'll be overclocking and benchmarking, etc, so i've got a bit of time... or then again maybe not, i mean, it's windows after all :/

hey
did you get sound working ?
i just bought a new motherboard, gigabyte P35 dq6. has the alc889 chip in it. and *late* last night i managed to make it beep!
if you need help let me know
P.

[3phemeral]

hey
did you get sound working ?
i just bought a new motherboard, gigabyte P35 dq6. has the alc889 chip in it. and *late* last night i managed to make it beep!
if you need help let me know
P.

i'm still waiting for it to arrive , ordered it from another country, and seems they're a bit slow... but that's great news to hear, as the sound chip is exactly the same [i believe]! what exactly did you do, and what exactly did you get working? Thanks in advance for any answer


unrelated to the above: i may start a new thread for Gigabyte P35 boards once i've received mine, to state what's working for which specific model and what fixes were needed to achieve it.

[peterg]

hey
to get audio working on my P35-DQ6 motherboard
- make sure BIOS has AZALIA enabled.
- i found an azalia kext on this forum.
- i modified the kext to work with the device id of the alc889 chip.
i do not have microphone input working. and i don't know if the surround sound works, but hey, it can beep!

I have included a copy of the file if that helps.
uncompress this kext and store in S/L/E and change the permissions, ownership and reload the kexts

P.

Attached File(s)

 AppleAzaliaAudio.kext.zip ( 73.96K ) Number of downloads: 3050

 

[3phemeral]

hey
to get audio working on my P35-DQ6 motherboard
...
I have included a copy of the file if that helps.
uncompress this kext and store in S/L/E and change the permissions, ownership and reload the kexts

Ah man, that's great to hear!
Now if only i could hear the delivery man arrive! Hehe...
I didn't think it would take much more than this to get sound [out, 2 channel] to work, good to hear that was all it took.
Thanks for the file, i'll give it a shot as soon as i have my MoBo/CPU & HDD [have the rest merely... lying around at the moment].

[niteman1969]

Has no-one thought of the Abit IP35-E ????

Not only Cheaper but better osx86 compatible parts.
Also it is an overclockers paradise of a board.

Have a look at the review http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/ip35economy/

Specifications below.

Abit Engineered Abit SoftMenu™ The original jumperless motherboard design allows for CPU setting changes completely through the BIOS. For GigaOverclocking! Boost your PC's Performance by up to 50%. Convenient and easy-to-use fine tuning from within a self-explanatory

CPU - Support Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme/Duo/Quad processors with 1333/1066/800MHz FSB
- Support Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme/Quad/Duo & Pentium® Dual Core Processors

Chipset - Intel® P35 Express / ICH9 Chipset
Memory - 4 X 240-pin DIMM sockets support max. memory capacity 8GB
- Supports Dual channel DDR2 800/667/533 un-buffered non-ECC memory

LAN - Onboard Gigabit LAN controller supports 10/100/1000M Ethernet (MARVELL 88E8056)

Audio - On board 7.1 CH HD Audio CODEC (Realtek ALC888)
- Supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF Out
- HDMI ready header (SPDIF header)

Expansion Slots
- 1 x PCI-E X16
- 2 x PCI-E X1
- 3 x PCI

Internal I/O -1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88 MB
- 1 x ATA 133/100/66/3 IDE connector
- 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connector
- 4 x USB header (support 8 ports)
- 1 x FP-Audio

Back Panel I/O 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
- 1 x S/P DIF Out
- 7.1 CH Audio connector (Front, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Surround, Rear Surround)
- 4 x USB 2.0
- 1 x RJ-45 LAN connector

Serial ATA - 4 x SATA 3Gb/s through Intel® ICH9
Form Factor - ATX form factor 305 x 245mm
- PCB Color: Blue

RoHS 100% lead-free process and RoHS compliant

[3phemeral]

Has no-one thought of the Abit IP35-E ????
...

I dit consider it, but having 4x instead of 8x SATA connectors, lacking FireWire + eSata, being slightly less of an overclocker compared to the GA-P35-DS4, it being harder to come by round these parts and my not being too pleased with my current Abit board [an SG-80] made me opt for the Gigabyte. I looked into the IP35 and the IP35Pro as well
 but the features on the GA-P35-DS4 convinced me. Of course i still have to try it out, but i don't think i'll be disappointed. Only thing that seems i'll be lacking will be microphone support, which i can live with.

On a different note, what's the use of posting the full specifications of the board you mention, when you could just as well filter out the OSX-relevant parts or simply post a link to the Abit site for this board, or to your IP35-E topic [particularly since it's exactly the same as what you posted above]? Sorry, but i hate seeing big blobs of text pasted into forums where they don't necessarily add to the thread...

[sheeplover]

Yes! Yeah! Yeeeee-haaa!

It works! It works! It works! It works! It works! Hahahahaha!!!!!!

Using the file from peterg above the 2channel output of my GA-P35-DS4 works. After copying the kext, chown to wheel and chmod to 755 it loads after rebooting the machine and gives me "HD AUDIO OUPUT" in the audio prefpane. SystemProfiler still says that there is no built in audio - but does this matter? ;-)

Thank you peterg, thank you!

And many thanks to 3phemeral for sending me the link to this thread!




ahhhm ... dear mister peterg :-) could you please give some specific info on the changes you've made?

[ddrdark]

hi! is not working 4me, give some some problems with file owner and permissions, but I have wheel as owner and the permissions has been repaired, don't know but when I try to load manually give the error

hope I can fix it! thanks!

root# kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAzaliaAudio.kext/
kextload: extension /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAzaliaAudio.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOHDAudioFamily.kext is not authentic (check ownership and permissions)
kextload: extension /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAzaliaAudio.kext is not authentic (check ownership and permissions)

[showthan]

It works!
Using the file from peterg above the 2channel output of my GA-G33M-DS2R works.

[Serenity Prospect]

niteman1969,

What OSX Version did you use? How hard were the drivers to load? Did they create an installation guide for this Abit board?

Thank-you for your help!

I just purchased a
Antec Sonata II Case (Amazon)
Abit IP35-E Motherboard (MWAVE)
Intel 6550 2.33Ghz Processor (NewEgg)
Corsair XMS2 DDR2800 (2x1gb) (ZipZoomFly)
EVGA GeForce 7600GT KO (ZipZoomFly)
SAMSUNG 216BW LCD Monitor (NewEgg)
Antec Thermostat-Controlled Case Fans (2) (ZipZoomFly)

All for $790.01 w/shipping

[Bluejacky]

It works very well on my P35-DS3P.

HD output, no input at moment.

Thanks a lot!
 Picture_3.png ( 58.46K ) Number of downloads: 285


But why I still can see any info about it in my System Profiles?
 Picture_1.png ( 33.1K ) Number of downloads: 192

[Chief9999]

go here do this http://forum.insanelymac.com/lofiversion/i....php/t3657.html

[karaakeha1]

I just tried and my Sound working on GA-P35-DS3P , thanks peterz for drivers
and after putting in the S/L/E

in terminal used this

sudo -s

chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions
rm /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
kextcache -k /System/Library/Extensions

reboot

after this sound worked

Now everything works on GA-P35-DS3P

[skippyretard]

I need testers for ALC889, download the kext here. It should provide input also.

[olav]

does firewire work on the Gigabyte P35-DS4?