grindliner Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 With the p35 boards getting to be hard to find, and the widespread availability of p45 based boards, is there any specific reasons to hunt down a p35 based board over a p45 based board? I have googled it here, and have not found much, other than lots of success with p356's, but there is success with the p45 series as well. I've also been doing some reading on Tom's, Anand, and motherboards.org as well. Tom's in a couple of reviews done upon the release of the p45 chipsets, pretty much says that p35's use less power and provide better performance. So can anyone state a case to seek out a p35 based gigabyte board? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/140265-a-question-about-gigabyte-motherboards/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zaap Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 I'd put it this way- if your needs for a system don't require more than 8GB of DDR2- 1200 RAM (I believe that's the max for P35 based boards, but anyone correct me if I'm wrong) then go with a P35 board. There are several benefits to the P35, namely, they are cheap, and very well supported. The Gigabyte P35-DS3L is a near perfect board for a retail install Hackintosh, and there are several guides for it floating around that when followed, you can have a perfect retail system up and running in less than half an hour. A few P35 boards can still be found on ebay. The P35-DS3L is currently about $100 with free shipping from a couple of vendors. (I bought several from seller Macpalace7 and used them to build several perfect retail Hacks.) It's news to me that the P35 would be a better performer than P45 based boards (I guess it depends on what aspect of performance is being measured.) I would tend to think they probably do use less power. In my experience, my retail installed EP45-DQ6 yields nearly identical performance for OSX as my EP35-DS4 based system, with all other things being equal (processor, RAM, vid card, etc.) So to me, the components used seems a more important concern than the differences between the P35 and P45- with perfectly supported boards for OSX, that is. If you need more than 8GB of faster DDR2 RAM, more SATA ports, and want more FSB headroom for overclocking, then go for the P45 boards. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/140265-a-question-about-gigabyte-motherboards/#findComment-993493 Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaaseyRacer Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 It really does not matter. I would get which ever one you can get that has the options you want, at a price you can afford. I have built two P45 machines and one P35. Both were just as easy to get going. Support is now equally as good. Both run better than P5k-VM. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/140265-a-question-about-gigabyte-motherboards/#findComment-993516 Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeHunt79 Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 P35 uses a little less power I think... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/140265-a-question-about-gigabyte-motherboards/#findComment-993547 Share on other sites More sharing options...
LogicalUser Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 is New Vs Used/refurbished an issue to you? EP45-DS3L, new, $85 after rebate http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813128345 or... nearly the same board but with onboard firewire & more ports for $20 more http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813128359 really its a cost & availability thing, if you can find a cheap EP35 its just as good, but no sense tracking one down, or ebaying one if you have no desire to Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/140265-a-question-about-gigabyte-motherboards/#findComment-994562 Share on other sites More sharing options...
grindliner Posted December 11, 2008 Author Share Posted December 11, 2008 is New Vs Used/refurbished an issue to you? EP45-DS3L, new, $85 after rebate http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813128345 or... nearly the same board but with onboard firewire & more ports for $20 more http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813128359 really its a cost & availability thing, if you can find a cheap EP35 its just as good, but no sense tracking one down, or ebaying one if you have no desire to those are on top of my list along with the DS3P, if I go p45, macpalace has the ep35 dsp3 for 95 shipped on fleabay. if I go with a non firewire board I will need a firewire card with a TI chip. The Gigabyte boards with FW utilize TI chips. Whats intresting is when viewing the specs on the gigabyte site, the ep35 ds3p uses the same lan and audio chips as the ep45 boards realtek 8111, and alc889. so installation guides for the ep35's should pretty much apply to the ep45 boards. I'd like for as smooth of an install as possible, as vanilla as possible and stable. I realize this is a hobby, but at the same time, I'd rather be recording music than always fixing my computer. I got away from that when I upgraded from windows Me to XP. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/140265-a-question-about-gigabyte-motherboards/#findComment-994837 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zaap Posted December 11, 2008 Share Posted December 11, 2008 I'd like for as smooth of an install as possible, as vanilla as possible and stable. I realize this is a hobby, but at the same time, I'd rather be recording music than always fixing my computer. I got away from that when I upgraded from windows Me to XP. Whatever you do, I recommend a retail build. My Hacks were still pretty much trouble-free when I was using 'distro' installs like Leo4All and iDeneb, but now my retail installs feel like 100% the real thing. Everything is flawless- no issues with sleep or any little annoyances,or any trepidation using System Update. I'm more satisfied with my latest P45-DQ6 based Hack than I would be with a MacPro- unless I could score the MacPro for the same price. I'm helping a friend do a retail install on a UD3P board in the coming weeks as he gets all his parts, so I can't wait to see how one of these performs. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/140265-a-question-about-gigabyte-motherboards/#findComment-994900 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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