[HOW TO] INSTALL ON GIGABYTE/ASUS/COMPATIBLE BOARDS

[thepunkerguy]

duh, i feel silly Of course macs only have 2.1 sound since they use optical for everything else.

That's helpful regarding the mic and optical/coax outputs thanks! I am starting to put together my build list over the next few weeks. I am debating the Gigabyte board versus the Asus. the Gigabyte is half the price and seems like it requires less patching, though the Asus works with AHCI...

 

I looked and didn't see Microphone mentioned? Does the Mic-in work on both those boards?

 

What do you think, Asus or Gigabyte board?

 

I love the DS3L boards. You can get them from newegg for $89 and they work quite well. I have built 3 hackintosh's with them so far and all work great. I use AHCI on mine just fine, but I only need 2 SATA ports and I use 2 IDE drives and 2 USB drives. I guess if you need raid then go for another board. I use to run raid, but got over that kick a while back because it's alot more hype than anything. Performance isn't THAT much better for the money you have to spend. I used the Kalyway 10.5.1 DVD to install with on my systems and it works awsome. I really like the Gigabyte boards. I also have a Intel Dual Core E2160 (1.8ghz) cpu overclocked to 3.2ghz on this board and it out scores and performs the fastest intel dual cores, not bad for a $89 board and $69 processor hu?

- Mike

[ottoman1384]

General hdd question:

 

would i be better off installing OS X on an IDE Harddrive or a SATA harddrive?

I already installed the whole system on the IDE hdd but i just got 1.5gb/s Sata drive today. If it will increase my computer performance, could i just clone the ide to a partition on the SATA?

 

 

thanks in advance

[thepunkerguy]

General hdd question:

 

would i be better off installing OS X on an IDE Harddrive or a SATA harddrive?

I already installed the whole system on the IDE hdd but i just got 1.5gb/s Sata drive today. If it will increase my computer performance, could i just clone the ide to a partition on the SATA?

 

 

thanks in advance

 

I am honestly not sure about the performance gains, I would think they would be minimal. But it shouldn't be a big deal to clone it over so why not i guess. As far as how OSX will handle the change, I have no idea.

- Mike

[newbmac]

I love the DS3L boards. You can get them from newegg for $89 and they work quite well. I have built 3 hackintosh's with them so far and all work great. I use AHCI on mine just fine, but I only need 2 SATA ports and I use 2 IDE drives and 2 USB drives. I guess if you need raid then go for another board. I use to run raid, but got over that kick a while back because it's alot more hype than anything. Performance isn't THAT much better for the money you have to spend. I used the Kalyway 10.5.1 DVD to install with on my systems and it works awsome. I really like the Gigabyte boards. I also have a Intel Dual Core E2160 (1.8ghz) cpu overclocked to 3.2ghz on this board and it out scores and performs the fastest intel dual cores, not bad for a $89 board and $69 processor hu?

- Mike

 

Wow, thanks for the great advice

 

I likely only need 2 SATA ports as well since I have 2 IDE hard drives and 1 IDE DVDR.

 

Two questions:

 

1) Does the MIC-in work

 

2) Will the IDE DVDR work in leopard?

 

Thanks again!!

[thepunkerguy]

Wow, thanks for the great advice

 

I likely only need 2 SATA ports as well since I have 2 IDE hard drives and 1 IDE DVDR.

 

Two questions:

 

1) Does the MIC-in work

 

2) Will the IDE DVDR work in leopard?

 

Thanks again!!

 

Remember the board (like most new boards) only has 1 IDE connector so you can only use 2 IDE devices. Yes, the IDE DVDR should work, my two work just fine on IDE. As far as the MIC in goes, i can test it later on when I get home but I think it should. I haven't tested the MIC so I can't really say if it does or not.

- Mike

[newbmac]

Remember the board (like most new boards) only has 1 IDE connector so you can only use 2 IDE devices. Yes, the IDE DVDR should work, my two work just fine on IDE. As far as the MIC in goes, i can test it later on when I get home but I think it should. I haven't tested the MIC so I can't really say if it does or not.

- Mike

 

 

Thanks for checking the mic. I like to use VOIP and mic is super important for me!

 

Looks like the cheaper board is the way to go for my needs! That CPU is super cheap and I assume is still much faster than my Penitum D 2.8ghz?

[mtotho]

@the punker guy. That cpu clock speed is fast, but it failed in comparission when taking cache into consideration. Cache is a huge performance factor, and that cpu has barely any. Still a good bang/buck

[thepunkerguy]

@the punker guy. That cpu clock speed is fast, but it failed in comparission when taking cache into consideration. Cache is a huge performance factor, and that cpu has barely any. Still a good bang/buck

 

Actually if you read around, at high speeds like 3.2ghz the lesser cache plays barely any factor in performance at all. The 3.2ghz Dual Core will still usually either beat or match the highest (3ghz) Core 2 Duo, even with the lesser cache. Here is one good comparison http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/12/pen...core/page7.html

But I have seen another sites benchmarks and the 3.2 dual core in that comparison nearly beats the 3ghz core2duo at mostly all tests

- Mike

[newbmac]

@the punker guy. That cpu clock speed is fast, but it failed in comparission when taking cache into consideration. Cache is a huge performance factor, and that cpu has barely any. Still a good bang/buck

That's true. I may spend a bit more on the CPU, that parts easy. Deciding the motherboard is the tricky part :)I don't think the Asus, for me, is needed as I don't use wireless (latency drives me nuts compared to my 100mbit lan) nor RAID. So I guess the extra $80 isn't worth it for my use. I have a couple drives in USB shells already so the total of 4 devices on the gigabyte is likely also fine.

Actually if you read around, at high speeds like 3.2ghz the lesser cache plays barely any factor in performance at all. The 3.2ghz Dual Core will still usually either beat or match the highest (3ghz) Core 2 Duo, even with the lesser cache. Here is one good comparison http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/12/pen...core/page7.htmlBut I have seen another sites benchmarks and the 3.2 dual core in that comparison nearly beats the 3ghz core2duo at mostly all tests - Mike

 

One negative is the E2160 doesn't have the Intel Virtual Machine extensions. So i assume VM might not run as smoothly as the Core 2 duo?

[koldasice]

does anyone know what seems to be the best and cheapest video card that works with nvinject, from what i read the 8600gt from evga seems to work with it. cause for some reason no matter what i try the 8400gs pny wont work with QE, i kinda needed it to run vmware fusion. and two, do u think that 10.4.8 would work any better with ds3l and the 8400? i know everyone says how awesome their install with the board is, mine was pretty good, i can restart and shutdown, on stock kernel, toh i believe, but the video is the only issue. and sometimes the sound gets scratchy, i added the kexts and used apple hda patcher, its just the video that sucks. any ideas would be nice, im dying to move from windows to osx and the video and scratchy sound is the only flaw as of now, thanks for your help past and future

[mtotho]

Actually if you read around, at high speeds like 3.2ghz the lesser cache plays barely any factor in performance at all. The 3.2ghz Dual Core will still usually either beat or match the highest (3ghz) Core 2 Duo, even with the lesser cache. Here is one good comparison http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/12/pen...core/page7.html

But I have seen another sites benchmarks and the 3.2 dual core in that comparison nearly beats the 3ghz core2duo at mostly all tests

- Mike

 

WEll this all depends on the type of benchmarks you are running, true some thing do benefit from great clock speed, but others do not. Overall, a processor with the same exact specs clocked at 3.2 ghz does not perform much better than a cpu clocked at 3.0ghz (same cache, everything).

 

Whatever floats ur boat.

 

@koldaslice, 8600gt or the 7000 series works great. 7300GT is working, and nice and cheap/

[ottoman1384]

WEll this all depends on the type of benchmarks you are running, true some thing do benefit from great clock speed, but others do not. Overall, a processor with the same exact specs clocked at 3.2 ghz does not perform much better than a cpu clocked at 3.0ghz (same cache, everything).

 

Whatever floats ur boat.

 

@koldaslice, 8600gt or the 7000 series works great. 7300GT is working, and nice and cheap/

 

Some guy on craigslist is selling a 8600gt for $50. I currently have a 7300gt. would it be worth it to upgrade to the 8600gt?

how much of a performance boost would i get?

[newbmac]

Some guy on craigslist is selling a 8600gt for $50. I currently have a 7300gt. would it be worth it to upgrade to the 8600gt?

how much of a performance boost would i get?

 

In what? Games, a lot. Doing things in OS X, uh, nothing in the real world IMHO...

[bpeugh]

I am getting the same error with GUID that I had with MBR. Can anybody point me in the right direction? It will boot after installation to the point where it kicks out of the white apple wheel spinning screen to the space view for 10.5 and dies right before the space screen.

 

Anybody?

 

I am having the same problem with the board. Any ideas?

[ottoman1384]

In what? Games, a lot. Doing things in OS X, uh, nothing in the real world IMHO...

 

how much in games? lets say, i play some need for speed carbon. battlefield, call of duty, halo, etc.

of course, ill probably be buying some new games as they come out.

 

what i want to know is if its worth spending 50 bucks on this card even though i already have the 7300gt?

[thepunkerguy]

WEll this all depends on the type of benchmarks you are running, true some thing do benefit from great clock speed, but others do not. Overall, a processor with the same exact specs clocked at 3.2 ghz does not perform much better than a cpu clocked at 3.0ghz (same cache, everything).

 

Whatever floats ur boat.

 

Thats true, some things benefit from higher clock and other from a higher cache. Either way, you can take my $69 processor @ 3.2ghz and it will beat bascially all the $200 or less core2duos at all tests, even if it only beats the $300 C2Ds at some tests. Either way, overclocking is always a risk and it's something you do more for fun than anything else. Some OC well, others don't OC well at all, just luck of the draw pretty much. I guess I just enjoy beating MacBookPro benchmarks with a $69 processor and budget motherboard

- Mike

[Yakow]

Hi. Thanks for the guide.

Have myself

GA-P35-DS3L rev.2.0

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550

2x1Gb dual DDRII 800 Mhz A-Data Extreme Edition

Asus GeForce 6600 256mb

Asus Sata DVD drive

Hitachi Sata 80Gb HDD

Seagate SataII 320Gb HDD.

 

Everything works fine, but i have a little problem with dual boot to windows XP:

Firstly, a have installed windows xp on my hitachi drive, then i changed in bios to boot from seagate drive. Installed kalyway dvd on it, but in disk utility i partitioned the drive. I have installed mac os on my first partition. Mac os running perfectly, but when i`m trying in mac os bootloader to boot in windows, he gaves me an error ("boot failure, please insert a proper boot device" or something like that). Is it because i have partitioned the drive or maybe another reason???

[Mikey Dread]

Question for mtotho:

 

Thank You for your great guide, I used it and have a had a great stable machine for a few weeks now. It has really helped me with a particularly cumbersome photoshop issue that I had with one client of mine, without having to buy a MacPro.

 

I wanted to ask you one question that I couldn't find with the search. I used the gigabyte board, but am thinking I might switch to the Asus board as you have. Can I simply switch to the new board adjust its bios settings and then just start up using the startup hard drive that I made for the Gigabyte? Or do I have to go through the whole Kalyway install again?

 

Also any advice on the Airport Express/Time machine update for your build yet?

 

Thanks again.

 

PS Also on your guide if you move the edited date up to the top, we won't have to scroll down looking for it, make it easier to check for changes regularly

[cubswinfllclssic]

how much in games? lets say, i play some need for speed carbon. battlefield, call of duty, halo, etc.

of course, ill probably be buying some new games as they come out.

 

what i want to know is if its worth spending 50 bucks on this card even though i already have the 7300gt?

 

@ottoman, I use the 8600GT and I love it. It plays most games on high settings (except Crysis, of course, but it gets through that on medium). I'd say it's an affordable step down from the 8800 series, but if you're not an intense gamer, it'll probably do the trick for you. But if you're really into gaming, I'd say hold your fifty bucks and put it towards an 8800 model... the 7300GT probably does the trick in terms of OSX graphics usability anyway.

 

If it helps any, my 8600GT gets a 5.9 in the Vista benchmark, and a 293.97 in Xbench's quartz graphics test. OpenGL is only a 203 in Xbench.

[ottoman1384]

@ottoman, I use the 8600GT and I love it. It plays most games on high settings (except Crysis, of course, but it gets through that on medium). I'd say it's an affordable step down from the 8800 series, but if you're not an intense gamer, it'll probably do the trick for you. But if you're really into gaming, I'd say hold your fifty bucks and put it towards an 8800 model... the 7300GT probably does the trick in terms of OSX graphics usability anyway.

 

If it helps any, my 8600GT gets a 5.9 in the Vista benchmark, and a 293.97 in Xbench's quartz graphics test. OpenGL is only a 203 in Xbench.

 

thanks for the help. the one im looking at is 512mb. how much of a difference would that be compared to yours?

[cubswinfllclssic]

thanks for the help. the one im looking at is 512mb. how much of a difference would that be compared to yours?

 

@ottoman, truthfully, I don't "game" enough to utilize 512mb of memory in my graphics card, so I'm probably not a reliable source with that. Obviously, more memory is better-- and I definitely know that a 512mb 8600GT for $50 is a great deal, but there are other factors you have to consider (like clock speed, of course). Because I don't game a lot, I would prefer a 256mb card clocked at 620MHz over a 512mb card clocked at 540MHz because I'll never utilize all 512mb of graphics memory, but the increased speed helps.

 

I usually look the product up on Newegg and do a comparison to other models. The customer reviews for graphics cards are mostly written by intense gamers, and they will give you all kinds of specifics to work with.

 

Hope that helps! Here are more specific xbench results, just in case. I can say that the 8600GT works WONDERFULLY with Leopard and NVInject, that's for sure.

 

also (unrelated), regarding my boot time issue and questions about AHCI, I noticed that by enabling AHCI on my DS3L board, I stop getting the IOKitWaiting timeout when booting, which cuts my boot time down by almost a minute. I'm now booting into Leopard in under 30 seconds. w00t.

 

However, has anybody with a DS3L used the normal combo update method to update to 10.5.2? I tried twice yesterday and no matter what, it wouldn't boot. Bombed out at "Still waiting for root device." I've gotten that same error before when I tried changing my SATA mode in BIOS from "IDE Native" to "Legacy IDE," and some people say there is a fix for it, but I can't get it to work. I tried booting -s, but I can't even get to the terminal command prompt because it just keeps spitting out "Still waiting for root device." -x (safe mode) and -f (extensions rebuild) aren't working either. Any suggestions?

 

If there's someone out there with a DS3L who has successfully updated to 10.5.2 using the normal combo update method, I would love to hear from you with your specs and experience!

[thepunkerguy]

@cubswinfllclssic

I used the Kalyway 10.5.2 combo update and then the Kernal updates and all works fine for me.. might want to give that a shot

- Mike

[newbmac]

Could someone with a Pentium e2160 comment on how well VMWare runs?

 

I noticed that the Pentium e2160 does NOT contain the Intel virtualization extensions. This could be a big deal for me as I know VMWare is very important for my future hackintosh.

 

Thanks!

[thepunkerguy]

Could someone with a Pentium e2160 comment on how well VMWare runs?

 

I noticed that the Pentium e2160 does NOT contain the Intel virtualization extensions. This could be a big deal for me as I know VMWare is very important for my future hackintosh.

 

Thanks!

 

I Installed VMware and Parallels the other night on my E2160 (running at 3.2ghz) and they both seem to run great and fast for me. It seems Parallels might be a tad quicker. They don't exactly play games because of the video card drivers and such, but for applications It seems speedy for me!

- Mike

[ottoman1384]

@ottoman, truthfully, I don't "game" enough to utilize 512mb of memory in my graphics card, so I'm probably not a reliable source with that. Obviously, more memory is better-- and I definitely know that a 512mb 8600GT for $50 is a great deal, but there are other factors you have to consider (like clock speed, of course). Because I don't game a lot, I would prefer a 256mb card clocked at 620MHz over a 512mb card clocked at 540MHz because I'll never utilize all 512mb of graphics memory, but the increased speed helps.

 

I usually look the product up on Newegg and do a comparison to other models. The customer reviews for graphics cards are mostly written by intense gamers, and they will give you all kinds of specifics to work with.

 

Hope that helps! Here are more specific xbench results, just in case. I can say that the 8600GT works WONDERFULLY with Leopard and NVInject, that's for sure.

 

also (unrelated), regarding my boot time issue and questions about AHCI, I noticed that by enabling AHCI on my DS3L board, I stop getting the IOKitWaiting timeout when booting, which cuts my boot time down by almost a minute. I'm now booting into Leopard in under 30 seconds. w00t.

 

However, has anybody with a DS3L used the normal combo update method to update to 10.5.2? I tried twice yesterday and no matter what, it wouldn't boot. Bombed out at "Still waiting for root device." I've gotten that same error before when I tried changing my SATA mode in BIOS from "IDE Native" to "Legacy IDE," and some people say there is a fix for it, but I can't get it to work. I tried booting -s, but I can't even get to the terminal command prompt because it just keeps spitting out "Still waiting for root device." -x (safe mode) and -f (extensions rebuild) aren't working either. Any suggestions?

 

If there's someone out there with a DS3L who has successfully updated to 10.5.2 using the normal combo update method, I would love to hear from you with your specs and experience!

 

thanks for the help. im gonna check newegg when i get home from work. see if itll be worth it.

 

i see you overclocked your e4600. i have an e4500 and was thinking of ocing it. is it hard to do and how risky is it?

i dont want to fry a $120. i built this machine for exactly $299, by using the ide hdd and burner i had in my old b&w g3. so you know im being cheap here. lol/