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Which board is better?



 
 
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  #11  
Old February 22nd 10, 10:31 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
John Doe
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,274
Default Which board is better?

Barry Watzman WatzmanNOSPAM neo.rr.com wrote:

"Even if the copper is aiding in the transport of some heat,
it eventually has to be transferred into the air stream, to get
rid of it."


Unfortunately, Bart does not know how to follow a USENET
conversation.

I do not believe that heat is, at all or in any way, part of the
thicker/thinner copper issue; I believe that the resistance of
the copper is low enough that even in the boards with thinner
copper, no significant level of heat is generated in the copper
to begin with.

HOWEVER, thicker copper would have less resistance. The
significance of that is that is not necessarily so much that the
heat would be better dissipated, but rather that the heat would
never be generated in the first place (or, more correctly, that
less heat would be generated).


You are clueless, Bart. Copper thickness has absolutely positively
nothing to do with generating heat.

And try posting in context like the rest of us do here on USENET,
Bart. Posting in context helps, especially in a technical
conversation, assuming you do want others to know what you are
talking about.
--











Paul wrote:
Gorby wrote:
I have an P35C-DS3R with an C2D Q9650 with 4x1 Gig Corsair DDR2 RAM.

I have been looking at getting either an EP45-DS4 or EP45-UD3
motherboard. These are the only available at the local stores as most
MBs are now DDR3.

I've looked at the differences, but don't really understand why 2oz of
extra copper in the MB is any better.
It is said that the extra copper makes the board run cooler. But the
DS4 has extra cooling on the board with its heatpipe setup over the
Northbridge, etc.

The major difference I see is the DS4 has 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Which do you think is a "better" board? Which one is newer?

Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Gorby


I recommend downloading the user manual for each motherboard from the
Gigabyte site. One page of the manual contains an architecture diagram,
and anything they're ashamed of, will be admitted in the footnotes of
that page. For example, on some motherboards, the PCI Express x1 slots
and an x4 slot, share the same lane bandwidth. If you were to use the x4
slot, the x1 slots stop working. It is for issues like that, that you
should be reading the user manual and doing your comparison.

As for a definition of half ounce or 2 oz copper, you can see a table
here. Not all copper conductive layers in the PCB, will be the same
thickness. Thicker copper helps with power transmission (in the power
distribution layer). Thinner copper may help with track density and
impedance control, in signal layers. Even if the copper is aiding
in the transport of some heat, it eventually has to be
transferred into the air stream, to get rid of it.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Practic...ics/PCB_Layout

As for finding motherboards with DDR2, there are still some out
there. I would never think of looking in local computer stores,
for "unique" motherboards. Local stores have limited stock.
But if you shop online, you can still find older stock.

Paul




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From: Barry Watzman WatzmanNOSPAM neo.rr.com
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Subject: Which board is better?
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  #12  
Old February 23rd 10, 12:58 AM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
Gorby[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 40
Default Which board is better?

On 22/02/2010 7:55 PM, Paul wrote:


ftp://download.gigabyte.ru/manual/mb...ep45-ud3_e.pdf

ftp://download.gigabyte.ru/manual/mo...5-ds4(p)_e.pdf

On page 8 of the EP45-DS4 manual, is the block diagram. The board has
a PCI Express slot wired with x4 lanes. If you plug an x4 card into the
slot with the x4 lanes, the lane switches shown, will disconnect the
three PCI Express x1 slots. So the EP45-DS4 does have a "trick". At least
one person discovered this while using the board.

The EP45-DS4 has two slots suitable for video cards. Using external
lane steering logic, it can run two slots with x8 wiring on each. The
EP45-UD3 has only one video card slot, running at x16. In fact, if
Gigabyte wanted, they wouldn't even need to install a P45 Northbridge
for that board - as the functionality they need to build the board that
way, is met by the P43. There are no compromises in the lane wiring, and
all three of the PCI Express x1 slots will be fully operational at
all times on the UD3.

It really boils down to what kind of cards you have available
to you, to insert into the slots. For example, I have a PCI sound
card that I move from system to system. I have a WinTV card which is
PCI. I have a Promise Ultra133 card I use occasionally (when I'm playing
with a lot of IDE drives). The system with three PCI slots might aid
the reuse of my cards.

One board has a parallel port, the other does not.

I count having one GbE LAN port, as a good start. Two GbE LAN ports
would allow Internet Connection Sharing (ICS), which may be a minor
benefit if you don't have a GbE Switch or Router, and wish to share
files at GbE rates between two machines. I've done a setup like this
before. Windows has ICS built in.

GbE (ICS) GbE
Internet ----------- New_computer ------------ Other_computer

The motherboard with two LAN ports also supports "Teaming", but I don't
know if in the real world, there is a lot of situations that will come
into play. This thread discusses how it works.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r233...aming-Question

I'd have to pick the UD3, simply because it allows me to use my older
cards. The DS4 might help solve problems, like adding high bandwidth
PCI Express functions at a future date. So if you were planning on
getting an expensive hardware RAID card with PCI Express edge connector,
then the DS4 might be better for that. I don't view Crossfire to be
a good enough reason to buy a motherboard with two video card class
slots.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/...d3_1.1_big.jpg


http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/...45-ds4_big.jpg


On the DS4, instead of putting the three black PCI Express x1 slots,
they could have put a couple PCI slots instead. At least that
would have solved my particular wants a bit better. By doing that,
then there wouldn't be any interaction with the usage of the x4
PCI Express slot.

Paul

Thanks again! You have settled my mind.
I'm going for the UD3.

I am not using Crossfire, nor intending to in the future. I have a
Radeon 4870. This card runs all games at max for my 1680x1050 resolution
monitor. Even if I upgrade to a 5670, then that is still a cheap, yet
powerful single card. I don't see the need to Crossfire.

I have no devices that use a parallel port. I print to a print server.

I also have an XFi ExtremeGamer sound card that will be used on the
board. The onboard sound chips are OK for speaker use, however you can
hear hissing with headphones. The external sound card is much better
(and is better in games, as well).

What sort of cards use the x4 PCI slot? The XFi sound card only uses a
x1 slot.

Let's hope the UD3 is still there...
Cheers
Gordy
  #13  
Old February 23rd 10, 03:21 AM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,364
Default Which board is better?

Gorby wrote:

Thanks again! You have settled my mind.
I'm going for the UD3.

I am not using Crossfire, nor intending to in the future. I have a
Radeon 4870. This card runs all games at max for my 1680x1050 resolution
monitor. Even if I upgrade to a 5670, then that is still a cheap, yet
powerful single card. I don't see the need to Crossfire.

I have no devices that use a parallel port. I print to a print server.

I also have an XFi ExtremeGamer sound card that will be used on the
board. The onboard sound chips are OK for speaker use, however you can
hear hissing with headphones. The external sound card is much better
(and is better in games, as well).

What sort of cards use the x4 PCI slot? The XFi sound card only uses a
x1 slot.

Let's hope the UD3 is still there...
Cheers
Gordy


PCI Express lanes are high speed serial connections. A "Version 1"
lane is 250MB/sec. A "Version 2" lane is 500MB/sec. Generally speaking,
they now put Version 2 lanes on the Northbridge, and the Northbridge
drives the video card slot(s).

The Southbridge has "Version 1" lanes. They are used for applications
on the motherboard, such as the GbE Ethernet chip, a small SATA/IDE
controller. Things like Firewire might use the existing PCI bus
on the motherboard.

Left over lanes, are wired to PCI Express slots.

The way the slots work, is they can use as big a connector as they
want. The motherboard designer could use x16 sized slots for every
PCI Express connector placed on the board.

Then, they don't have to wire up all the pins on the connector.
They can install a x16 connector and wire up x4 of the lanes.
This is why a buyer must read the architecture diagram *very carefully*
to figure out what bandwidth any of the slots is getting.

Installed cards, can use variable numbers of lanes. For example,
if you used a x16 connector, then an x16, x8, x4, or x1 card could
fit, but if only x4 lanes were wired, the maximum bandwidth
available would be proportional to x4 (about 1GB/sec). The x1 card
would get 250MB/sec max. The x4 card 1GB/sec max. The x8 and x16
would also be limited to 1GB/sec max, because not all the lanes
are wired up. (Note - the reason I'm quoting these particular numbers,
is because an x4 slot would typically be connected to the Southbridge,
and so the lanes are likely to be the slower kind.)

Northbridge ------- PCI Express x16 Version 2 ---- video card
| 8GB/sec
|
| DMI bus 2GB/sec
|
Southbridge ------- PCI Express x1 or x4, Version 1 lanes
| at 250MB/sec per lane. Up to 8 lanes on
PCI the Southbridge.

x4 might be suitable for a USB3 or SATA3 card (coming soon to a
store near you). x4 might also be suitable for some kind of RAID
storage card (4, 8, 12, 16, 24 SATA connectors).

With the slot types, you really need to survey the market, and
see what slots are popular, and what slots you can use for
various stuff.

For example, there are "workstation" motherboards out there, which
include a PCI-X bridge chip and a couple PCI-X slots. The slots
are relatively long, and use PCI protocol like the smaller
regular 32 bit PCI slots. But the PCI-X slots support much higher bandwidth.
Normally, you wouldn't be interested in those, except if you could
get RAID cards on the used market. Sometimes, you can find a better
deal, on some older technology, that just happens to fit a PCI-X
slot. PCI-X would more normally have been a server motherboard
technology. Workstation motherboards, are desktop boards, with
a couple PCI-X slots thrown in, so you can get some old stuff
from servers and plug it in.

Slowly, more PCI Express type cards are becoming available. And you may
find the odd reasonably priced card with a connector larger than x1.

Again, it all depends on the final objective for the box. If you
were building a file server, you'd then spend more time matching
slot type, to the used RAID controller market. The PCI Express slots
they're putting on motherboards now, go largely unused, but things
won't stay that way forever.

I like the old 32 bit PCI slots, because I already own a few different
cards, which I use regularly. I prefer my PCI sound card, because
the EAX support isn't broken on it, and it seems to work better
than some of the AC'97 and HDAudio onboard sound solutions I've
tried. And my WinTV BT878, allows me to copy stuff from the VCR.
I don't own any RAID cards (and will probably never be able to
afford them). I have several SCSI cards, but the disks I have for
them are museum pieces.

Paul
  #14  
Old February 26th 10, 01:19 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
John Doe
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,274
Default Which board is better?

John Doe wrote:

Paul wrote:


Thicker copper helps with power transmission (in the power
distribution layer). Thinner copper may help with track density
and impedance control, in signal layers. Even if the copper is
aiding in the transport of some heat, it eventually has to be
transferred into the air stream, to get rid of it.


[Thicker copper] might also help when using an infamous Intel
heatsink/fan combination?


On second thought, probably not. If the motherboard is thicker,
the pins are going to stick farther through before they latch, and
actually bend the motherboard more. I used long clamp style heavy
duty vise grips to hold the heatsink on the CPU, with some wood in
between for cushioning. I think it stuck the CPU to the heatsink
pretty well, at least the temperatures are very low

Next time I go with Intel, I will consider the cost of buying a
real heatsink/fan in addition to the CPU.
  #15  
Old May 27th 10, 02:48 AM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
Keith
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 119
Default Which board is better?

what are your RAM settings- on my P35 board with Corsair PC6400
(CM2x1024-6400C4) RAM, I cannot run 4 x 1 GB at 400 MHz only 270 , so I run
only 2 x 1 GB at higher speeds to avoid RAM errors.


"Gorby" wrote in message
...
I have an P35C-DS3R with an C2D Q9650 with 4x1 Gig Corsair DDR2 RAM.

I have been looking at getting either an EP45-DS4 or EP45-UD3 motherboard.
These are the only available at the local stores as most MBs are now DDR3.

I've looked at the differences, but don't really understand why 2oz of
extra copper in the MB is any better.
It is said that the extra copper makes the board run cooler. But the DS4
has extra cooling on the board with its heatpipe setup over the
Northbridge, etc.

The major difference I see is the DS4 has 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Which do you think is a "better" board? Which one is newer?

Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Gorby



  #16  
Old May 27th 10, 05:42 AM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
Gorby[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 40
Default Which board is better?

On 27/05/2010 11:18 AM, Keith wrote:
what are your RAM settings- on my P35 board with Corsair PC6400
(CM2x1024-6400C4) RAM, I cannot run 4 x 1 GB at 400 MHz only 270 , so I run
only 2 x 1 GB at higher speeds to avoid RAM errors.


wrote in message
...
I have an P35C-DS3R with an C2D Q9650 with 4x1 Gig Corsair DDR2 RAM.

snip
Thanks
Gorby



Sorry! I can't help now. I've purchased a new MB with a P45 chip.
I don't remember what the old RAM settings were. I do remember giving
them a touch more voltage (as stated in the Corsair web site for that RAM).

Those 4 sticks of Corsair RAM are now running happily in the P45 MB.
 




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