SPCR

I was hoping to get the Asus P5K Deluxe, which would have made things simple, but everyone seems to complain that the P5K runs hotter than Gigabyte's offering, so fine, I'll get the Gigabyte.

But when I go to the Gigabyte Web site, I see that they have no fewer than 27 motherboards based on the P35 chipset! And I'd really like to be informed as to how they differ. I understand that most seem to prefer the GA-P35-DS3R but there's also the GA-P35C-DS3R or the GA-P35-DS3 or the GA-P35-DS3P and I'd really like to know what the differences are. I assume the letters mean something. Does the R in DS3R mean RAID, perhaps? What does the C mean in P35C?

Thanks.

P35C:
4 DDR2 slots, 2 DDR3 slots. Otherwise, same as DS3R.

DS3R has raid...but what the "R" actually is I don't really know.
As for the 27 motherboards...Gigabyte also lists the different revisions of the same model.

I'm amazed by how many boards they have for this series. Then they create another variation just to replace the parallel/serial ports with USB... Incredible... At least I was able to pick two different boards out that were just what I needed.

Sadly, they didn't have the exact board that I wanted. I did get something close, though.

Just goes to show you...

I think ASUS has about a dozen P5B boards. If you include all their i965 boards, they probably wtfpwn Gigabyte in sheer numbers

Shmanky wrote:Why does Gigabyte have 27 boards based on the P35 chipset??

Because they are stupid and don't realize that it confuses people.

But the hardware is good, so try to work through it. Narrow your selection down to a handful and use their website product compare feature to finally decide.

I welcome this. One size does not fit all. Now you can choose which ever suits you best.

Some of those are revisions of a particular board, with some boards having 3 versions. The BIOS and driver files are the same for different versions of the same board, but the manuals are updated to reflect the changes. The new revisions replace the earlier ones, so it's not as if they actually have 27 different ones on the market at once.

If you go to their Comparison Sheet page, there are two ways of searching in their Comparison Sheet Search box. The bottom option will let you narrow things down a bit. For instance, next to "Type:," if you select "Socket 775" in the "By Socket" box and "Intel P35" in the "By Chipset" box, then check the "No" radio button for "By VGA On-Board," that results in 6 boards (still a lot, but it's workable). If you also get rid of on-board RAID, that results in just one board.

I agree, though: it would be nice if they had a radio button for each of whatever those letters in the model names mean so we could find exactly what we want.

Thanks everyone for your responses.

Newegg has a great comparison feature for discerning motherboard differences. I think it is something that has played a key role in their success. I always review hardware at Newegg before making the purchase, even if the transaction is done elsewhere.