# MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) PCI-Express 3.0 LGA1155



## cadaveca (Aug 5, 2011)

Our first look at PCIe 3.0 comes from none other than MSI, with their recently launched Z68A-GD65 (G3). Adding support early for future Intel CPUs, the Z68A-GD65 (G3), with its true PCIe 3.0 support, not only offers a bit for the future, but also a bit of extra speed, right now. We take the overclocking-oriented Z68A-GD65 (G3) for a spin.

*Show full review*


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## blu3flannel (Aug 24, 2011)

Looks like a pretty nifty board. I'm glad they got rid of the base block increaser and reducer buttons, as well as the OC Genie button. IMO, they were pretty pointless.


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## EarthDog (Aug 24, 2011)

They were on this platform!!! Nice review cad.


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## Trackr (Aug 25, 2011)

My problem with this board is:

Its main feature won't be usable for 8 months.

Who makes a product like that?


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## W1zzard (Aug 25, 2011)

Trackr said:


> Who makes a product like that?



I think the company is called MSI


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## heky (Aug 25, 2011)

Nice review cadaveca, finally an MSI board. I was wondering, does the board raise the vcore under load? My P67A-GD65 B3 raises the voltage around 0.04v under load, which is out of intel specs i believe. And no bios changed that till now. But i see the Z68A-GD65 G3 uses a different bios, so it might not have these issues.


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## cadaveca (Aug 25, 2011)

heky said:


> I was wondering, does the board raise the vcore under load?



Depends on how you are clocking, and how you adjust voltage. Personally, I prefer to use Turbo to OC, and "offset" voltage, rather than setting voltages and using loadline calibration.

That said, I did not see voltage increase under load. It was either what I set, or stayed just under.



Trackr said:


> Its main feature won't be usable for 8 months.



I am not so sure about that. I saw some sizable performance increases that can only be explained by the PCIe support. The fact of the matter is that if you use PCIe SSD, you'll see a performance improvement there, immediately.


This is a board built for benching, From component design, to layout and features...THAT is the "Main Feature" of this product, not the PCIe 3.0 support. That PCIe 3.0 support is just one addition that makes it a far more valuable product for benching, both for now, and in the future.


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## EarthDog (Aug 25, 2011)

Im curious since its not a bandwidth issue (last I checked 4x was plenty for revo x2 at least), what makes the performance increase on this board? Latency improvements on PCIe3.x?


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## cadaveca (Aug 25, 2011)

EarthDog said:


> Im curious since its not a bandwidth issue (last I checked 4x was plenty for revo x2 at least), what makes the performance increase on this board? Latency improvements on PCIe3.x?



I do beleive that MSI has optimized the BIOS specifically for these drives. PCIe 3.0 not only features higher bandwidth, but also less traffic management overhead, and they have taken advantage of these features NOW rather than later.

Also, 3D performance is a fair bit higher than other products. This is not totally obvious in the benchmarks I use, other than 3DMark, but when I was using it to play BC2 and a few other titles with the guys on the TeamSpeak server, things felt smoother. Of course, this could just be some sort of placebo effect, but given the high 3DMark performance, with somewhat lower memory bandwidth, I've no choice but to attribute the performance boost to the PCIe configuration.


If there was no noticible difference between this board and a PCIe 2.0 board, I would have mentioned it, but the fact remains that in several benches, it's the top performer, and I ahd no problems that were worth mentioning...I did have a few problems with memory on the first BIOS, but I contacted MSI, and they provided a BIOS that solved those problems. I hard a hard time coming up with negatives on this product, and that's really saying something.


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## EarthDog (Aug 25, 2011)

Awesome..thanks for the info.


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## caleb (Sep 7, 2011)

Whats the difference with GD55 ? I see it lacks a SATA slot but the specs say it has 2x16 PCIE and this one is 16x and 8x. Either I don't get something or these are confusing.


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## heky (Sep 7, 2011)

Both boards have 2 16x PCIE lanes, but the second one is x8 electricaly, on both motherboards. The difference is, as you said, some sata ports, voltage reading points, etc. No big difference. Oh and the most important thing. The GD55 is not gen3 PCIE.


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## caleb (Sep 7, 2011)

heky said:


> The GD55 is not gen3 PCIE.



http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z68A-GD55--G3-.html


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## cadaveca (Sep 7, 2011)

The differences remain the SATA controller, as well as the voltage measuring bits. The goodies in the box probably differ as well.


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## caleb (Sep 7, 2011)

Price drop is pretty decent between those two.


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## Retro* (Sep 18, 2011)

It also appears that the GD55 has only one bios chip compared to the two on the GD65.
Always nice to have a backup in case of a bad flash.
@cadaveca:
Thanks for the thorough and well-photographed review.
It helped me to decide between the GD65 and a couple other boards I was considering, to upgrade to from my G43.
I now have a Z68A-GD65 G3 on it's way from NCIX.
Looking forward to it's more extensive bios settings, amongst other things.


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## EarthDog (Sep 18, 2011)

Cad - Did you have any issues with this thing at 50x multi or so? Reason I ask is b/c it is throttling when Im sitting at 50x and goes down to 47x with a heavy multi threaded (Prime05/Wprime) load. I actually had to have Cstate enabled to even be able to use the 50x multi with more than 2 cores. Otherwise it would boot in to windows at 49x.

I have all power options disabled, wattage set to 250W under turbo, Overspeed proctection disabled.

If not, what bios are you on and is there a chance you could screenshot those settings?

TIA!


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## Retro* (Sep 18, 2011)

That downclocking multi issue seems to be related to the latest bios for these boards, here is a similar case with a GD80:
http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=152131.0


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## heky (Sep 18, 2011)

I am haveing the same issues with the latest couple of bioses on my P67A-GD65. When running linx or aida64 stress test, it throttles to 4.3 or 4.2ghz from 4.8. I have the long and short duration power setting set to 250W for both, but no luck. I informed the MSI technical support about the issue, but their reply was: the latest bios is the most stable, but not the quickest. Facepalm!


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## EarthDog (Sep 18, 2011)

Quickest? I just want it to hold the multi! 

Here I am thinking its a setting of mine, but... may not be if others are experiencing the same issues.


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## heky (Sep 18, 2011)

Thats exactly what i told them, i want my oc to stick the way i want it. I mean it would be ok if the proc would throttle becouse of high temperature or something, but not becouse of their incompetence.


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## EarthDog (Sep 18, 2011)

Well, I'm in contact with my MSI rep about the issue and will report back if there is a resolution.

Others at my home site have posted that the june bios resolves this issue? I havent had time to try it out... care to?


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## heky (Sep 18, 2011)

For my board the 1.C bios(old) solves the issue, but has other issues. But yeah, the older versions dont have the throttling issues.


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## cadaveca (Sep 18, 2011)

EarthDog said:


> Cad - Did you have any issues with this thing at 50x multi or so? Reason I ask is b/c it is throttling when Im sitting at 50x and goes down to 47x with a heavy multi threaded (Prime05/Wprime) load. I actually had to have Cstate enabled to even be able to use the 50x multi with more than 2 cores. Otherwise it would boot in to windows at 49x.
> 
> I have all power options disabled, wattage set to 250W under turbo, Overspeed proctection disabled.
> 
> ...



I always update to the most recent non-beta release at the time of review. Of course, sometimes I may complete a review several weeks before you see it, but I do try to list the BIOS in the review itself.

I received this board before it was fully in retail, and I did have a few issues on the release BIOS, but MSI was quick to provide me with a BIOS that didn't have the same problems.

I di NOT notice any throttle issues, however, I always overclock using all power features enabled, and I also use offset voltages ratehr than a set votlage with loadline calibration.

Initially, i found some stability problem from too low voltage on VCCIO/CPU_NB. BIOS fixed it. 

If you are still ahving issues in a couple of days I can toss the board in the teest rig and take a look, but right now I have another product in there that I am working on right this second. So maybe this afternoon I'll try; we will see.


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## EarthDog (Sep 18, 2011)

Throttling doesnt happen where you overclocked in the review (and what you have seen in the thread). So unless you want to try 50x+ multi's to assist, I wouldnt bother... but thank you.

Im trying to see if there are any common denominators with bios's.

I have tried everything as far as power goes as well offset/regular/llc on/off tubro on, power options on/off....

When I first got the board it wouldnt boot with 2 sticks (Gskill RipjawX Turbulance 2133 7-10-7-27) I had to up the voltage to even get it to DDR3 1600.


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## cadaveca (Sep 18, 2011)

yeah, I can try higher multis, no problem. I don't really have sufficient cooling to do, say 2 hours of IBT, but I got enough to take a look, for sure. I still have a 55 chip that I can use as well. It's just that, as you know, 5500 MHz drops a tonne of heat.

what BIOS is on your board?


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## EarthDog (Sep 18, 2011)

I dont recall what I had (original shipping bios is my guess), but what the MSI rep sent me was E7681IMS.N25 and that didnt help. they are looking in to it however.

It just takes a 'blip' to see the throttling so no need for anything but good air. 

This is the Juen bios that supposedly works (have not tried yet): E7681IMS.M30

These was a not go: E7681IMS.M56 / E7681IMS.1D0


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## leftyman (Sep 28, 2011)

*Heavy throttling*

Hello:


I have this mb with a 2500k and a noctua NH-d14 and the multi lowers from
48x to 41x with every bios except the initial release one (N00). I hope I dont ever
need a newer bios beacause I wood loose half my overclocking potential....


best regards


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## cadaveca (Sep 28, 2011)

leftyman said:


> Hello:
> 
> 
> I have this mb with a 2500k and a noctua NH-d14 and the multi lowers from
> ...



That is due to Turbo Current and Wattage limits. If they are too low, the CPU will automatically lower multi to stay within those limits. Same applies to all boards when overclocking using Turbo mode, and you'd more than likely have the problem no matter what product you used. i did not use the release BIOS for testing, as I always try to use the most recent for any product, and I did not have any issues with throttling, or this would have reflected in the scores.


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## EarthDog (Sep 28, 2011)

He can try setting the wattage/current to 250w and see if that helps. Or try non turbo overclocking. It didnt help me, or many others though. MSI is working on a solution. 

Cad, your 45x multi with the nice low voltage (compared to say the 50x and 1.48v I use) is at least part of the reason why the issue doesn't show up (proper bios that doesnt have these limits is another). NOte, this user was trying 48x multi. I would imagine once he makes those adjustments to the wattage he may run into the same thing others are (47x max multi under load).

Lefty... can you email me the bios? I will pm you my info. Thanks!


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## cadaveca (Sep 28, 2011)

EarthDog said:


> He can try setting the wattage/current to 250w and see if that helps. Or try non turbo overclocking. It didnt help me, or many others though. MSI is working on a solution.
> 
> Cad, your 45x multi with the nice low voltage (compared to say the 50x and 1.48v I use) is at least part of the reason why the issue doesn't show up (proper bios that doesnt have these limits is another). NOte, this user was trying 48x multi. I would imagine once he makes those adjustments to the wattage he may run into the same thing others are (47x max multi under load).
> 
> Lefty... can you email me the bios? I will pm you my info. Thanks!



I totally forgot about you mentioning this issue. Funny thing is, I haven't seen it on my board. Interesting. I did have this board and did the review before public release though, so who knows whats up. I hope it's not the same issue keeping him @ 41x...that'd really suck.


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## EarthDog (Sep 28, 2011)

It was your low multi and voltage that does it (or doesnt do it )...and MAYBE a 'good' bios. I can rock and roll all day long at 45x. Its when Im above 47x that it throttles back to 47... IF I set the wattage/current to their max of 250/255.


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## cadaveca (Sep 28, 2011)

EarthDog said:


> It was your low multi and voltage that does it (or doesnt do it )...and MAYBE a 'good' bios. I can rock and roll all day long at 45x. Its when Im above 47x that it throttles back to 47... IF I set the wattage/current to their max of 250/255.



I do not see the same, and have tried my two CPUs. My 55x chip is not so "low voltage", needing 1.35v for 4.5. 

could be BIOS, I got mine direct from MSI with information that the same BIOS would be flashed to all shipping boards.

Low and behold, this BIOS is what works. My version number is not the same, however.



I was hoping he'd try the limit increases, and report back before just up and saying it was the BIOS...he could potentially get 48x without issue with how you've described the problem.


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## heky (Sep 28, 2011)

It is not a problem of setting the power limits. It is a problem with the latest bios versions from MSI. I have the same problem, throttling under linx, ibt, etc. with anything higher than 4.5, and i can set the power limits to 250W(which btw this chip can never achieve). On my board, with bioses up to 1.C, there are no problems, but 1.D,1.E, and all the betas after 1.C have this issue. MSI really should get their act together. I am using a 6 months old bios becouse of that.


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## EarthDog (Sep 28, 2011)

Its several bios versions. You guys *may* have got lucky with the bios and the fact that you never pushed past 45x. Again, it doesnt happen at that 'low' multi is why you didnt see it. With any bios I can sit at 45x under load with power limits set. Im betting good money says that if you tried 50x, cad, it would throttle...unless you have a good bios. But again, we know you didnt see it because you havent pushed to where it begins to show this behavior.

Heky, can you email me the bios version you have? YHPM.


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## cadaveca (Sep 28, 2011)

EarthDog said:


> we know you didnt see it because you havent pushed to where it begins to show this behavior.



That's a pretty large assumption. And I'll leave it at that. You asked me to test @ 50x, and I did, and I did not have the problem. I am also using a BIOS from prior to release, that you may not have.




heky said:


> It is not a problem of setting the power limits.



There is more to power settings that just current and wattage limits, there is also a setting in BIOS that probably isn't open to the end user that can fix this. It should be automatically enabled once power limits are increased, not sure why it isn't.

MSI simply needs to make this option open to the end user, as ECS has.

You all are talking like i don't know what's up...do you even know what setting I am refering to?


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## EarthDog (Sep 28, 2011)

Sure its an assumption. You didnt tell me via PM, nor mention it in this thread that you tested that multi! Not to mention in this thread you said, "your 55x chip needs 1.37 @ 45x", with nary a mention that you went past that. How am I supposed to know you did that?? Im a reviewer, not a mind reader! 

With that, I will PM you my info and if its no trouble, please send me your bios, or LMK which one it is on their website and I will get it. 

Thanks!



cadaveca said:


> You all are talking like i don't know what's up...do you even know what setting I am refering to?


Overspeed Protection? But that needs disabled, so thats not it...?

Note we have mentioned that information 'like you dont know whats up' becuase we had no idea, since you didnt tell anyone, that you tested it. Please accept my apologies for that, but know you brought that on yourself for not sharing your testing. 

Please be more helpful to the public you voluntarily serve instead of being cryptic about this bios setting that you apparently have that we may not? I can also share this information with MSI to hopefully speed up the problem resolution.


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## cadaveca (Sep 28, 2011)

you can rest assurred that from me personally, when I say I'm gonna do something, it gets done.

I did say in my post up a few that i tried BOTH CPUs without the problem. Since we discussed the problem only happens at higher multis, and you requested I try 50x, that is EXACTLY what I was referring to in the post above.


I mention the other CPU so let you know it's not really something CPU specifc, as neither my high VID nor my low VID chip have the problem.


Clearly, since there may be an issue, and my board does not have it currently, I'm not about to flash a BIOS that might cause the problem.

In BIOS is a setting for MAXIMUM TDP. This is NOT overspeed protection...it's a literal switch that raises the power consumption limits, which seem to be something not specific to Turbo, like the wattage and current limits are.







Second option in this screenshot. This option is DIFFERENT than the adjustable Current setting(default 97a, up to 200a). Adjusting the variable current limit that some BIOSes have(and this board has as well, but only adjustable via XTU) will not increase the max multi available under high load without this setting being adjusted as well.


This is pretty basic stuff, IMHO, so if MSI disabled the option, it must have been on purpose. I cannot aruge against MSI doing so, as it may save a few CPUs. 


Things like this are why i tell users trying to OC to the limit, say under sub-zero, to always start with the original release BIOS, no matter what board you are using. Typically BIOS updates adjust things because stability problems or such have been noticed, so it's only natural that at times, BIOSes will limit clocking abilities.


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## EarthDog (Sep 28, 2011)

Yeah sorry, couldnt pull that out of any of your posts. Thanks for taking the time to test and show your results. 

Im not asking you to flash to a different bios, Im asking you to send me yours. You have a PM with my email. 

I *think* I have IA Core limit in there and tried that..... I will have to check. This board has been collecting dust for almost 2 weeks now.


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## cadaveca (Sep 28, 2011)

This option isn't available to the end user in the MSI BIOS that I have seen, unfortunately. MSI merely needs to expose it. 


I couldn't find anything else that may lead to this issue, and the cause and behavior are pretty specific, which helps eliminate the probable causes. It can ONLY be that option, IMHO, causing the problem.

Myself, I'm more interested in why you need to update the BIOS in the first place.


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## EarthDog (Sep 28, 2011)

Me personally? I tried this on the bios that came with it (E7681IMS v23.2B1) first and experienced the throttling. And the one he gave me (E7681IMS.N25) did not work as well. I will try yours (E7681IMS N21) I just received and report back. If that resolves it, I believe we can confidently say that something in that bios that isnt in the others did it.

You will have to give me some time though as I am moving Friday and packing...


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## heky (Sep 30, 2011)

@EarthDog
The latest beta bios fixes the throttling issue for your board.

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=151148.50


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## EarthDog (Oct 6, 2011)

Confirmed that N34 and N35 fixed this issue. Thanks for the PM Heky!!!


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## orangec (Oct 13, 2011)

Hi, 

I have an ASUS P8Z68 V-Pro board, and as many owners, I have a problem with awakening from sleep mode , and booting up , if *Internal PCC overvoltage* is set to Auto or Enabled, so disabling is the "cure" for this issue , 

so my question is  the "Internal PLL overvoltage" present in  Msi z68a-gd65 (g3) BIOS, and has any of you experienced, issue mentioned above, 

tnx


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## cadaveca (Oct 13, 2011)

Most boards have this issue.


Personally, I do not think anyone should be really using PLL overvoltage, so no, I have not checked. Do you really require it?


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## orangec (Oct 14, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Do you really require it?



Actually, no , I was just curios, why something strongly related to the overclocking needs to be disabled, on a board which is ment to be a fine oveclocker. Contrary to my initial belief, this issue si present with Z 68 boards , regardless of vendor. Anyway, one of the solutions is setting *Ai Overclocker Tuner* to *[X.M.P]* under Ai Tweaker Menu, and* BCLK* to *100 *. More complex way to fix multiple boot issue : http://blog.tabinda.net/microhard/p67-dualdouble-triple-boot-issue/

I hope someone will find this usefull, cheers


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## cadaveca (Oct 14, 2011)

orangec said:


> Actually, no , I was just curios, why something strongly related to the overclocking needs to be disabled, on a board which is ment to be a fine oveclocker. Contrary to my initial belief, this issue si present with Z 68 boards , regardless of vendor. Anyway, one of the solutions is setting *Ai Overclocker Tuner* to [X.M.P] under Ai Tweaker Menu, and* BCLK* to *100 *. More complex way to fix multiple boot issue : http://blog.tabinda.net/microhard/p67-dualdouble-triple-boot-issue/
> 
> I hope someone will find this usefull, cheers






I understand your opinion on that, however, that is kinda of how it works when you overclock to the level that requires PLL Overvoltage - some caveats must be made. There are many boards that do not even have that option at all, perhaps due to the issues it causes.


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## orangec (Oct 14, 2011)

Well, I will have to get into all this. Next step is to see how  my Kingston can do at 1600 MHz, at lower voltages, then 1, 65 V, which is automatically set by the [X.M.P] profile. Great forum you got there, cadaveca,  glad I found it


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## ColdPlay (Oct 27, 2011)

*amd + pcie 3.0?*

NIce review!
I would def bee looking for pcie 3.0 on my next board/build!
Would be nice to find an amd board that supports it. 
Does anyone know when that will be?
I think the fx 8150 would do nice paired with pcie 3.0!

Thx Cold


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## SonDa5 (Dec 10, 2011)

I'm on my second Z68 GD65 G3.  First one was defective and I'm getting ready to install OS on 2nd.

First I want to make sure I have a good BIOS.  

What BIOS is the best stable BIOS for full over clocking features?


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## cadaveca (Dec 10, 2011)

The N34 and N35 that EarthDog mentioned above seem to work well for most users. I've still got the pre-release BIOS on my own GD65 board.


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## SonDa5 (Dec 11, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> The N34 and N35 that EarthDog mentioned above seem to work well for most users. I've still got the pre-release BIOS on my own GD65 board.




Does the pre-release BIOS work?  I keep reading about problems with the MB.  As much as I like it for its use of "Military Class" electronic components and its 5 year warranty I'm thinking about returning it because of so many problems with the BIOS that I read about online.


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## cadaveca (Dec 11, 2011)

Can't say I have had any problems with my board. And yes, the pre-release BIOS works well.the only differnce between the BIOS i got and the official release is that the one I have doesn't have the throttling issue. But then, that BIOS didn't work for EarthDog, I do not think.

As always, ram used is key.


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## EarthDog (Dec 12, 2011)

SonDa5 said:


> Does the pre-release BIOS work?  I keep reading about problems with the MB.  As much as I like it for its use of "Military Class" electronic components and its 5 year warranty I'm thinking about returning it because of so many problems with the BIOS that I read about online.


So long as you use those bios, you will be fine. The board is a champ with those.


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