hmm forgot about updating this....
ZZF gave me a prepaid shipping voucher to return the mobo, but been so busy, haven't had time to return it. I gave up waiting on Abit to work out their bioses for the AB9, (stuck a 915 in there for now), and am idling the 6300 until I get another mobo.
The Gigabyte 965 DS3 with E6400 is running very smooth, no issues at all, was able to run it up to 3200 mhz with minimal effort. it's been crunching for almost 2 weeks, tomorrow it should pass my fleet of D's @4Ghz in RAC. Here's the results-
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=2629865 Pretty impressive....