Gigabyte's GA6OXM7E i815 Socket 370 Motherboard Review

Gigabyte's GA-6OXM7E i815 Socket 370 Motherboard
It sure looks nice...but how does it perform?

By, Marco ?BigWop? Chiappetta
11 / 2 / 2000

The hardware community had been eagerly anticipating a worthy successor to the mighty 440BX chipset. When Intel released their 133MHz FSB capable "Coppermine" Pentium IIIs it was time to also replace the aging BX chipset with a more feature-rich, capable part. The BX lacked native support for AGP4X, UDMA/66/100 hard drive transfers and wasn't designed to fully support FSBs greater than 100MHz. To compensate, Intel released the i810 and i820 chipsets to handle the needs of these new Coppermine processors.

There were many issues to deal with should a user opt for one of these new Intel platforms though. Should someone choose an i810 powered platform they had to contend with dismal overall performance and the lack of an AGP slot. i820 users had to deal with outrageous prices on RDRAM which was necessary to realize the full potential performance of their new system. Intel also released something called an MTH (Memory Translator Hub) which allowed the i820 to use standard, much more affordable SDRAM but performance was terrible (when it worked) and all boards using this technology were eventually recalled. All of these issues coupled with VIA's release of the very popular Apollo Pro 133A chipset resulted in Intel losing much of the mainstream chipset market. 

Intel's response to this dilemma was to find a good mid-point. They wanted to design a chipset with all of the value of the i810 with performance and features similar to the i820. Their solution was the appropriately named i815. With all of the benefits of both the i810 and i820 plus the ability to use much cheaper SDRAM the i815 should be a winner. Many motherboard manufacturers have jumped at the opportunity to implement this newer chipset from Intel. Virtually all motherboard manufacturers have since introduced products utilizing the i815, today we're going to take a look at one of Gigabyte's offerings, the GA-6OXME7. Let's see what happens when you mix Intel's newest chipset and Gigabyte's design team...

Specifications of the GA-6OXM7E Some i815 & Socket 370 Action

Click for Enlarged View

The spec list reads like many other i815 boards, which is a good thing, the i815 is an excellent all around chipset. There are however a couple items worth mentioning. Our board came bundled with a Smart Card reader.

We didn't get around to actually using the reader to perform a secure transaction but it sure does look cool doesn't it?!? :) This is the first time we have even seen an item like this bundled with a motherboard but suspect that as e-business continues to blossom we'll see more and more of this. Kudos to Gigabyte for getting the ball rolling.

We mention this other item, not because the board comes with something others don't but because it's missing something that has become almost standard. The GA-6OXM7E does not offer any sort of over-clocking options via the system BIOS. You heard us right, no over-clocking via the BIOS. You can over-clock with this board though using some proprietary software from Gigabyte called Easy Tune III. We'll get more into the over-clocking and Easy Tune III a little later.

 Quality, Installation and Setup