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The beautiful thing
about a new processor platform is that with it is
born a whole new architecture and motherboard
platform to go with it. Pentium 4
motherboards are flowing fairly freely now from
various vendors and the second P4 / i850 based
product we have up to bat is from one of the
largest Taiwanese vendors in the market, Gigabyte.
You
probably didn't know this but Gigabyte is in the
top echelon of manufacturers in this space and
they ship about a million motherboards a
month. That my friends, is a lot of
product. They do well in the OEM sector
which is where the volume is, so it is no
surprise. However here at HotHardware, we
are more interested in products based on the end
user experience versus the OEM. This is a
look at Gigabyte's GA-8TX Pentium 4 i850
based motherboard. Let's see if Gigabyte can
deliver here as well.
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| Specifications
/ Features of the Gigabyte GA-8TX |
| Straight
up i850 with a good layout |
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PROCESSOR
PGA 423 socket for Intel® Pentium® 4
processor
Supports 100/105*/110*/133* MHz system bus
(400MHz data bus, 200MHz address bus
frequency)
AUTO detect CPU voltage
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CHIPSET
Intel® 850 AGPset + ICH2
Creative CT5880 PCI sound chip; AC97 codec
Winbond W83627HF LPCIO + health
monitoring
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MEMORY
64MB to 2GB memory size
4 x RIMM sockets; Dual RAMBUS channel
support
Supports 64/128/256/512 MB RAMBUS RIMM
module
Supports ECC type RIMM module
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SLOTS
1 x AGP Pro slot supports AGP Pro AGP card,
and 2X/4X mode AGP card (1.5V only)
1 x CNR (Communication Networking Riser) slot
(Shared with PCI slot)
5 x PCI slots support 33MHz & PCI 2.2
compliant
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I/O
2 x UDMA ATA 100/66/33 Bus Master IDE ports on
board
1 x FDD, 2 x COM, 1 x LPT, PS/2 Keyboard, PS/2
Mouse on board
1 x Joystick, 1 x Line-in, 1 x Line-out, 1 x
MIC on board
4 x USB ports (2 on board and another 2 by
optional cable)
IrDA header ready
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POWER
ATX power connector, ATX 12V connector, 3.3V
AUX Power Connector
Power-on by K/B, PS/2 Mouse, LAN, RTC, Modem
& switch
Supports USB device wake-up
Suspend / Wake-on by ACPI & APM
device
AC recovery ON/OFF control; 3 level ACPI LED
support
Stop CPU fan during entering suspend
mode
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FORM
FACTOR
ATX , 6 layer PCB (30.5*24.4cm)
Those
of you that have been doing your homework, will
notice that the CPU socket on the GA-8TX is
mounted to the board with plastic press fit
pins. Three cheers for Gigabyte and a few
others who have found a way around the obstacle of
mounting the socket heat sink retention brackets
for the P4 socket. We just got one other
board that uses this method but the design on the
GA-8TX allows you to drop the GA-8TX into any ATX
case without the need for modification for the
mounts on retention brackets.
Other
notables are that the layout is clean and well
planned with power connectors on the edge of the
PCB away from the CPU socket. In addition,
you'll notice in the middle shot, that the GA-8TX
has a set of dip switches. These are for
setting the Front Side Bus speed on the board
manually and there is no other way ( as with many
BIOS setups on the market ) to set the CPU
frequency.
It is
on this note that we see the more "OEMish"
side of the Gigabyte approach to
motherboards. The Power Users in our
audience may not find this board to be as flexible
as other boards with soft menu CPU BIOS settings,
like the Asus P4T. Other than that, the
GA-8TX seems to be constructed well and made of
top end quality components. Let's see if the
whole board is equal to the sum of its parts.
Setup,
Installation and Overclocking
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