A very "sensible" choice
Written: Oct 14 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Features, software bundle, lives up to its brand name.
Cons: Dodgy onboard sound drivers, not as fast as it could be.
The Bottom Line: I would recommend this board if you want stablity above all else. If raw speed is what you want you'll need to look elsewhere.
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| zckls04's Full Review: Gigabyte GA-7VTX Motherboard |
After deciding to upgrade everything in my computer I went straight to a computer fair and spent as much as I could afford on a motherboard and processor. I came back with the Gigabyte GA7VTX with a 1.1 GHz Athlon Chip, and paid £160 for the pair.
The main reason I chose this board is:
A) I have always had a lot of success with Gigabyte boards- they have generally provided me with a stable, if not blisteringly fast, board and
B) I wanted a DDR RAM board but I didn't want it to include RAID as I didn't need it and couldn't afford it. I believe this board also comes in a RAID version.
After opening the box I was pleased to discover that the board was an attractive shade of blue- not perhaps the most important feature but I have a window kit so it works well.
Mounting the chip and RAM were pretty straightforward, even for me. The manual showed very clear instructions (even if the english left a bit to be desired).
Having done that I switched on. The BIOS settings were not all quite right hard-drive wise but with the familiar AMIBIOS I managed to solve them pretty quickly.
The RAM was picked up fine, and Windows 2000 installed everything OK. The gigabyte drivers installed fine from the CD. Windows detected the on-board sound, and installed it OK. In the interest of completeness I installed the sound drivers from the CD as well. This was a bit of an error as I later had problems with a file called NewsUpd.exe which was related to the sound drivers, which kept stopping responding.
I accept entirely that this may have been a particular problem with my system- in any case I simply deleted all occurences of the file from the registry and the sound continued to work fine without it.
So, a rundown of the BEST things about the board:
1) Takes DDR RAM
2) Has Creative onboard sound- makes a change from the bizarre sound chipsets on previous Gigabyte boards.
3) DualBIOS feature, allowing you to back up and restore your BIOS. I wish so much I'd had that on my old computer, as I screwed up the BIOS doing a flash update (hence why I needed a new motherboard)
4) POST is blisteringly fast (much faster than I am used to, anyway).
5) Excellent software- Norton Antvirus & Personal Firewall 2001 plus lots of hardware monitoring and overclocking utilities if you are obsessed with speeding things up.
And the WORST things:
1) Sound driver problem (see above)
2) Not as fast as some DDR boards I have seen. Much more stable, and much cheaper though.
3) Doesn't take SDRAM or RAMBUS(obviously)
4) Should be used with a 266 processor and 266 DDRRAM for best results (ask your vendor!)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 150
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Epinions.com ID:
zckls04
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Member: Oliver Cornfield
Location: London, UK
Reviews written: 12
Trusted by: 0 members
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