Gigabyte Slot 1

• Gigabyte Sli Bridge 1 Slot
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Introduction

Gigabyte has been producing motherboards ever since the 486s era. Stability has always been the main focus for the design of their mainboards. Following closely to the specifications given by Intel, it has been a known fact that the mainboards produced by Gigabyte will only support the conventional conservative settings like the 66Mhz and 100Mhz bus speed. Due to this fact, many overclockers who want their money worth are giving this brand a miss. Today, faced with the increasing competition by other mainboard manufacturers, Gigabyte has released the GA-6BXC Slot-1 motherboard. So what is it that its so great about this board? The answer is, without deviating from its focus of stability, Gigabyte has introduced to this motherboard an additional selection of other bus speeds like the 75Mhz, 83Mhz, 112Mhz and 133Mhz. With a wider selection of bus speed to play with, the option of overclocking is no longer limited. Let's find out how this board fare.

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The Good

The board comes in 30.5cm x 18cm ATX size and feature 3 DIMM slots with 4/3/1 expansion slots. Layout of the board is neat with markings clearly labeled on the 4 layer PCB. The IDE connector is located just on the right edge of the motherboard and this means that you will not have any messy data cable criss-crossing over your motherboard. The GA-6BXC uses DIP switches instead of the cumbersome conventional jumpers. However, it will even be more convenient if Gigabyte could move on to a jumperless design in its next generation of mainboards.

Initial setup of the board is a breeze. DIP switches settings are clearly labeled both in the manual as well as on the mainboard itself. However, the unofficial bus speed settings could only be found on the motherboard itself. Reknown for the fact of producing stable and reliable motherboards, the GA-6BXC live up to Gigabyte's standard when I conducted the tests on it. The unofficial 112Mhz setting was found to be rock-stable when I tweaked my P2-266MHz to 336MHz. In addition, the conventional 66MHz and 100MHz setting needless to say give stable results with my P2-300 (2.0V).

The Test

The 2.0V P2-300MHz chip was used for the testing of this board. With multiplier locked at 4.5x, the maximum speed I could push the chip to was at 450MHz @ 100Mhz x 4.5. When set at 112MHz, the system could only reach as far as POST before it hang. However, like all other boards that I've tested with, the 300 chip that I used could not run @ 504MHz, hence, it wasn't actually the fault of the GA-6BXC. I then proceeded on to test the board with my P2-266MHz chip. With the 112MHz setting, I could push the chip up to 336MHz with a multiplier setting of 3x. The system was totally stable at this setting without having to increase my core voltage of the chip. However, I was not able to boot up to Windows 98 at 350MHz setting when I set the dip switches to 100x3.5. This was due to the reason that the GA-6BXC support auto voltage detection and hence, not allowing me to tweak the voltage up. As for the 133MHz setting, the Mitsubishi SDRAM which I used did not allow the system to POST at all.

Jumper Settings :

ExternalCPU Bus Setting SW1

CPUMultiplier Settings SW2

Gigabyte Sli Bridge 1 Slot

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The Bad

Gigabyte is seen as taking a big step forward by introducing some of the unofficial bus speed settings to the GA-6XBC. However, it will even be a bigger step if they could introduce more unofficial settings like the 103MHz or the 124MHz. In addition, it will be perfect if the DIP switches could be replaced with a CMOS control jumperless setup for configuring the multiplier and bus speed setting. Also, the location of the DIP SW1 (for setting of the external bus speed setting) would be more accessible if it was placed beside SW2 instead of between the CPU and the DIMM slots.

Conclusion

The GA-6BXC lives up to the good old tradition of Gigabyte. Not only does it peform stabily at the conventional bus speed settings, the GA-6BXC also produces rock-stable setting with its bus speed set at 112MHz. Priced at a very affordable range, this board will definitely be in your consideration list if there is ever a need for you to upgrade to a SLOT-1 motherboard.

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