Gigabyte Gaming Machine

by Len "Viking1" Hjalmarson

Article Type: Hardware
Article Date: January 28, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: GA-7VTXE
Category: Motherboards
Manufacturer: Gigabyte
Files & Links: Click Here

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse!

The last eight machines I have built all used Abit mainboards. It’s time for a change!

It was a tough decision between ASUS, Abit, Gigabyte and Shuttle. Shuttle offers the most bang for the buck, but I haven’t been confident in their quality. That left Abit, ASUS and Gigabyte.

Tired of Abit, and with some trouble on my last Abit installation (thanks to incorrect instructions in the manual), left me leaning toward ASUS and Gigabyte. ASUS was my board of choice five years ago, which left me leaning toward Gigabyte. When a friend of mine offered to sell me a brand new board for half price, I couldn’t resist!

To complement one of the latest 266A chipsets, I had to choose an Athlon XP 1900. One notch down from the fastest AMD CPU on the market, the prices are fairly reasonable. A 1900 running around 1600 MHz can be found for $230 US, almost half the price of the Pentium 4 2.0 GHz, with comparable horsepower.

VIA 266A

It’s said that VIA has finally done it right with the KT266A. USB issues are now a thing of the past and memory bandwidth has increased around 15 percent. With DDRAM on board, we want to take maximum advantage of bandwidth: the 266A is almost equal to NVIDIA’s latest release in the nForce chipset.

Furthermore, DASP technology has come to the VIA chipset, reducing latency in the memory subsystem. This is the primary element responsible for increased performance.

Interesting…DASP technology is also present in the latest AMD CPU, the Athlon XP.

Athlon XP

The XP, in fact, has two major improvements over the older Thunderbird. First, DASP technology increases the cache hit rate, and second, Intel’s SSE instructions has been added to the chip.

Furthermore, power consumption has been reduced, reducing heat in turn. Any reduction in heat is a huge bonus with Athlon CPUs, since they crank out heat like your average diesel engine.

Reduced power consumption means that the Athlon XP runs at 1.75 volts, leaving a little more headroom for overclocking for the performance user.

Gigabyte GA-7VTXE

Gigabyte Mainboard

After four years of Abit mainboards, a switch to Gigabyte brought a few surprises.

First, Abit is renowned for the adaptability of their mainboards. They cater to the performance market, and their SOFTMENU III offers access to many advanced BIOS features, allowing maximum tweaking.

Gigabtye, however, has not been standing still. I found their BIOS system a bit less complex than Abit’s but almost as powerful. And in some areas, their BIOS is even more flexible. Before we get into the detail, let’s take a look at its main features:

Processor:

• Supports 500MHz ~ 2000 CPU and faster
  
• FSB adjustable by BIOS up to 161MHz
  
• Supports CPU multiplier 5.0/5.5/.../12.5
  
• CPU voltage overclockable by adding 5%, 10% CPU voltage

Chipset:

• VIA KT266A system controller north bridge
  
• VIA VT8233A V-Link south bridge
  
• Creative CT-5880 sound chip and AC97 Codec

Memory:

• Supports PC1600/DDR200 or PC2100/DDR266 DDR memory
  
• Supports up to 3GB DDR memory

Slot:

• 1 x AGP 4X slot
  
• 5 x PCI slots support 33MHz and PCI 2.2 compliant

I/O:

• 2 x UDMA ATA 66/100/133 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 and 1 x MIC on board
  
• 2 x USB ports on board, 2 x USB ports by cable
  
• 1 x IrDA connector

H/W MONITORING:

• 2 cooling fan connectors
  
• System health status detect and report by BIOS
  
• H/W detect & report power-in voltage, CPU voltage and CMOS battery status

BIOS:

• Dual BIOS, 2 x 2M bit flash ROM, enhanced ACPI feature for PC98/Win98/Win2000 compliance, Green, PnP, DMI, INT13 (>8.4GB) and Anti-Virus functions
  
• IDE#1~#4, SCSI, LS120, ZIP and CD-ROM bootable
  
• AC recovery ON/OFF control
  
• Auto-detect and report system health status
  
• Supports @BIOS™

There are some unusual features here, but the most important is Dual BIOS. Along with this feature, and not evident until you read the manual, is @BIOS Live Update Utility and their EasyTUNE III Overdrive Utility. Heh.. I know, “what the heck is that?”

@BIOS Live Update allows the user to connect to the Gigabyte website and update their BIOS online, without having to download files, create a special diskette and then reboot in DOS mode. It’s about time someone simplified this process.

EasyTune III is an overclocking utility that automates the process. The user installs the utility from the included CD and then can run EasyTune, selecting the AUTO mode or ADVANCED mode. ADVANCED Mode allows the user to tweak the system according to individual preference.

Dual BIOS is an innovative feature that should guard against BIOS corruption and BIOS failure. With increasingly sophisticated viruses out there, this is a potentially pain saving innovation.

Gigabyte mainboards now feature two physical BIOS chips. If your main BIOS fails for any reason, the backup chip takes over. Simply power down the system and then power it up again. The backup BIOS takes over.

After some teething problems, the Dual BIOS feature appears to function as advertised. If you have particular reason to worry about potential BIOS corruption, Gigabyte may be your solution.

The general layout of the board is clean and orderly. Some users may not be happy with the limitation of three DDRAM slots, but this allows up to 3 GB of memory, further than most of us will ever go.

Installation

I installed the GA-7VTXE in place of my Abit KG-7 mainboard, swapped all the components over, including my Athlon 1333, and then powered up the system. New software was installed for various devices and the system booted WIN ME without a hitch.

The manual is clear and logical and actually helpful! Thankfully, documentation for mainboards is not limited to PDF files, which is the way so many audio and video hardware manufacturers have gone.

Hardware included with the board is standard cables and connectors. Unfortunately however, Gigabyte has NOT included the additional USB connector for the mainboard. I simply can't believe they didn't include this part.

In use, boot time was reduced by about four seconds…interesting. I assume since all components came over cleanly that this is due solely to improvements in memory bandwidth.

Next I swapped out my Athlon Thunderbird for the XP 1900. Boot time dropped by another three seconds, making this by far the fastest booting Windows system I have ever owned.

Alpha Pal 8045

Incidentally, I went from my Thermalright SK6 CPU cooler to an ALPHA PAL 8045 CPU cooler with this system so that I could maximize the potential of the new CPU (more cooling info).

Let’s take a look at the components that are now in this system.

• Athlon XP 1900
  
• IBM 40 GB GXP 7200 RPM
  
• OCZ Titan 3 GF 3, Detonator 21.88
  
• Creative Audigy
  
• SONY 16x DVD ROM
  
• 512 MB Mushkin PCI 2400 DDRAM
  
• Windtunnel II Gamer case (www.coolerguys.com)
  
• Realtek 8100 NIC
  
• WIN ME, DX 8.1

This system is state of the art with the exception of the hard drive. It ran all the software I threw at it without a hitch. Time to try some overclocking!

Overclocking and Benchmarks

There are only two ways to overclock the Athlon XP. First, there is the high tech way of modifying the bridges using silver dope, super glue and a sharp knife. Then there is the low tech way of simply increasing the FSB.

Modifying the CPU will certainly invalidate your warranty, but it does allow the advantage of changing the multiplier, thus leaving the system stable with regard to PCI expansion cards. However, I decided the additional headroom I might gain probably wasn’t worth the effort and decided to see how far I could go on the FSB.

My first trials were at default voltage of 1.75. CPU temperature in WIN ME at idle in my moderately cool office (16 C) was 27 C.

Temperature and Settings Chart

The system would not boot WIN ME at the 1727 setting.

At the 1713 setting IL-2 Sturmovik failed to load, whether the CPU was at 1.75 or 1.8 volts. This looked like a good place to stop.

VIA Hardware Monitor

The system appears stable at 1699 and IL-2 loads and runs stably. Idle temperature at 32 C is fine. Note that the high-powered fans on the Windtunnel II are contributing to lower CPU temperatures, and thus enabling a higher overclock than some users will obtain. Furthermore, not all 1900 CPU’s will overclock like this one, and some may overclock further.

Bench on Abit KT-7 with Tbird 1500

Bench on Gigabyte with Athlon XP

FRAPS was used in F/A-18 and Flanker 2.5 and Combat Flight Simulator 2, and the built-in frame counters was used in Flight Simulator 2002. Settings were maxed out in all instances.

Game Testing

To check out combat simulation compatibility, I ran a suite of my favorite sims on the new platform.

The games I tested:

• B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th!
  
• Battle of Britain
  
• Combat Flight Simulator 2
  
• Jane's F/A-18
  
• Flanker 2.5
  
• Flight Simulator 2002
  
• IL-2 Sturmovik
  
• MiG Alley
  
• Jane's WW2 Fighters

These games all ran flawlessly. I’ve never had games load so fast or fly so smoothly. “What do you expect on a 1.6 GHz system?” Exactly. This is the way it should be. But not every fast CPU results in a system running smoothly or with stability. For a fast and stable system components must be of high quality, the system well-balanced and properly tweaked.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Some of you are aware that we are moving into a transition time with video hardware, but also with CPUs. Intel has released their new 2.2 GHz P4, which is overclocking very nicely up to 2.6 GHz. This is the new .13 micron process, so we are talking about some very nice (and expensive) hardware. (Watch for a system build article with the 2.2 P4 in about four weeks, hopefully running the new GeForce4).

AMD will follow suit by the end of January with their new 2100 and the .13 micron process. It’s likely that overclocking headroom will increase considerably, and speculation is that the 2100 will run up to 2.2 GHz (roughly equivalent to the P4 at 2.8 GHz).

Meanwhile NVIDIA is about to unleash their GeForce4. Sample boards are shipping in a week or two, and these boards will hit store shelves in late February. This means that GeForce3 prices will drop again, and the new state of the art will be the GeForce4.

At present not a lot is known about the GeForce4. Clock speed will be higher than GeForce3, since the chips are also in the new .13 micron process. Texture pipelines will increase again, but just how much more powerful will the chip itself be?

Speculation is that in-game frame rates will increase about 40 percent with a 1.5 GHz class CPU moving from GeForce3 to GeForce4, and up to 60 percent with a 2 GHz class CPU. But that increase will come with a price tag around $500 US.

In the short term, this means your upgrade path should be:

1. more memory
   
2. a faster CPU
   
3. if you have GeForce2, move to GeForce3
   
4. If you have GeForce3 or GeForce2 and cash to spare and you are already running a 1.5 GHz CPU or better, move to GeForce4.

System / Mobo Resources

Articles:

• 2001/11/01: Power Gaming System, Part 1
• 2001/11/02: Power Gaming System, Part 2
• 2002/01/29: Gigabyte Gaming Machine
• 2002/06/25: AMD Athlon 2200 Gaming System

Related COMBATSIM Resources:

• 2001/10/24: Everything Cool, Part 1
• 2001/10/25: Everything Cool, Part 2
• Archived Hardware Articles

Files:

• FRAPS

Mobo Sites:

• Gigabyte Technologies
• ASUS
• ABIT
• Shuttle

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