The Gigabyte GA-7ZXE is a motherboard based on the via KT133A chip set. I picked it up for 116$ Canadian.
The specs are:
Socket A for AMD Athlon™ /Duron™ 266/200MHz FSB processors
Supports 600MHz ~ 1.5GHz and faster
AUTO detect CPU voltage
168-pin DIMM sockets
Supports PC-100 / PC-133 SDRAM and VCM SDRAM
Supports up to 1.5GB DRAM
1 x AGP slot supports 4X mode & AGP 2.0 compliant
5 x PCI slots support 33MHz & PCI 2.2 compliant
UDMA 33/66/100 bus master IDE ports on board
AC97 codec (onboard sound)
Inside the box came a fairly comprehendable manual, floppy drive cable, 80pin drive cable, and some assorted software on a CD.
Installation was simple, and all the anchor holes lined up nicely with the case i selected to install it in. As for the CPU, i choose to use an XP2000+ with stock heatsink and fan(for starters ;) )
The CPU had plenty of room to install onto the motherboard, no tight fits here! next i added 512 megs of ram, and connected the harddrive and all the other stuff that makes a computer go.
I booted up, and... everything worked fine right off the bat! (thank god) Next i popped in the the driver CD and installed all the drivers using a nice little install menu.
So everythings running smashingly, time to see how far i can push it. Gigabyte comes with a a nifty little program called Easytune. Basically it allows you to raise the frontside bus in 1 mhz increments. Good thing too, as there is no way of changing your FSB from the bios, let alone the voltage because of its auto detect feature.
So i tried a bus of 143mhz. Started up sandra, and started the burn-in wizard for 30 minutes.
That lasted about 12 minutes, the computer crashed. Next i tried 140mhz, 18-20 minutes, crashed.
Finally i tried 138mhz.... stable for 30 minutes! Of course this is with the stock AMD heat sink and fan.
I later tried it with the 80 mm Vantec Tornado fan and was able to finally run stable at 143 mhz. More over clockability could possibly be achieved, if you used a copper heatsink and additional cooling.
This board isn't really aimed at the hardcore overclocker. Though it not bad for a newbie to get their feet wet, with this budget board.
PROS
- In expensive
- Easy FSB setting through software
CONS
- Cannot change voltage settings in the bios
- Cannot change FSB settings in the bios
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Inside the box came a fairly comprehendable manual, floppy drive cable, 80pin drive cable, and some assorted software on a CD.
