This is definitely one of the top boards produced by Gigabyte in year 2002! It has very nice features and it has definitely make me drool considering it for my workstation use. Featuring Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, RAID (SATA and IDE), External bracket for SATA devices, it makes connectivity to other devices easier than before. It also has 6 channel audio, Dual RAID, Hyperthreading support (P4 3.06), Dual BIOS etc. There is also the Smart Card connector on board. Gigabyte left out the 1394. They claimed that only Japanese users use it? It is really a pity, otherwise this could be one of the best boards ever produced.

The DPS makes its debut on this Gigabyte board. The DPS as described allows backup or use together to form a 6 phase voltage regulator. Some boards only uses 2 phase while Gigabyte chose a 3 phase. We have known that some companies implemented 4 phase solutions before and now a 6 phase, would we see 8 phase, 10 phase in the near future? Anyway, DPS is definitely an innovative feature.

In the performance category, the Gigabyte 8INXP seems to  be performing much better in graphics applications compared to the RIMM4200, 845PE, SIS 648 solutions. When it comes to Content Creation and Business Winstone, the results seems to be mixed. Could this be due to the BIOS? That is possible.

Overclocking wise, this board has 1Mhz stepping and also an independent PCI/AGP setting if you wish to keep your FSB at 133(533) and just overclock your PCI and AGP bus. Voltage adjustments are also available for Vcore, DIMM.  We are able to o/c to 153Mhz fsb using a P4 1.8A SL63X.

Discuss

Pros 好处:

• Overclocking features
• 6 Channel audio
• USB 2.0 
• 1394
• Dual Channel DDR266
• SATA RAID 0/1+ ATA RAID 0/1/0+1
• DPS
• Exterior bracket for SATA ports

Cons 坏处:

• No 1394
• No Async DDR333 support (by design of chipset)

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.

Product Excellence and
Innovative Design