The Gigabyte 7NNXP is the best all rounder board we have ever reviewed in our labs. It has almost everything you need on a full featured board. From the Dolby audio to Dual LAN, DPS to SATA bracket. This is what I think innovation is all about. The 6 Duals is definitely something that has brought this board to stand out from the rest. In our tests, the 7NNXP's performance full potential is not unleashed (we are talking abt less than 1%) and by BIOS upgrades, that is not a difficult to achieve.

This board has what most users need and the SATA RAID. Not only that, it has IDE RAID for your PATA drives. If you intend to make it a gateway, the dual LAN makes it a good choice for running a gateway and pair it up with the faster SATA RAID 0.

We used a few different RAMs from Kingston, Buffalo Winbond -5 DDR modules. It performs well under CAS 2, 5-2-2 at 2.6v. Initially we used DIMMs 2+4 and found that the performance was way below normal nForce2. Our 2x256M was later discovered as being recognised as 256M only. After reading the manual, we found out that in order to tap the power of Dual Channel DDR400, it must be place on DIMMs 1+3. It is advisable to read the Manual which has a detail description of the RAM combinations. The BIOS also never show whether you are running in Dual or Single channel mode.

Overclocking wise, it has a almost everything you need. FSB can be adjusted from 100 ~ 300Mhz at 1mhz stepping. Vcore voltage can only be increase by 5%, 7.5% or 10% of its default voltage.
DIMM voltage can be up to +0.2v of default. AGP voltage can be up to 0.3v of default. CPU Ratio is selectable up to from 5.0x ~ 22.5x at 0.5x interval. CPU Voltage control can be be set from 1.10v ~ 1.85v. Together with the Vcore Overvoltage control, the max is 1.85v + 10% (1.85) = 2.035v. Using a AXP 2400+, we managed to get it run well at CAS 2.5, 6-3-3 at 225MHz.

Suggested Retail : USD182 on pricewatch.com

Discuss

Pros 好处:

• 6 Channel audio
• USB 2.0 
• 1394
• Dual LAN, Gigabit Ethernet
• SATA RAID
• SATA Bracket
• IDE RAID
• Vcore, Vdimm, VDD, multiplier, fsb control

Cons 坏处:

• Memory Installation - please read manual
• Price is steep

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.

Gold Award & Innovation Award