Gigabyte K8VNXP

Gigabyte has covered its options when it comes to the new Athlon 64 processor. In the Time Viper PC, also reviewed in this issue (see page 58), we found the company's GA-K8NNXP motherboard, which uses the Nvidia Nforce3 150 chipset. Here we bring you an exclusive review of the GA-K8VNXP, based on the rival Via K8T800 technology.

If you covered up the processor socket and heatsink base, it would be difficult to tell which processor family this model supports. It all looks very similar to an Athlon XP board, and bears more than a passing resemblance to Pentium 4 designs.

When you consider how much Athlon 64 differs from other processors, it's a surprise that the K8VNXP doesn't look more radical. The processor contains the memory controller, so the northbridge of the chipset does little more than connect the processor and graphics card together.

Athlon 64 doesn't allow for dual-channel memory, so this board has three memory slots with support for up to 3GB of unbuffered PC3200 memory. While this is good by current standards, it could be a major limitation when a 64bit version of Windows is available, along with 64bit applications.

Looking at the backplate, we were again struck by how conventional it all looks. There are two PS/2 ports, one parallel and two serial ports, three mini jacks for the integrated audio, dual Lan (Gigabit and 10/100) and four USB2 ports.

The southbridge of the chipset is the VT8237, which offers a feature set to rival Intel's ICH5. It supports two Parallel ATA133 controllers and a pair of Serial ATA connectors with Raid 0 and 1, and there's a Gigaraid chip to add two extra Parallel ATA133 controllers. You could use a total of 10 hard disks and optical drives with that little lot. Two Serial and three Parallel ATA cables are provided in the box.

Gigabyte has also included three brackets to make sure you get all the ports you could possibly want. One bracket handles surround sound and has extra mini jacks, as well as optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs. A second bracket has two USB2 ports as well as one Firewire and one mini-Firewire, and the third bracket is a Serial ATA adaptor that makes life easier if you're upgrading an old PC case with your new motherboard.

The Firewire controller that Gigabyte uses is updated to IEEE 1394b and has increased bandwidth of 3.2Gbytes/second, rather than the older standard of 800Mbytes/second. As yet, we haven't seen any IEEE 1394b peripherals.

Gigabyte has also used an updated audio controller. We are used to seeing the Realtek ALC650 or ALC655, but the ALC658 is quite new and allows the mini jacks to be configured as either inputs or outputs. Realtek calls this 'Universal Audio Jack'.

Between the processor socket and the parallel port you'll find the Dual Power System module that Gigabyte includes with its high-end motherboards.

It's a plug-in module that looks similar to a Pentium II slot processor and it adds power regulation circuitry to change the board from three-phase power to six-phase. In this case the module is called Dual Power System K8 and is apparently specially designed for the Athlon 64 platform.

You'll usually find extra power is beneficial when overclocking your processor, and we hope that Athlon 64 is particularly good at overclocking as it doesn't have a front-side bus and multiplier, running instead at its true speed. That should make it easier to lock the AGP and PCI speeds before you start to work on the processor speed in isolation.

At standard speeds, the Gigabyte matched the three Athlon 64 PCs we have on review in this issue.

All these features are good, but they make the motherboard very cluttered. Everywhere you look you'll find a connector or another chip but, despite that, all these components have their space and nothing interferes with anything else. Gigabyte could probably take a leaf from Abit's Max range and remove a couple of PCI slots to create some space for the dual Bios chips, the dual Lan chips, and a few more besides.

The only other problem with the Gigabyte K8VNXP is its steep price, but we're happy that it offers good value for money.

Contact: Gigabyte 01908 362 700
www.giga-byte.com

Specifications:

• Gigabyte GA-K8VNNXP
• Socket 754 Athlon 64
• Via K8T800
• 3 memory slots
• AGP 8x
• Realtek 6-channel audio, optical & coaxial S/PDIF out
• 5 PCI slots
• 1 floppy, 4 parallel ATA133 controllers, 2 Serial ATA connectors with Via VT8237 and Gigaraid chips
• Raid 0 and 1
• 6 USB2, 1 Firewire, 1 mini-Firewire
• 2 PS/2, 2 serial, 1 parallel port
• 10/100 Lan and Gigabit Lan