Socket-A VIA KT133 Motherboard Roundup - November 2000

Gigabyte GA-7ZXR

Gigabyte GA-7ZXR
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CPU Interface	Socket-A
Chipset	VIA KT133
Form Factor	ATX
Bus Speeds	95 / 100 / 102 / 104 / 106 / 108 / 110 / 112 / 133
Voltages Supported	Auto Detect
Memory Slots	3 168-pin DIMM Slots
Expansion Slots	1 AGP Slot 5 PCI Slots (4 Full Length) 1 AMR Slot (1 Shared) 1 ISA Slot (1 Shared)
On-board Audio	Sigmatel STAAC9708T AC97 CODEC Creative CT5880 (Optional)
BIOS	AMI Simple Setup 1.21 Gigabyte DualBIOS

In terms of overclocking, the GA-7ZXR is definitely not the right board for many users. The GA-7ZXR does not have any multiplier ratio settings implemented on the board, so users can only overclock their processors by changing the FSB speeds. Not only is that not the best overclocking method, Gigabyte also does not provide users with many FSB speeds settings. There are only six FSB speed choices between the most important regions, from 100MHz to 110MHz.

Moreover, in the original BIOS that shipped with the board, we were not able to set the memory to run at CAS2, even though our memory was CAS2 rated. After further investigation, we learned that our version of the BIOS does not allow users to run any memory at CAS2 in order to maintain stability. We were able to obtain a BIOS update from Gigabyte with the CAS2 setting enabled and we performed our tests using both BIOSes.

If we used CAS3 timings instead of CAS2, there is a performance hit of a few percent. However, when we got to the stability tests, we found that running the memory at CAS2 resulted in only average stability scores.

Feature wise, the GA-7ZXR includes an on-board Ultra ATA 100 IDE RAID controller, the Promise PDC20265. It supports two Ultra ATA 100 channels, and together with the original two Ultra ATA 66 IDE channels provided by the VIA 686A South Bridge, users can connect up to eight IDE devices. Users can also use the Promise controller for RAID configuration, however only RAID 0 and RAID 1 are supported.

Gigabyte's Dual BIOS is similar to the Die Hard BIOS found in AOpen products, where there are two physical BIOS chips on the motherboard. The redundant BIOSes are there incase the main BIOS starts to malfunction, either due to error in a BIOS update or a virus, users can still boot up the machine using the second BIOS chip.