Gigabyte GA-8TX i850 Socket-423 ATX

Finally, six months after its first debut, the Intel Pentium 4 has reached 1.7GHz, a speed that delivers very competitive performance against AMD’s Athlon 1.33GHz.  Combined with the recent dramatic price cuts on the Pentium 4, the idea of owning a Pentium 4 system is no longer a strange one. 

A few weeks ago, we looked at the ASUS P4T, the first Pentium 4 motherboard we have reviewed so far.  Nonetheless, it’s also one of the most impressive Pentium 4 boards we have used in the labs throughout these past few months. 

ASUS was actually the second manufacturer to send us a Pentium 4 motherboard in early December 2000.  The first company was Gigabyte, with their GA-8TX, which was available very shortly after the release of the first Pentium 4 CPU’s, showing that Gigabyte was determined to get into the Pentium 4 market early in the game, something that is often more important than actually having a good product. Fortunately, Gigabyte is shooting to accomplish both feats with the GA-8TX. Let’s take a detailed look at the GA-8TX and see what Gigabyte has done to lead the industry, as the first to market with a board for Intel’s latest CPU.