Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW+
Published on 2002-11-05 09:34:11 By: Jim_

Would it surprise you to discover that before now, I'd never even touched a Gigabyte board, let alone tested one? It's true. I think this more has to do with the distribution of their motherboards in Canada over the last couple of years than a reflection of the quality of product that they produce.

Gigabyte certainly isn't a new player in the dual motherboard scene, though. Looking back to the time when dual slot-1 boards were bleeding edge, I can't say that I remember anyone ever complaining about their GA-6BXD. Can you?

Jump back to the here and now and we're dealing with the duel of dual platforms; with both Intel and AMD offering attractive solutions to all power users out there. They aren't making it easy on your decision making process, are they?

Today, with the GA-7DPXDW+, we have yet another AMD 760MPX-based board to run through its paces. Will it perform? Will it meet our expectations and demands? Let's see.

The Specs

  • Supports Single or Dual AMD Athlon MP processors running on a front-side bus of 266MHz
  • AMD 760MPX chipset - 762 Northbridge / 768 Southbridge (B2)
  • Supports up to 3.5GB of PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM (Registered -and- Unbuffered - only 2GB, though) - 4 DIMM slots
  • Integrated Promise PDC20276 RAID controller (Supporting RAID0 and RAID1)
  • Integrated Intel 82550PM 10/100Mbps Ethernet
  • Integrated AC97 Audio
  • AGP Pro, 3 32-bit/33MHz PCI slots and 2 64-bit/66MHz PCI slots
  • 12" x 10.6" in size

This is a different animal than the 760MPX boards I've looked at thus far. Gigabyte decided to up the anty somewhat and throw some valuable components on the board. The insertion of Promise IDE RAID will doubtless make many an enthusiast happy. An integrated Intel NIC, while ironic, is always welcome on any board I test. Turning the corner and looking at the integrated audio solution... AC97 surely isn't going to replace your high-end sound board but at the very least it should give decent output for mp3 or cd audio playback. It seems like an acceptable package all-in-all, let's look in the box.

The Box

As you've seen in the past, we'll generally always critique the way a board is packaged. While this probably doesn't matter to the average consumer, when you test as many boards as we do here it's natural to make such comparisons. I think all motherboard manufacturers are starting to pay more attention to this when designing the packaging and deciding what additional goodies to throw in the box. How did Gigabyte do? A clean looking blue and white box which certainly seemed sturdy enough to endure a jostle or two during shipping. Let's take a look inside:

  • 1x GA-7DPXDW+ (stored in a sizeable static bag in a completely foam-enclosed portion of the box)
  • 2x ATA133-capable IDE cables (with green ends!)
  • 1x ATA33 cable
  • 1x floppy cable
  • GA-7DPXDW+ manual, and Promise RAID manual
  • Promise RAID drivers for Win32 and RedHat Linux (7.1 and 7.2)
  • Standard driver/utility cdrom

 
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