Gigabyte GA-7VAX?

[Technoid]

tried to get a Asus A7V266-C to boot this day and it vehemetly refused....

Why?

I haden't conected a mb speaker

[Dr Mordrid]

Picky picky picky

Dr. Mordrid

[lindberg]

Read this over at Anandtech:

For the overclockers and cooling fanatics, they will be disappointed with this motherboard. In the overclocker's case, there's only an adjustable FSB up to 165MHz (or 200MHz via DIP switches), which you can't take real advantage of anyway due to the fact that there are no PCI divider options or an AGP/PCI lock available via the BIOS. In addition, for those overclockers that desire to unlock their Athlon XP, they will be very disappointed to learn that the 7VAXP has no multiplier options available in the BIOS or via jumpers on the motherboard. In the case of cooling fanatics, the Gigabyte 7VAXP lacks the four mounting holes that make the powerful Swiftech MCX and Alpha PAL series of heatsinks tick. Without a doubt, this will hurt the 7VAXP's prospects with cooling gurus.

Guess this finally dumps the gigabyte for me, for a while i thought i looked promising though.
I'm not all that fancy about the 745. I really want ata133/usb2 and the latest candy when I buy a new card, including support for DDR333/400

[Wombat]

Why? You're not going to get a DDR400 solution right now. It's crap in its current implementations, and from testimony on these boards, the KT400 is slower at 200MHz than when it is at 333MHz.

[DentyCracker]

I absolutely want ATA133 and usb2 onboard. That is why I haven't bought the 745 Ultra. I am absolutely not buying a VIA or NForce based board or going P4. So I'll wait for MSI to release their 746FX based board. I also figure that by that time the XP2600+ will have showed up, pushing the price of the 2400+ down a bit. I can just about take this KT7 until then. Hopefully I can get a Parhelia for a bit less dosh here as well. In fact I'm seriously thinking of getting the parts bought in the US and having my flight attendant cousin take them here the next time she comes to London or Manchester.

[lindberg]

I agree, DentyCracker. The 400MHz isn't that important after all but I do want ata133 and usb2. I think I'll buy at the end of this month and currently epox seems like a good choise. But It has the darn via controller...

Anyone know how close to release the 746FX boards are?

[Taz]

I don't really see why ATA-133 is such a big deal, Maxtor are the only drive manufacturer who produce ATA-133 hard disks. They're are currently no drives around which push the ATA-100 spec and by the time they do we will all be using Serial ATA.

You can get USB 2.0 add in cards relatively cheap so native support isn't a real issue either.

[lindberg]

heh, well maxtor is just the brand I'm going for. But you got a point there. And I'm not to fancy 'bout another pci-card, they just make more trouble.

But the 745 board feels kinda old, and I really want something fresh or atleast something that feels kinda fresh after a year. Not like my current slot-A mobo, one and a half month after socket-A came along and I could just sit there and be happy with my top-of-the-line mobo that one couldn't get a processor for anymore :P

[Ali]

Originally posted by lindberg
Read this over at Anandtech:


Guess this finally dumps the gigabyte for me, for a while i thought i looked promising though.
I'm not all that fancy about the 745. I really want ata133/usb2 and the latest candy when I buy a new card, including support for DDR333/400

Thats just wrong! I have just bought the 7VAXP which is the thing but with onboard RAID.

It has jumpers on the mobo for CPU multiplier.

You can also set them from within BIOS. (with F7 anyway).

Voltage is done in that stupid % system.

I dont think you can change your PCI divisor manually, but it does tell you what you are running at inside BIOS. Im not 100% sure you cant change them, as Ive never tried.

Its a little odd for the FSB. You can set a jumper on the mobo, that gives you different options inside BIOS. If you have it set at 100, then you can set FSB from (I think) 66 to 132Mhz. Set the jumper to 133 and you can adjust in bios from 133 to 165, and guess what, set the jumper to 166 and you can adjust from 166 to 200.

My nice new 2200+ (1800Mhz) can run at either 13.5*133 or 11*166 or 11*200 They all end up at 1800Mhz, but as you can guess, it gets faster the faster the FSB is. Also, no PCI/AGP overclocking to worry about.

The only problem I have with it is the lack of the 4 mounting holes for my water block around the CPU socket. I had to make up a clamp for the water block.

Anyway, lunch time

Ali

[lindberg]

Ok, Ali. Thanx for clearing this out. But I'm still a bit concerned since I'm not interested in the raid version of the mobo (just costs extra and I don't need it), and atleast when I checked the epox cards 8K5A2 and 8K5A2+ (raid) the non-raid had multiplier settings but not the raid-version! Atleast accoring to Epox on their own website...
Wasn't it gigabyte who had the Ctrl+F1 keys to access advanced memory settings?