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| Our
Test System |
| Rockin'
& Rollin' |
|
AMD
Athlon 600 (at 600mhz & 700MHz), Generic
Mid-Tower Case w/ 300Watt PS, 128mb Mushkin 2-2-2
PC133 ram, 3dfx Voodoo5 5500, IBM 22GXP HD,
Plextor UltraPlex 40max, Windows 98SE, DirectX
7.0a and VIA 4-in-1 Drivers
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| Overclocking
The GA-7VX |
| Why'd
they do that? |
|
Overclocking is not
a strong point with the GA-7VX. Not only is
the board "jumpered". meaning to adjust
the FSB you have to set dip-switches, but the
choice of FSBs between 100MHz. and 115Mhz. is
slim. When using the jumpers, you only have
the option of 110Mhz. or 115Mhz. which can be
tough to hit with an Athlon. Athlon's
generally do not perform well when the FSB is set
to high due to the effective 200MHz. (DDR)
bus. If you're overclocking an Athlon, using
a Gold Finger Device is a much better
solution...we used an Afterburner
GFD supplied by Outside Loop.
Gigabyte does offer
another option for the "would be" Athlon
overclocker in the form of their Easy-Tune
software. It will actually let you
select FSBs in 1Mhz. increments between 100MHz.
and 110MHz. and beyond.
We
didn't focus our overclocking efforts on FSB
adjustments in this review, but I will say that at
the processor's default multiplier (6), we were
able to overclock our Athlon 600 to 660Mhz.
without a problem. For a much closer look at
the Easy-Tune software's capabilities and
features, check out Davo's
GA-7ZM & Duron review.
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| Benchmarking
The GA-7VX |
| Respectable
all around... |
|
We
ran our usual suite of SiSoft Sandra 2000 and ZD
Winbench on the GA-7VX at both our processor's
default speed of 600MHz. and at an overclocked
speed of 700mhz. We would like to mention
that throughout testing this board performed
flawlessly without a single crash.
Let's
take a look at the Sandra numbers first...
CPU
600MHz.
700Mhz.
MEMORY
600MHz.
700Mhz.
DRIVES
600MHz.
700MHz.
The
CPU and memory scores are right on par with
similarly specified boards, but the hard drive
performance seems slightly lower than what I
expected. This same drive had broken 12,000
points in this same test on a VIA Apollo Pro 133a
based motherboard...I suspect that future driver
tweaks and perhaps a BIOS revision may help this
out a bit.
We
also ran ZD's WinBench to give you an idea of the
overall performance of the GA-7VX...
WinBench
99
The
GA-7VX performed admirably in WinBench,
application performance should not be an issue at
all.
With
the exception of the slightly low hard drive
scores, there isn’t anything major to hold
against the GA-7VX. The lack of "jumperless"
overclocking from within the BIOS is compensated
for with their Easy-Tune software and Athlon
overclockers are better served by using a GFD and
adjusting the processor's multiplier anyway.
The stability of this board is second to none and
is worthy of our recommendation.
We'll
give the Gigabyte GA-7VX Slot-A Motherboard a
HotHardware Heat Meter rating of...
Get
in and air it out in the HotHardware Conference
Room!
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