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Gigabyte GA-8GPNXP-Duo Motherboard Review :: Features and Layout
One of the things you will notice right off the bat are the six rows of memory slots supporting both DDR2 and DDR Dual-Channel memory, there are four slots for DDR1 and two slots for DDR2 with a maximum memory capacity of 4GB total. You can use either DDR2 533/400 or DDR400/333 SDRAM depending on your budget or what you have on hand making memory flexibility very ample. The standard power connector is located a bit close to the memory for it to meet my tastes. Even though the location is not my favorite of places the board's layout really provides no alternative location that would be better due to its design and features. AGP 8X is gone and now the PCI 16X slot has become the new standard on the LGA775 platforms. The new slot theoretically should provide faster speeds than the AGP bus, but results so far show it to be almost exactly on par with the 8X AGP standard that hopefully will be ratified in the near future through drivers and software implementations that will take advantage of the VGA cards of tomorrow. Maybe then we will see some real performance increases, but for now this is not a strong enough point to upgrade your system.  Socket 775  Memory  PCI 16X Based on the new Intel 915X chipset the board supports the latest LGA775 Pentium 4 CPU's in all its flavors and will accommodate future releases via new BIOS updates. The board uses the Dual power system module the U-Plus D.P.S. which helps add stability by controlling and conditioning the power that comes into the motherboard. When you use the little plug in the wall or even a power strip there are fluctuations in how much current goes along that line and the U-Plus D.P.S stabilizes that current ensuring not only stability but increased life of the board. Alternating currents going through the motherboard will cause your board to have a better chance of having problems, this is due to the heating and cooling of the various motherboard parts that eventually leads to failure. The D.P.S plugs into its own slot located by the rear I/O and 12v power connector. It does not hinder or block anything on the board, although it is a bit of a large heavy part that might cause problems if you try and tote your PC around, but beyond that it's all good. The North Bridge chipset comes with a heatsink, but no active cooling, which may be a strike with the enthusiast's crowd who usually prefer an active chipset cooler for their board.  NB Heatsink  D.P.S Connection  D.P.S Drive support is suitable for most users offering three PATA connectors and four SATA controllers. One of the PATA controllers offers ATA 66/100 support, while the GigaRAID controller serves up a two ATA133 channel connections that allows configurations of RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 arrays. The four SATA connections and the IDE connections are all located right next to each other on the board and it is quite packed in that area as well due to all the connections being placed that way. It did not become an issue with setup for us, but if every connection was being used it could potentially become a cable mess. LAN is provided in two ways, the first is the Marvell 8001 Gigabit Ethernet controller that provides 10/100/1000mbps transfer rates and the second is the Broadcom PCIe X1 Gigabit Ethernet controller. You can run simultaneous WAN and LAN environments at the same time. Wireless LAN comes via the integrated 802.11g wireless LAN. There are DUAL RJ45 connections located on the rear I/O for the standard LAN and a wireless LAN card that occupies a slot for handling the WiFi tasks. Having these LAN options is a very cool thing and soon I think almost everyone will be using a wireless LAN environment in their homes and businesses as it much less of a cable mess and you rid yourself of the dreaded dead cable.  WiFi Card  PATA/SATA  PCI/PCIe slots  12v power connector  USB/IEEE connections Sound is provided by the Azalea chipset and by the C-Media 9880 audio codec that work together bringing Intel's new High Definition Audio to the desktop and offering many features that will work well within the Home Theatre environment. From Auto-Jack sensing to 7.1 channel surround sound the new Azalea standard brings a new dimension to on-board sound. Working in conjunction with companies like Dolby Labs and Sonic Focus, Intel has on-board sound that rivals that of most consumer electronics products. Sonic Focus is a major advancement to Intel's Audio Studio that helps shape and enhances music by breathing new life into the heavily compressed MP3 audio file. It does this major task by adding back the missing elements that have been removed in the compression process therefore making the sound once again have the warmth and depth of its original source. 2.1 Audio sources can be heard in real-time 5.1 by presets that have been written to alter, remix and spread the sound into the 5.1 environment, which let me tell you will add a whole new aspect to your listening environment. You can change the type of device the output is going to IE; using headphones, large or small speakers or even room type for achieving your optimal sound preferences. You can spend a few hours just trying all the features that are offered and that can be quite a bit of fun for audiophiles like me.  There are a total of six USB 2.0 slots available 4X on the rear I/O and two more by a bracket that has 2X USB ports and 2X IEEE ports on it. The bracket connects to headers on the board and it occupies one slot on the rear of your enclosure. The rear I/O offers the user the standard fare in addition to SPDIF digital coaxial audio connections for connecting to speakers that offer that function or to connect to a receiver in the Home Theatre configuration. This about wraps up what the hardware features of the motherboard are and Gigabyte themselves offer the use a few distinct additional plusses to add to the overall appeal of their products. Things like the GIGABYTE ShieldWare that offers the user additional software tools for customizing their system are one of the things that are specific to Gigabyte products. Overall this board has enough feature options to hold its own, and the layout and design is done pretty well to making this a very well rounded out motherboard for the LGA775 platform. So far everything looks pretty good, but how about the boards performance levels? Next we will take a look at the BIOS features and what kinds of control options are available to the user and then it's off to the testing phase. Follow along and see what else the new Gigabyte GA-8GPNXP has to offer us. Contents:Discuss This Article
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