Gigabyte GA-6BXU i440BX ATX Slot-1 SCSI

A single jumper provides for bus speed selection, either 66 MHz, 100 MHz, or Auto. Auto, of course, uses the state of B21 to set the bus speed and the other settings force the specified FSB. A second jumper enables a 133 MHz FSB mode with a PCI divider of 1/4 so that the PCI bus remains within spec. As with all other i440BX solutions, AGP is still way out of spec when the 133 MHz FSB setting is in use. It would be nice to see some overclocked bus speeds here, but Gigabyte apparently does not think those are necessary for a "high end" onboard SCSI motherboard. Four DIP switches control the clock multiplier settings, which is of course not necessary to set on today's multiplier locked CPU's. Stability is excellent as we've come to expect from Gigabyte boards.

Gigabyte has also taken the standard Award BIOS and improved upon it just a bit, starting off with a feature well known on AOpen boards - a set of BIOS options that can be loaded and are already tweaked for performance. These options pretty much are optimal for the majority of users, but if you're a real hardcore tweaker, you'll want to go through and double check that everything set the way you like it. Upon boot, the BIOS reports the core voltage of each CPU and any voltages that may be out of spec. The onboard SCSI chip can be enabled or disabled from the BIOS as well.

Power management consists of pretty much the standard stuff these days. Wake on LAN and wake on modem ring headers are available to allow the system to power on in the presence of network activity or incoming call. The BIOS can be set to turn on the system at a specific time. The CPU fan can be shut off when the system suspends to quiet things down a bit. ACPI support is built into the BIOS for added power management under an ACPI compliant OS like Windows 98 or Windows 2000. The system can be configured to power on via hot key or mouse click as well.

Since the GA-6BXU is a considered a high end board, which might be running 24/7, Gigabyte was wise enough to include a jumper that would force the system to power back on in the case of a power failure. When enabled, the system will return to its previous power state upon loss of AC power.

For hardware monitoring, the GA-6BXDS uses the extremely popular Winbond 83782D to monitor both onboard fans, 9 voltages, and up to 3 temperatures. The reason for "up to 3 temperatures" is that the Winbond hardware monitor can only monitor one temperature on its own - the temperature of the Winbond chip itself. In order to monitor the other two temperatures, such as that of the CPU, the Winbond chip requires an external sensor. With the 83782D, it is usually best to read the CPU temperature via the CPU's onboard thermal diode, but unfortunately, Gigabyte has chosen to use a board mounted thermistor. This is simply not as accurate as the onboard diode. No further thermistor headers are included, so the only temperatures measured are ambient case and CPU. The included CD features Intel LANdesk Client Manager (LDCM). Of course, a variety of shareware/freeware hardware monitoring utilities are available on the web as well.

Although lacking details on installing a motherboard, the manual is otherwise pretty good for the experienced user and includes detailed information on all connector pin outs as well as the various BIOS settings. A separate manual is included for the onboard SCSI controller. The CD includes Intel LANdesk Client Manager (LDCM) for hardware monitoring, Trend PC-Cillin 98 (OEM) anti-virus software, a suspend to disk utility, and even DirectX 6.1. Of course, there's also the traditional chipset patches and drivers. The CD is not board specific and does not include an online version of the manual.