• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Gigabyte Motherboards

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

phatjedi

Registered
Joined
Nov 10, 2001
Location
Indiana
I was about to purchase a Abit STR6, but when I found out I was limited to 512mgs of sdram, I wanted to see if there were other alternatives. I am the happy owner of a Intel P3 Tualatin 1.3ghz
with 512L2 cashe. It will be my desktop for the next 2 or 3 months, then it is going to become a linux box.
Gigabyte makes a board that uses DDR for this chip, but I wanted to see if anyone can tell me if Gigabyte boards are in the same league or close to Abits. And if the VIA chipset it uses is any good.
Any and all opinions are welcome.

Thanks.
 
Gigabyte is one of those manufacturers that has a few very good boards out there and a few very bad ones. I don't know which you are referring to but if it's a newer board since it has DDR and Tualatin support, it's probably one of their more decent boards.

As far as comparing Gigabyte to Abit, well, you really can't...not to say certain boards can't be compared head-to-head. Abit has just been around way too long and has earned its respect. Gigabyte is no rookie, but are just starting to make a name for themselves in the overclocking world as far as performance, reliability and stability (not to mention overclocking options).

I would have no problem, personally, buying a Gigabyte board of my choice.

As far as the VIA chipset goes, it's OK. I have 3 (maybe 4 unless I am able to switch my RMA) VIA chipset motherboards at the moment and they are all good boards. Only gripe I have is that they have bad memory bandwidth. It's not unacceptable but nearly every other chipset out there beats it.

I'm actually wanting to trade off the VH6-II I have out for RMA for an MSI 815EP chipset board. It does have the 512MB memory limitation but for what this system is going to be used for, 512MB would be more than enough. I just want the superior bandwidth it carries with it.
 
Back