Introduction & Specifications

At a glance the Gigabyte GA-G1975X has all the markings of a great enthusiast motherboard. But does its ability to overclock well make up for its design flaws? Every detail is covered from motherboard cooling, installation, to audio performance.

Back in December the latest and greatest Intel Extreme Edition CPU was unleashed to the world, and along with it a new chipset – the Intel 975X. The 975X wasn’t a huge advance compared to the 955X; in fact the only major difference is the addition of simultaneous 8x PCI-Express operation on two channels on the 975X.

The simultaneous 8x PCI-E function was huge news for gamers since it meant that the 975X is capable of running dual graphics cards in full rendering modes using technology like ATI’s Crossfire and NVIDIA’s SLI. To date, the 975X has been certified to fun Crossfire, but not for SLI.

However, Gigabyte is not letting that stop them as it bundles accessories in anticipation of SLI in the future as well as support for ATI’s Crossfire. The GA-G1975X we are reviewing today has been designed from the ground up to be a true enthusiast board. There are many features and small touches that make the GA-G1975X exceptional and better executed than its competition. So let’s get on with the review of the board!

Specifications (from Gigabyte’s website)

Processor
  1. LGA775 Intel® Pentium® D / Pentium® 4 prcessor
  2. Supports 1066/800/533MHz FSB
Chipset
  1. Northbridge: Intel® 975X Express Chipset
  2. Southbridge: Intel®ICH7R
  3. T.I IEEE 1394 Controller
  4. Gigabit Ethernet Controller
  5. Creative Sound Blaster Live 24-bit Audio controller
  6. ITE 8211controller
Memory
  1. Type: Dual channel DDR2 533/667-240pin
  2. Max capacity: Up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots
Internal I/O Connectors
  1. 4 X Serial ATA 3Gb/s connectors
  2. 1x UDMA ATA 100 / 66/ 33 connector ( ICH7R )
  3. 1x UDMA ATA 133/ 100/ 66/ 33 connector (ITE IT8211F)
  4. 1 X FDD connector
  5. 1 X IEEE 1394 connector (support 2 ports)
  6. 3 X USB 2.0/1.1 connectors (support 6 ports)
  7. 1 X audio pin header (support 7.1-ch)
  8. 1 X S/PDIF In/Out pin header
  9. 3 X Cooling fan pin headers
Expansion Slots
  1. 2 x PCI Express X16 slot
  2. 2 x PCI Express X4 slots
  3. 2 x PCI slots
Rear Panel I/O
  1. 2 X USB 2.0/1.1 ports
  2. 1 X RJ45 port
  3. PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse
  4. Audio (1x Line-in/ 1x Line-out/ 1x Mic) connector
Form Factor
  1. ATX form factor
  2. 305 x 244mm
H/W Monitoring
  1. System health status auto-detect and report by BIOS
  2. Hardware detecting and reporting for case open, CPU voltage, and fan speed BIOS
  3. 2 x 4Mb flash ROM, Award BIOS
Other Features
  1. Multi-GPU support
  2. C.R.S. (CMOS Reload Switch)
  3. Norton Internet Security
  4. Xpress™ Installation
  5. Xpress™ Recovery 2
  6. C.I.A. 2 (CPU Intelligent Accelerator 2)
  7. M.I.B. 2 (Memory Intelligent Booster 2)
  8. EasyTune™ 5
  9. Download Center
Remark This model DOES NOT support Win9X / ME due to some chipset vendors has stopped providing Win9X / ME drivers.


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