Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Technical details

The standard amount of space has been provided around the CPU socket in order to fit a P4 heatsink.

The memory slots are located too close to the AGP port, thus introducing the chance of a retention bar coming into contact with the graphics card when installing memory.

The voltage regulation circuits are of the triple phase, bi-Mosfets variety.

One 3300Mfds, and ten 1500Mfds capacitors have been placed around the CPU socket.

The Northbridge is capped with a heatsink and fan.

The ATX connector is located between the memory slots and the disk-drive connector, in an area where the power lines shouldn't interfere with CPU ventilation. The 12V connector is located behind the CPU, on the East end of the motherboard.

Four fan connectors are included, but only three are controlled by the hardware monitoring system, and one of them is used by the chipset fan.

Hardware monitoring is controlled by an ITE IT8721F-A circuit.

This board does not permit the manual assignment of IRQs.

RAID ATA133 support is made possible by a Promise Technologies PDC20276 controller.

A six-channel, 5.1 sound-card is included, in the form of the Realtek ALC650E.

10/100Base-T Ethernet connectivity is possible via an IntelR PRO/100 VE chip.

An integrated SmartCard Reader connector is included, for use with MS/SD/SCR data cards.

The AGP port does not support AGP Pro graphics cards.

This board also supports "AGP AntiBurn", a technology that allows users to avoid the problems that can arise if they install an incompatible 1.5V AGP card.

Next: Additional features.

Gigabyte GA-8PE667