Great all purpose AMD motherboard.
Written: May 21 '04 (Updated May 21 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy set up, dependable, standard chips sets.
Cons: I wish it had an Intel network chipset
The Bottom Line: I have always had luck with Gigabyte brand motherboards, and this one is one heck of a nice board. It would be perfect if it cleaned my house too.
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| neocoffee41's Full Review: Gigabyte GA-7VT600-L Motherboard |
In a given year I probably build 15 - 25 PC workstations. Over the years I have used various motherboard brands (Asus, ECS, Chaintech, MFI, Abit and Gigabyte). No matter which manufacturer you choose there are always good models and bad ones.
This is one of the good ones.
This board has 4x/8x AGP slot using the VIA KT600 chipset, 3 DDR memory slots, 5 PCI slots, 2 PS/2 ports, 2 com ports, 1 parallel, 6 - 2.0 USB (2 rear panel USB, 2 using an included slot cover riser, connections for 2 case USB ports) , integrated VIA 10/100 LAN & Sound card; Of course the standard dual channel 4 drive IDE controller, dual floppy controller, and the cables to hook up 2 IDE drives and 1 floppy drive, Award BIOS, and in the box you will also find a full manual, driver CD, and two sticker sets, one of Gigabytle logos for the front of your computer case, and a nice large motherboard information sticker of hardware and jumper locations, and simple configurations. I usually place this sticker (and recommend this for all users) on the inside of the of the computer case. Mainly so in 5 months when I need to get back into the system and change a setting, I will not spend 2 hours looking for the manual.
Installing this motherboard into your case is no easier or harder than any other motherboard. Configure the riser posts to align with the holes in the board, secure into place. Usually the ease or difficulty of installing a motherboard into a case is dependant on the configuration of the case itself. The only thing I would call attention to is on this motherboard, make sure that you switch the processor speed selector to the "auto" position, since by default it is set to 100 MHz, which is not going to be the correct setting about 98% of the time. Unless you know that you have and older 200 MHz FSB (front side bus) processor. The processor slot is placed for easy insertion of the processor and cooling fan without having to fight against other components on the board itself. There is plenty of room to insert memory, and all of the connector cables without having to have studied under a contortionist master.
So far I have installed this motherboard into systems running the following operating systems Windows 2000 Pro, Windows XP Pro, Windows 2003 Server, and SuSE Linux 8.1 - 9. I have never had a problem with one of these boards yet. The system disk contains all of the drivers that you will need to run any Windows OS, and if inserted after the initial OS install, has an autorun menu that will help you install the CORRECT drivers for all of the hardware included on the board (Anyone using ECS motherboards knows this is not always the case); and SuSE from 8.1 on includes all of the necessary drivers for the board. Only one time have I needed to do a CMOS reset to make the system come up correctly, not bad out of 15 boards. Considering that it may have been caused by static discharge by me handing the board in the first place.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 52
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Epinions.com ID:
neocoffee41
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Location: Champaign, IL USA
Reviews written: 31
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Of course I'm not rich... I only have 4 computers.
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