Thoughts
Overclocking wise, I was able to bring the Gigabyte board up to 301MHz without the DPS installed and 308MHz with, using a 570J ES at 14X multiplier, Crucial Ballistix memory and the retail 570J air cooler, all powered by a Tagan TG480-U01.Pair that with a great bundle, performance that marginally beats the ASUS, presentation to befit a £150 mainboard and features that you'll struggle to make full use of, such are their number, and you have a board that's hard for me to say a bad thing about. The BIOS was great when unlocked with the keypress, stability was never an issue unless at the ragged edge of overclocking testing and in general it performed very well. I never had to rely on DualBIOS to rescue me, which says something in itself about how Gigabyte usually engineers a mainboard.
My only reservations lie with the platform itself, my personal preference still being with AMD for a powerhouse system. That doesn't take anything away from the Gigabyte at all, should you wish to place a Pentium 4 processor into your box.
At £153.93 including disgusting VAT, at Scan, its even cheaper than its main competitors, ABIT's Fatal1ty AA8XE and ASUS P5AD2-E Premium, by a few quid.
If I have to say something bad about the board, it's that the aesthetic makes me decidedly unwell. Go forth and seek, should high-performance, feature-packed, well-presented Pentium 4 be your Valhalla. Highly recommended.
HEXUS Awards
