Gigabyte GA-7VX Slot-A KX133 ATX

The Bad

While DualBIOS is a nice feature that can certainly save you in a number of situations, it does make flashing the BIOS a little more complicated since there are physically 2 BIOS chips on board. The GA-7VX would complain that the BIOS was corrupt even though our flash was successful and then proceeded to try to copy the backup BIOS to the main BIOS. Unfortunately, this BIOS copy would fail and the system would lockup. Fortunately, a simple reset brought the system back up, but we were stuck in a loop until we entered the DualBIOS configuration utility. From there, we were able to disable the automatic copying of the backup BIOS to the main BIOS.

Our only complaint layout wise is the positioning of the ATX power connector behind the Slot-A connector - while this isn't as bad as the positioning on some other Athlon motherboards that block the use of larger heatsinks, we'd still prefer to see the ATX power connector at the front of the board per the ATX 2.01 specifications. We were also disappointed that Gigabyte did not include the cable necessary to use the 2nd set of USB ports.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: 1 x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested: 1 x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

Manufacturer: Corsair
Purchase Website: http://www.corsairmicro.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com