Gigabyte GA-6VXD7 Dual Socket-370 Apollo Pro133A ATX

Name: Gigabyte GA-6VXD7 Dual Socket-370 Apollo Pro133A ATX
Item: Gigabyte GA-6VXD7 Dual Socket-370 Apollo Pro133A ATX
Author: Mike Andrawes

by Mike Andrawes on May 28, 2001 12:00 PM EST

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Motherboards

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Final Words

Quite frankly, the GA-6VXD7 is not a very impressive board when one considers the features and the performance that it offers. By comparison, the scenario is very similar to the Gigabyte KT133 and KT133A boards where the original version of the KT133 by Gigabyte fell behind in performance and overclocking ability, while the later revision 2.2 board with the KT133A chipset, improved upon these weaknesses dramatically by including tons of overclocking features while simultaneously boosting performance by a noticeable amount.

On one hand Gigabyte has made a decent dual Socket-370 Apollo Pro 133A boards in terms of reliability, and that's what we have seen in general with Gigabyte's solutions. But on the other hand, Gigabyte still has quite a bit of work to do on the GA-6VXD7 before it becomes a true killer. Overclocking features are something they definitely have to work on, while additional features like an IDE RAID controller would be nice as well. Gigabyte should also now know that the reason for their poor performance lies in the less aggressive memory timings, something that should be very easy to change.

Indeed as the VIA Apollo Pro266 chipset starts to emerge, Gigabyte could definitely modify their current solution to adapt the new chipset and also the extra features. The only thing that they have to be careful is to make the move fast, unlike the GA-7ZXR (2.2) case where the good solution was too little too late.

How it Rates

AnandTech Motherboard Rating
	Rating (x/10)
Performance: The performance of the GA-6VXD7 is a little bit below average, but not enough to eliminate the board as a possible solution. The poor memory performance holds back the overall performance by quite a bit.	4.5
Price: As with most other Gigabyte boards, we see the GA-6VXD7 coming in a bit cheaper than the competition from ASUS and Tyan, but a bit less than some other manufacturers.	5.5
Stability Stability of the board is very good as it didn't crash once in 36 hours of stress testing, putting it among the best dual Socket-370 boards we have seen so far.	8.5
Features The GA-6VXD7 definitely lacks in terms of features, and that's something Gigabyte really has to work hard on. We found virtually no overclocking features on the board beyond a few FSB speeds, which is simply not sufficient for any overclocking.	4.0
Layout The layout of the board is pretty decent, with enough space around the CPU sockets for large HFS units, although there are a few capacitors in the vicinity that could pose problems. The IDE and floppy connectors are also nicely placed to avoid blocking any of the expansion slots.	6.5
Availability Gigabyte boards are not the most commonly available board in the market, but you should still have no problem finding the on-line. Finding the board locally may be a bit more difficult, however.	8.5
Documentation & Software Bundle The manual that comes with the GA-6VXD7 is about average. It's not as good as those included with more recent Gigabyte boards, but you should still be able to find all the necessary information.	8.5
Overall Rating - not an average Click here to find out why	6.0

Gigabyte GA-6VXD7 Dual Socket-370 Apollo Pro133A ATX

Final Words

How it Rates

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