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Product: GA-G1975XMore info: Gigabyte
MSRP: 249 USD
Hey everyone, today we'll be taking a closer look at a mainboard, the name I for some reason just keep forgetting. Ya'll ready ?... Gigabyte G1 Turbo GA-G1975X. Indeed it's the new pride and joy from Gigabyte. A mainboard based on the PCI-Express platform and build for Socket LGA 775 processors, both Pentium 4 Single and Dual-Core.
This mainboard of course is manufactured by that big name in the business : Gigabyte. Gigabyte's core business; among many other products, is making mainboards for both Intel and AMD based platforms. They have been doing just that for quite a while now with an amount of success that is just mind boggling. They are now one of the major Taiwanese electronics manufacturers that produce all kinds of hardware from Taiwan to America to Europe to your living room. No matter where you look, you'll probably be able to buy a Gigabyte product anywhere these days.
This "backplane" is designed in their new G1-Turbo series of mainboards, a series that is targeted at overclockers and hardcore gamers. The Gigabyte G1-Turbo combine the finest from Intel & Gigabyte and have more functions than a Swiss-knife. This mainboard is the first born from that G1-Turbo series, and it's a cutie for sure.
Featuring the latest Intel 975X Express chipset, it support the latest Intel Pentium Dual-core & Extreme Edition with an FSB frequency up to 1066MHz. The new 975X chipset is in many ways similar to the 955X but now has official support for dual PCI-E graphic cards for and even better gaming experience.
As mentioned this mainboard has been designed for the enthusiast community, overclockers and thus the Guru3D.com audience. When you first look at the mainboard one of the first things you'll notice is are the blue plastic ducts, "Turbojets". Well now, that name alone is good marketing. Turbojet is pretty much two ducts which move hot air outside coming from the CPU and Northbridge chip to ensure better overclocking. And although it's really a lot of plastic with four 40mm fans .. overclocking results where exceptionally good. We'll tell & show you more about that later on in this article.
The mainboard is also featuring other tweaking technologies from GIGABYTE, such as: C.I.A. 2, M.I.B. 2, EasyTune5, and the hottest one C.R.S. (CMOS Reload Switch). But it's doesn't stop there though. This is supposed to be a high-end mainboard so you can expect some nice additional features. For example the G1975X has an integrated Creative Sound Blaster Live 24-bit hardware audio controller, to provide 7.1 channel surround effects with DTS support. And that's just fantastic. Creative Labs audio solutions have been really good ever since this Live! series and sure, it's no X-Fi soundcard, but the sound coming from this mainboard is absolutely better than any integrated sound solution we have ever experienced.
Other notable yet key features of the G1975X are Dual Channel DDR2 888, two additional PCI-E x4 slots, Gigabit LAN, Firewire, four 3Gb/s SATA ports with RAID, six USB 2.0 ports, Dual BIOS, on the mainboard a funky debug LED & power-on switch.
One very interesting feature is that this mainboard has been equipped with 2 x PCI Express (x16) slots .. that's right. And although it should not work at all, a SLI bridge has been included with this mainboard. SLI (two graphics cards interconnected) is only working on the NFORCE4 platform from NVIDIA. So we'll definitely test that for you.
Furthermore, what absolutely works on this mainboard is ATI's Crossfire solution. You can hook up two Radeon Crossfire cards and double that rendering power. So you are not stuck to a RD480 based mainboard solution from ATI (the Express 200 series).
Say hi to Intel's i975X chipset with a review based on a full retail Gigabyte mainboard. Let's look at the most important specifications and features first after we'll do a photo-shoot, overclocking, benchmarks and round it all up in the (in)famous verdict.
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