Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra Review

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Features

Features
Let's have a look and see what we can find in the box once we opened it up whall we.

imageview.php?image=193You'll receive a LOT with this mainboard

In the box we'll find a very nice looking mainboard with a plethora of gadgets which show the immense detail Gigabyte put into this package. Included with the mainboard are 3x IDE cables, 1x floppy cable, 4x USB port cable, Audio combo kit (SPDIF), SATA cable, I/O shield, G/C SATA card with SATA cable x1 and a power cable. Included software next to the standard drivers and tools is Norton Internet Security, Norton Anti Virus,  Norton Personal Firewall, Norton Privacy Control, Norton Parental Control and Ad Blocking. Next to all this several manuals for the mainboard, quick install guide, and manuals for the controllers can be found. All of them quite details and very helpful. Very nice package if you ask me.

  • Pentium 4 with hyper Threading support- Provides a performance boost on multi-threading and multi-tasking operations for the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture.Hyper-Threading  is a very innovative technology that basically makes a single 'normal' processor appear as two "logical" processors. It does this by adding a certain two-way aproach in the core, therefore splitting the CPU's resources managed by the operating system.
  • Serial ATA 133 - Serial ATA is a  new generation for ATA specification that provides an outstanding performance for data transfer. With up to 150MB/s data transfer rate, Serial ATA is faster than current Parallel ATA, while providing 100% software compatibility.
  • USB 2.0 - With data transfer rate up to 480Mbps, 40 times faster than USB 1.1, providing a faster data transfer rate between platform and peripherals.
  • Up-to 3 GB DDR memory, combined over thee DIMM slots.
  • RAID + ATA133 IDE controller (Supports RAID 0 (Striping) or RAID 1 (Mirroring) function, through smart-bios technology, GA-8PE667 Ultra 2 provides additional two IDE UDMA ATA-133/100 connectors that support not only HDD but also other ATAPI devices such as CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW and DVD-RAM)
  • 6-channel Audio - High quality 6-channel AC'97 audio with S/P-DIF function. Integrated Realtek ALC650 AC'97 audio CODEC chip, enabling users to experience the seamless high quality 6-channel audio while watching movies or gaming). The mainboard has integrated sound through the6-Channel AC97 Audio via the Realtek 6ch controller. Six  channel audio is design based on a Realtek ALC650, which is an 18-bit, full duplex AC'97 2.2 compatible stereo audio CODEC designed for PC multimedia systems. In all honestly, not bad at all. Sound was peachy fine and in games we heard no problems. It fully supports EAX, of course it's no Audigy 2 though.
  • 1 Gbit/sec integrated LAN (The Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller delivers a high speed data transfer rate of up to 1000Mbit/s, providing a new generation for the broadband era)
  • Dual BIOS - Provides a double security for BIOS from virus attacks, enhancing the PC stability. A backup BIOS is automatically enable if the main BIOS is malfunction. "Bios Mirror" is always nice for the people that tweak their bios and like to flash it often, having a backup will save you the time you'd have to wait for your motherboard manufacturer to send you a new one. BIOS Mirror will always keep one copy of the BIOS image in the backup BIOS. In the event of Main BIOS failure, you can switch and boot up from backup BIOS.
  • ANTI Burn - EZ-Fix AGP 4x and memory DIMM slot with Anti-Burn design. Prevents motherboard from damaging if an AGP 2x (3.3V) is inserted or memory module is not properly installed.

The layout of this mainboard is good, everything seems to be in place. Everything is easily accessible. Gigabyte has placed the ATX power connector just below the DIMM slots, keeping the cable chaos associated with many other motherboards to a minimum. 

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Left IDE connectors - Right Power Conector and Floppy. in the back you can notice the three DIMM slots. Everything color coded.

I'm not so happy with that location though as it is forcing the  power-cable over the CPU to be connected to the motherboard. IDE/Floppy connectors are stacked, and on par. The mainboard is a very well designed and color coded board (we'll explain later). One remark, once you've inserted an AGP card you won't be able to insert or remove a Memory stick.

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To your upport left you'll notice the pink AGP slot, once a card is inserted you will not be able to insert or remove Memory modules.

They are in each others way. But hey, remove the AGP card and you are set to go. A quick hint to Gigabyte R&D .. what is CNR still doing on the mainboard ? It's phased out already and taking up mainboard space, completely useless in my eyes. Overall a very nice looking mainboard with everything color coded. The AGP slot is Purple, RAID connectors are green, DIMM is blue. It helps you mentally separate the different connections on the board which can be very helpful for the amateur PC builder. What I just love is the color coded jackets for THE HD/POWER LED, Speakers, Reset and power on swicth. each connection has it's own color. If PC case manufacturers and mainboard producers would set a standard in this then connection in this case would be so much easier.

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Color coding connections like this is a brilliant idea.

BIOS & overclocking
Tweaking can be done at BIOS level. I must state that Gigabyte managed to do an average job here, the results where not amazing compared to other mainboards as it lacks a few options we need to do a succesful overclock. For instance manual setting of memory CAS latency at 2.5 or 2 is not even possible. Furthermore, what i miss very much is a 2.66x multiplier for the memory. At a 150 MHz FSB we would have been able to achieve a DDR speed of 400 MHz.

With the following settings however you'll achieve a reasonable overclock. Changable settings are:

  • CPU Voltage up to 1.7250 Volts
  • CPU Host Frequency (FSB) up to 248 MHz
  • CPU:AGP clock ratios 2.0x, 2.5x and Auto.
  • Fixed PCI/AGP Frequency (33/66 to 50/100)
  • DDR:CPU Ratio (2.00x, 2.50x and auto)
  • AGP port voltage (+.1 - .3 volts)
  • DDR Voltage (+0.1 to 0.2 Volts)

That's it for overclocking settings people. We got the FSB at 150 MHz while exactly the same configuration on other mainboards got us to 160. Perhaps future BIOS upgrades will bring some more options.

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