Ok, let's get this straight...
Written: Jun 21 '01 (Updated Jun 21 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Low price, good performance, on-board sound, some unique features, ISA slot
Cons: Useless audio modem riser, only 3 SDRAM slots
The Bottom Line: This board is excellent!! Well priced and it works great! Just make sure you buy the correct version that you're after!!
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| maniac_00's Full Review: Gigabyte GA-7ZX Motherboard |
Alright, now I've read a lot of reviews on this motherboard and I have to say that if you are going to write an honest review of a product, please make sure that you are buying the correct product in the first place!! The motherboard shown in the picture is indeed correct. Now, there may be some confusion because there are 2 different incarnations of the board. The first is the GA-7ZX-1 and the second is the GA-7ZX (revision 5.0).
Now the only differences between these 2 boards is that the GA-7ZX-1 does NOT have the following:CT-5880 (on-board sound chip), ISA slot, and dual bios. These can all be found on the GA-7ZX (rev 5.0). Now there are other variations of this board (i.e. GA-7ZX-H or GA-7ZXC,) but they have a 266/200 MHz (Athlon/Duron) front-side bus. Also, one reviewer mentioned that he got the GA-7ZM which is in the mirco-ATX format and should most definitely not be confused with the GA-7ZX!! So, if you want the motherboard pictured here on epinions, ask and make sure that you are getting the GA-7ZX revision 5.0. Now that I have cleared that up, let me tell you what I think of this motherboard.
The GA-7ZX (rev 5.0) is a well-priced board with many great innovative features. One of these features is the dual-BIOS. Now, let's say you somehow corrupt your BIOS. If you've only got one BIOS, you could be in for expensive repairs. However, with the dual-BIOS, if your first BIOS goes down, the motherboard can switch over to the second BIOS automatically. Then you can rewrite to your first BIOS, saving you much time and money. Now, to be perfectly honest, I've never had a BIOS go bad on me in any computer I've owned. However, the dual-BIOS feature is a nice little piece of insurance.
The motherboard performs well. I haven't put it through any rigorous benchmarks or anything like that, but if you go to a website like www.tomshardware.com, you can read their review of 10 KT133 chipset motherboards and compare the numbers for yourself. Now in my opinion, after reading the reviews from that website, there was not a large difference in the test results. Who is going to notice a difference of 2 or 3 FPS or other minute numbers like that??
The ISA slot is great for those of us who have older hardware and are still trying to make those parts last as long as possible. Also, the CT5880 Creative PCI 128 on-board sound chip is a good feature because it allows you to free up one more PCI slot and it puts out decent sound. Also, you can monitor the hardware of the system (i.e. fan speed, processor temperature), however this cannot be done from Windows. The motherboard also comes with a fairly useful CD that has drivers for the sound, etc. It also comes with a tool called "Easy-tune" which is supposed to allow you to "overclock" your processor. However, I have not tried this yet, so I cannot tell you how well it works.
The only things that I have issues with are the audio-modem riser slot and the fact that there are only 3 SDRAM slots. The audio-modem riser slot is a completely useless feature because no one makes audio-modems for everyday consumers. So the cost of this useless feature is passed on to you and I, and we see no benefits for our money! Also, with only 3 SDRAM slots, you are somewhat limited in terms of future RAM expansion.
Overall, this is a great board for the money. Just make sure that you're getting the correct version of the board!! I also just wanted to make one last point. One reviewer said that when he disabled the on-board sound, it also disabled the game port. Well, let's think about this. When you go out and buy a sound card that has a game port on it, if you were to "disable" your soundcard, don't you think that your game port will also stop working? Yeah, it would be nice to be able to disable the on-board sound and stick in another sound card and then have 2 functioning gameports, but I don't know of anybody who has a set-up like this. Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope you find this useful.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 185 (CDN)
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Epinions.com ID:
maniac_00
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Location: Calgary, AB, Canada
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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