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SiS655 - New Dual-Channel Chipset. Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 Ultra – First SiS655 Based Mainboard (page 3)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 03/21/2003 | 01:49 AM ]

Closer Look at Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 Ultra Mainboard

Gigabyte is actively expanding its market presence and is one of the first to roll out mainboards based on new chipsets. Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 Ultra is an excellent example. That’s why we decided to get acquainted with SiS655 with the help of this product.

SiS655 represents an alternative to a more expensive Intel E7205 in the desktop market. Therefore, Gigabyte did its best to implement as many extra features as possible, so that they could position this product as a solution for high-performance systems of enthusiastic PC users.

Notwithstanding all the integrated stuff, the design of Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 Ultra can be considered a success. The mainboard carries an AGP 8x slot equipped with a fastening latch, five PCI slots and four DDR DIMM slots (two for each of the memory controllers). The design layout is handy; there should be no problems during installation. Our only critical remark to Gigabyte’s product concerns the connection of the riser-card. This card provides three IEEE1394 ports supported by the controller integrated into the chipset South Bridge. When installed, it hangs above the PCI slot located next to the AGP, so that you appear unable to use it. As a result, the cooling of the graphics card may be hindered. Moreover, GeForceFX owners would have to give up IEEE1394 ports as the cooling system of this particular graphics card takes up the room above the neighboring PCI slot completely.

Thanks to the South Bridge, the mainboard supports six USB 2.0 ports. A back panel bracket coming with the mainboard carries four of them.

Integrated controllers also add a lot to mainboard’s functionality. Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 Ultra features an ordinary Fast Ethernet chip from Realtek and a six-channel AC’97 ALC650 controller with SPDIF output support. Among more exotic capabilities we can name SerialATA RAID and ParallelATA RAID controllers. SerialATA RAID is provided by Sil3112A chip from Silicon Image supporting two channels and arrays of level 0 and 1. GigaRAID ITE IT8212F chip provides Parallel ATA RAID. GA-8SQ800 Ultra is the first mainboard where we meet this chip. It supports two ATA-133 channels and arrays of level 0, 1 and 0+1.

Besides, Gigabyte has also implemented one more innovation in its GA-8SQ800 Ultra mainboard, which has to do with easy connection of HDDs. For this purpose they included a special GC-SATA bracket into the mainboard package. This panel allows placing the Serial ATA connectors implemented via the Silicon Image controller at the back panel of the PC case. In other words, with a GA-8SQ800 Ultra mainboard and GC-SATA bracket you may get the opportunity to connect your SerialATA hard disk drives to your computer as external ones. Moreover, in this case not only SerialATA connectors will be moved to the back panel, but also the necessary power connectors for the HDDs. Inside the chassis, the GC-SATA is connected to the onboard SerialATA connectors and to the power supply unit.

One more house technology from Gigabyte is Dual BIOS. There are two flash-memory chips on the mainboard PCB that store two copies of the system BIOS. A special utility integrated into the BIOS code helps to copy the data between the chips and also boot up from either of them. As a result, an accidental damage of the flash-memory data (for example, after an incorrect BIOS update) won’t be a problem.

As for overclocking, Gigabyte offers a dainty bit here. First, we were simply impressed but the widest FSB frequency range available in BIOS we have ever seen: from 100 to 355MHz. You can argue about the necessity of this sky-high upper value, but Gigabyte claims that GA-8SQ800 Ultra will support the upcoming CPUs with 800MHz bus. The mainboard also allows adjusting three voltages: Vcore, Vdimm and Vagp. CPU voltage may be set to any value from 1.55V to 1.85V with 0.025V increment; DIMM voltage can be set to 2.5V or 2.6V; AGP voltage – to 1.5V or 1.6V. The AGP/PCI frequency can be changed independently of the FSB frequency. Besides that, the BIOS Setup of GA-8SQ800 Ultra offers options for basic memory timings adjustment and setting the dual-channel mode for the memory controllers. But these options are hidden by default. In order to reach this sub-menu of BIOS Setup, press Ctrl + F1.

Despite all the indisputable advantages, the overclocking friendly features set of GA-8SQ800 Ultra lacks one important thing. The mainboard doesn’t allow re-setting CPU and memory parameters in case of “over-overclocking”. Moreover, there is no Clear CMOS jumper – a useful tool for every overclocker.