Intel “Granite Bay” E7205 Based Mainboard from Gigabyte Technology

by Anton Shilov
11/12/2002 | 10:00 PM

This web-site reports that Gigabyte Technology will soon unveil its code-named Granite Bay based mainboard. To tell you the truth, Gigabyte offering is going to be very impressive: the GA-8INXP supports numerous of advanced and interesting technologies.

Let us start from the specifications:

• Supports Socket 478 Pentium 4 / Celeron processors with 400/533MHz FSB with 3.06GHz clock-speed and above;
• Can take advantage of the CPUs with the Hyper-Threading technology enabled;
• Intel E7205 core-logic with ICH4 South Bridge;
• 4 DIMM slots for up to 4GB of PC1600 or PC2100 DDR-SDRAM memory. Dual-channel memory bus support: the memory modules should be identical and installed in pairs.
• 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel ATA-100/66/33 integrated controller;
• Parallel ATA-133 RAID controller from Promise, supporting 2 ATA-133 ports;
• Serial ATA-150 controller from Silicon Image, supporting 2 Serial ATA-150 ports;
• 6 USB 2.0 ports;
• 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet adapter from Intel;
• AC’97 6-channel audio solution with SPDIF support;
• Overclocking functions, including Vcore, Vmem and Vagp adjusting and so on;
• DualBIOS and other proprietary technologies from Gigabyte;
• ATX Form Factor.

What is very interesting about the GA-8INXP mainboard is that it is the first one to support the so-called Gigabyte’s Dual Power System.

The DPS is an additional board that can not only provide better stability compared to the rivals, but also to increase the strength of electrical current up to 150A and electrical power up to 225W. The company hopes that this will provide end-users an opportunity to install the next-generation Pentium 4 “Prescott” CPUs on this mainboard. Basically, in case Gigabyte guarantees that the device will work stable when the PSB overclocked to 667MHz, it makes sense, however, I am not sure that the current revision of E7205 core-logic can take advantage of the Hyper-Threading II and other advantages of the up and coming Pentium 4 processors made using 90 nanomenter technology.

Gigabyte will also offer a special Serial ATA-150 kit to allow users to make use of hard disk drives without opening the computer case.

Presently I have no information about the pricing and availability of the GA-8INXP. The mainboard may be supplied with different bundles.