Details
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The board is colorful and fitted with numerous elements: a DPS voltage regulator, featuring a total of six phases, six DIMM sockets for flexible memory placement, four additional Serial ATA ports via a Silicon Image Sil3114 (the Southbridge already offers two ports), DualBIOS, Gigabit-Ethernet with CSA connector, an Adaptec 7902W Ultra320 controller and an AC97 2.1-compliant sound system.
The feature that stands out the most though is the Southbridge used by Gigabyte, because it is not the ICH5 from Intel. Instead, this board has the Intel's HR 6300 ESB, which supports two 64 bit PCI-X slots with a maximum of 66 MHz (533 MB/s). The rest of the features are much the same as the ICH5's: two UltraATA/100 ports and two SATA connectors. RAID functionality is assured by Adaptec's BIOS software, which can be purchased separately. In contrast to the Intel RAID on the ICH5R, it does not offer any 128 kB stripes - you can choose from 16, 32 and 64 kB. As the 6300 ESB also has a mere four USB 2.0 ports, Gigabyte has grafted a VT6202 from VIA onto the board to offer four further connection possibilities.
The Adaptec chip has two Ultra320 SCSI ports and supports RAID modes 0 and 1. Although SCSI drives are still considerably more expensive than ATA hard drives, as demands increase, they are the better choice.
The two PCI-X slots leave a total of three PCI ports over - enough in most cases. If not, PCI plug-in cards can be operated in a PCI-X slot since these are downward compatible. The network chip does not take up a slot - it is operated via the CSA interface of the 875P chip. Here, the Northbridge cooler noteworthy, in that it now spins at a far lower speed and is practically inaudible.
The HR 6300 ESB is a clearly enhanced version of the ICH5. Most importantly, it offers two PCI-X slots.
