Athlon KX133 Motherboard Roundup - A Nail-Biting Affair

Gigabyte GA-7VX

The Gigabyte GA-7VX is equipped with two BIOS memories (Dual BIOS) from AMI. Positive: A plastic snap mounting secures the graphics card. Weak point: The connector labels are partially unclear and too small.

The Dual BIOS function is one of the outstanding features of the Gigabyte GA-7VX. It allows booting with the second BIOS memory, even after a flash error. Not so good are the much too small labels for the connectors. As the only candidate in the test field, the GA-7VX comes with an additional snap mounting for AGP 4x graphics cards. During the test with VCM-SDRAM the board refused to work. A BIOS update will very likely remedy this. Quite remarkable is the extensive controller with four power transistors and a number of capacitors. The board is equipped with a sound chip from Creative that functions as PCI device. Different sources can be linked over a total of three audio connectors and connect to the integrated sound chip.