DDR for Pentium III: 10 Boards with VIA Apollo Pro 266

Gigabyte GA-6RX - Multitalented, But A Bit Kooky

BIOS - AMI 6RX F3B (14.03.2001)

Board revision - 1.0

The blue color of Gigabyte's well-equipped GA-6RX really makes it stand out. It was the only board we tested that had four DDR SDRAM slots. The Gigabyte proves to be multitalented. It has more than its full allotment of equipment - ranging from a RAID controller (Promise Ultra 100), an AGP Pro slot and Dual BIOS functions, all the way to clock rate adjustment using DIP switches.

The board incorporates the most important features. Be that as it may, some insufficiencies became apparent in the test. Every time the system crashes, the individual BIOS settings are lost. This can be very time-consuming and irritating for people running systems under Windows 98 SE, which is world-renowned for its stability problems. After all, is there anybody out there who enjoys reentering IRQ settings over and over again?

It's also a bad idea to overload the Gigabyte with overly fast memory modules. We had enormous problems with the CL2 memory modules (CL2 = CAS latency of 2 clock cycles). In terms of performance, this board hovers around the middle of the benchmark chart. Overclocking aficionados can adjust the CPU core voltage and the clock multiplier manually. Regarding the AMR slot, the same thing could be said for the Gigabyte as for the other candidates - the slot is superfluous for retail customers because there are no peripheral devices available for it.

The Gigabyte GA-6RX has two independent BIOS chips. In the event of a BIOS flash update failure or incorrect settings, it is possible to switch chips.