Computex 2000 Coverage Day 3: More Motherboards

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Gigabyte has also jumped on the Dual Socket-370 bandwagon with their Apollo Pro 133A based solution.

Here we have another dual 133A board Gigabyte had on display.

Just like FIC from yesterday's coverage, Gigabyte was showing off their own Win32 overclocking utility, EasyTune III. This brought us to ask Gigabyte why their motherboards fail to implement a fully jumperless setup which was the case with their latest Socket-A Motherboard, the GA-7ZM. Gigabyte's only explanation was that ABIT holds the patent to the jumperless setup and all other manufacturers that implement such a setup were infringing on their patents. Honestly that explanation didn't make much sense to us but if Gigabyte is hoping to gain more ground with the enthusiast population, a jumperless setup is definitely a requirement.

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The GA-6VMM7 is based on the VIA PM601 chipset. The PM601 chipset is sort of like a Slot-1/Socket-370 version of the old Super7 MVP4 chipset. The similarity extends from the fact that the PM601 features the same integrated Trident Blade3D AGP core as the MVP4.

With the PM133 chipset (integrated Savage4) already available from VIA, it doesn't make much sense for Gigabyte to pursue a PM601 based motherboard since the PM133 would most definitely outperform it as far as integrated video is concerned.

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The GA-6SMZ7 was one of many SiS 630E based motherboards we saw and continues the string of Gigabyte boards with integrated video features at their booth and in their suite. It'll be interesting to see how much of the market SiS can claim with their new integrated chipsets (630/730E) but it is entirely too early to judge their success right now, we'll just have to wait and see.