Introduction

Gigabyte has been in the business of making motherboards for quite some time now; since 1986 to be exact. They weren't really a name that was held in high regard by Power Users. Gigabyte have made themselves a reputation for delivering OEM quality boards, more designed for stability and integration into workstation and business environments rather than an overclocked rig.

While this is a very good thing to make any real headway in the motherboard department, you need to be focused to the market that spends the most money on PC components, hardcore gamers and overclockers. For some 5-6 years now, overclockers have become a major influence in the motherboard industry. Passed off as a fad by the major hardware vendors like Intel, it has now grown to be a full blown event recognized by just about every motherboard manufacturer who wants to make themselves a reputation and some good capital. ASUS, MSI and Abit have done it, once known for stable platforms, they have added to their successes with superb overclocking features.

Just recently we were fortunate enough to receive the Gigabyte GA-8IRXP motherboard from Rectron Communications to review. This board alone was without a doubt the best i845 board we have seen so far. Today we have the GA-8SRX motherboard based on the SiS 645 DDR Pentium 4 platform. Gigabyte seems to be using just about every chipset available for their boards, which can only be a good thing.