Gigabyte's New Pentium 4 Solutions - 8IEXP and 8IGX

Overclocking and Installation

Installation of the two boards was painless. While both boards did use non-standard ATX backplanes, Gigabyte does supply them for you, so there is no need to hunt down the right one. After installing the boards in the case we connected up all the externals and powered up. Both boards booted up without a problem. Windows installation was also a sit back and watch affair while it did its own thing.

The 8IEXP took a bit more installing of software due to its RAID and Firewire controllers. The 8IGX required a INF update (which was provided on the drivers CD) in order for the AGP4x to work since the I845G is a new generation chipset and not a direct descendant of the I845 like the I845E is.

Overclocking on both boards was basically a mirror. Both boards have an identical BIOS layout for the overclocking, and almost identical for the peripherals setup. The only difference is the 8IGX has the option for the onboard video and no RAID, Hardware sound or Firewire options.

First off in the overclocking section you have the "CPU Host Clock Control" setting. You set this to enable in order to set the CPU front Side bus and many other factors. Once this option is enabled you have full overclocking control.

"CPU Host Frequency" is next in line. From here you can set your FSB of the CPU from 100Mhz up to 355Mhz - This is the largest amount of settings that anyone has ever made possible, though getting the system to over 200Mhz FSB (800QDR) is quite a challenge.

Next is the "Fixed AGP/PCI" Control. This option allows you to set your AGP/PCI dividers to any setting you want at any FSB. This is a fantastic option as it allows you to overclock your FSB without overclocking the video systems.