Introduction

With the AMD64 CPU now starting to make its appearance into the consumer markets, it is easy to forget that there still is a more cost affective CPU from AMD at the moment; though one would think it would be hard to forget the AMD Athlon CPU. Ever since the introduction of the original 500MHz Slot A CPU, it has caused Intel some great discomfort. In fact, AMD at one stage had the first CPU running 1GHz and the fastest CPU on the market for over a month.

Gigabyte has been one of the most avid AMD supporters since the introduction of the Irongate 750 chipset, and as the product matured, so did Gigabyte's product portfolio. Gigabyte has been one of the few manufacturers to build motherboards based on just about every AMD Athlon chip, from VIA, SiS and AMD. In fact it is this diversity that has made Gigabyte a name to be taken seriously.

The VIA KT600 chipset is the latest chipset for the AMD Athlon CPU from VIA. This is the first chipset from VIA to support native Serial ATA, in fact VIA is the second manufacturer to natively support Serial ATA but is the first to bring it to the AMD platform. Gigabyte has once again shown it's not afraid to put its best foot forward with its adoption of the KT600 chipset. Today we look at the Gigabyte GA-7VT600-1394 based on this very chipset.