Date:
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Author:
Brent Justice
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Gigabyte GA-8IHXP

The newest addition to Gigabyte's Pentium 4 family packs features with performance while keeping stability their number one priority.

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Software

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The CD is loaded with all the chipset, network, and audio drivers you will need with this motherboard, as well as plenty of Gigabyte specific utilities. It includes Microsoft Management Console for viewing various information about your computer and its OS setup. SIV Hardware Monitor is a simple hardware monitor to view voltage, temperature and fan speed information. @Bios Writer is a utility to update the BIOS of the 8IHXP easily from within windows. There is a DMI viewer included as well. Utility manager is Gigabyte’s taskbar utility to manage all the utilities you have installed so that you can start them easily.

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Above you can see the BIOS writer utility, which is the easier thing to use. You simply check the Internet Update box and click on Update New BIOS. It will then check the web for a later version of the BIOS then you have installed and will automatically update the BIOS and then ask you to reboot to save changes, simple as that. You can also see the DMI information utility and the SIV Hardware Monitor utility here.

Test Setup

Gigabyte GA-8IHXP, Pentium 4 2.53GHz Northwood B (clocked at stock 533MHz FSB and 1066MHz RDRAM); 512MB Kingston PC1066 RDRAM; Asus GeForce4 Ti 4600; 3Com 3c905tx-nm NIC, 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HD, Enermax 450 watt PSU. Windows XP, NVIDIA driver v40.41, Intel Chipset Driver 4.00.1013. F4 BIOS.

ASUS P4T533, Pentium 4 2.4GHz Northwood B (clocked at stock 533MHz FSB and 1066MHz RDRAM); 512MB Samsung RIMM 4200/ECC; Asus GeForce4 Ti 4600; 3Com 3c905tx-nm NIC, 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HD, Enermax 450 watt PSU. Memory settings of RDRAM Turbo Enabled. Windows XP, NVIDIA driver v29.42, Intel Chipset Driver 4.00.1013.

ABIT SR7-8X Mainboard; Pentium 4 2.53B CPU; Stock HSF; VisionTek GF4 Ti4600 (29.42); 1x Corsair 512MB XMS3200 DDR; NetGear FA311 10/100 PCI; Maxtor 40GB ATA/133 7200RPM HD; Windows XP Professional; SiS . IDE Driver 2.00.01 AGP Driver 1.10.03 BIOS "A8"; Intel Chipset Driver 4.00.1013.

MSI 845G MAX, Pentium 4 2.4B, Intel Stock HSF, Gainward GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB (28.32 Drivers), 2x Corsair 256MB XMS3000 DDR SDRAM, 3Com 905cx-txnm 10/100 NIC, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133 7200RPM HDD, Windows XP Professional, DirectX 8.1, NVIDIA Driver v28.32, Intel Chipset Driver version 4.00.1009.

Intel D850EMV2 / Intel i850E; Pentium 4 2.53B; Intel HSF; VisionTek GF4 Ti 4600 128MB (29.42 Drivers); 4x Kingston PC1066 128MB RDRAM; NetGear FA311 10/100 PCI; Maxtor 40GB ATA/133 7200RPM HD; Windows XP Professional; Intel Chipset Driver v3.20.1008.

Intel D850EMV2 / Intel i850E; Pentium 4 2.53B; Intel HSF; Gainward Ultra 750/XP GF4 Ti 4600 128MB (28.32 Drivers); 4x Samsung PC800 128MB RDRAM; 3Com 905CX-TXNM 10/100 PCI; Western Digital 30GB ATA/100 7200RPM HD; Windows XP Professional; Intel Chipset Driver v3.20.1008.

Application Benchmarks:

Business Winstone 2001

Business Winstone measures a PC's overall performance by running today's top-selling Windows-based 32-bit applications. Latest release: Business Winstone 2001 version 1.0 (11/07/2000). The Business Winstone tests are "market-centered" tests. Business applications are the popular applications employed by most users every day. Their final list of ten business productivity applications includes: Five Microsoft Office 2000 applications (Access, Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, and Word); Microsoft Project 98; Lotus Notes R5; NicoMak WinZip; Norton AntiVirus; and Netscape Communicator.

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Our GA-8IHXP motherboard outperforms our previous i850E motherboard, the Asus P4T533, at stock speeds. It is interesting to note, however, that the two DDR333 motherboards actually outperform the 8IHXP at stock speeds in this test, but with a little overclocking the 8IHXP quickly takes the lead.

Content Creation 2002

Content Creation Winstone 2002 is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running top, Windows-based, 32-bit, content creation applications on Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, or Windows XP. Content Creation Winstone 2002 uses the following applications: Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, Adobe Premiere 6.0, Macromedia Director 8.5, Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev 4, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055, Netscape Navigator 6/6.01, Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 5.0c (build 184).

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Under Content Creation, the RAMBUS systems perform slightly better than their DDR counterparts. Our 8IHXP at stock speed edges out slightly ahead of the DDR systems and even the Asus P4T533. When overclocked it doesn’t take the lead as much as one would think, though. Telling us it’s not so much CPU power that wins this benchmark as it is memory bandwidth.

SysMark 2002 Office Productivity

SysMark 2002 incorporates the following Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity applications:

Office Productivity: Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Microsoft Access 2002, Netscape Communicator® 6.0, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred v.5, WinZip 8.0, and McAfee VirusScan 5.13

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Under office productivity, we see the same thing as we saw in Business Winstone 2001. The ABIT SR7-DDR333 performs better at stock than our 8IHXP. When overclocked it does take the lead, but barely.

SysMark 2002 Internet Content Creation

SysMark 2002 Internet Content Generation: Adobe Photoshop® 6.01, Adobe Premiere® 6.0, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, and Macromedia Flash 5.

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Again, in content creation tests we see the RDRAM solutions perform better than DDR333. When our 8IHXP was overclocked, there are just no comparisons to it in our graph.