Gigabyte 7VRXP (VIA KT333)

By Dmitry Mayorov
and Sergei Pikalov

VIA KT333 chipset

This is the first (non-reference) board on this chipset which we were able to get. Although the board is a pre-production sample, it is equipped with a good set of accessories and works excellently.

Accessories:

Package: an old design;
Cables: 3 ATA66/100/133 and 1 FDD;
Bracket with 4 USB ports;
Bracket with two USB ports;
Bracket for the rear panel;
CD with software including:

drivers;
Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0;
Norton Antivirus 2002;
Norton Personal Firewall 2002;
several utilities for a smart card reader;
system monitoring programs;
Gigabyte EasyTune III;
Gigabyte Face Wizard;
Gigabyte Management Tool.

The layout is rather good, except audio-ins which are located in front of PCI slots, and too close components in the lower right-hand corner. It's not difficult to reach jumpers even when the board is already installed.

The 3-channel switching voltage regulator incorporates 2 capacitors of 3300 uF, 2 of 1200 uF and several lower-capacity ones (although modern boards use a larger number of LowESR capacitors, it was enough for the card to work stable).

The following controllers are integrated: an audio one based on the Creative CT5880-DEQ, it has a connector for front outputs and inputs; USB 2.0 bus controller based on the VIA's VT6202 chip, it has 4 ports and is back compatible with USB 1.1 devices. The Winbond I/O controller (W83L518D) provides for installation of connectors for readers of smart cards and MS and SD cards.

The board incorporates the Gigabyte DualBIOS technology which allows using the second unsoldered BIOS chip as a reserve one.

Non-unsoldered connectors: jumpers and switches for clearing of the CMOS, changing a CPU frequency, BIOS protection from recording and connectors for 2 USB 1.1 ports, a fan, SPDIF, WOL and WOR.

The system monitoring is supported by the ITE IT8705F chip. Processor voltage (+/-3.3, +/-5 and +/-12 V), speed of 3 fans and temperatures of the processor (a built-in sensor), the board (a built-in sensor) and an external sensor can be controlled. There are 2 connectors for adjustable connection of fans and 1 for non-adjustable.

Brief characteristics of the board: memory slots - 3 DDR SDRAM; expansion slots - AGP/ 5 PCI; I/O ports - 2 COM/ LPT/ 2 PS/2/ 4 USB 1.1/ 4 USB 2.0; dimensions - 305x235 mm.

Adjustment can be carried out with:

jumpers and switches	Switches to change a CPU multiplier		x5-x>12.5
jumpers and switches	Jumper to change an IDE RAID mode		ATA133 mode/ RAID mode
BIOS based on the v1.24i from AMI	Setup of memory timings	+	CAS Latency, Command Rate, Fast Command
	Setup of memory frequency	+	Auto, DDR266, DDR333
	Setup of AGP bus	+
	Setup of PCI bus	+
	Changeable scaler of AGP and PCI buses	-
	Manual assignment of interrupts	+
	Changeable FSB frequency	+	in 1 MHz steps, 133-200 MHz
	Changeable CPU multiplier	-
	Changeable core voltage	+	+5%, +7.5%, +10%
	Changeable memory voltage	-
	Changeable chipset voltage	-
	Changeable AGP bus voltage	-

We used the latest available version of the BIOS - F3.

The board features an excellent set of functions and good speed characteristics, but there are not many settings - it will hardly be a good choice for overclockers.

Test results: