Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D

Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D

Like ASUS’ P5AD2, the Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D is designed from the ground up to appeal to the guy who wants it all and then some. The spec list is eerily identical, especially when you consider how few motherboard manufacturers have been able to differentiate themselves for 925X. The GA-8ANXP-D provides Dual Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394b, onboard 802.11g Wi-Fi, and support for up to eight Serial ATA hard drives. Sound familiar to anyone?

The biggest differentiating factors between the two boards are Gigabyte’s highly respected dual power system which delivers eight-phase power circuitry and has been enhanced with the addition of a heat pipe for additional cooling performance, two extra DIMM sockets (although total memory size is unchanged), and 3 PCI Express x1 slots on the GA-8ANXP-D, versus two on the P5AD2 (which adds an extra PCI slot instead). The P5AD2 also provides two additional IDE RAID connectors for parallel ATA hard drives.

6 DIMMs

Lots of SATA here

New UPlus power module

Besides the heat pipe on the Universal Plus dual power system module, Gigabyte provides a flexible cooling solution on the 925X North Bridge. Like the ASUS P5AD2, the GA-8ANXP-D relies primarily on passive North Bridge cooling. A large aluminum heatsink sits atop the chip. But Gigabyte also provides an additional North Bridge cooling fan in the GA-8ANXP-D’s packaging which can be mounted on the North Bridge. This flexible solution appeases the enthusiasts, who want active cooling on the North Bridge, while at the same time providing backup in case the fan fails, and also pleases those who want to run their system as quietly as possible.

For convenient overclocking within Windows, Gigabyte also provides their Easy Tune 5 software with the GA-8ANXP-D.

FSB tweaking

CIA2 settings

CPU voltage adjustment

The GA-8ANXP-D’s BIOS provides bus speeds ranging from 200-355MHz in 1MHz increments, with the option of manual memory frequency adjustment like the ASUS and ABIT motherboards, ratios of 2.0 and 2.66 are standard. Voltages can also be adjusted in the GA-8ANXP-D BIOS. Memory voltage settings of 1.8V, 1.9V, 2.0V, and 2.1V are offered, while the PCI Express voltage can be tweaked to run at 0.1V, 0.2V, or 0.3V over default. Gigabyte had been toning down their CPU voltage ranges in comparison to other manufacturers, but all that goes out the door in the GA-8ANXP-D BIOS. Options range from 0.8375V-1.6V in increments of 0.0125V for Prescott processors. Considering that we only needed 1.5V to hit 3.96GHz on a Pentium 4 540 (3.2GHz), we think this should be plenty for most overclockers.

Use the MIT menu to tweak CPU settings

DRAM voltage adjustment

Gigabyte’s CPU Intelligence Accelerator 2 (C.I.A. 2) is also present in the GA-8ANXP-D’s BIOS. C.I.A. 2 will dynamically adjust your processor’s clock speed depending on the system’s workload. For gaming and other processor-intensive applications such as video editing, C.I.A. 2 will automatically bump up your processor’s clock frequency. Once you’re finished, C.I.A. 2 will dynamically adjust your system parameters to more conservative levels. Settings of cruise, sports, racing, turbo, and full thrust are available.