Introduction
The new Intel 865PE chipset is really targeted at the mainstream market segment with its attractive pricing and its powerful features. Of course, if you compare it with the top-of-the-line Intel 875P chipset also recently launched not long, the 865PE would probably lag behind the former by a small margin. However, that's quite insignificant to users especially for those who don't really require that last extra ounce of performance. In fact, the Intel 865PE is quite on-par with the 875P if you put in a little more effort in optimizing the system with more aggressive memory timings and clock speeds. But that's a different ball game altogether.
Today, we'll look at Gigabyte's 865PE offering which is known as the GA-8PENXP. The GA-8PENXP is the most feature rich 865PE board that Gigabyte has to offer. Packed with a lot of on-board goodies, there's really not much you need to purchase with the board except for a good graphics card (a Gigabyte RADEON 9800PRO perhaps?) and definitely a good sound card to spice it up further. Other than those two items, Gigabyte has pretty much taken care of everything - from SATA RAID controllers all the way to IEEE 1394 support.
Before we go into the juicy details of Gigabyte's latest offering, let's have a closer look at the technical specifications below.
Gigabyte GA-8PENXP Technical Specifications
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Processor
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- Socket 478 for Intel® Pentium® 4 / Celeron® processors
- Intel® Celeron® Processors 1.7GHz - 2.0GHz or higher (400MHz FSB)
- Intel® Pentium® 4 Processors 1.4GHz - 3.06GHz or higher (533MHz FSB)
- Intel® Pentium® 4 Processors 2.4GHz - 3.2GHz or higher (800MHz FSB)
- Supports processor at 400 / 533 / 800MHz front side bus
- Supports processor with Hyper-Threading technology
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Chipset
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- Intel 865PE chipset
- AGP 4x/8x slot (1.5V only) with fast write capability
- Supports 400/533/800MHz Intel NetBurst micro-architecture bus
- Supports up to 4GB of DDR333 or DDR400 SDRAM memory
- Supports single/dual channel memory configuration
- Intel ICH5 chipset
- Eight high-speed USB 2.0 ports
- 2x Serial ATA/150 ports
- Dual channel Ultra ATA/100 IDE bus master controller
- PCI bus mastering v2.3
- I/O APIC
- Supports both ACPI and legacy APM power management
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Cache memory
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- CPU Built-in 512KB (Northwood) L2 cache for Pentium 4 or 128KB L2
cache for Celeron
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System memory
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- 6 x 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM
- Supports up to 4GB of unbuffered and non-ECC single/double-sided DDR266
/ DDR333 / DDR400 SDRAM memory
- Supports 2.5V DDR SDRAM
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PCI IDE
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- 2x Ultra ATA-66/100 IDE ports integrated in ICH5 (up to 4 devices)
- Support for PIO, UDMA-33, Ultra ATA-66/100 IDE devices
- 2x Serial ATA/150 ports supported by ICH5
- Up to 150MB/s transfer speeds
- 2x Serial ATA/150 ports supported by SiI3112A
- Up to 150MB/s transfer speeds
- Supports RAID 0 or 1 configuration
- 2x Ultra ATA-66/100/133 IDE ports powered by ITE IT8212F controller
- Supports up to 4 Ultra ATA-133 internal hard disk drives
- Supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD configuration
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| I/O Ports and Headers |
- 1x floppy port (360KB - 2.88MB)
- 2x serial port
- 1x parallel port (SPP/EPP/ECP)
- PS/2 Keyboard
- PS/2 Mouse
- 8x USB 2.0 ports (4x rear and 4x by cable through on-board headers)
- 1x Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) LAN jack (powered by Intel 82547EI)
- 3x fan headers
- Audio jacks for Line In, Line Out and MIC
- 1x S/PDIF input/output header
- 2x IEEE-1394 header (supports up to 3 ports)
- 1x Game port header
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Expansion slots
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- 5x 32-bit PCI slots, PCI 2.3 compliant
- 1x AGP Pro 2x/4x/8x slot (0.8V/1.5V only)
- 1x DPS slot
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Power Management
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- Supports ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface)
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Form Factor
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- ATX Form Factor : 30.5cm x 24.4cm
- Fits into regular ATX case
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BIOS
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- 2x 4Mbit (512KB) Flash EEPROM
- Award Flash BIOS with PnP, ACPI, IDE drive auto-configure and multilingual
support
- Multi-boot on ZIP, ATAPI CD-ROM, SCSI, SATA, IDE #1, #2, #3, #4
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In the box, you'll find the following items:-
The GA-8PENXP motherboard
CD with drivers and utilities
GA-8PENXP user's manual
Quick PC Installation guide
GigaRAID manual
SATA RAID manual
Motherboard settings label
GC-SATA card
3 pieces of ATA-133 IDE cable
Floppy drive cable
2-port USB bracket
2-port IEEE 1394 bracket
4 pieces of SATA cable
Audio combo kit (with surround jacks and S/PDIF outputs)
I/O shield
DPS2 card + retention brace
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