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Gigabyte GA-G1975X (i975X)

Date: 15.03.2006

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Early in November last year, Gigabyte presented a new line of motherboards based on Intel 955 and Intel 975 chipsets to the public. The first unusual and mysterious motherboard in the line, as was expected, was the solution aimed at "overclockers and extreme gamers" (cited) - Gigabyte G1 Turbo 975X which is today our long-awaited guest at our test lab.

The exterior of the board is extravagant enough. While watching it in operation from close proximity, you get the impression of a boiling life in some fantasy city of the future. The components are indeed hot, because G1 Turbo 975X uses the most interesting technologies by Gigabyte. The most interesting is the "Turbojet technology" - a proprietary feature developed especially for providing maximum efficiency of cooling the motherboard's chipset and the power components. Additionally: C.R.S. (CMOS Reload Switch) - a button that allows clearing all the BIOS settings in charge of overclocking with a single press; an onboard button to control the motherboard's power; there is such a useful thing like a POST indicator; an integrated 8-channel high-quality solution by Creative - Sound Blaster 24-bit, which is no match to ALC-codecs; the already customary DualBIOS; implementation of two PCI Express x16 slots for video cards (in the SLI mode, both operate in the PCI Express x8 mode); "Easy Tune 5" software for "dummies" in the world of overclocking... The list can be continued more..

Specifications declared by the manufacturer:

The board was packaged in a box of stylish "book jacket",

which describes all the advantages of this motherboard.

Package bundle

The board came bundled with the following items:

• A user manual in multiple languages;
• a Quick installation guide brochure;
• CD with drivers - for the chipset, audio, proprietary utilities and Norton Internet Security 2005;
• Gigabyte bonus CD - Cyberlink PowerProducer and Power2Go (data/music burning);
• Creative SoundBlaster 24 bit demo disk;
• DTS demo DVD disk.

• 4 SATA cables with fasteners to fix it in place;
• GS-SATA2 connection - a device for fitting an external SATA hard disk;
• 2 power adapters to plug in two SATA hard disks;
• GS-SATA2, a plate for fitting an external HDD on the rear panel;
• SLI adapter to link video cards (although officially the chipset does not support SLI);
• Plate for the rear panel with holes for coolers;
• 2 cables for 80-pin IDE, 1 FDD cable;
• 2 USB plates for two connectors each;
• Plate for 2 USB ports and 2 FireWire ports;
• Audio cable;
• Gigabyte corporate logo sticker.

The package bundle is very rich, but ... Annoying was that it lacks a plate for plugging in a good old COM port. Of course, this interface will soon come into non-existence, but - who knows "if that may be needed." But no. If needed, a plate for COM-port would have to be purchased separately elsewhere.

Board layout

To start with, let's examine the most eye-catching onboard component - the Turbojet system. We have already seen systems like that on motherboards by Abit, ECS, ASUS. Gigabyte goes on with own good tradition and keeps improving the cooling system. In fact, the new system appears to be a structure made of two "wind tunnels" having a 40 mm fan on each of the ends. The first "tube" is in charge of cooling the north bridge, the second one - for maintaining the temperature mode for the board's power components.

We can say the following regarding the operational efficiency: in small- to medium-sized housings constrained in the inner space the system will show excellent results and effectively cool the hottest components. However, it should be noted that a person seriously into overclocking, willing to pay over 300$ for a motherboard of such level is unlikely to install it inside such a housing. Also, it's no good interfering with the established system of air flows within the housing. In our view, the noise level also exceeds the admissible level and resembles the bygone greatness of Thermaltake coolers for Intel Pentium III platform - SuperOrb and DragonOrb.

There is one more note regarding the Turbojet. We can't ignore the dimensions of such a cooling system, so not every non-standard cooler can be installed on Gigabyte G1975X, and the overclocker should be well aware of that! Besides, these dimensions have prevented engineers at Gigabyte to wire the interfaces in compliance with the ATX/BTX standard, so some ports had to be brought over to separate plates. In far not all the housings there is enough space for such a number.

Therefore, on the rear side of the board there is merely a small part of connectors needed to the user, namely, PS/2 ports of the mouse and keyboard, analogous outputs of the sound card, 2 USB 2.0 ports, and an output of the network card.

Now let's look at the power supply subsystem. The 4-phase pulsed voltage stabilizer that provides power to the processor includes 3 field-effect transistors per phase, seven 560 mkF, four 1500 mkF, and three 1000 mkF capacitors. The memory voltage stabilizer is reinforces by inductive components.

Now on to the wiring of the board.

As we see, the Turbojet takes the lion's share of the space onboard, but the remaining space is separated in a very well thought-out way. Under the processor connector, there are 4 slots for DDR-II memory, with the color marking of paired to switch modules to the dual-channel mode. Even if quite a massive board is installed into the first PCI Express x16 slot, the video card won't be able to hinder installation of the memory, which is a definite plus for the assembly operator.

Gigabyte G1975X has not one interface for plugging in IDE devices, as it should be expected in accord with the used south bridge ICH7R, but two. The company engineers decided not to compromise and implemented an additional channel as a separate ITE IT8211F chip, which in turn allows plugging in up to four IDE devices to the motherboard. There are 4 interface connectors for plugging in hard disks and other SATA drives. The picture is complemented by the FireWire controller on the Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 chip and a network controller based on the Broadcom BCM5789KFB chip of Gigabit Ethernet standard.

The feature which will definitely appeal to the amateurs of hi-fi sound in computer games is Gigabyte's implementation of onboard 8-channel solution by Creative - the Creative Sound Blaster 24-bit. These are also EAX 3.0, and full 24 bit / 96 KHz already integrated into the motherboard. Maybe the quality of sound is a bit worse than that of its "separate" brother, but in any case this is definitely better than cheap AC'97 codecs.

And this component is indeed worth of a careful attention from overclocking fanciers. The combined block which is made up of a POST indicator, a power control button, and a button to reset BIOS settings to the defaults. Together with the proprietary DualBIOS technology, it makes a formidable word-combination - the so-called "irrepressible overclocking machine".

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