Gigabyte GA-6EA Slot 1 Motherboard Reviewed by Jereme Wong Jong Siang (26/07/98)
<Introduction><The Good><The Bad><Conclusion><Rating> |
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Back to topIntroduction
With the introduction of the Intel Celeron, the Intel 440EX chipset opens up a whole new option for those in the basic PC market segment. Designed to harness the full potentioal of the Celeron chip, and added performance feature of the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), the EX chipset allows designers to easily implement support for popular multimedia computing graphics and applications on volume-priced basic PC platforms.
Being the first EX motherboard for review, I do not really have any benchmarks to compare the board with. The only Celeron chip available for testing is the 300 Mhz version. However, I have also included the PII-333 Mhz chip for the test of this motherboard as I wanted to find out what is the performance of a PII chip on the EX chipset. I have categorized my findings into the good and negative points in the following section.
The GoodWintune 98 Result for Intel Pentium Celeron 300 Mhz @ 4.5 x 66 MhzThe GA-6EA comes in a baby ATX form factor which is easy to install into most casings. Integrated on board with both AT and ATX connector, current users of the Pentium Classics chips will be please to know that they do not have to upgrade their casing or power supply if they intend to upgrade to this Slot-1 motherboard.
Fitted with an ATX power supply, the system could be power on by using your PS/2 mouse or keyboard. By double clicking on the right or left mouse button, or entering a string of combination on the keyboard, you will able to do away with the convention way of switching on your PC. A feature new to most motherboards in the market, Gigabyte has definitely designed the board to bring convenience to the home users.
The REV 1.03 AWARD BIOS that comes with this motherboard is able to display the clock speed accurately for the various multiplier settings. In addition, the CPU ID is also displayed on the boot up screen. There is also full control of the IRQs for the resources setting for the PNP/PCI cards.
Though limited to the three common clock speed settings found in most motherboards today, the 75 clock speed boast an unexceptional stable setting for this motherboard.
| CPU | (1) Intel Pentium II with MMX@300 MHz |
| Video Board | Intel740-854 Win9x PC1 3.1.1516-980316 |
| Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM | 64 MB |
| OS | Windows 98 4.10.1998 |
| Area Tested | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU Integer | 837.4557 MIPS |
| CPU Floating Point | 343.5545 MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) | 43.87423 MPixels/s |
| Direct3D | 26.50739 MPixels/s |
| OpenGL | 8.08579 MPixels/s |
| Memory | 485.6639 MB/s |
| Cached Disk | 41.56826 MB/s |
| Uncached Disk | 1.970179 MB/s |
| CPU | (1) Intel Pentium II with MMX@366 MHz |
| Video Board | Intel740-854 Win9x PC1 3.1.1516-980316 |
| Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM | 64 MB |
| OS | Windows 98 4.10.1998 |
| Area Tested | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU Integer | 1056.652 MIPS |
| CPU Floating Point | 429.7889 MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) | 48.71221 MPixels/s |
| Direct3D | 29.7499 MPixels/s |
| OpenGL | 10.78658 MPixels/s |
| Memory | 570.7598 MB/s |
| Cached Disk | 48.4916 MB/s |
| Uncached Disk | 1.732439 MB/s |
The Intel Celeron 300 Mhz chip was found to be clock-locked at the multiplier setting of 4.5x. All other tests conducted above the 4.5x multiplier setting refused to POST. Notice that the 75 bus speed setting is faster than the 83 Mhz setting in all the tests.
| CPU | (1) Intel Pentium II with MMX@334 MHz |
| Video Board | Intel740-854 Win9x PC1 3.1.1516-980316 |
| Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM | 64 MB |
| OS | Windows 98 4.10.1998 |
| Area Tested | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU Integer | 937.878 MIPS |
| CPU Floating Point | 386.6912 MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) | 65.70863 MPixels/s |
| Direct3D | 24.58364 MPixels/s |
| OpenGL | 10.90728 MPixels/s |
| Memory | 594.0654 MB/s |
| Cached Disk | 77.6221 MB/s |
| Uncached Disk | 2.477493MB/s |
| CPU | (1) Intel Pentium II with MMX@367 MHz |
| Video Board | Intel740-854 Win9x PC1 3.1.1516-980316 |
| Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM | 64 MB |
| OS | Windows 98 4.10.1998 |
| Area Tested | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU Integer | 1059.472 MIPS |
| CPU Floating Point | 431.6269 MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) | 67.27513 MPixels/s |
| Direct3D | 25.43312 MPixels/s |
| OpenGL | 11.24928 MPixels/s |
| Memory | 653.5404 MB/s |
| Cached Disk | 85.2421 MB/s |
| Uncached Disk | 0.0892913 MB/s |
| CPU | (1) Intel Pentium II with MMX@407 MHz |
| Video Board | Intel740-854 Win9x PC1 3.1.1516-980316 |
| Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM | 64 MB |
| OS | Windows 98 4.10.1998 |
| Area Tested | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU Integer | 1186.917 MIPS |
| CPU Floating Point | 479.4584 MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) | 69.814 MPixels/s |
| Direct3D | 25.96058 MPixels/s |
| OpenGL | 12.09221 MPixels/s |
| Memory | 723.7497 MB/s |
| Cached Disk | 86.32361 MB/s |
| Uncached Disk | 0.0673001 MB/s |
Back to topBefore you purchase this motherboard, one thing in mind is that you have to be pretty sure of what are the peripherals you are going to plug into this board. Reason is, with limited PCI and ISA slots, (not to mention that the board only comes with 2 DIMM slots) there really isn’t any option for future expansion or upgrading.
In addition, for the die-hard overclockers out there whose common belief is to squeeze every ounce out of a chip, this board may not be a good choice as you are not able to set the voltage setting on this motherboard. Furthermore, the board does not have a Soft-CPU menu in which you are able to set the clock speed and multiplier settings in the CMOS setup. With a dip switch and set of jumpers located on the right of the AGP slot, you have to constantly open up your casing to do any changes to the clock speed setting.
One more point to take note of, is that although this board supports the 83 bus speed setting, however, when set at this speed, the whole system seems to be running at a fraction of the 83 bus speed. This is especially so for the PII 333 in which the performance of the whole system slows down dramatically and a wintune result shows that the uncached disk performance is below 0.1MB/s !!! Compared to the 75 bus speed setting, which is a very stable setting for this motherboard, the uncached disk performance is at the average of 2.47Mb/s.
Conclusion
From the above results, it is clear that having a L2 cache in a P II chip does speed things up tremendously. However, if you are thinking of the cost-effective way of upgrading your present Pentium Classic chip to a Celeron, at the same time not wanting to change your casing or power supply, the GA-6EA will be the answer to this. Overclocking isn't the primary factor to consider when Gigabyte designed this board. But, with the on-board stable 75 Mhz setting, you may consider pushing your chip to its limit to get the most value out of your money.
Overall Rating (Out of a maximum of 5 Star) |
|
| Installation | *** |
| Performance | *** |
| Price | **** |
| Overclockability | ** |
| Material Quality | **** |
| Stability | **** |
| Overall Rating | *** |
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