Gigabyte 8I955X Royal presentation
Our sample Gigabyte 8I955X Royal motherboard arrived in non-retail packaging. Those with a fetish for box shots will be disappointed.
Gigabyte's bundle begins in deluxe fashion. 6 SATA cables allows one to make use of the board's full complement of SATA2 ports immediately, and three molex-to-SATA extenders cover power requirements perfectly. Gigabyte also bundles in some funky IDE cables and, it must be noted, an excellent manual that, for once, is written well. The deluxe nature continues with the bundling of a small USB-based Bluetooth key and accompanying driver CD, although Gigabyte hasn't gone the whole 10 yards and added WiFi connectivity.
The driver CD deserves an explicit mention. Gigabyte's XPress Install makes onerous installation a simple one-touch affair. The install utility correctly identifies which components require driver support and installs them one after another. There's also a plethora of additional, useful software that includes Easy Tune 5 tweaking/overclocking Windows-based software.
Making full use of the feature-set on offer, Gigabyte also bundles in 3 brackets that take up space usually reserved for PCI-based boards. An extra 6 USB 2.0 and 2 FireWire 800 ports then become available.
Here's what fits into the orange-coloured slot on the previous page. Gigabyte's U-PLUS DPS, once plugged in, turns the 'Royal into a motherboard featuring an 8-phase power circuit. Of course, the board works perfectly well without it, but, Gigabyte reckons, U-PLUS DPS adds extra power-related stability at higher frequencies and voltages. Certainly an interesting concept.
All in all, a decent, functional bundle for a deluxe motherboard.
