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BIOS
Hurrah, a non generic BIOS. Non generic in that some keypress trickery (CTRL + F1) is required to unlock certain options deemed advanced enough to hide from prying eyes. But besides that, hidden settings unconvered, it's pretty standard in terms of features offered up for adjustment. On the Gigabyte specific side of the fence we've got the following: 5%, 7.5% and 10% over detected CPU voltage in terms of Vcore adjust, the usual 2.5 to 2.8V Vdimm adjust and 1.5 to a silly 1.8V Vagp.
We've got CPU ratio adjust in the BIOS, but a DIP switch bank on the board itself to select your FSB range available, for further higher resolution adjust in the BIOS.
That's about it as far as BIOS tweaking goes, everything else is common to all the boards.
Bundle
Given the feature set, it would be prudent to expect more bundled goodies than should be decent. Gigabyte don't disappoint here, you get everything, and more.
A large, colourful quickstart guide to get you going without the manual, said manual, another seperate motherboard settings sheet with a Gigabyte case sticker, 4 seperate USB2.0 ports, the FireWire ports, 2 Serial ATA cables and a rare Serial ATA power cable, 3 (very long) PATA cables and a floppy cable, the I/O shield, driver CD, Promise and Silicon Image manuals for those chips, a rather funky external SATA module and finally, the SPDIF optical and RCA digital outputs and the rest of the speaker outputs on a seperate flyoff bracket. Phew. I'm sure I broke some rules of the English language with regard to comma usage, listing all of that.
It puts manufacturers like EPoX to shame, especially given that the board isn't massively more expensive than any of the others. The more kit the better we say.
Manual
Well, I best cover all three manuals here. I'm not entirely sure Gigabyte wrote the Silicon Image and Promise books, they read a lot differently to the manual for the board itself. Never the less, each manual is clear, full of useful information and easy to navigate. It makes all the difference sometimes. Nobody ships a bad manual these days really, but in the bad old days, shocking translations were the norm, so an easy to read manual raises a smile.
Midway Conclusion
I'm impressed by the bundle and board features. My only criticism is the northbridge, it could have done without the fan. Giga could still have been flashy without it and it seems the only reason it's there is to show off. Otherwise, another DFI, hopefully the performance stands up alongside the initial impression you get. Time for another board.
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