Final thoughts
Gigabyte has tried to create a motherboard that takes the forward-thinking approach of Socket-T and marries it with established Springdale technology. The end result is a hybrid board, unimaginatively named 8IPE775-G, that will last as long as Socket-T is around. It's also priced at a wallet-friendly £60 and makes use of regular DDR1 RAM and AGP-powered graphics cards, thus making the jump to LGA775 a palatable one for most.£60, then, buys you rock-solid stability from a big-name manufacturer, decent overclockability and reasonable performance. I can see the 8IPE775-G being attractive to white box PC builders looking to jump on the LGA775 bandwagon with minimal expense. The very fact that it generally matches the vastly more expensive Alderwood's performance is another definite plus, and Gigabyte has done a reasonable job in keeping the features count up.
I do feel, however, that the 8IPE775-G needs to work on better BIOS if it's going to draw the interest of the enthusiast. Another factor that takes away from the platform's attractiveness is extraneous to Gigabyte, and that's the recent excellent price-to-performance ratio performance exhibited by 90nm Winchester core-based Athlon 64s. But if you've got your heart set on Socket-T in the near future and have decent RAM and at least a midrange AGP graphics card already in your system, the 8IPE775-G is a strong contender for the enthusiast on a budget.
