Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra: The KT400A in Retail Action

Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra: BIOS and Overclocking

The Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra uses the popular Award BIOS, which most high-end motherboards use nowadays.

We see a pretty healthy amount of information present in the PC Health section of the 7VAXP-A Ultra BIOS. Here you'll find readings on Vcore, PSU (all rails), system temperature, CPU/System fan speed, CPU temperature, and options for enabling or disabling CPU/System Fan Failure Warning, CPU Shutdown Temperature, and Case Open Status options. We would have like to have seen an RPM reading on the Power fan header, as there was one included on the 7VAXP-A Ultra above the Floppy connector. A VDIMM reading and North Bridge fan speed reading would have also been nice additions. All in all though, quite an acceptable PC Health section.

The Advanced Chipset Features section contains some pretty nice tweaking options. Some of the memory timings options available are Active to Precharge, Precharge to Active, Active to CMD, and CAS latency. A common addition among VIA chipset-based motherboards however is Bank Interleave, Command Rate, and Fast Command. Bank interleave was available up to 4-bank, Command Rate was available as low as 1T, and Fast Command was available as high as Ultra mode. It's great to see all these memory tweaking options available, especially since feature-filled nForce2 Advance Chipset Features sections starting taking the lead last year. Therefore, we feel confident in proclaiming the 7VAXP-A Ultra's Advanced Chipset Features section as one of the best we've seen from a Socket A BIOS. Just remember to hold the CTRL key while pressing F1 to open up the Advanced Chipset Features section; that's right, Gigabyte continues the CTRL + F1 tradition with the 7VAXP-A Ultra BIOS.

There are some very nice options available in the Frequency/Voltage Control section of the Frequency/Voltage Control BIOS. One of them is the high FSB adjustments, available up to 250MHz in 1MHz increments. While this gives us hope for 400MHz FSB Barton support, Gigabyte tells us that this board will not officially support 400MHz FSB Barton processors. Perhaps, though, the Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra will unofficially support 400MHz FSB without issue, we'll have to get a 400MHz FSB Barton for testing to be sure.