Review : Gigabyte 7VAXP (KT400)

There are a lot of good things we can say about the Gigabyte 7VAXP. For starters, it's well-priced motherboard for what you get. Currently, you can purchase the Gigabyte 7VAXP for around $115 from a reputable vendor before any applicable taxes or shipping fees. Considering features like USB 2.0, Firewire, RAID, LAN, and "real" DDR400 support are included, this is quite the steal. The fact that we encountered no stability or reliability issues with this board in our stress tests is yet another good reason to buy this motherboard.

However, "most" people obviously doesn't include all the computer users out there. For the overclockers and cooling fanatics, they will be disappointed with this motherboard. In the overclocker's case, there's only an adjustable FSB up to 165MHz, which you can't take real advantage of anyway due to the fact that there are no PCI divider options or an AGP/PCI lock available via the BIOS. In addition, for those overclockers that desire to unlock their Athlon XP, they will be very disappointed to learn that the 7VAXP has no multiplier options available in the BIOS or via jumpers on the motherboard. In the case of cooling fanatics, the Gigabyte 7VAXP lacks the four mounting holes that make the powerful Swiftech MCX and Alpha PAL series of heatsinks tick. Without a doubt, this will hurt the 7VAXP's prospects with cooling gurus.