Review Date: 14th June 2002 Reviewed By: Michael "Hughesey" Hughes Product: Gigabyte 8SIML SIS650 Motherboard Rating: 95% Manufacturer: Gigabyte Supplier: N/A

Overclocking

Being a motherboard which is targeted primarily at the OEM market, I wasnt expecting a mass of overclocking features. Upon entering the bios, however, I was pleasantly suprised. There are options for CPU FSB, CPU Multiplier, DRAM Speed, AGP Speed, PCI Speed and VCORE Voltage. The FSB is selectable in 1mhz increments from 100MHz to 355MHz, and the core voltage is selectable up to 1.85v in .025v steps.

Apart from pure overclocking, the RAM/AGP/PCI settings really impressed me. You are able to select a number of multipliers, and the bios will show you what speed each will be at. For example, at 133FSB, I could select 166MHz DRAM speed. There are simply too many combinations to discuss, but basically, you wont be left high and dry in any department, because no matter what FSB, there will be a multiplier which can keep your AGP/PCI/DRAM speeds in spec.

On our review sample, we were able to overclock our Pentium4 1.6a (100/400FSB) up to a nice 2.2ghz on 138FSB (552MHz Quad Pumped). With the new 533FSB motherboards and processors out, its nice to know that just like some of the AMD chipsets (namely the KT266A), that this motherboard is capable of being overclocked to the next chipsets standard, and hence, I could run a 533FSB processor on here without too much trouble at all.