Certainly the majority of our readers won't be changing their FSB setup more than ten to twenty times over the course of the GA-6CX's lifetime, but we're left puzzled as to how this poor solution got through Gigabyte's fairly strong quality and assurance testing.
Other less controversial features of the GA-6CX are more commonplace and are standard to all i820 mainboards. Items like the integrated UDMA/66 HD protocol and AGP4X support are present in the GA-6CX, as is support for up to 1GB of RDRAM.
Integration is all the rage lately as mainboard vendors attempt to appeal to PC system builder's cost sensitivity. Towards this goal the GA-6CX includes an Aureal 8810 audio processor on the mainboard itself, along with a joystick/midi port and audio out jacks.
The 8810 is a sharp four speaker output chipset that offers support for A3D 1.0 and DirectSound3D audio streams in hardware. Gigabyte even includes an internal SPDIF digital out port directly on the GA-6CX itself to support Dolby AC-3 digital surround sound.
This may sound like a powerful mainstream audio solution, and as integrated audio products go, it's easily the best on the market.
Buyers do need to be aware though that the 8810 is an older chip that is not as capable as the current 8820 and 8830 Vortex 2 chips, which power aftermarket PCI-based audio solutions in stand alone cards like the Diamond MX300.
Still, it's a good solution that comes on the GA-6CX at almost no cost to the user and in that light it shines brightly.
Owners of certain ISDN adapters, networking cards, or other ISA-based peripherals can now rejoice as there will be at least one i820 mainboard on the market that can handle your needs: The Gigabyte GA-6CX.
In what we believe is an extremely smart move, Gigabyte has included a single ISA slot that's shared with the board's fifth PCI slot for users who need that type of support.
Also included on the GA-6CX is the first AGP retention device that we've seen mounted on a retail mainboard.