Gigabyte has also improved their cooling capabilities by including three fan headers on the GA-6OXM7E. These fan headers are also very well positioned, and there will be no difficulty determining which one to use for the CPU, or the two case fans. The ATX backplate is pretty standard for an i815E motherboard and features two USB, one serial, one VGA-out, LPT, and two PS/2 ports along with the standard game and audio connectors. The VGA port takes the space reserved for the second serial port, and Gigabyte offers an optional external connector for COM 2. This was not included with our review unit, so if you require this functionality, make sure your board has this option.

Gigabyte has also included their innovative DualBIOS technology with the GA-6OXM7E. This means that on any Gigabyte product with the DualBIOS feature, you will actually have two physical chips on the board itself. The first one will be your primary BIOS while the second will remain dormant until the time comes when you need it. If anything happens to your primary BIOS, such as a virus or bad flash update, then the secondary BIOS chip automatically takes over. DualBIOS is a feature that will be rarely used, but will be extremely important to those who do come to need it.

The GA-6OXM7E also features an array of internal options such as CD, modem, SPDIF and AUX connectors, SMBus, Wake on LAN (WOL), Wake-On-Ring (WOR), Suspend-To-RAM (STR), as well as the option for an on-board Creative CT5880 sound chip. It should also be noted that Gigabyte has an alternate revision of the board, the GA-6OXM7E-1, which has the same specifications as the GA-6OXM7E, except it has only DIMM sockets, a single BIOS, and no STR or CT 5880 options.

The Gigabyte GA-6OXM7E retail box contains the motherboard, one FDD cable, one ATA-66 EIDE cable, one ATA-33 EIDE cable, a driver CD and a 98-page user manual. The driver CD includes the i815E and on-board sound INF and driver files, as well as several utilities such as @BIOS and EasyTune III. The user manual is up to Gigabyte's high standards and even makes improvements in some areas. Though its organization could be improved, the diagrams and installation instructions are very clear and easy to follow. The most impressive portion of the manual is the section dedicated to the software installation. Many motherboard vendors totally ignore this area and it is nice to see Gigabyte including detailed instructions, as well as images of all the main software screens.