Gigabyte has today announced the first in a series of motherboards aimed at computer enthusiasts and overclockers looking to get the most out of their system. They're kicking things off with a board based around Intel's 975X Express chipset.
Sticking with their rather logical but in no way glamorous product names, the board has been dubbed the GA-G1975X. It belongs to the new G1-series family of motherboards, all of which will be engineered with extreme performance in mind.
The choice of the beefy new 975X chipset is probably a wise one, although at the time of writing just how much grunt 975X will have remains to be seen.
Chipset aside, Gigabyte has some other interesting design features on this board, the first being its cooling solution. It seems everybody is jumping on the CPU & I/O area cooling bandwagon, and Gigabyte can now be added to that list, with Turbojet technology.
Gigabyte's wonderful Turbojet diagram outlines how it works. Heat from the CPU, northbridge, memory and voltage circuitry is extracted by the means of two ducts with fans at each end. How quiet will it be and is it actually going to provide any overclocking headroom? That remains to be seen. However, it should come in handy for watercoolers, as the ducting and fans will provide cooling for chips that would normally rely on airflow generated by the CPU's heatsink/fan.
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The G1975 also incorporates on-board surround sound. That's no surprise, of course, but what is interesting is the use of a 24-bit Creative chip, rather than good old AC'97 or Intel Hi-def audio.
Finally, let us not forget the PCIe interconnects, with two 8x slots for dual graphics cards, along with two 4x electrical PCIe slots which will run at 4x or 1x.
Will crazy cooling, Intel's latest chipset, sound blaster audio and dual PEG slots give Gigabyte's G1-series a good start in life? We'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, check out Gigabyte's press release.
