Gigabyte produces two versions of this board. The micro-ATX version has only three PCI slots but makes up for it with an on-board AC97 sound controller that's fully SoundBlaster compatible, plus an AMR (Audio/Modem Riser) card slot and a separate 4x AGP slot. This version, though, has those features plus the full complement of five PCI slots and even an ISA slot.

The board's system bus is adjustable in eight increments, so if you fancy pushing the system you can do so in small-ish steps. You don't need to worry about setting the core voltage for the CPU, either, as this is automatically detected. The three DIMM sockets can take a maximum of 1.5GB of either PC100 or PC-133 DRAM, and the VIA KT133 chipset handles all the I/O, with dual UltraDMA/ATA-66 IDE ports.

All the boards in this roundup produced a similar performance and represent the fastest combination of processor/motherboard that we've ever seen, and the GA-7ZX was no exception, although some of its features - such as the 66MHz UltraDMA/ATA interface - are not quite up to the level of the other boards. Despite this performance, the GA-7ZX is by no means the most expensive board on offer here.

If you're looking to build a system that's intended for continuous use, the three fan connectors should keep everything cool. Also included is a Windows Utility manager to monitor the system and a VIA 4-in-1 service pack with the necessary drivers. In all, this is a well-built board that matches Gigabyte's reputation.

For the full specification of this board, see the Features table.