Intel tried their best and released several new chipsets for Pentium 4 in the last months. Although Intel chipsets seem to be the most attractive solution for the majority of users, it’s obvious that lower priced chipsets have a market too. VIA was not able to get Intel's seal of approval for their Pentium 4 chipsets and they have a lot of trouble in entering certain markets. The situation is very favorable for the talented company SiS that owns a license from Intel because they have no rival in producing low cost Pentium 4 chipsets. Today we will take a look to a motherboard built around the new SiS 648 chipset, Gigabyte GA-8SG667.

First look

Gigabyte is known to offer good quality, fair priced motherboards. Gigabyte GA-8SG667’s package is decent. You can find inside all you need to install the board in your case: two IDE ribbon cables (unfortunately one of them is UDMA33), one ribbon floppy cable, one USB bracket, one CD with drivers, the user’s manual and the motherboard. The user’s manual describes the motherboard's installation but fails to provide information to advanced users. Overall it’s an useful manual, but I think that Gigabyte could have done more. The motherboard has five PCI slots, one AGP and three DIMM slots. It’s not a very large motherboard, actually the integration level of the SiS 968 is pretty high. On board you can find a six channel AC’97 audio controller (the already notorious ALC650 from Realtek) and six USB ports. I think that there are versions of GA-8SG667 which also have an onboard network controller because the necessary space is visible on PCB.

The motherboard's layout is quite good, except for the ATX power source connector which is not placed very inspired near the rear motherboard connectors. The SiS 648 chip is passive cooled by a medium sized heatsink. Near the fifth PCI slot and the IDE connectors there are the two additional headers which connect four on-bracket USB ports. The headers position is good for airflow maximization, but not the easiest to work with. Fortunately you won’t have to play with these headers too often. The motherboard uses the ITE IT8700F I/O controller which is able to control three FAN speeds beside the traditional I/O tasks. There are only two fan headers on GA-8G667 and only one is close to the CPU socket.

Gigabyte GA-8SG667 product picture

There is not much to discuss about the board's physical characteristics. Gigabyte kept all simple, the motherboard is targeted to a market where people are not looking for astonishing features. Except for several jumpers which set the audio output there are no other jumpers on board. Unfortunately GA-8SG667 doesn’t come with the famous Gigabyte dual – BIOS feature; there is only one BIOS chip onboard.