Gigabyte 7NNXP (nForce2 Ultra 400): Gigabyte Goes nForce
by Evan Lieb on July 5, 2003 10:53 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gigabyte 7NNXP: Tech Support and RMA
For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:
The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address (es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we are not getting the staff “on” an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we have had with our motherboard. We then give the manufacturer up to 72 hours to respond over business days and will report not only whether they even responded within the time allotted but also if they were successful in fixing our problems. After publishing the review, if we do eventually receive a response we will go back and amend the review with the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria to base your motherboard purchasing decisions upon; with motherboards looking more and more alike every day, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we are interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews so please do email us with your comments.
Gigabyte's RMA policy is easy to follow and fairly good for a tier one motherboard maker. They offer a one-to-three year (depending on the model) manufacturer's Limited warranty. If you are experiencing difficulties in warranty service through your dealer, Gigabyte may attempt to resolve this issue. You must provide the following details to process your RMA request: Name, Address, Phone/Fax number, Model/Revision number, Serial number (10 digits), the precise issues you are experiencing, vendor from which you purchased your Gigabyte product from, (include vendor contact info), CPU type and size, and memory module type and size.
Like ASUS, Gigabyte prefers that you deal directly with the vendor from where you purchased the motherboard rather than with them. This is understandable, as the cost of RMAs, facilities, employees, etc. can be prohibitive. Still, we would love it if the tier one manufacturers would adopt similar RMA policies akin to Epox, Albatron or AOpen's policies.
We were pleased to see that Gigabyte's tech support responded within 72 hours; 33 hours to be exact. This is a vast improvement over Gigabyte's past tech support record, and hopefully it will continue. Though Gigabyte's RMA policy is only adequate, in this instance their tech support performance was excellent. We certainly hope this is the start of a trend.
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Anonymous User - Tuesday, July 8, 2003 - link
Yes, uhm, can we go back to GIF? I hate Flash. Look, I'm on dialup, and I'm lagged a LOT by big downloads, but I still prefer GIFs to Flash (which seems to load a tad faster). My friends all agree, and most of them are dialuppers too. Please, at least put up a poll or something so you can see how we all really feel about this stupid Flash stuff.NovaPolice - Monday, July 7, 2003 - link
It looked very good on paper but it hated every brand of ddr I had on hand. I went through a couple gigs of sticks before deciding to send it back.Anonymous User - Monday, July 7, 2003 - link
I have tested both this board, and the MSI K7N2Delta. The MSI board was FAR MORE stable, and a bit (7%) faster. I wonder why in this test the Gigabyte board is compared with an EPOX via board: Just to let it outperform, which is otherwise not possible?Anonymous User - Monday, July 7, 2003 - link
They say that CPU voltage is adjustable only up to 1.85v and that chipset voltage is adjustable by 5, 7.5 or 10%. I believe this to be wrong however. What the reviewer believes to be chipset voltage is actually CPU voltage also!! Check out the review over at Digital Daily and they show how voltage up to 2.035v is possible using a combination of these 2 seperate CPU voltage controls! Quite a large difference and large overlook by the reviewer.WooDaddy - Monday, July 7, 2003 - link
Evan, are you or anyone at Anandtech going to discuss the differences between the Ultra 400 and the standard nForce 2 chipsets? Maybe a general review with reference boards? Is there a big performance difference or limiting factor for future upgrades?Anonymous User - Monday, July 7, 2003 - link
The review does not include information on the presence of Heat Sink Mounting Holes. Suggestion, add info on mounting holes or lack of to all motherboard reveiws.Anonymous User - Monday, July 7, 2003 - link
It appears that the performance test results in the Gigabyte 7NNXP review are presented in Macromedia Flash Player 6.This is unfortunate, since I am among the many web users who dislike the Flash format, and resent the numerous pop-up "ads" requesting that version 6 be installed.
I regret that I will be unable to view these results, to find out what additional complexities required them to be displayed in Flash, rather than a standard, multi-platform/browser form such as GIFs. And I hope that this is not an indication that future results will be Flash-formatted, since I am a frequent AnandTech reader and will miss whatever informative content is Flashed.
Thanks.
Anonymous User - Sunday, July 6, 2003 - link
The Anandtech review claims Gigabyte replied in 33 hours..I Wonder who in Gigabyte Should I contact ,Or what e-mail address i should mail to,
To get a Reply in ANY time frame.
CrystalBay - Sunday, July 6, 2003 - link
Nice evaluation...However perhaps the six phase power DMS prolongs the overall life of these boards, rather than inherently more stable overclocking...Replacing a board thirteen months, two or three years down the line (If lucky) is common place...I like to see more board makers produce the bare bones 400's like Solteks NV400-64L...Why because these boards can be thrown away once a year or so...