Gainward's first pass through the AnandTech test lab, with their i440ZX 6IZB, was a disaster, but don't write them off just yet. They're back with a more traditional board, the 6IBA based on Intel i440BX. This board is actually older than the 6IZB, a hence has actually been through more revisions and should have given Gainward a good chance to work out some of the bugs.

New Anand Tech Report Card Rating
79/C

Do not compare newer ratings to older ones, the newer ratings are much more aggressive

The Good

The impression given by the 6IBA after a first look is that it is appears much like any other ATX i440BX Slot-1 mainboard with no special features nor any obvious defects. The ATX specification is also closely followed with most major components strategically placed to minimize cable clutter and provide the greatest possible space to work around the board. All HDD/FDD connectors are located where they should be, right at the front of the board, so that these cables are not forced to run over the CPU and/or memory.

Marring the otherwise good layout, the ATX power connector is right behind the Slot-1 connector, forcing that cable to run over the CPU, and possibly the memory, to reach its destination. That cable clutter makes it difficult to work inside the complete system and also obstructs air flow somewhat. The board uses a standard ATX mounting format, but is fairly short - just a bit longer than an ISA slot - and should fit just fine in any ATX case.

Gainward chose to offer the now dated 4/3/1 (PCI/ISA/AGP) slot configuration that is being phased out on just about all Slot-1 motherboards. The three available DIMM slots are pretty much standard fare for an i440BX board in this class. Two fan connectors are available - one next to the CPU, and one at the front, left corner of the board. A relatively sparse four 1500uF capacitors are located immediately behind the Slot-1 connector as well as a number of 1000uF capacitors placed all over the board. The virtually standard green heatsink covers the i443BX chip and is attached via thermal tape. Betaconn connectors are used throughout the board. Although not one of the biggest makes of connectors and sockets, these get the job done fairly well and feel sturdy. DIMM slots are also no-name, but seem to be quite strong and as good as any others available today.

Although the Gainward site makes claims of 60/66/75/83/90/100/112/133 MHz FSB speeds, the 60 and 90 MHz options appear to be myths. The 60Mhz is instead replaced by an essentially useless 50MHz option. Overclocked FSB speeds are not documented in the manual at all, and are fairly well hidden under the Chipset Features Setup in the BIOS under the label "CPU Host Clock." The default is "Auto," which essentially means it selects 66 or 100MHz as indicated by the state of pin B21 - just like Intel wants motherboard manufacturers to do. The available bus speeds are also determined by the state of B21 - 100MHz and above bus speeds are intended for 100MHz CPU's and the same goes for the 50 - 83MHz settings. Fortunately, a jumper that can be used to override B21 is included right next to the i443BX chip and allow for 100MHz speeds on a 66MHz CPU. Clock multipliers are controlled via a dip switch block, with settings from 3x to 6x documented on the board via silk screening.

The stability of the 6IBA in non-overclocked situations was much improved over Gainward's 6IZB, although still slightly below the average i440BX board. Overclocked stability was also somewhat below average. Performance improved greatly to bring it to the average i440BX level. The 6IBA is nothing to write home about, but at least Gainward has brought themselves that much closer to other manufacturers' boards.

For hardware monitoring, the 6IBA uses the extremely popular Winbond 83781D to monitor both onboard fans, 7 voltages, and up to 3 temperatures. The reason for "up to 3 temperatures" is that the Winbond hardware monitor can only monitor one temperature on its own - the temperature of the Winbond chip itself. In order to monitor the other two temperatures, such as that of the CPU, the Winbond chip requires an external thermistor. Unlike most other manufacturers using the Winbond monitoring chip, Gainward has included a convenient clip on thermistor for mounting to the CPU. Unfortunately, however, only one thermistor header is provided, so that "up to 3 temperatures" is really cut down to just two. Winbond's own hardware monitoring software is included to report these values in Windows 9X and NT and a variety of freeware/shareware programs are available on the internet for doing the same.

The BIOS also suggests some minimal performance enhancing settings such as a recommendation to select CAS 2 upon boot. Hardware monitoring information is provided in the BIOS as well. The system can be powered on by not only the regular power button, but also a password, hot key, or mouse button. Otherwise, the BIOS is pretty much the generic Award BIOS.

Power management consists of pretty much the standard stuff these days. A wake on LAN header is available to allow the system to power on in the presence of network activity. The BIOS can be set to turn on the system at a specific time. The CPU fan can be shut off when the system suspends to quiet things down a bit. ACPI support is not included despite its usefulness under an ACPI compliant OS like Windows 98 or Windows 2000.

The manual is not very useful for the first time system builder with little information on how to install the actual board. It covers two different boards, but fortunately they only vary in the chipset used, so this is not a major compromise. The included CD features Winbond hardware monitoring software and a few other small utilities.

The Bad

Gainward overlooked some features that many other motherboard manufacturers have neglected as well. First and foremost is the ability to tweak the CPU core voltage for increased stability (and heat) while overclocking - ABIT with their SoftMenu II still remains the king in that arena. Second is the ability to control the power state when AC power is resumed after a power outage. The Gainward 6IBA simply remains off, which is not what you want a server (or any other computer than needs to be on 24/7) to do. Third is the ability to assign a specific IRQ to a particular PCI slot. This has been a boon for many users trying to sort out fully loaded situations, but something Gainward users will have to do without for now (although there is always the possibility of a BIOS upgrade to correct this oversight). The IRQ for USB cannot be disabled either.

It would be nice if Gainward used the newer Winbond 83782 hardware monitoring chip that includes the ability to read CPU temperature from an on-die thermal diode for more accurate reading. On the other hand, older .35 micron Klamath Pentium II's do not feature the thermal diode, so this would not necessarily be an effective solution for everyone.

Power management support is also lacking. ACPI is not supported at all, which is already quite useful under Windows 98 and will become even more important under Windows 2000. A BIOS update could fix the lack of ACPI support, but none is currently available.

As mentioned earlier, the manual is a bit weak in the installation section. Anyone that has never installed a motherboard before will not feel comfortable with the complete lack of information given in the Gainward manual on this topic. This reflects, of course, reflects their OEM roots where anyone involved in system building would be trained in the installation of a motherboard.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: No

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

AnandTech Motherboard Testing Methodology

The Final Decision

Gainward's i440BX board, the 6IBA, is a great improvement over their first entry at AnandTech with much improved performance and stability. Unfortunately, that improvement and stability only brings them up to par with other average boards. If you don't demand too much from your computer, the Gainward 6IBA will get you by just fine. However, unless you get an incredible deal, there's really no reason to pick the merely average Gainward over more stable, higher performing, and more feature packed motherboards.

The 6IBA makes Gainward look a lot more credible as a motherboard manufacturer. However, in such a competitive market, its hard to become known by offerring simply average products. What they really need to do is come up with something to make them stand out above everyone else. Merely producing average boards will leave Gainward competing on price for vendors, OEM's, and VAR's who pick the cheapest board that meet a particular set of specifications.

How it Rates