Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW+ - motherboard - ATX - AMD-760 MPX

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Ease of Installation	Good - quick to install
Stability	Very stable
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Supports all Athlon MP processors, CPU plug and play,
Disadvantages:	Not many overclock options, tempremantal onboard raid, registered memory recommended

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Deciding to upgrade my computer as i could not do many things at once, i looked into the options available.
My current pc at the time being an Amd Athlon XP 2600+ (which is still pretty fast), i was after something faster but not too expensive (and as i am an AMD fanatic it had to be an AMD).

After much searching and forum checking, i had three options:

1/ Upgrade to Athlon 64
Pros:
Newest processor offering from AMD,
PCI express on most motherboards,
Dual Channel memory support,
My current memory will work fine.

Cons:
Might mean purchase of new video card,
Might mean purchase of new Power supply,

2/ Upgrade to AMD Opteron
Pros:
Newest server/workstation based processor offering from AMD,
PCI express on most motherboards,
Dual Channel memory support,

Cons:
Might mean purchase of new video card,
Might mean purchase of new Power supply,
Might mean purchase of new registered memory/ram,

3/ Upgrade to Athlon MP
Pros:
My current video card will work fine (AGP)
My current memory might work,
Cost is less than Athlon 64 or Opteron

Cons:
Might mean purchase of new power supply,
Might mean purchase of registered memory/ram

After weighing up the pros and cons, i decided to go for an Athlon MP based computer.
Keeping my eye out on ebay, and looking up all the available motherboard options, i decided to see if i could get a Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW+.

The reason i chose this board above the others is:
Staggered 64bit PCI slots,
Onboard IDE RAID Controller,
Onboard Sound,
Onboard Network Card,
Standard ATX12v Power supply connection.

The board i purchased (from ebay) came with 1gigabyte of registered memory, and 2x Athlon MP 2600+ Barton processors.
The barton being the last revision of Athlon core with 512kb of level 2 cache.

I purchased a new power supply to go with the new board - An Antec 550W EPS12v (see my review)

Swopping the bits over in my computer case was pretty straighforward - out with one board, and in with the other (after putting heatsink/fans on etc)

Windows XP had to be reinstalled in order for it all to operate correctly with the new motherboard (Dual CPU instead of single CPU).

My computer now does what i want - i can go on the internet, encode a CD, folding@home,and write a cd all at the same time!!
Before my computer would slow down as the cpu/processor was being used for too many programs for it to cope with efficiently.
Windows now distributes the programs between the two processors which speeds things up.

The only thing i can fault, is the onboard Promise RAID controller, which suffers from very slow write times.
Eventually i will get a highpoint SATA Raid controller.

My next upgrade, when i can afford to, will be to a dual Opteron based system - it makes so much difference with two processors instead of one.