First off I would like to thank you site for offering free insigtfull reviews over the past few years I have been visiting.
THE BEEF.
After reading the first installment of your review titled "DDR333 for P4: 16 Boards with Intel 845G - Part I" I was quite impressed with how Gigabyte has come along as a competitive if not superior motherboard manufacturer. Not only was I impressed by the benchmarks, but the feature set was outstanding. The only thing that could have been added to the Gigabyte 8iGXP would be serial ATA.
Now the Problem, after reading the review I went looking for the motherboards mentioned, and sadly the Gigabyte 8iGXP wasn't to be found for sale. After some extensive searching I broke down and called Gigabyte's California, USA offices to find an official release date. When I asked the sales staff if they knew anything about the 8iGXP, they had no idea the board existed. So I quickly got myself in touch with the Marketing team there and started asking questions. The down and dirty is that they have no current plans to release this board in the US market, and quite frankly she was suprised that I found a reference webpage for the board on thier website (
http://www.giga-byte.com/products/8igxp.htm ) which they have since pulled it would appear. if you search for the 8igxp on google you can still see the page cached there.
the reason I bring this to your attention is so you can see what markets this board will be released in, or hopefully persuade them to release it in the US market too. (me smiles)
Request too editors:
I was hoping thatwe could see some benchmarks and reviews of the different inegrated peripherals we are seeing on modern motherboards. for instance what are the differences between the audio chips being put on motherboards and thier respective performance. IE: Real ALC650, Creative CT5880-DEQ, AD1981A, ALCxxx, etc. just from your 845g chip review alone.
Sorry for the long winded email, I just wanted to give as much info as possible. If your require anymore specific information from me please feel free to ask.