When Intel introduced the i865PE last year, little was the company aware that it would later become a victim of that chipsets success. Targeted towards the mainstream market, the i865PE offered a lot of a value, was less expensive than the i875P, and performed like a champ. Soon after its release the major Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers discovered how to turn the i865PE's 'PAT' on, a feature that was supposedly exclusive to the i875P. This put Intel in a difficult situation. With i865PE and PAT enabled, there was really no reason to spend the extra money for an i875P equipped motherboard since performance was identical.

With the i865PE being substantially cheaper than the i875P, we can only assume it was none to pleased that sales of its flagship i875P solution quickly faltered... This time around, Intel has been very tight lipped about the 915P and 925X chipsets, and exactly what differentiates the two.

Over the next few pages of this review, PCstats will be examining the Gigabyte -built GA-8GPNXP Duo socket 775 Intel Pentium 4 motherboard. It is targeted towards the masses, and is based on the 915P chipset.

Along side the Socket 775 Pentium 4 the GA-8GPNXP Duo will support up to 4GB of DDR-2 or DDR memory (though not at the same time); which is one the nicer features of the 915P chipset.

Gigabyte GA-8GPNXP Duo Includes: Users Manual, SATA RAID Manual, Hardware Installation Guide, One Ultra/133 IDE Cable, One Floppy Cable, Four Serial ATA Cables, Two Molex Y Serial ATA Power Cables, Wireless NIC, DPS Power System, Northbridge Fan, Driver CD, USB Bracket, IEEE1394b/USB Bracket

There are two sockets for DDR-2 RAM, and four sockets for DDR RAM. Onboard components consists of an IDE RAID controller, IEEE 1394b fireware, four SATA channels, three PCI x1 slots, 7.1 channel Intel 'High Definition Audio', a PCI Express based Broadcom 5751 Gigabit NIC, a second PCI-based Gigabit Marvel NIC, an 802.11G wireless LAN card, and twin BIOS'. The software bundle includes all the typical fodder, including a copy of Norton Internet Security 2004.

The board is the typical Gigabyte shade of blue, and utilizes colour coded sockets and ports to help new users find their way around easier. From this standpoint I can certainly appreciate the extra work Gigabyte has done with this board, and it makes installing components all the much simpler.

The board features two legacy PCI slots, four PCI Express x1 channels (one is used for the Gigabit NIC, so there are three actual PCI Express x1 slots), and the all important PCI Express x16 videocard socket. There aren't too many PCI Express expansion cards on the market right now, but with the emphasis Intel is putting into it, I'd expect that to rapidly change.