As the review on Bjorn3D explains, the Gigabyte GA-8I955x qualifies as royalty because of the support for 888MHz DDR2, Gigabyte’s patented Universal-Plus Dual Power System, dual gigabit LAN and IEEE 1394b. Kudos to Gigabyte for supporting IEEE 1394b and not just 1394a and for including support for three ports.
If you want to read about something even newer, Ryan has posted his preview of NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI XE and Ultra for Intels.
“Rare jewels (diamond), precious metals (platinum), positions of distinction (royal)… all of these are common themes used by manufacturers to distinguish its flagship products from the rest of the pack. For Gigabyte, the theme is royalty, and the board to most recently grace our labs is the GA-8I955X Royal.”Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:
- MSI RD480 motherboard @ Pro-Clockers
- MSI RD480 Neo2 @ t-break
- MSI P4N Diamond @ [H]ard|OCP
- NVIDIA: New nForce4 Chipsets @ Anandtech
- NVIDIA nForce4 SLI XE and nForce4 Ultra Technology Report @ Adrian’s Rojak Pot