Full Featured Plug-and-Go for Socket AM2Gigabyte motherboards have been around for a long time, and they have made some very impressive motherboards over the years. They’re no stranger to the enthusiast market, making both AMD and Intel boards geared towards hard-core overclocking. However, as with the graphic card industry, the largest market (and the most money) is in the mainstream category. For the mainstream consumer, stability, on-board features, and value are paramount – myriad enthusiast settings, tweaking options, and exotic glitz take a back seat.
Gigabyte’s GA-M61PM-S2 is geared towards the user who just wants everything to work right away and get the job done without breaking the bank…but at the same time, getting the job done comfortably, because as you will see there are some things that make this board special. It is the Honda Accord of motherboards if you will – not pretentious or glamorous, but just a cut above the Honda Civic. The board is based around Nvidia’s GeForce 6100/nForce 430 chipset, and has on-board everything: Nvidia graphics, 8 channel High Definition Azalia audio with a header for optional S/PDIF output, gigabit ethernet, 4 USB ports with 3 internal headers for a maximum of 10 USB ports, 1 firewire port (IEEE 1394) with 2 internal firewire headers, 1 IDE/ATA 133 connector (kind of a bummer since a lot of people still use many parallel ata devices), 4 SATA II ports, and RAID (0,1,0+1,5).
Packaging
Contents are a little on the sparse side, probably to help keep costs down. There’s a CD with drivers and utilities, manual, rear I/O shield, 80-pin IDE ribbon cable, floppy ribbon cable, and two SATA cables. The SATA cables and corresponding connectors on the board are very nice as they are the much more secure snap-in type. The manual is also a fine piece of work. It’s 80 pages, all in English – good English! – and quite thorough. It describes, in detail, hardware installation, BIOS settings, connector pin-out, audio setup, and very extensive RAID configuration, including how to make an SATA RAID driver floppy for installing Windows XP. Installing Windows with a RAID configuration has been a very troublesome endeavor for many people, but by carefully following the Gigabyte manual you should have no trouble. There are no additional USB or firewire brackets, but since the headers are present on the board, if you need the extra ports, it is not too difficult to buy some from a third party.
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Gigabyte GA-M61PM-S2 Features & Specifications
Processor
- AMD Socket AM2 Athlon™ 64 FX / Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core / Athlon™ 64 / Sempron™ processor
Chipset
- NVIDIA® GeForce 6100 / nForce 430
- Super I/O chip: ITE IT8716
- Integrated Peripherals
- T.I. IEEE1394 controller
- Realtek RTL8211 Gigabit Ethernet controller
- Realtek ALC883 Audio Codec
Memory
- 4 DDR2 DIMM memory slots (supports up to 16GB memory)(Note 1)
- Supports dual channel DDR2 800/667/533/400 DIMMs
- Supports 1.8V DDR2 DIMMs
(Note 1) Due to the limitation of Windows 32-bit operating system, when more than 4GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory available for the operating system will be less than 4GB; Windows 64-bit operating system doesn't have such limitation.
Internal I/O Connectors
- 1 24-pin ATX power connector
- 1 4-pin ATX 12V power connector
- 1 floppy connector
- 1 IDE connectors
- 4 SATA 3Gb/s connectors
- 1 CPU fan connector
- 1 system fan connector
- 1 front panel connector
- 1 front audio connector
- 1 CD In connector
- 1 SPDIF In/Out connector
- 3 USB 2.0/1.1 connectors for additional 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports by cables
- 2 IEEE1394a connectors for additional 2 port by cable
- 1 COMB connector
- 1 Power LED connector
Expansion Slots
- 1 PCI Express x 16 slot
- 1 PCI Express x 1 slot
- 2 PCI slots
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Rear Panel I/O
- 1 PS/2 keyboard port
- 1 PS/2 mouse port
- 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 1 parallel port
- 1 IEEE1394 port
- 1 COMA port
- 1 VGA port
- 1 RJ-45 port
- 6 audio jacks (Line In / Line Out / MIC In/Surround Speaker Out (Rear Speaker Out)/Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out)
Power
- ATX power connector and ATX 12V connector
Form Factor
- Micro ATX form factor; 24.4cm x 24.4cm
H/W Monitoring
- System voltage detection
- CPU / System temperature detection
- CPU / System fan speed detection
- CPU / System warning temperature
- CPU fan failure warning
- Supports CPU Smart Fan function
(Note 2) Whether the CPU Smart FAN Control function is supported will depend on the CPU you install.
BIOS
- 1 4Mbit flash ROM
- Use of licensed AWARD BIOS
Other Features
- Supports @BIOS
- Supports Download Center
- Supports Q-Flash
- Supports EasyTune (only supports Hardware Monitor function)(Note 3)
- Supports Xpress Install
- Supports Xpress Recovery2
- Supports Xpress BIOS Rescue
(Note 3) EasyTune functions may vary depending on different motherboards.
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