The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you should not base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

Click Here to learn about AnandTech's Motherboard Testing Methodology.

Test Configuration

Processor(s):
AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) 800MHz
RAM:
1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM
Hard Drive(s):
Western Digital 153BA Ultra ATA 66 7200 RPM
Bus Master Drivers:
VIA 4-in-1 v4.24 Service Pack
Video Card(s):

NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS 32MB DDR
S3 ProSavage On-board Video

Video Drivers:

NVidia Detonator 5.22
KM133 ProSavage 1.07

Operation System(s):
Windows 98 SE
Motherboard Revision:
Gigabyte GA-7ZMM Revision 1.2

 

Windows 98 Performance (Using NVidia Geforce2 GTS)

Athlon 800MHz OEM

SYSMark 2000

Content Creation Winstone 2000

Quake 3 Arena 640x480x16

Gigabyte GA-7ZMM (KM133)

166

33.4

126.9

Gigabyte GA-7ZXR (KT133)

165

32.7

125.0

VIA KM133 Reference Board (KM33)

166

33.1

123.1

ABIT KT7-RAID (KT133)

164

32.9

122.5

Microstar K7T Pro2 (KT133)

162

32.5

122.5

Windows 98 Performance (Using KM133 ProSavage On-board Video)

Athlon 800MHz OEM

SYSMark 2000

Content Creation Winstone 2000

Quake 3 Arena 640x480x16

Gigabyte GA-7ZMM (KM133)

156

32.2

42.5

VIA KM133 Reference Board (KM33)

160

32.1

41.3


Final Words

Gigabyte was once again the first to release a new Socket-A solution with the GA-7ZMM.  However, the motherboard does not really live up to most people’s expectation.  Its performance is not particularly attractive.  In some occasions it is better than the reference board, but in some occasions there is quite some gap between it and the reference board.  It obviously means that Gigabyte still has a lot to work on.

Feature wise, the GA-7ZMM definitely loses quite a few points here, especially among overclockers where the inclusion of multiplier ratio controls is a prerequisite. 

From an OEM point of view, the GA-7ZMM can be a good solution however.  Overclocking is never a feature that OEM builders will look into, and the board does have nice features such as optional on-board sound and decent expansion slots implementation, including an AMR slot for cheap modem solution.  Stability of the motherboard is average, but again performance is something Gigabyte still has to work on.

In short, the GA-7ZMM might be a solution for OEM builders, but for general users, who don’t care too much about video performance and want a cheap solution so that they can overclock their Duron processors to the limit, the GA-7ZMM does not seem to be the right choice.  They should sit back a little bit and wait for some other solutions, at least one with multiplier ratio settings.

Something Missing: Overclocking How it Rates
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