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COMPUTER SYSTEMS

Giga-Byte G-MAX TA4 Mini PC Review
By: Gnorb
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  • Rating: 4 stars4 stars4 stars4 stars4 stars / 24
    2004-01-30

    Table of Contents:
  • Giga-Byte G-MAX TA4 Mini PC Review
  • What Comes in the TA4's Box?
  • A Look at the System
  • The GA-8IGVT Motherboard Upclose
  • The BIOS
  • TA4 BIOS, Part 2
  • Can You Tango with a Penguin?
  • Video Benchmarks
  • Motherboard Benchmarks
  • Conclusion

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    Giga-Byte G-MAX TA4 Mini PC Review - The BIOS


    (Page 5 of 10 )

    The BIOS on this system was nothing to go woolly about; it was basically a standard Award BIOS, featured in other Giga-Byte systems. The items of note were the voltage and overclocking options available. These were nothing spectacular really, and useless for the purposes of this review. This system is marketed, aimed at, and created for people with business needs and not much space.

    Looking at the system temperature didn’t make me feel any better about overclocking this thing: at regular operations, this thing was already at 53 degrees Celsius*. Although it has a well thought out cooling scheme - the system fan and blow hole being right above the heat sink - the size of the encasing is not conducive to overclocking, at least if you want to keep the case the way it is. Having a P4 2.8GHz with just a 120 watt PSU backing it up doesn’t do much for my long term expectations in the overclocking arena. In short, this is not a PC that an enthusiast would want to use for that purpose (unless you just want a good challenge).

    *It should be noted that the temperature gauged was at my home, with the computer between my 19-inch CRT and a sub-woofer. In a more open and cooler setting the system ran at a much more comfortable 45 degrees Celsius.

    BIOS - Home screen
    Fig. 1 - BIOS Home Screen

    Standard CMOS Features
    Fig 2. - Standard CMOS Features

    Advanced BIOS Features
    Fig 3. - Advanced BIOS Features

    Integrated Peripherals
    Fig 4 - Integrated Peripherals

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