Abit's IS7 motherboard
The GATling gun
IT'S NOT VERY OFTEN THAT a manufacturer will totally change the appeal of a piece of hardware with a simple software upgrade, but Abit manages such a feat with its 865PE chipset board, the IS7. Shortly after receiving the board, we got a new BIOS from Abit that included a totally new feature called Game Accelerator Technology, or GAT. As you'll see in the benchmarks, GAT made quite a bit of difference in performance, which raises the question: What is GAT, and how did it pull off the performance jump?
The GATling gun
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The answer is more nebulous than one might expect, because Abit is essentially mum on what GAT is and how it works. However, based on the benchmarks and some other GAT-related information, we'll at least try to piece together what's going on inside the black box that is GAT. Along the way, we'll take a look at what the IS7 has to offer, and examine its performance in detail.
