Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1162
Computex 2003 - Day 2: Motherboard and Video Coverage
by Evan Lieb on September 23, 2003 11:34 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
As you know, AnandTech is at Computex this year and we are as excited as ever to be here. After a fairly uneventful Day 1 at Computex, Day 2 ended up being much more interesting, though many more eventful launches and benchmarks will be coming later this week for all to see.
This year, a lot of different things are coming to fruition after much speculation. Unless something changes at the last minute, ASUS will be announcing the worldwide launch of ATI-based video cards. Add to that the mixed feelings on nForce3 and the fact that MSI, NVIDIA’s largest OEM and retail channel graphics manufacturer, is considering a move similar to ASUS, and things look bad for NVIDIA. We’ll have more detailed information about these situations and products shortly.
Athlon 64 is shaping up to be a killer gaming processor; even the mainstream (single channel) versions of Athlon 64 are turning out to be remarkably powerful.
Anyway, without further ado, we bring you Day 2 at Computex…
AOpen
AOpen’s overall product strategy continues to be diversification. Whether it’s AOpen’s motherboards or AOpen’s computer cases, AOpen has a well diversified range of products. While we certainly can’t get into all of AOpen’s products in just one article, we’ll highlight the most significant products and tell you a little bit about them before we review them latter this year.
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First up is AOpen’s Athlon 64 motherboard, based on NVIDIA’s nForce3 chipset. Formally known as CK8 (as its codename), nForce3 is a single chip solution, essentially integrating the traditional North Bridge and South Bridge. Since the memory controller is now integrated into the Athlon 64 CPU itself, the North Bridge would basically only contain an AGP controller. Obviously, NVIDIA thought it completely unnecessary to create a North Bridge with just an AGP controller, so they took their MCP-T South Bridge and basically threw in the AGP controller to create nForce3. So far, AOpen believes that nForce3 is the way to go for Athlon 64 motherboards, though their VIA solution isn’t far behind.
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AOpen’s Athlon 64 motherboard based on the VIA K8T800 chipset is almost identical to AOpen’s nForce3 motherboard in terms of onboard features. The primary differences are BIOS features, stock and overclocked performance, and price.
Both AOpen’s VIA and NVIDIA Athlon 64 motherboards will be available almost immediately after AMD announces their next generation K8 CPU this week during Computex.
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AOpen’s SFF (Small Form Factor), dubbed the XC Cube AV, comes in a sleek black case design and is based on Intel’s 865G chipset. Without giving away too many details before we review this product, we can tell you that the BIOS options and enthusiast potential for this SFF look quite tasty. Everything else about this SFF is also quite appealing, including the onboard IEEE 1394 FireWire, rear SPDIF ports, and the ability to include the largest modern day graphics cards in its AGP slot (Radeon 9800 Pro, GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, etc.), in addition to future AGP video cards. One of the main selling points of this SFF is its radio capabilities, which essentially doubles as an AM/FM radio. There are other additional cooling and silencing features that we’ll go into detail about later in the year when we receive this product.
ASUS
ASUS had a lot of different things to show off at Computex this week. Whether it was their motherboards, video cards, PDAs or laptops, ASUS had a wide range of components and systems that dwarfed pretty much every other competing manufacturer at Computex.
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Probably the most exciting idea ASUS had lined up at their booth was their “concept PC” for 2004 motherboard featuring two PCI Express 1X slots and one PCI Express 16X slot. Installed in the 16X slot was an ATI video card, probably using either a 9200 or 9600 GPU. Unfortunately, this PCI Express video card was not running at all; ASUS’ concept PC for 2004 is truly just that, a concept. The only part of the system that was running was the CPU HSF. This quite obviously means that PCI Express video cards are not so far along in testing that a manufacturer would be able to show off its capabilities. Still, we’ve been told by countless motherboard, chipset, and CPU manufacturers that PCI Express will be a solid 2004 product, likely rearing its head in late Q1/early Q2 with true mass production slated for sometime in Q4 depending on how market acceptance of PCI Express devices turns out in the beginning.
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As you can see in the pictures above, ASUS is going to bring Socket 940 Athlon 64 motherboards to market based on the nForce3 and VIA K8T800 chipsets. ASUS has already released their Socket 940 nForce3 motherboard to market (SK8N) that supports Opteron processors and that will eventually support AMD’s upcoming high-end Athlon 64 FX processors. The only downside to introducing Socket 940 processors to market is that they must use registered DDR memory modules. Currently, there is a premium for registered DDR memory modules, and the highest available speed is still just DDR333 (PC2700). However, as shown in our Athlon 64 preview last month, it may not matter.
When asked about the market acceptance between NVIDIA and VIA’s Athlon 64 and Opteron chipsets, ASUS seemed to be split down the middle. Basically, ASUS has found that nForce3 and K8T800 chipsets perform almost identically and offer essentially the same feature set. Because of this fact, ASUS doesn’t think either chipset will really overtake the other unless one of them matures more rapidly than the other over the next few quarters. Unfortunately, we can’t get a straight answer from motherboard makers about nForce3 and K8T800; some think nForce3 is superior and will enjoy better overall sales, some think K8T800 will enjoy better overall sales, and some (like ASUS) think that both chipsets will experience about the same success. Whatever the case may be, AnandTech readers will know a good portion of our Athlon 64 results later this week…
Epox
As per tradition, Epox is sticking to what they know best; desktop motherboards. Their entire range of products is pretty much focused around dozens of Athlon XP, Athlon 64, and Pentium 4 platforms.
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Pictured above is Epox’s hotly anticipated nForce3-based 8KDA+ motherboard. Feeding off of their nForce2 success, Epox is gong ho about their nForce3 150 motherboard. They believe that Athlon 64 will be very popular with gaming and hardcore enthusiasts, and that they think nForce3 is probably the best route to go for that area.
Epox hasn’t expanded into the video card channel yet, but they have shown an interest in the SFF (Small Form Factor) market that Shuttle has made exceedingly popular the last year or so.
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Above is Epox’s VIA K8T800 motherboard. Epox is one of the motherboard manufacturers that believes that nForce3 has the edge on VIA’s Athlon 64 chipset. However, Epox still believe there’s a very real market for this product, especially the ones that demand low cost motherboards that AMD will need to push Athlon 64 mainstream sometime in 2004.
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Pictured above is Epox’s latest SFF based on Intel’s 865PE chipset. Like some other SFFs, Epox’s SFF uses a knob for overclocking and radio capabilities.
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The above picture is Epox latest and greatest P4 motherboard based on the PT880 chipset. This is yet another highly anticipated chipset that motherboards makers are still undecided about. We will have a sample of Epox’s PT880 motherboard in the next few weeks, as Epox (and every motherboard maker for that matter) work out the kinks in VIA’s first dual DDR P4 chipset.
Gainward
Normally, Gainward isn’t known for anything other than video cards, but today we learned they had quite a bit to offer in terms of variation in product range.
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What you see above is Gainward’s $1000 water-cooled GeForce FX 5900 Ultra video card. The water pipes themselves are produced by Eheim, with Stammham actually manufacturing this beast. Supposedly, with this setup Gainward claims that a core clock speed of 500MHz and a memory speed of 1000MHz (1GHz) are possible. This is certainly an impressive overclock of sorts to be able to reach, but we think that both the price tag and the GeForce FX’s performance in DX9 games is so lacking that a product like this is simply without any steam.
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The “Hollywood@Home” sound card is Gainward’s official entry into the PCI add-in sound card market. This card is based on the 7.1 channel sound controller from VIA, dubbed the Envy 24HPT, and is capable of sample rates of up to 24-bit/96KHz through optical SPDIF. Overall, after listening to this sound card with an excellent set of Klipsch Promedia 5.1 speakers, we can say that its sound fidelity was absolutely superb, even if it wasn’t the best we’ve heard from a PCI sound card before.
Among some of the other, less exciting, products Gainward had on display were wireless cards in the 802.11b and 802.11g format. Their 802.11g wireless card will be shipping later this year.
Gigabyte
As usual, Gigabyte had a wide range of video and motherboard products to show off at Computex. Most of them we’ve already reviewed; various nForce2 Ultra 400, KT600, 865PE, 875P, SiS 655FX, and so on. What we haven’t taken a look at yet is their retail video cards based on ATI’s full line of GPUs; the 9200, 9600, and 9800. However, we’ve already covered these GPUs in the past few months in various technology reviews and previews, but what we haven’t covered is the following unique variation of one of these R3xx cores.
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The video care displayed in the above picture is ATI’s 9600 Pro video card outfitted with a specially modified heat-pipe and fan design to accommodate its factory overclocked core clock speed. That’s right, instead of a regular 9600 Pro running at a 400MHz core clock speed, we have an overclocked 9600 Pro that approaches a clock speed of 500MHz at a mere $15 premium. Gigabyte guarantees that this overclock speed will remain stable, but even if you happen to be one of those unlucky users that is experiencing problems with their new “uber” Gigabyte 9600 Pro video card, Gigabyte offers a full 3-year warranty. This means that users will be able to RMA their overclocked 9600 Pro for a brand new one.
I think it’s fair to say that I’m not the only one who is excited to hear about a cheap, reliably overclocked 9600 Pro for their upcoming Half Life 2 machine. :)
ECS
ECS had lots of intriguing points to touch on in their meeting room at Computex. We sat down and had breakfast with some of ECS’ marketing and multimedia team and learned quite a bit about ECS.
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Moving on, we see yet another motherboard manufacturer proudly show off their Athlon 64 motherboards. ECS, unlike ASUS, is going to concentrate solely on VIA’s Athlon 64 K8T800 chipset in the Socket 754 single channel DDR variety. This isn’t very surprising given ECS’ close ties with VIA and their almost complete lack of support for anything NVIDIA.
Anyway, ECS’ product positioning for their Athlon 64 motherboards will be in the form of their “Photon” high-end series of products, with various mainstream Athlon 64 motherboards to be introduced next year when Socket 939 Athlon 64 FX processors hit the market.
IWILL
IWILL has seemingly almost transformed their primary product focus overnight. IWILL has gone from a scrappy motherboard maker aligned with low-cost manufacturers like SiS for most of their motherboards to a driven and motivated SFF-centric company. IWILL displayed truckloads of SFFs in their Computex booth, with absolutely no desktop motherboards in sight; only dual processor Xeon and Opteron motherboards were being shown off.
One of the most interesting SFFs that IWILL had to show off was their Athlon 64 SFF.
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Not only is IWILL creating an interesting compact SFF design here, but one that is much smaller than most SFFs we’ve ever seen. The two primary reasons for this is that you must install the PSU (Power Supply Unit) outside of the box and because there is no AGP slot. The lack of an AGP slot is a big minus for enthusiasts, and installing the PSU outside of the case can be an inconvenience. However, looking closely at the ZPC64, we see that it is truly unique; it is the first Athlon 64-based box we’ve seen in full operation using NVIDIA’s nForce3 150 chip. What’s really unique, and a big plus for users that don’t demand graphics power from an add-in AGP card, is the soldered on GeForce FX 5200 GPU. Even though the GeForce FX 5200’s DX9 performance is horribly slow, its DX8 and lower performance is exceptional with AA or AF turned on, and so should be especially useful for those that don’t want to pony up the cash for an AGP video card.
IWILL did say they plan on having a version of the ZPC64 that has the PSU integrated back into the case and with an AGP slot this time. To tell you the truth, we look forward to both solutions becoming available, the ZPC64 likely being on store shelves by the end of November with their improved Athlon 64 variations following soon afterwards.
SiS
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As you can see above, ASUS has been working on a SiS 655FX motherboard. ASUS is planning on introducing this motherboard in limited quantity soon, but at the moment they are waiting to see how 655TX pans out. From what we’ve been told, 655TX will be quite the chipset.
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The picture above is just one motherboard maker’s version of SiS’ 755 Athlon 64/FX chipset. It doesn’t look like motherboard manufacturers are too keen on introducing SiS 755 motherboards to most markets with VIA K8T800 and NVIDIA nForce3 chipsets already well established before launch. However, SiS is pretty positive about the 755’s future with future BIOS tweaking.
Final Words
That concludes our coverage of Day 2’s Computex events. Stay tuned as we continue to explore Computex during the next few days, and take an exclusive first look at a next generation processor...
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