CES 2006: Motherboards, Memory, Cooling, and a Few Surprises
by Wesley Fink & Jarred Walton on January 11, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Sapphire
Sapphire was showing several interesting new products under NDA. We couldn't provide pictures, but the new ATI video card will be launching soon. Vendors tell us that they already have GPUs and completed cards this time around and therefore, product will be on the shelves at launch. Specifications hint that this may well be the new top-end video card, outperforming even the 7800GTX 512, which appeared in small quantities in what nVidia is now calling "limited release", and which has now disappeared from the market.
Sapphire was also showing several new motherboards based on the new ATI RD480 and the upcoming RD580 chipsets. While it took Sapphire quite a while to get 480 motherboards to market, they appear committed to providing ATI chipset motherboards looking ahead. Their RD580 boards look to be very competitive with the best products expected at the RD580 launch next month.
Since RD580 is also Socket AM2 compliant, you will see even more RD580 motherboards at the AMD M2 launch. We have also been told that the M2 launch is the likely time frame for release of the ATI SB600 south bridge.
Shuttle
Shuttle has updated several of their recent products, and we visited their suite to get a look at their latest offerings.
One of the more interesting items was their updated version of the M1000 HTPC system, the M2000. The original included a Pentium M 1.83 GHz chip and two analog AverMedia tuners. The M2000 has upgraded the chipset to the 945GM, and with the new chipset comes the Intel Core Duo processor (T1400 1.83 GHz 2MB L2 at present). The added processing power should help out quite a bit with video encoding/ transcoding, and it doesn't change the thermal characteristics much. A new chipset and processor aren't the only changes, though: they have added a hybrid HDTV/Analog tuner along with a second analog-only tuner. These changes address most of the concerns that we had with the M1000; all that really remains is proper CableCARD, which of course won't come until Windows Vista ships.
As expected, Shuttle is also working on various SFF updates. They have everything from a socket 754 update through socket 775 with Pentium D support and a socket 939 unit with SLI, the SN26P. If SFF designs interest you, Shuttle remains one of the top picks for any platform, and all of their designs are aesthetically pleasing.
Sapphire was showing several interesting new products under NDA. We couldn't provide pictures, but the new ATI video card will be launching soon. Vendors tell us that they already have GPUs and completed cards this time around and therefore, product will be on the shelves at launch. Specifications hint that this may well be the new top-end video card, outperforming even the 7800GTX 512, which appeared in small quantities in what nVidia is now calling "limited release", and which has now disappeared from the market.
Sapphire was also showing several new motherboards based on the new ATI RD480 and the upcoming RD580 chipsets. While it took Sapphire quite a while to get 480 motherboards to market, they appear committed to providing ATI chipset motherboards looking ahead. Their RD580 boards look to be very competitive with the best products expected at the RD580 launch next month.
Since RD580 is also Socket AM2 compliant, you will see even more RD580 motherboards at the AMD M2 launch. We have also been told that the M2 launch is the likely time frame for release of the ATI SB600 south bridge.
Shuttle
Shuttle has updated several of their recent products, and we visited their suite to get a look at their latest offerings.
One of the more interesting items was their updated version of the M1000 HTPC system, the M2000. The original included a Pentium M 1.83 GHz chip and two analog AverMedia tuners. The M2000 has upgraded the chipset to the 945GM, and with the new chipset comes the Intel Core Duo processor (T1400 1.83 GHz 2MB L2 at present). The added processing power should help out quite a bit with video encoding/ transcoding, and it doesn't change the thermal characteristics much. A new chipset and processor aren't the only changes, though: they have added a hybrid HDTV/Analog tuner along with a second analog-only tuner. These changes address most of the concerns that we had with the M1000; all that really remains is proper CableCARD, which of course won't come until Windows Vista ships.
As expected, Shuttle is also working on various SFF updates. They have everything from a socket 754 update through socket 775 with Pentium D support and a socket 939 unit with SLI, the SN26P. If SFF designs interest you, Shuttle remains one of the top picks for any platform, and all of their designs are aesthetically pleasing.
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swatX - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
i am so dissapointed at DFI. i thought they were going to show off their mATX nforce 6150/430 board. are they even planning to release it or was this just a rumor.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
I went back to our CES pictures and found shots of the new DFI mATX GeForce boards. Since you are interested the images have been added to the coverage. It looks like the new DFI 6100/6150 boards are for real and not just rumors.swatX - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Thanks a lot!do you know by any chance if the bios of those motherboards will be simillar to bios of their Nforce 4 motherboards.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
The red DFI matx board is based on the ATI RS482 chipset, not the 6150 as we reported earler. We have corrected the article. DFI was not displaying a 6150 Socket 939 board, but they did have the 6100 Socket 754 which is pictured on the DFI page. We have asked DFI to update us on their 6150 plans and we will let you know as soon as we hear more.highlandsun - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link
I read the specs for the ATI board on the DFI web site. Too bad it uses the ATI southbridge instead of ULI. http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_detai...">http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product...=4497&am...Otherwise, it looks pretty interesting, doesn't seem to be missing anything critical as an HTPC platform.
Avalon - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Eh, top air cooling is somewhat close to good water cooling. However, this OCZ Revolution phase change has me very excited. The possibility of $200-$300 phase change is phenomenal!Xenoterranos - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
No Kidding. That's how much Koolance was asking for the Exos a few years back. Phase change for this cheap would cause either a massive increase in quality and quiteness among water-cooling solutions, or a massive price-drop.rjm55 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Great job on covering the processor cooling at CES. I've been looking for this everywhere and no one else was posting much about it. Does this attention to cooling mean you guys may be launching a cooling section in the future?tuteja1986 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
"We couldn't provide pictures, but the new ATI video card will be launching soon. Vendors tell us that they already have GPUs and completed cards this time around and therefore, product will be on the shelves at launch. Specifications hint that this may well be the new top-end video card, outperforming even the 7800GTX 512, which appeared in small quantities in what nVidia is now calling "limited release", and which has now disappeared from the market."irony ... lol
i wonder what how fast G71 will be and will it make it in this month or late feb/early march as various website are reporting it.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
We'll be looking into it for sure. Air cooling is all about equal once you hit the $40+ parts (well, the good ones are equal anyway). Water and phase-change are way beyond anything air can do, though.