Cebit 2006 in Hanover, Germany is certainly Europe's premier Electronics show. Some would even say that it's the best Consumer Electronics show in the world. Cebit is fun to attend, but it is spread over many buildings in a city with inadequate hotel space, which means that you often have to stay many miles away from the Hanover show. From a press viewpoint, this makes Cebit a tough show to cover.

This year, AnandTech went to Taiwan just before Cebit to visit manufacturers who will be some of the top exhibitors at Cebit because most, if not all, of the new products at Cebit were born in Taiwan or China. This means that our readers are the first to see many of the new products, which will be producing all the buzz at Cebit this year.

It is still about 3 months until AMD is expected to launch their new Socket AM2, but this time gap has only made the AM2 information search that more frantic. Most major manufacturers will be showing a working AM2 board at Cebit, but they won't be displaying any benchmarks. Our guess is that AMD is still not ready to hang its hat on benchmarks. The second spin of the AM2, widely called DVT or DeVelopmenT, combined with the latest NVIDIA MCP55, Rev. A02 or the ATI RD580, is widely reported to bring AM2 performance very close to Socket 939 levels. The earlier EVT chip fell far short of Socket 939 performance levels.

It appears that an issue remains with the latest DVT AM2 in that single channel and dual-channel memory performance are virtually the same on the latest DVT spin. If this is corrected, AMD may finally see the performance gains that they told the industry to expect with the move to AM2 and DDR2. Another AM2 spin is expected in the next few days, and until performance is more representative of the final shipping product, AMD likely does not want benchmarks leaving the wrong impression.

AM2 Motherboards

All of the Tier 1 players will be showing at least one AM2 board, and some will have several on display, but not running.

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe

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The upcoming Asus AM2 board based on the NVIDIA chipsets looks very much like the current A8N32-SLI Deluxe. Asus also plans an upper end ATI RD-580 board at launch.


ECS KA3-MVP & KN3-SLI2

ECS was the only Tier 1 manufacturer showing a working ATI RD580 motherboard for Socket AM2, which will be called the KA3-MVP.

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ECS also had a working dual x16 SLI motherboard based on new NVIDIA chipsets. It is called the KN3-SLI2.

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Gigabyte K8NDSLI PRO

Gigabyte was also showing an NVIDIA chipset based AM2 board. The Gigabyte board being shown appears to be a dual x8 solution based on the single NVIDIA chipset.

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You will also likely see an ATI RD580 AM2 board from Gigabyte.


MSI K9N Platinum

MSI was showing both high-end and low-end AM2 boards. The K9N Platinum is a dual x8 NVIDIA SLI board.

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There was also a smaller, cheaper MSI AM2 based on the recently released Ultra chipset.

You will also see an ATI RD580 AM2 at the launch of the new AMD chip in about 3 months.



Abit KN9 SLI

Abit claims to have returned to their enthusiast roots with their upcoming KN9-SLI.

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The new Abit AM2 board was designed for both outstanding overclocking capablities and outstanding stability - even at high overclocks.


Biostar GeForce 6100-AM2

To survive and flourish in a tough motherboard market, Biostar has decided to specialize in integrated graphics/HTPC motherboards. Not surprisingly, that means that their AM2 offering is based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6100 chipset.

DFI AM2 LANParty

DFI has had some of the top-selling NVIDIA nForce4 motherboards with their SLI, Ultra, and Expert versions. They decided to skip the NVIDIA dual SLI on Socket 939, and concentrated instead on the ATI RD580, which will launch in about a week.

This time around, though, DFI is showing a dual x16 SLI design for AMD, based on dual NVIDIA chipsets.

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As always, you can expect an enthusiast board with no holds barred with the new AM2 dual x16 SLI LANParty. DFI will also have a Dual X16 AM2 board based on the just released ATI RD580 chipset.


Epox MNF55P SLI2, MNF55P SLI & MU1697

Epox is showing a very wide range of motherboards for AM2 - boards that cover price points from entry to top-end.

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At the top is the dual NVIDIA chipset dual x16 EP-MNF55P SLI2.

Next in the Epox AM2 lineup will be the EP-MNF55P-SLI.

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As you would expect from the name, the SLI version uses just one NVIDIA chipset and supports single x16 or dual x8 video.

Entry level AM2 is filled by ULi M1697 chipset. The ULi offers dual x8 or single x16 - and there is even a patch recently introduced by ULi that supports NVIDIA SLI drivers.

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Of course, with NVIDIA now owning ULi, the question is whether or not ULi M1697 boards for Socket AM2 will ever see the light of day under the ULi name. Certainly, NVIDIA is not likely happy that ULi chipsets can now run SLI with a small ULi-supplied patch that can work with any nVidia SLI drivers.

SiS

SiS has struggled in recent months, but they are still producing new and interesting chipsets for the motherboard market. Their new AM2 design is certainly not high end, with just one x16 PCIe slot.

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However, SiS has still enjoyed success at the low end of the chipset market, and the new SiS AMD chipset fills that entry-level AM2 niche just fine.



Our Take

Cebit is often a show with many industry launches, but this year appears to be a lot thinner than the recent past. The only major NDA to lift at Cebit will be the new NVIDIA video cards. We will be covering those launches and publishing benchmarks and comparisons to the current top-line ATI X1900XT/XTX when the new cards launch.

The big question for NVIDIA, of course, is whether or not their new video cards have the performance to push ahead of ATI X1900XTX, the current performance leader. We will be answering that question soon.

IDF will also be a hot ticket this year with Intel finally having something very interesting to talk about in Conroe. IDF starts today and Anand will be covering the event live from San Francisco. Unfortunately, IDF is still going when Cebit starts in Germany on March 9th. This will force many reviewers and exhibitors to have to choose between IDF and Cebit.

The other big event at Cebit will be the first looks at AM2 motherboards. As you can see in our preview, almost every motherboard maker will be showing at least one AM2 board and many manufacturers will show complete AM2 lines. We are told that AMD will only allow one working AM2 demo per manufacturer (without keyboard, mouse, or benchmark capabilities), so some manufacturers will be showing just boards at their booths.

We will continue our Cebit preview over the next few days as we look at some other items "Live from Taiwan" that will end up being the talk of Cebit 2006.