Computex 2006: 300W GPUs, Conroe, HDMI Video Cards and Lots of Motherboards
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 5, 2006 10:24 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
BenQ: Status of Blu-ray and SATA Optical Drives
We talked at great length with BenQ about the current lack of Serial ATA optical drives. While SATA optical drives don’t offer any real performance advantage over PATA drives, there are other factors that are driving our demand for and interest in the units. Intel’s new I/O Controller Hub used in the 965 (Broadwater) chipsets, ICH8, doesn’t natively support any PATA ports; motherboard manufacturers have to resort to a 3rd party controller to offer one PATA port. It’s clear that Intel wants to be rid of PATA, and with 6 - 8 SATA ports on new motherboards these days the time to transition entirely to SATA is now.
Unfortunately, as BenQ tells us, the same desire to transition to SATA doesn’t exist with the Tier 1 OEMs that are building systems using these optical drives. Apparently there are still a number of compatibility issues with the default Windows driver and many SATA optical drives, which has made the big OEMs wary of moving away from tried and true PATA drives. With very little OEM pressure to transition to SATA optical drives, manufacturers like BenQ have no reason to push for a quicker move to SATA.
BenQ said to expect less than 5% of its drive shipments by the end of this year to be SATA; by the middle of next year that number will thankfully grow to 25%.
With DVD readers and recorders quickly dropping to commodity price levels, the new focus of optical drive makers is on Blu-ray and HD-DVD. BenQ is exclusively producing Blu-ray drives and its representatives showed us the first two Blu-ray drives that will debut later this year. The BW1000 is offered in both an internal and an external variety, both featuring a 2X read/write speed for Blu-ray media. Dual layer Blu-ray media will be written to at 1X.
The drives also feature a LED indicator telling you what sort of media you’ve got in the drive (e.g. Blu-ray or DVD). The internal drive will carry a price tag of around $700 when it debuts in July. The Optical Pickup Unit in a Blu-ray drive can cost around 20x that of the OPU in a DVD drive, which contributes to the incredibly high cost.
BenQ stated that you may be able to upgrade these 2X drives to 4X drives with a firmware update later on, but it’s too early to tell for sure. The first native 4X Blu-ray drives from BenQ will arrive in Q1 of next year.
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mindless1 - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Nice coverage. These new toys leave me drooling. Now off I go to find a smallish nuclear reactor to power everything. LOL.sri2000 - Friday, June 9, 2006 - link
You just need to get yourself a "Mr. Fusion" and you'll be all set.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Fusion">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Fusion
bespoke - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Too bad the new DFI boards still have that hideous fan on the NF chipset - that little bugger runs at 4,000 to 5,000 and is terribly loud.I can't wait to upgrade to Conroe, ditch NF4 and get back to a quiet (yet nicely performing) PC.
Griswold - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Duh.. newsflash, there are also NF4 boards without fans - just not from DFI. What really sucks about the fan on the DFI board is, that it breaks after 3 months and you end up replacing it with a better fan.Stele - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Although that's not much of a use if you're aiming to get a DFI board - which I think is where he was coming from. :)
For one reason or another DFI does not seem to be interested, or at least eager, to implement more/more effective passive cooling solutions on their products. Besides the lack of noise, passive cooling's greatest advantage is the fact that it doesn't have moving parts that are prone to failure like fans... as you found out.
At least they did take a unique step in implementing a digital integrated VR design on their board... its remarkable compactness and 'clean' layout without large electrolytic capacitors makes it really worth looking at for motherboard power circuits. Can't wait till more details of their implementation and tests thereof surface.
R3MF - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
was the ECS miniITX A64 motherboard with an nForce chipset.i would love to see a AM2 MCP61-S variant with two dimm slots and PCI-E 16x card!
bldckstark - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Dual redundant power supplies in the Asus 1U server would seem to indicate that there are three or four power supplies housed within, but I believe the actuality is that there are only two right? Redundant means secondary as I understand it. Dual redundant means two secondaries. Therefore dual redundant PS's include a backup power supply and then a backup of the backup power supply. Which is it? Are there 2 or 3 power supplies in that thing?hoppa - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
God I am so sick of hearing about x new card that is "even better than" the already $500 dual x1950.9 XFIRE XLI+ v2.0 ZI miss the days when those cards, the best cards, maxed at $300, the awesome stuff was at $200, and you could do quite well for $150. Now $150 is a joke.
One43637 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
is it just me or does the GB motherboard offerings remind you of the Asus motherboards (A8N32 & P5N32) that were released last year...Griswold - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
High time the dorks at Nvidia and ATI start working on the power saving front. At least they seemm to have that in mind for the follow-up generations... This only means that R600 and G80 wont make it into my computer until the following cards reduce the power envelope by quite a bit.*shakes fist*