Fall Comdex '98 Coverage

Just two more motherboards...

Due to popular request, I paid visit to two companies in particular at Comdex (even after I promised not to make any more motherboard related updates, don't worry, this one won't be too long), Tyan and ASUS. 

At ASUS I finally managed to get a contact for evaluation samples, so you can expect more ASUS reviews on AnandTech in the future.   Unfortunately ASUS didn't have too much to show off in terms of motherboards at this year's Comdex.  Their P2B gained a few family members, some of which were equipped with on-board Audio and Video, and others which were simply geared towards a more cost effective solution.  For those of you out there who made the wish that ASUS would once again walk down the path of the Jumperless CPU Setup ala ABIT, you're out of luck once again, after the little mishap with the original P2L97 motherboard ASUS seems to be soured on the idea of a jumperless solution as none of their upcoming boards will feature such an option.

Tyan had a little more on display than ASUS, Tyan already had a few successors to the Thunder 100 DLUAN on display, including a Dual Xeon version with dual channel Ultra2 SCSI.  Tyan also has a MVP4 based Super7 motherboard in the works, the board itself looks promising with its spacey ATX layout, however the success of the product will probably depend on VIA's new chipset.   Following the lead of virtually every other motherboard manufacturer at Comdex, Tyan also had a Socket-370 motherboard which used the BX chipset, AnandTech was told that an LX version may be in the works however there have been no plans to release a ZX based product as of now.

That's it for the motherboards, now let's get on to some of the more unique displays AnandTech soaked up on Wednesday.

Matrox

After a wonderful meeting with Matrox it seemed as if I was leaving a restaurant with a hungry feeling inside.  Not only were no new products announced or even alluded to, but the entire issue about the disappointing lack of an OpenGL ICD for the G200 line of products wasn't answered with anything more than a "we're still aiming for a November release" response.  If Matrox can keep their promise, we should be able to expect somewhere around 1.5x to 2x the performance of the OpenGL wrapper, an expectation which this editor unfortunately will have to wait to see to believe.  The meeting with Matrox indicated that Matrox was waiting to release an OpenGL ICD that was both stable and offered a significant performance improvement over the wrapper, let's hope that the delays don't mean that Matrox's goal was unattainable.