Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2029



We are almost finished with Computex coverage; the show may have ended more than a week ago, but there are so many products to see and talk about that it's nearly impossible to cover them all. Today we will be looking at more motherboards and a few notebooks we saw in our visits to the various manufacturers, with our final Computex article centering around cooling and external storage products.



While Intel was very noticeable throughout the entire Computex area and officially launched their i965 chipset from the 84th floor of Taipei 101, AMD did not miss any opportunities to be noticed also. Besides the majority of motherboard suppliers featuring new AM2 products along with Server motherboards featuring the Opteron series, AMD provided a very nice showcase area for some of their recent product introductions including a strong showing by several notebook suppliers with Turion 64 X2 based systems. This impressive mobile processor series should give the Intel Core Duo series of processors a good run for its money and we look forward to reviewing a production ready Turion 64 X2 notebook shortly.

Motherboard Products:

ASRock

You can always count on ASRock to launch several interesting products in the very competitive under US $100 motherboard market. While the majority of products we viewed were either product refreshes for AMD AM2 or board updates for Core 2 Duo compatibility they still had a surprise or two at the booth. ASRock is one of the few motherboard suppliers who aggressively designed products that have an HDMI capable interface and are Windows Vista Premium ready.



The 775Dual-VSTA is Core 2 Duo ready and is based on the VIA PT880 PRO chipset while featuring support for both DDR2 and DDR memory along with PCI-E or AGP graphics capability.



The 775i65G is Core 2 Duo ready and is based on the Intel 865G chipset while featuring support for DDR memory along with 8X AGP or on-board Intel Extreme Graphics 2 capability. While most people would not pair a new Core 2 Duo with a board like this we find it interesting that the i865 chipset fully supports "Conroe" and if this board is capable of running DDR memory at the very low latencies of 2-2-2-7, then it very well might surprise some of the newer boards in CPU and memory performance. We should have a sample soon and will see if ASRock has endowed the board with some interesting bios capabilities. Of course, Core 2 Duo on an older chipset is all well and good, but don't expect this to be a gaming powerhouse platform given the lack of truly high-end AGP graphics cards.



The 775Twins-HDTV R2.0 board is fully Core 2 Duo capable and features the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 / ULi M1573 chipsets. The board ships with a VGA-HDTV panel that has component video output allowing it to connect to most current HDTVs.



The 775XFire-eSATA2+ is based on the Intel 945PL and ICHR7 chipsets and is Core 2 Duo ready along with the capability to fully support ATI CrossFire. The second X16 PCI Express slot also fully supports PCI-E X4, X2, and X1 cards. The board also features two eSATA ports along with an HDMI S/PDIF header.



The AM2XLI-eSATA2 is based on the ULi M1697 chipset and fully supports the AMD AM2 product family. The second physical X16 PCI Express slot (X8 capable) supports PCI-E X4, X2, and X1 cards. The board also features two eSATA ports along with the HDMI S/PDIF header. Although ASRock does not mention NVIDIA SLI support on this board as on their previous ULi based boards, we are happy to report that if you still have the ULi SLI enabling driver and the NVIDIA 81.98 driver set then the board will provide X8 SLI capability, though this is not sanctioned or approved by NVIDIA.



ASUS

We looked at a few ASUS products in our Computex Preview article so our coverage will highlight some of the expected high volume boards for either AMD or Intel processors this summer.



The M2N4-SLI is an AM2 board based on the nForce4 SLI chipset that will be ASUS's budget priced AM2 SLI board. It boasts passive cooling and a price in the US $75~$85 range. Performance from all indications will be close to that of the nForce 570 SLI but not as feature rich.



ASUS's M2N-SLI Deluxe is based on the nForce 570 SLI chipset and is a fully featured board. In our recent review we found the performance of the nForce 570 SLI to match or be extremely close to that of the nForce 590 SLI.



The M2R32-MVP Deluxe is based on the ATI EXPRESS 3200 and SB600 chipsets while offering improved performance over the A8R32-MVP series.



The P5W DH Deluxe is based on the Intel 975X and ICH7R chipsets. This is one of several boards that ASUS is launching that features their new Digital Home initiative, and they include such features as WiFi-AP Solo, MP3-In, DH Remote, and MP3 FrontLinker options depending upon the board series.



The P5B-V DH Deluxe is based on the Intel G965 and ICH8R chipsets. This board features the new Intel integrated 3000 series graphics capability along with eSATA and IEEE 1394a features.





Four of the most prominent options on the ASUS Digital Home series boards will be the DH Remote, WiFi-AP Solo, MP3-In, and FrontLinker components.



ECS

ECS was prominently displaying several different product lines this year with motherboard options ranging from their new server series to the PC Chips value brand line. ECS also displayed the Linux OS Ready symbol on a significant amount of their motherboard products.



ECS was proudly displaying their IX2-5000VR series featuring the Intel BlackFord-VS MCH and ESB2-E ICH with full support for six SAS or SATA ports along with being rackmount 1U or 2U capable. The board supports either the Dempsey or Woodcrest series of processors.



The ECS KA3-MVP features the ATI Xpress 3200 and SB600 chipsets and should be widely available at the end of June.



The PC Chips P31G features the SIS662 and 964 chipsets along with support for Core 2 Duo and should be priced around the US $45 range.



The ECS 946PLT-A features the Intel 946PL and ICH7 chipsets along with support for the Core 2 Duo and is Linux Ready.



The PF24 model features the Intel 975x and ICH7R chipsets and ECS's new passive cooling system along with full support for Core 2 Duo. Availability should be in the middle of July.



The PX1 is one of several boards from ECS that feature the Intel P965 and ICH8 chipsets along with being ViiV compliant and Linux OS ready.



The ECS RS485M-M model features the ATI RS485 and SB460 chipsets along with full support for the AMD AM2 processor series.



Lastly, the RS600T-M model features the soon to be released ATI RS600 Northbridge along with the recently released SB600 (rumored to be called the ATI Radeon Xpress 1250). The board will also offer HDMI output (based on X700 graphics core) and availability is scheduled near the launch of the Core 2 Duo.



Gigabyte

Gigabyte had a very large presence at Computex and introduced several new board designs based on Intel chipsets.





Gigabyte has an entire series of server related products and was showing several Opteron boards featuring both the NVIDIA and Broadcom chipsets.



The GA-965P-DS4 features the Intel P965 and ICH8R chipsets along with HD audio and dual PCI-E X16 slots for graphics, although the second X16 slot is limited to X4 operation at this time. (All boards with this chipset have the same limitation.) The board also features Gigabyte's new silent heat pipe system along with all capacitors being solid chemical based.



The GA-965QM-S2 features the Q965 chipset designed for businesses along with the ICH8 chipset. The board includes the new Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3000 and optimized LAN capabilities.



The GA-946PC-S3 features the Intel 946PL and ICH7 chipsets along with HD audio and a PCI-E X16 slot for graphics.



Gigabyte was showing of their new Mobile on Desktop system with the GA-8I945GMMFY-RH (which wins the show award for longest product name) that featured a Core Duo processor, Silent Pipe Radeon X1300 video, and GT-PTV-TAF-RH (we are not making these part numbers up!) Analog/Digital TV tuner card. A very good blend of components for building a silent and inexpensive HTPC system.



Iwill

Iwill is one of the leading server motherboard manufacturers and was displaying just about every conceivable combination of chipsets and board designs imaginable.





The DF88 series of products features the NVIDIA nForce4 2200 Pro series chipset.





The DPK66 series features the Intel 5000X MCH and ESB2 ICH.



Here's the H8503 CPU board that features full support for DDR2 memory now.



The H2106 1U Rackmount server features the Intel 5000X with dual CPU support, PCI-E X16 slot, and 16 DIMM sockets stocked full of FB-DIMMs.



Their S2224 2U SAS storage server also uses the Intel 5000X with dual CPU support, and it has a PCI-E X8 slot, two PCI-X 64bit/133MHz slots, and room for 24 SAS hard drives.





And here are a couple of random shots of the AMD Opteron Rackmount server solution from Iwill, with eight CPU sockets.



MSI

MSI showed a significant amount of product ranging from server motherboards to several new Turion 64 X2 notebook designs.



MSI is also offering a series of server products with this example being the 5000P with support for two processors and 12 FB-DIMMs.



The 975x Platinum Edition features the Intel 975X and ICH7R chipsets along with full support for ATI CrossFire, Intel ViiV, Dolby Master Studio, and Core 2 Duo.



The MSI G965MB-DH features the Intel G965 and ICH8 chipsets in a BTX form factor.



The K9AGM uses the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 and SB460 chipsets along with integrated graphics and full AMD AM2 support.



MSI's K9A Platinum utilizes the ATI Radeon Xpress 3200 and SB600 chipsets and should be available at the end of June.



MSI



MSI's K9N Diamond utilizes the NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI chipset and is a follow up to the successful K8N series.



The K9NGM-V pairs the NVIDIA GeForce 6100 and nForce 410 chipsets together resulting in an entry level NVIDIA product with integrated graphics for AM2.



The K9NU Neo-V is an interesting board and one we would like to review as it uses the ULi M1697 chipset and now supports the AM2 processor series. This board should cost less than US $75 and offer great performance.



The K9VGM-V leads MSI's entry level products for AMD AM2 by combining the VIA K8M890 and VT8237R+ chipsets. Expect to see this board sell for under US $50 later this month.





While not motherboard related, MSI did have two silent video cards that stood out from the normal offerings. The NX7600GT offers HDMI output and the NX7900GT is one of the few 7900 products with passive cooling.



Notebooks

MSI

MSI introduced several new notebooks with our favorites listed below.



The MSI S262 is designed for the road warrior as it features a magnesium aluminum alloy construction while weighing in at 1.9kg with the standard 4-cell battery. The system is designed around the Intel 945GM chipset with support for the Core Duo/Solo series and comes with a 12.1 inch WXGA (1280x800) display.



The S271 is a Turion 64 X2 based notebook designed to compete with 945GM/Core Duo systems. It also has a 12.1 inch WXGA display and includes Radeon Xpress 1150 graphics. We are expecting to see this notebook available for purchase within the next month.



The MSI Megabook L735 is also based on the Turion 64 X2 but features a 17 inch WSXGA+ (1680x1050) display, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 graphics, and a built-in camera with TV Tuner for the multimedia enthusiast.

Packard Bell



Packard Bell is still around and had several notebooks based on the Turion 64 X2 being displayed in the AMD booth. The EasyNote MV61 is one such model and features a 15.4 inch WXGA display with NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 graphics.

ASUS



The ASUS F2J is based on the Intel 945PM chipset with full support for the Intel Core Duo/Solo processor lineup. The unit features a 15 inch display, Radeon X1400 graphics, hard drive options up to 120GB, and DVD-RW drive. This notebook is Single-Sign-On (SOS) approved and features the ASUS Security Protect Manager, TPM and RF Biometric Fingerprint capability along with a liquid spill-proof keyboard. To top it off the notebook also has a built-in high resolution web cam for wire free communication.



Clevo



We stopped by the Clevo booth to see their new lineup of products as we heard they also had a surprise Desktop Replacement unit on display.



The M575U is based on the Intel 945PM chipset with the obvious support for the Intel Core Duo/Solo processors along with a 17 inch wide screen display and a choice between the ATI Radeon Mobility X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX graphics. The unit also includes a TV Tuner card, ExpressCard, Bluetooth, and Video Camera. A second hard drive can be installed in the system, and RAID 0 or 1 is supported in such a configuration.



The M590KE is the mother of all notebooks. The system features the AMD Turion 64 X2 CPU, NVIDIA nForce4 SLI chipset, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX SLI, and a 19" wide screen display. If that's not enough, the system features 2.1 speakers (it has a built-in sub-woofer), TV Tuner, Bluetooth, and a Video Camera. We expect to see models based on this design in the next six weeks.



The L570W series is actually an LCD PC featuring the AMD Turion 64 CPU, VIA K8N800/VT8237chipsets, and a 17" WXGA display. It also includes a wireless keyboard and mouse with instant-on capability.

Closing Thoughts



While we have already covered a staggering number of products, we haven't even bothered talking about many of the prototypes on display. If you have never been to Computex, for every product displayed that actually sees retail availability there are probably several prototypes that will never be seen or heard from again. We've tried to confine our coverage to the items that we actually think will make it out onto the retail market. We will complete our coverage of Computex 2006 tomorrow, and we hope you've enjoyed this quick overview of some of the many technology products that are in development.

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