Computex 2004: Graphics Cards Galore
by Derek Wilson on June 5, 2004 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Gigabyte and Sparkle
We were privileged to be able to attend Gigabyte's Nan Ping factory tour while in Taiwan. It's always interesting to see what goes into mass producing motherboards and graphics cards, and some of the gadgets used in the process are very cool. Probably the most interesting thing that we saw was a device that affixed all the components to the motherboard at once by running it over a sea of molten solder. Having spent countless times in labs hand-soldering components on PCBs, we can absolutely say that this is a life-saving invention.
It is also important to have a deep appreciation for the amount of labor that goes into the boards, with many people on an assembly line building up the briskly paced line of boards like an endless lego project for hours a day. Of course, the end results are seen in desktops everywhere.
As for graphics products on the floor, Gigabyte is also one of the houses that produces both NVIDIA and ATI cards.
Their 6800 has a customized-looking 5950 style heatsink with a clear plastic sheild...
...while the X800 XT and 6800 Ultra (not pictured) products looks a little more stock.
We've taken a look at Sparkle's cards, and they will again be bringing us some NVIDIA based goodness.
Hopefully, we'll get our hands on a card to test in the not-too-distant future.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
16 Comments
View All Comments
EddNog - Sunday, June 6, 2004 - link
Okay, who FUBAR the photos?!?J/k ;-)
-Ed
Illissius - Sunday, June 6, 2004 - link
Damnit, I wanted to see MSI's 6800s :/.Oh well. Can you just say whether they had any nBox-esque coolers on them? Best coolers evar (possibly) excluding the Silencer and Zalman's stuff.
jiulemoigt - Sunday, June 6, 2004 - link
I had to laugh what happened to ATI's responce that shader 3.0 weren't useful and not going to be implmented? it just goes to show that it's more about PR that about what is useful, this is the second time in as many months ATI is having to pull the foot out of their mouth... when's nvidia going to get caught? or has it finnaly come down neither company should be throwing stone in the first place as they both live in glass houses... for the record I like nvidia's cards but hate both PR deptments!kristof007 - Sunday, June 6, 2004 - link
Wow I can only imagine what kind of overclocking will be avalible with coolers like PowerColors fan (at least I think it was PowerColor). This should be very exciting summer.orion23 - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
Hi, did anybody notice a picture of an ASUS ATI X800 PCI EXPRESS video card with support for Shaders 3.0?Also, how many different X800's are out there, 2 or 3?
X800 450MHZ
X800 XT 500MHZ
X800 XT PE 520MHZ
orion23 - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
NeedSpeed - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
Alienware has been shipping 6800 Ultra's from at least May 14th when I got mine. They announced the card a month earlier.Its not cheap, but it is very fast. The drivers are still not perfect.
DerekWilson - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
doh!!HIS is working on a dual DVI solution, but they aren't sure about the market yet. I essentially told them "if you build it they will come" ...
they did have a sample dual dvi board (I believe an x600 though I could very easily be mistaken), but the very important fact slipped my mind since I didn't have pics of it...
Sapphire also mentioned working on dual DVI solutions for the future (of course, they've told us this in the past as well).
I'll add an update to the article.
Lonyo - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
I take it you missed the captions on Asus' booth saying both the 5900 and X800XT are the fastest PCI-Express cards? ;)RyanVM - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
#5, my thoughts exactly. Not one single manufacturer felt the need to stray from the ATI reference design far enough to go dual DVI? Pathetic.