Q4 Motherboard and Graphics: Tour de Taiwan

Biostar

A few weeks ago, we saw the first T-Series motherboard from Biostar, the C51G based TForce 6100-939. Biostar's entire T-Series lineup is gunning for DFI and Abit in the "extreme overclocker" category. High voltage jumpers and a full lineup of easy BIOS saving options certainly give Biostar a lot more bang for the buck than what we've been accustomed to. Biostar's first attempt at a DFI-killer looks like a pretty good one - the Biostar TForce4 SLI:

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Another new announcement for Biostar is its entrance into the NVIDIA VGA market. Biostar's Sigma-GATE series (eerily similar to Chaintech's Sigma series...) video cards are a big addition to the company's portfolio. At first, we expect to see low end video cards like the GeForce 6600 and 6600GT (many based on DDR2 configurations), but eventually we will see a full line of cards all the way down from the ultra high end. Biostar recently re-launched their website to reflect the new addition.

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Biostar will also feature high end 7800GT and GTX products, although their focus will primarily be the middle to low end video cards. When we talked with Biostar, a lot of emphasis was put on cool, heat-pipe VGA cards.

Not surprisingly, Biostar's near dominance of the C51G (nForce 6100 and 6150) market is mostly due to their ability to get their motherboards into the channel first. Signing large exclusivity deals with NVIDIA is a good way to get first in line for chipset allocation too.

ECS

Like the other Tier 1 manufacturers on our visit, ECS was also working on 945GT and 945GM based motherboards. Unlike the others, however, ECS also had the only working product and a full line of set top systems based around the chipset. Remember that mini-PC from IDF? Here is the actual model from the ECS showroom:

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There were also several other prototype mini-PCs based on Yonah as well, including this gem:

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Also featured in the show room was an ECS PMP - Portable Media Player. It's an interesting gadget, but it will probably remain a prototype forever.

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The surprise board at ECS was their 975X Yonah-compatible model. When NVIDIA was still on board with Intel, 975X Yonah would have meant an SLI Pentium M desktop, but now it looks like we'll just have to settle for a Crossfire MOD board instead. Of course, if ATI decides to release a Crossfire driver for 975X, we wouldn't be too surprised if the drivers could be tweaked for 945P or 955X chipsets as well - and there are a lot of 945GT motherboards for Yonah with dual PEG slots in development. In fact, there are several 945G boards like the one featured below that are already pin compatible with 945GM and GT.

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ECS also had their Crossfire boards on display. Unfortunately, we are all still waiting for availability in the US:

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For those of you who don't keep pace with the Taiwanese stock market, the big news this month for ECS is the company's acquisition of Tatung. Elitegroup has facilities for PCB, SMT, component and system building already, and their recent merger with Tatung will give the company complete system building capabilities from PCB to full desktop systems. In fact, once the merger is complete, ECS will become solely responsible for complete construction of 8 of the top 10 US system integrators - the other two being Apple and Dell. Expect to see a lot more of ECS in the near future.