CES 2006: Motherboards, Memory, Cooling, and a Few Surprises
by Wesley Fink & Jarred Walton on January 11, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
DFI
The most significant new item at DFI could not be photographed, since it is still under NDA. We can, however, tell you that DFI will be producing a top-end ATI RD580 Socket 939 motherboard for dual x16 Crossfire. This time around, DFI is using the excellent ULi M1575 south bridge with competitive USB performance and SATA2 3Gb/sec with full support for NCQ. DFI expects to ship the new RD580 at the time of the ATI launch in mid to late February.
On display at DFI were two new microATX boards based on the ATI and nVidia integrated graphics chipsets.
At the top is the DFI Socket 939 board based on the ATI RS482 (Xpress 200) chipset. The bottom board is Socket 754 featuring the nVidia 6100 chipset.
DFI also plans one more revision to their just-released nF4 Expert. The new board will provide further improvements to the overclocking capabilities of their nF4 Expert.
MSI
MSI has been relatively quiet of late, so we were curious to find out whether they had anything interesting to show us.
Like most other Tier 1 manufacturers, MSI is working on a 975X motherboard, the 975X Platinum. Features are comparable to what most other 975X boards are including, with the only noteworthy addition being Dolby Master Studio certification for the audio. The socket 939 based K8N Diamond Plus is similar in many ways to the 975X board: it's a dual X16 SLI board, and once again, special attention has been given to the integrated audio. A Creative Audigy SE 7.1 chip is integrated onto the motherboard, which should be better than most other onboard solutions. MSI has also used a heatpipe cooling arrangement for the chipset, which should help to accommodate longer graphics cards.
MSI was also showing products other than motherboards, including a variety of ATI and NVIDIA based graphics cards, but there wasn't much new in that area. We know that both ATI and NVIDIA are working on their next generation products, but we don't have anything that we can discuss or any images to show at this time. We did get a picture of MSI's HTPC barebones unit, pictured above. Since this is the Consumer Electronics Show, it should come as little surprise that virtually every motherboard-related company was showing some form of home theater device.
The most significant new item at DFI could not be photographed, since it is still under NDA. We can, however, tell you that DFI will be producing a top-end ATI RD580 Socket 939 motherboard for dual x16 Crossfire. This time around, DFI is using the excellent ULi M1575 south bridge with competitive USB performance and SATA2 3Gb/sec with full support for NCQ. DFI expects to ship the new RD580 at the time of the ATI launch in mid to late February.
On display at DFI were two new microATX boards based on the ATI and nVidia integrated graphics chipsets.
At the top is the DFI Socket 939 board based on the ATI RS482 (Xpress 200) chipset. The bottom board is Socket 754 featuring the nVidia 6100 chipset.
DFI also plans one more revision to their just-released nF4 Expert. The new board will provide further improvements to the overclocking capabilities of their nF4 Expert.
MSI
MSI has been relatively quiet of late, so we were curious to find out whether they had anything interesting to show us.
Like most other Tier 1 manufacturers, MSI is working on a 975X motherboard, the 975X Platinum. Features are comparable to what most other 975X boards are including, with the only noteworthy addition being Dolby Master Studio certification for the audio. The socket 939 based K8N Diamond Plus is similar in many ways to the 975X board: it's a dual X16 SLI board, and once again, special attention has been given to the integrated audio. A Creative Audigy SE 7.1 chip is integrated onto the motherboard, which should be better than most other onboard solutions. MSI has also used a heatpipe cooling arrangement for the chipset, which should help to accommodate longer graphics cards.
MSI was also showing products other than motherboards, including a variety of ATI and NVIDIA based graphics cards, but there wasn't much new in that area. We know that both ATI and NVIDIA are working on their next generation products, but we don't have anything that we can discuss or any images to show at this time. We did get a picture of MSI's HTPC barebones unit, pictured above. Since this is the Consumer Electronics Show, it should come as little surprise that virtually every motherboard-related company was showing some form of home theater device.
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swatX - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
i am so dissapointed at DFI. i thought they were going to show off their mATX nforce 6150/430 board. are they even planning to release it or was this just a rumor.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
I went back to our CES pictures and found shots of the new DFI mATX GeForce boards. Since you are interested the images have been added to the coverage. It looks like the new DFI 6100/6150 boards are for real and not just rumors.swatX - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Thanks a lot!do you know by any chance if the bios of those motherboards will be simillar to bios of their Nforce 4 motherboards.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
The red DFI matx board is based on the ATI RS482 chipset, not the 6150 as we reported earler. We have corrected the article. DFI was not displaying a 6150 Socket 939 board, but they did have the 6100 Socket 754 which is pictured on the DFI page. We have asked DFI to update us on their 6150 plans and we will let you know as soon as we hear more.highlandsun - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link
I read the specs for the ATI board on the DFI web site. Too bad it uses the ATI southbridge instead of ULI. http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_detai...">http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product...=4497&am...Otherwise, it looks pretty interesting, doesn't seem to be missing anything critical as an HTPC platform.
Avalon - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Eh, top air cooling is somewhat close to good water cooling. However, this OCZ Revolution phase change has me very excited. The possibility of $200-$300 phase change is phenomenal!Xenoterranos - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
No Kidding. That's how much Koolance was asking for the Exos a few years back. Phase change for this cheap would cause either a massive increase in quality and quiteness among water-cooling solutions, or a massive price-drop.rjm55 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Great job on covering the processor cooling at CES. I've been looking for this everywhere and no one else was posting much about it. Does this attention to cooling mean you guys may be launching a cooling section in the future?tuteja1986 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
"We couldn't provide pictures, but the new ATI video card will be launching soon. Vendors tell us that they already have GPUs and completed cards this time around and therefore, product will be on the shelves at launch. Specifications hint that this may well be the new top-end video card, outperforming even the 7800GTX 512, which appeared in small quantities in what nVidia is now calling "limited release", and which has now disappeared from the market."irony ... lol
i wonder what how fast G71 will be and will it make it in this month or late feb/early march as various website are reporting it.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
We'll be looking into it for sure. Air cooling is all about equal once you hit the $40+ parts (well, the good ones are equal anyway). Water and phase-change are way beyond anything air can do, though.