Live from Taiwan: Cebit 2006 Preview
by Wesley Fink on March 7, 2006 12:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Our Take
Cebit is often a show with many industry launches, but this year appears to be a lot thinner than the recent past. The only major NDA to lift at Cebit will be the new NVIDIA video cards. We will be covering those launches and publishing benchmarks and comparisons to the current top-line ATI X1900XT/XTX when the new cards launch.
The big question for NVIDIA, of course, is whether or not their new video cards have the performance to push ahead of ATI X1900XTX, the current performance leader. We will be answering that question soon.
IDF will also be a hot ticket this year with Intel finally having something very interesting to talk about in Conroe. IDF starts today and Anand will be covering the event live from San Francisco. Unfortunately, IDF is still going when Cebit starts in Germany on March 9th. This will force many reviewers and exhibitors to have to choose between IDF and Cebit.
The other big event at Cebit will be the first looks at AM2 motherboards. As you can see in our preview, almost every motherboard maker will be showing at least one AM2 board and many manufacturers will show complete AM2 lines. We are told that AMD will only allow one working AM2 demo per manufacturer (without keyboard, mouse, or benchmark capabilities), so some manufacturers will be showing just boards at their booths.
We will continue our Cebit preview over the next few days as we look at some other items "Live from Taiwan" that will end up being the talk of Cebit 2006.
Cebit is often a show with many industry launches, but this year appears to be a lot thinner than the recent past. The only major NDA to lift at Cebit will be the new NVIDIA video cards. We will be covering those launches and publishing benchmarks and comparisons to the current top-line ATI X1900XT/XTX when the new cards launch.
The big question for NVIDIA, of course, is whether or not their new video cards have the performance to push ahead of ATI X1900XTX, the current performance leader. We will be answering that question soon.
IDF will also be a hot ticket this year with Intel finally having something very interesting to talk about in Conroe. IDF starts today and Anand will be covering the event live from San Francisco. Unfortunately, IDF is still going when Cebit starts in Germany on March 9th. This will force many reviewers and exhibitors to have to choose between IDF and Cebit.
The other big event at Cebit will be the first looks at AM2 motherboards. As you can see in our preview, almost every motherboard maker will be showing at least one AM2 board and many manufacturers will show complete AM2 lines. We are told that AMD will only allow one working AM2 demo per manufacturer (without keyboard, mouse, or benchmark capabilities), so some manufacturers will be showing just boards at their booths.
We will continue our Cebit preview over the next few days as we look at some other items "Live from Taiwan" that will end up being the talk of Cebit 2006.
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kilkennycat - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
With the novel location of a PCI socket in a position between the CPU and the first PCIe X16 slot, the passively-cooled Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe will safely accommodate at least 2 PCI boards, even with 2 high-end single or double-width PCIe video cards present. I believe that none of the other PASSIVELY-COOLED 939-pin nVidia 'X16 chip- set' boards currently available nor the other pasively-cooled AM2-based nVidia 'X16' boards pictured in this article will do this. (Note that single-width high-end video cards, such as 7800GT/GTX need a full DOUBLE-space for adequate ventilation.) The current passive-cooling Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe (nF4 X16 chip-set) is restricted to one usable PCI slot under the same circumstances. Also, the M2N32-SLI Deluxe, like the current A8N32-SLI Deluxe, has 8-phase CPU power (runs very cool indeed) -- see the dual mosfet heat-sinks. Put that board at the top of the potential shopping list if you are contemplating building a nVidia chipset AM2 system. I have a A8N32-SLI and am very pleased indeed, after having been an exclusive purchaser of Abit boards for many years. Asus' support of enthusiast-level systems has grown very strong indeed during the past year.KorruptioN - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
More and more boards are coming with the EPS12V connection standard. It's not the 4-pin ATX12V connection anymore, but 8-pins. DFI used to do this on their high-end boards, and I remember seeing Asus put the EPS12V connectors on their high-end LGA775 boards, to accomodate for a more power-hungry CPU. Seeing how the "lowly" MSI AM2 board is coming with EPS12V, we can expect more boards to follow suit in the future. More +12V for the CPU is nice.I am liking the passive cooling for the chipsets. The nightmares we saw with the first-generation A8N-SLI is something Asus probably doesn't want to deal with again...
Von Matrices - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Did anyone else notice that there is no 4-pin ATX 12V or 8-pin EPS 12V connector on the DFI SLI X16 motherboard? I wonder why.Von Matrices - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Never mind, it's in black and is hard to see.Omega215D - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Anyone else notice the Asus board with the PCI slot on top of the PCIe 16x? This would be good for me to put my X-Fi in... just can't get a videocard that has a heatsink on the back of the card.latino666 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
It's a good thing there is not real need to have a PCIe slot. Most of those slots would of been blocked by video card fans.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Yeah, what is with the morons who design the motherboards at Asus? They put a single PCI-E 1x or 4x slot on the board, and then place it so that it's useless when a dual slot video card is installed. DFI and other makers don't seem to have this issue. They did the same thing on the A8R32-MVP.Ecmaster76 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Okay, I like your articles.But I like em better when they are published in finished form and stay published (of course minor corrections and updates are fine).
It wasn't too bad until recently, but the RD580 articles went up and down like yo-yos and the RD580 chipset overview piece is still gone.
This one gets posted and the 7600 info was linked but gone, and by the time I finish the 7900gtx stuff has dissappeared. I know that things have to go through revisions, but its a little aggravating to try to read a work in progress. It shouldn't be too hard to keep the incomplete stuff of the public page.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
We are under NDA for the nVidia information. This means more than just publishing benchmarks this time. I was told we also could not mention names of the cards or specifications until the NDA lifts. I apologize for the quick deletes.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I think they purposefully post it so that Google's cache will grab it, then pull it real quick. Then they can say "oops", but still have the article out there. :-)