Live from Taiwan: Cebit 2006 Preview
by Wesley Fink on March 7, 2006 12:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Cebit 2006 in Hanover, Germany is certainly Europe's premier Electronics show. Some would even say that it's the best Consumer Electronics show in the world. Cebit is fun to attend, but it is spread over many buildings in a city with inadequate hotel space, which means that you often have to stay many miles away from the Hanover show. From a press viewpoint, this makes Cebit a tough show to cover.
This year, AnandTech went to Taiwan just before Cebit to visit manufacturers who will be some of the top exhibitors at Cebit because most, if not all, of the new products at Cebit were born in Taiwan or China. This means that our readers are the first to see many of the new products, which will be producing all the buzz at Cebit this year.
It is still about 3 months until AMD is expected to launch their new Socket AM2, but this time gap has only made the AM2 information search that more frantic. Most major manufacturers will be showing a working AM2 board at Cebit, but they won't be displaying any benchmarks. Our guess is that AMD is still not ready to hang its hat on benchmarks. The second spin of the AM2, widely called DVT or DeVelopmenT, combined with the latest NVIDIA MCP55, Rev. A02 or the ATI RD580, is widely reported to bring AM2 performance very close to Socket 939 levels. The earlier EVT chip fell far short of Socket 939 performance levels.
It appears that an issue remains with the latest DVT AM2 in that single channel and dual-channel memory performance are virtually the same on the latest DVT spin. If this is corrected, AMD may finally see the performance gains that they told the industry to expect with the move to AM2 and DDR2. Another AM2 spin is expected in the next few days, and until performance is more representative of the final shipping product, AMD likely does not want benchmarks leaving the wrong impression.
This year, AnandTech went to Taiwan just before Cebit to visit manufacturers who will be some of the top exhibitors at Cebit because most, if not all, of the new products at Cebit were born in Taiwan or China. This means that our readers are the first to see many of the new products, which will be producing all the buzz at Cebit this year.
It is still about 3 months until AMD is expected to launch their new Socket AM2, but this time gap has only made the AM2 information search that more frantic. Most major manufacturers will be showing a working AM2 board at Cebit, but they won't be displaying any benchmarks. Our guess is that AMD is still not ready to hang its hat on benchmarks. The second spin of the AM2, widely called DVT or DeVelopmenT, combined with the latest NVIDIA MCP55, Rev. A02 or the ATI RD580, is widely reported to bring AM2 performance very close to Socket 939 levels. The earlier EVT chip fell far short of Socket 939 performance levels.
It appears that an issue remains with the latest DVT AM2 in that single channel and dual-channel memory performance are virtually the same on the latest DVT spin. If this is corrected, AMD may finally see the performance gains that they told the industry to expect with the move to AM2 and DDR2. Another AM2 spin is expected in the next few days, and until performance is more representative of the final shipping product, AMD likely does not want benchmarks leaving the wrong impression.
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Dubb - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
any news on workstation motherboards?Wesley Fink - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
We did see a Socket F design on our last day in Taiwan, but manufacturers were not as far along with Socket F boards as AM2 designs. You will want to review other Cebit coverage to see who might be displaying new workstation designs.neweggster - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
The AM2 boards pictured all are using a passive heatsinks on the chipsets. Does this mean something about the new AM2's that they run cooler or whats the deal? All the major AM2 boards shown all have passive cooling, and for how much they will sell for $200+ I doubt I would want one without a nice heatsink fan configuration for OC'ing.JackPack - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I doubt processor power consumption has much influence on the chipset.Fancy fansinks on the chipset are the probably the last detail the manufacturers are concerned with. They can finalize those designs at the last minute.
JoKeRr - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Same pic as Asus AM2 moboWesley Fink - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
The Abit KN9 links were correctedJoKeRr - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Is it just me or does someone else doesn't see the second MCP on that K9N Platinum board?? Supposed to be Dual X16 and I'm not aware of any single MCP made by NV that supports 32 PCI-E lanes.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Good Catch. The MSI is definitely dual x8 and not dual x16. The text has been updated. nVidia will have a single chip dual x16 PCIe chipset late this year, but not for AM2 launch.JoKeRr - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
thanks for the corrections Wesley. Interesting to note that MSI has only 1 SLI-32X mobo and it's K8N Dimond Plus, I guess they're reserving the dimond naming scheme for the single 32X MCP solution.Powermoloch - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
The new 7xxx cards are lookin' mighty fine :D