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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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