Computex 2006: 300W GPUs, Conroe, HDMI Video Cards and Lots of Motherboards
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 5, 2006 10:24 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
MSI's Conroe Motherboards
Like most other motherboard manufacturers, MSI kicked off our meeting with a showing of its new Conroe motherboards.
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MSI's entry level P965 motherboard uses the regular ICH8, which only supports four SATA ports as you can see below:
The other important thing to note is that all of MSI's Conroe motherboards are passively cooled. MSI insists that you can adequately cool Intel's chipsets without resorting to more expensive heatpipes.
MSI's high end P965 motherboard with Conroe support uses the more expensive ICH8R option, which offers six SATA ports.
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As with all P965 motherboards there's no CrossFire support despite the two PCIe x16 slots (one is a x16 and the other is a x4).
Below we get a better look at the new P965 chipset beneath the MSI heatsink:
Intel's P965 chipset features a new memory controller design compared to previous Intel chipsets, however we have not been able to get an idea of how extensive the modifications are. We do know that this is the first Intel chipset to officially support DDR2-800, which may be all the redesigned memory controller offers.
Intel's new ICH8R is pictured below:
Like all other motherboard manufacturers making Conroe boards, if you want CrossFire support you need to go with the Intel 975X chipset. While both ATI and NVIDIA will have multi-GPU solutions with Conroe support, for now it's all about Intel's offerings.
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With the older ICH7R, MSI's 975X platinum only has 4 SATA ports that are driven by the South Bridge. The extra SATA port is provided by a third party controller.
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ceefka - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Just when Intel has attractive numbers on power consumption and also AMD aims again for lower numbers these GPUs negate all their effort and have you on the look out for an even bigger PSU or an additional PSU. How can ATI or NVIDIA justify this? I'd like a good reason.phusg - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I think you've already given the only reason (CPU's using less). I won't call it a 'good' reason, but all the same.sri2000 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
When I read that line about 1000-1200 watt PSU's, all I could think of was Doc Brown in Back to the Future yelling "1.21 Gigawatts!?!"... (yeah I know - kilowatt != gigawatt... but still).Griswold - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Who knows, maybe ATI/Nvidia bundle plutonium batteries (as seen in deep space probes) with their cards in the future? Not only to feed the cards but mainly to power your cooling equipment...segagenesis - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Exactly my first thought. The concept of a seperate external supply for a graphics card is already ludicrous to me, if this becomes standard then I would hate to see future progression from there. Does anyone remember the Taco Town SNL skit? I desire better video as much as anyone else, but I draw the line when I need a nuclear power station to run it. ATI/nVidia must have forgotten that electricity DOES cost money.Needless to say... impressive Conroe boards, for a premium.
Stele - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
All in all an excellent article, good coverage and of course lovely photos :PThe Asus Pluto board is interesting indeed, especially the audio riser card. By the way, anyone noticed that the riser card is nicknamed Charon? For the uninitiated, Pluto was the Greek god of the Underworld, separated from the living world by the river Styx. Charon was the boatman who ferried the dead across that river to Pluto's domain. The two have hence been generally closely associated with one another. In astronomy, Pluto's moon is also named Charon, for the same reason. Nice bit of humour on Asus' side :P
punko - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Actually, Pluto is the Roman name for the Greek God Hades. Charon was indeed the ferryman of the Underworld, but the river wasn't Styx, but Acheron. I believe that there were four famous rivers in the Underworld, Lethe was another, but I can't remember the fourth.Stele - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
It is another Greek name for Hades (from Greek ????t??, Plouton), but it was adopted by and hence much more commonly associated with Roman mythology.
Oh heh! Styx was the popular misconception... forgot about it. Thanks for correcting me! There were five rivers of Hades: Acheron (the river of sorrow), Cocytus (lamentation), Phlegethon (fire), Styx (hate) and... Lethe (forgetfulness). I guess that explains why you remember Lethe but forgot the others! ;)
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Didn't really see anything new here.Audio on a riser card - DFI has been doing it for awhile now.
Lighting around the I/O shield - Been done before.
Debug code readout - Been on numerous boards for quite some time. Asus just made it viewable from outside the case.
Stele - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
No, I wasn't saying that anything was new in the industry, but new at least to Asus. IMHO the concept motherboard was an interesting exhibit, even if it isn't the only one of its kind.More to the point, what's noteworthy is that Asus - along with other manufacturers as well, hopefully - is considering following DFI's Karajan module concept. That can only be a good thing, as long as the manufacturers sincerely mean to improve noise immunity and not just throw it in as a gimmick to charge a premium for.
As for the other ideas... interesting but not terribly unique, as you've already pointed out.