CES 2007: Motherboards and Memory
by Gary Key on January 17, 2007 12:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
As we mentioned in our previous Consumer Electronics Show 2007 article, the majority of products on display were evolutionary rather revolutionary. This pattern combined with the continuing emphasis on digital convergence left us with very few new product releases for the personal computer market.
We expect this to change in Q2 as AMD releases their new Barcelona processor series, additional chipsets, and the R600 family of graphic processors should be widely available. Intel is planning on new platforms based around the upcoming Bearlake series of chipsets in late Q2 with derivatives in Q3. We possibly could see the new Intel 45nm Penryn processor series by the end of the year based upon early test results.
In the consumer network market we very could see the final ratification of the 802.11N standard late this year. This is due in part to the current second draft specifications looking acceptable for all parties concerned at this time with the general plan being certified product that is upgradeable to the final specification will ship in late Q2.
The storage market will continue to see drive capacity increases with the first terabyte size drives shipping in early Q2. Solid State Disks will also make inroads into the portable market throughout the year. We expect to see a rapid acceptance of the SSD products during 2008 in both the portable and corporate desktop markets as the prices continue to fall while performance and drive capacities increase.
After attending a short presentation by AMD on the benefits of their upcoming 690G chipset that features Radeon X1250 graphics capability, we stopped by the MSI booth to view an early board built on this chipset. The initial performance numbers show the 690G easily outperforming the Intel G965 X3000 graphics core, and with some additional driver tuning it should offer a very competitive platform choice when compared to the NVIDIA 6150 boards, along with providing additional features.
The board we viewed was an early design release from MSI and will be marketed at the K9AGM2-FHI. It is a mATX design that features the AMD 690G Northbridge, AMD SB600 Southbridge, Realtek 8111B Gigabit Ethernet, Realtek ALC888 HD audio codec, and IEEE 1394 support from the VIA VT6308P chipset. The 690G chipset features native HDMI output via the integrated transmitter and HDCP support.
Based upon our early viewing of the X1250 graphics capability we have to say that AMD has an excellent solution for the HTPC crowd. The gaming performance was acceptable at 1280x1024 resolutions in both the Half Life 2 and Prey demos while providing more than enough capability for running most RTS and simulation type games. We will have a preview of this board and others in the coming weeks as AMD has informed us the official launch date is 02/28/07.
We expect this to change in Q2 as AMD releases their new Barcelona processor series, additional chipsets, and the R600 family of graphic processors should be widely available. Intel is planning on new platforms based around the upcoming Bearlake series of chipsets in late Q2 with derivatives in Q3. We possibly could see the new Intel 45nm Penryn processor series by the end of the year based upon early test results.
In the consumer network market we very could see the final ratification of the 802.11N standard late this year. This is due in part to the current second draft specifications looking acceptable for all parties concerned at this time with the general plan being certified product that is upgradeable to the final specification will ship in late Q2.
The storage market will continue to see drive capacity increases with the first terabyte size drives shipping in early Q2. Solid State Disks will also make inroads into the portable market throughout the year. We expect to see a rapid acceptance of the SSD products during 2008 in both the portable and corporate desktop markets as the prices continue to fall while performance and drive capacities increase.
MSI: AMD 690G makes a debut
After attending a short presentation by AMD on the benefits of their upcoming 690G chipset that features Radeon X1250 graphics capability, we stopped by the MSI booth to view an early board built on this chipset. The initial performance numbers show the 690G easily outperforming the Intel G965 X3000 graphics core, and with some additional driver tuning it should offer a very competitive platform choice when compared to the NVIDIA 6150 boards, along with providing additional features.
The board we viewed was an early design release from MSI and will be marketed at the K9AGM2-FHI. It is a mATX design that features the AMD 690G Northbridge, AMD SB600 Southbridge, Realtek 8111B Gigabit Ethernet, Realtek ALC888 HD audio codec, and IEEE 1394 support from the VIA VT6308P chipset. The 690G chipset features native HDMI output via the integrated transmitter and HDCP support.
Based upon our early viewing of the X1250 graphics capability we have to say that AMD has an excellent solution for the HTPC crowd. The gaming performance was acceptable at 1280x1024 resolutions in both the Half Life 2 and Prey demos while providing more than enough capability for running most RTS and simulation type games. We will have a preview of this board and others in the coming weeks as AMD has informed us the official launch date is 02/28/07.
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syzygy - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
Did anyone else notice the solid state capacitors that this mobo will be equipped with - for under 120.00 !!! The 650is have already been shown to overclock rather well and are an infinitely better price-to-performance option than the splashier 680is.Hulk - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
Is this a "seat of the pants" recommendation or have you done some testing that shows 4GB to be faster than 2GB for Vista?Gary Key - Thursday, January 18, 2007 - link
We have completed testing in several areas at this time with 4GB being consistently faster than 2GB in several games, Photoshop, Recode (still trying to figure that one out), and a few other desktop applications where we feel the consistency of the benchmark is valid. The issue we have now is consistency of other benchmark scores. In XP we generally see several benchmark runs of the same application not vary over .05%. In Vista the same benchmark differences might vary up to 4%. The patterns do not make sense (high,low,mid,high, mid scores, reboot and it might be low, mid, low, high, high) and we attribute the differences to Vista's caching scheme along with some other possibilities that Microsoft brought up to us.Samus - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
all that graphics power on that northbridge and only that tiny heatsink?mamisano - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
Is it me, or are these new C2D mainboard prices totally absurd? I just don't get why people are willing to spend $250+ on a part that is aimed at a crowd of people who constantly upgrade. Are they really worth double the price of i965P based boards?IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
I would think people who can constantly upgrade has much more money to spend than the ones that don't :P.
Most don't need better than P965.
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
Where's the newer drivers and benchmarks for it?? Did Intel give up making newer drivers?? The newer drivers should have been out month ago, and the one after that should be out now.Indeed it is, but considering that both the GMA 3000(X3000 core but no new features like T&L,SM3.0) and GMA 950(older core) beat the X3000, there's still much performance to be gained before making conclusions. 690G isn't even out yet for sale.
duploxxx - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
that's true but you know from older days what the x700 was capable off, so you can compare this with other chipsets... and easy to say nore 6150/g965 intels will come near that performance the only thing that will up the performance is the core architecture, the same reason why a compare between G965 and 6150 is in favor of Intel, we'll see if the it is still the case with the new 690, this will sell alot to oem vendors due to sales from the same vendor (byebye many amd nvidia chipsets for oem, probably less influance in retail due to the fact that they also by high end nvidia graphics and will choose the nvidia chipset)btw check the heatsink on the chipsets and compare those with the nvidia ones (and they don't have a grapics inside....) and the intel g965 easy to say nvidia/intel better start working on a chipset that consumes less power.
hint to anand to keep it a litle fair review systems from the same budget...
x2 3800 - whatever netburst
x2 4200 - e6300 / e4300
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
LOL. 690G is nowhere near X700. 690G will probably get close to X700 in games where it requires full SM2.0 to run, but X700 is a significantly more powerful core. 690G has half the pixel pipelines(4), with core clock speed equal to regular X700(400MHz), 1/3 the amount of vertex shaders(2), slightly greater memory bandwidth(12.8GB/s vs. 11.2GB/s for regular X700)that's shared with the CPU, which doesn't even have a crossbar memory system.
http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/hwdb.php?tid=728310&t...">http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/hwdb.php?tid=728310&t...
30-40% faster than GF6150/Xpress 200
It happened before, integrated GPU based off a dedicated GPU coming out to be slower than the slowest dedicated version. Xpress 200, based off X300, doesn't even beat X300SE.
Intel and ATI is pretty close: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2891&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2891&am...
"Our system at stock voltages ran very cool but we did see power consumption increases almost equal the 975X when overclocking both platforms. We will present these numbers along with CrossFire results shortly."
And many enthusiasts overclock, making zero advantage.
MadAd - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
omg, what IS that gargantuan heat pipe array doing stuck to a strip of memory?What is it lately, this is the 3rd ridiculous design ive seen in as many weeks.
If someone (at anandtech preferrably) would go to the trouble of benchmarking this ram before and after removing these ridiculous cooling arrangements I would be very grateful. Personally I think its just spin and glitter for the no sense fat wallet crowd but without testing, its just an opinion however the more and more of these ridiculous designs we see, the more it needs to validated by a forthright site such as yourselves here at AT.