Motherboards - Page 34

We managed to get hold of exclusive pictures of the upcoming GIGABYTE P55A-UD7 motherboard. It's labeled as "EXTREME" at the moment, but that's because it's not the final shipping product.

From what we heard from our source, "UD7" is the new name to replace the "EXTREME Series" that GIGABYTE used with a couple of its recent products. Without knowing for sure, we would say that "UD7" is the new name because of the tremendous popularity of the new Windows 7 operating system. It's all about the number seven right now.

GIGABYTE has today announced seven new P55 based Intel motherboards which include a trio of the latest technologies that GIGABYTE refers to as GIGABYTE 333 Onboard Acceleration.

Late last week we gave you an exclusive look at GIGABYTE's upcoming P55A motherboards. We promised this week we would also give you a look at the upcoming GIGABYTE EX-58 EXTREME2 motherboard.

Asus loves its high-end customers. First they dropped out the "RoG (Republic of Gamers)" line as their high-end products, now they have their "The Ultimate Force" (TUF) boards.

The first of this new line of board is being called the Sabertooth 55i. This is going to be a P55 with quite a few unique features and improvements over even their RoG boards. The first is the implementation of what Asus is calling E.S.P. this stands for Efficient Switching Power. This is intended to provide clean power to the CPU and memory as well as the PCI-e Slots and controller (now on the CPU). According to the hard-sell from Asus it raises the efficiency of power conversion from 60% to an impressive 90%.

But the fun does not stop there.

Asus has stuffed in extra goodies like ceramics based heatsinks, direct memory cooling (with an optional cooling fan), "military-certified" MOSFETs, and more.

The new color scheme for the board gives it a decidedly military feel. I am sure this is to allow it to compete (in advertising) against Foxconn's military themed products. No word yet on retail availability or pricing but, given its redesign and high-end components you can bet it will not be cheap.

Last week we told showed you a couple of CPUz results for AMD's Magny-Cours K10 CPU. These had some interesting information but in reality did not tell us anything more than what we already knew (although there are rumors of thermal issues at full speed and 100% load).

Today we have a picture of the board that was used for the testing. This is a dual socket board that showed up as Dinar2 (Dinar is a form of currency used in the Middle East).

The picture does not show us much other than the name and the edges of the CPU sockets and RAM slots.

I have to wonder if the name is in anyway representative of the money that AMD received for the purchase of their foundry operations. If so that would be odd after all the money can from Abu Dhabi, a country that uses the Dirham as currency.

During the Intel Lynnfield and P55 Express chipset launch press conference earlier today in Taipei city, we managed to spot what we believe is an unseen motherboard from ASUS.

The ASUS Sabertooth 55i motherboard is obviously based on Intel's recently launched P55 Express chipset for the Socket LGA-1156 Core i5 and Core i7 processors and includes dual channel DDR3-1333 memory support.

What is interesting about this board is that it is part of the Ultimate Force brand from ASUS, which we have heard little about in the past. Sadly we couldn't find any ASUS reps during the event, so we are a little unclear on details, but you can get a good look at the upcoming motherboard in the video below.

That concludes our Intel Lynnfield and P55 Express chipset launch video coverage - we hope you enjoyed it!

We have more Intel rumors today. This one is surrounding the Turbo Memory successor Braidwood. Intel Turbo memory was a method of increasing I/O performance through the use of an NVRAM module. This feature showed up in a few notebooks but never really took off. On the whole the performance gain was not measureable so it was deemed as un-needed by many people that tested it.

Braidwood was supposed to bring this technology to the P55 in the form of the P57 chipset.

All of that is out the window if the rumors being reported are true. You see they claim that Intel is shelving the whole Braidwood project until a later date. This means that since the P57 is not much more than a P55 with Braidwood there is no reason to release the P57.

Of course again the problem with Turbo Boost (Much like Ready Boost) did not have any real measurable effect on performance. Did they help? Yes, they did but not in a way that was visible to the consumer. This coupled with rumored problems with the software side of Braidwood could be the main reason for shelving it for now. It is possible that like HyperThreading Turbo Memory will reappear when the technology is viable and the platform it is run on can really benefit from the technology.

With the lifting of the NDA on the 785 is not s surprise to see everyone announcing mainboards with this new chipset from AMD on it.

So it is no surprise at all that Asus has let slip what they have planned.

According to the Asus Website (and a small blur on Fudzilla) There will be three 785 boards that have support for the AM3 and one with AM2+ support two of the boards are the same model except for the memory and CPU support.

The models are as follows

M4A785D-M Pro (both AM2+ and AM3)
This is a microATX board that features the AMD HD 4200 IGP but no extra sideport memory. CPUs of up to 125W TDP are supported.

M4A785TD-M EVO (AM3)
This is a microATX board that has the additional 128MB DDR3 sideport memory and also support for up to 140W TDP CPUs.

M4785TD-V EVO (AM3)
This is a full sized ATX board that is identical to the M4A785TD-M except for its size and additional slots.

All of these boards look to be pretty good, but as we found out earlier today they will not have full 7.1 Surround from the HD 4200IGP. This means they will lose out over existing Intel and nVidia based boards for the high-end HTPC and SFF market.

Well if you were waiting for a new PCIe standard before upgrading you are in for a long wait. If you did not know that a new standard was due out and has now been delayed, well you are not alone. The PCI-Special Interest Group has announced that they are going to delay PCI 3.0 until sometime next year.

The new protocol would have enabled faster data rates (32Gigbits/second) and better (lower) power consumption. According to the PCI-SIG the new protocol is a bit more work than expected, but that is ok as, well apparently we do not even need it yet.

You have to wonder about these new standards that keep getting delayed. After all USB 3.0 got dropped for now, SATA 6Gb/s had stability issues and now PCIe 3.0 is being pushed back. One possibility is that slow economic times could delay development of products that can actually support the new interfaces. This would realistically delay adoption of the new standards by OEMs, but that is just speculation on our part.

Today we visited the Foxconn Channel office in Taipei and got a look at its upcoming range of motherboards to be released in the coming future. We got a look at what was being shown behind closed doors during Computex. You've already seen the Foxconn Cinema 785G board, now we get a look at a couple upcoming Intel boards.

Zach Ko, Quantum Force & Digital Life motherboard product manager, gave us an early look at its upcoming Quantum Force Socket 1156 boards based around Intel's P55 Express chipset for the upcoming range of Core i5 mid-range processors.

The Inferno Katana is the big daddy and comes loaded with all the features. There is a slightly cut-down version called the Inferno Katana GTI. The main difference being that the GTI only has eight CPU power phases and the Inferno Katana has 12. Each board has two dedicated power phases for the dual channel DDR3 memory. Both boards support NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossfireX.

We got no details on price or availability, but you can expect Foxconn to begin selling these one Intel starting selling the compatible processors to match the boards. There are plenty of exciting features on this board, especially to do with power. We look forward to testing it fully when it comes out.

Today we visited the Foxconn Channel office in Taipei and got a look at its upcoming range of motherboards to be released in the coming future.

First up Zach Ko, Quantum Force & Digital Life motherboard product manager, gave us an early look at its Cinema motherboard. It is part of the popular Digital Life line and is based on the upcoming AMD 785G chipset, which includes the DX10.1 ATI Radeon HD 4200 GPU. Overclocking is one of the features which hasn't been forgotten on this small board and there is an option in the BIOS to increase the graphics core up to 1100MHz - and that enables it to hit a 3DMark06 score of around 2700 3DMarks. On the Deluxe version of the board, 128MB DDR3 1333MHz onboard SidePort memory is included for an extra performance boost.

It's capable of supporting both AM2+ and AM3 based AMD processors and comes with Dual Channel DDR2 667/800/1066 support. There are a total of five CPU power phases to keep things stable and 100% solid capacitors are used as well as ferrite choke power delivery for basic overclocking and increased reliability.

Audio is a strong point with this board and that makes sense since it is targeted at users wanting to build a home theater PC. Surround sound 7.1 channel audio is added along with DTS CONNECT and Dolby Digital Live certification.

As far as price goes, Foxconn reckon it will go on sale at a little under $100 USD and it will go online in early August first in China and then around the rest of the world at the end of August.

Core i7 owners and prospects will be pleased to know that MSI has added more options for those that wish to go with SLI along with the Core i7.

While many motherboard manufacturuers are taking the time at Computex to show off motherboards based upon Intel's P55 chipset, ASUS is showing off a little bit more.

Some very early AMD G34 motherboards were spotted at Computex this year that will be filled with AMD's upcomming six-core and twelve-core derivitives of Istanbul.

Intel and NVIDIA haven't said anything official about SLI support on upcomming P55 motherboards, however motherboard manufacturer J&W seems to have brought forth some confirmation of their own.

With Intel's Core i5 coming soon, it should come as no surprise that some pictures are starting to pop up concering compatible motherboards, especially since Computex just around the corner.

The upcomming Crosshair III Formula motherboard from ASUS has been spotted in the wild and the board is expected to debut at this year's ComputeX.

Motherboard giant ASUS has finally listed the upcomming P6T7 WS SuperComputer motherboard that they showed off at CeBIT this year.

The new motherboard looks to be ready to cater to enthusiasts, with dual nForce 200 chips and 7 PCI-E Gen2 x16 slots. The board will support CrossFireX and SLI, as well as giving users a choice between Core i7 and Xeon processors.

Intel has announced two new motherboards hoping to spur some growth in the area of small form factor computing.

First up is the D945GSEJT boarth that comes fully integrated with an Atom N270 processor and the Mobile Intel 945GSE Express chipset. Intel seems to think this low-power nettop platform is great for building all-in-one or thin client PC's.