Motherboards - Page 61

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.