Motherboards - Page 66

Foxconn has today launched the second motherboard in its Quantum Force series and it's a ripper.

BLACKOPS is the name and this mighty motherboard may even make the most serious of overclockers cringe. It is based on Intel's new X48 Express chipset and is targeted specifically at overclockers. Out of the box, it includes a 4-in-1 chipset cooling arrangement that allows for regular air cooling as well as water cooling and even LN2 or dry ice.

AMD is set to release its next chipset next month and it is the 790GX. You could think of it as a 790FX with onboard graphics, Radeon HD 3300 to be exact. It's a faster onboard graphics solution than the 780G which uses Radeon HD 3200. It even includes a memory chip onboard using Side-Port Memory technology.

Rumors are floating around that the 790GX will support CrossfireX (not full speed but half speed two x8 slots) as well as Hybrid Crossfire to reduce power consumption and boost performance when teamed up with a discrete graphics card such as the Radeon HD 3450.

ABIT, once the mighty king of all motherboard manufacturers, is still in the game and has just announced its A-S78H AM2+ motherboard based on AMD's 780G chipset.

It doesn't seem to include anything overly spectacular besides the AMD chipset features such as Hybrid Crossfire. It does manage to fit in not only a DVI and VGA port but also HDMI.

It would have been nice to see an optical out port for digital audio but I guess HDMI is going to take over from that soon enough for newer HD audio such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD.

MSI has just announced its latest Socket 775 motherboard supporting all new 45nm Intel processors called the P7N2 Diamond.

It is based on Nvidia's high-end NForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset and uses a non-reference design which is a fresh change from all the other reference based boards from companies like XFX, EVGA and BFG.

First pictures of Intel's codenamed 45nm Bloomfield high-end desktop processor based motherboard recently appeared online.

It is an Intel Desktop Board brand motherboard which is quite different to anything else we have seen in the past. It is a very early sample so the design and layout will probably change throughout the year until the first Nehalem processors are due to launch sometime in the Q4 timeframe.

Intel is not due to officially release their P45 chipset until sometime in April but that hasn't stopped information being leaked early.

A recent event held in Taiwan which ASUS attended allowed an onlooker of the Xfastest forum to take a few shots of ASUS' upcoming P5N64 WS Pro motherboard, this based on NVIDIA's latest flagship desktop chipset; the 790i.

With NVIDIA's official unveiling of the 780i chipset a short while ago, a slew of manufacturers are coming out with boards based on this new flagship nForce chipset for Intel users. Below are three 780i boards we've spotted so far.

We begin with an offering from EVGA :-

Though NVIDIA's highly anticipated "nForce 780i" flagship desktop chipset is yet to be unleashed for the Intel platform, ASUS took it upon themselves to put details of their upcoming 780i motherboard on their website which will be known as the "P5N-T Deluxe".

The folks over at BCC Hardware managed to get their hands on an upcoming Nvidia nForce 780i SLI reference motherboard.

As you may know, this is the upcoming chipset to replace the aging 680i SLI chipset which lacks proper support for new 45nm processors from Intel.