Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/564
Computex 2000 Coverage Day 3: More Motherboards
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 15, 2000 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Yesterday we took a look at the products ABIT, AOpen, ASUS, Chaintech and FIC displayed at Computex and today we're continuing our coverage with the latest from Gigabyte, Iwill, MSI and Soyo.
Before we hop to the coverage here's a quick look at one of the halls at the Computex convention from above
Also be sure to check out our Day 1 Coverage (Chipsets) and our Day 2 Coverage (Motherboards) before continuing on to read the rest of our Computex articles.
Gigabyte
While Gigabyte pretty much had the same type of products on display that everyone else we visited had, we ended up taking quite a few pictures at their booth.
Here we have Gigabyte's i815E boards, the microATX DFP2-F on the left and the ATX DFP2-T on the right.
Gigabyte's
i815E based DFP2-T makes use of an ITE I/O controller, something a fair number
of motherboard manufacturers are actually implementing, which provides all of
the normal I/O controller functions (FDC, keyboard, etc...) in addition to acting
as a controller for a Smart Card reader. While this may not be the most useful
feature for a number of AnandTech readers, it was interesting to see nonetheless.
If you recall, the i810/810E featured an optional integrated display cache which was basically a small set of on-board SDRAM/SGRAM that could be used for your Z-buffer. The i815E no longer has this on-board display cache option, instead, if you plan on using the integrated graphics of the chipset you can simply install a display cache card in the AGP slot as seen above.
Here we have a CNR card installed on the DFP2-T (the card in the picture is a HomePNA adapter). You can still see the display cache card which is installed in the AGP slot on the very left of the picture. The CNR card would cost an OEM or system integrator much less to include with the motherboard than it would for them to bundle a 10/100 PCI Ethernet card because of the ICH2's integrated LAN controller.
Above we have a closer look at exactly what a CNR card looks like. Since the LAN controller is integrated into the ICH2 chip, there is very little that must be placed on the CNR card.
Gigabyte has also jumped on the Dual Socket-370 bandwagon with their Apollo Pro 133A based solution.
Here we have another dual 133A board Gigabyte had on display.
Just like FIC from yesterday's coverage, Gigabyte was showing off their own Win32 overclocking utility, EasyTune III. This brought us to ask Gigabyte why their motherboards fail to implement a fully jumperless setup which was the case with their latest Socket-A Motherboard, the GA-7ZM. Gigabyte's only explanation was that ABIT holds the patent to the jumperless setup and all other manufacturers that implement such a setup were infringing on their patents. Honestly that explanation didn't make much sense to us but if Gigabyte is hoping to gain more ground with the enthusiast population, a jumperless setup is definitely a requirement.
The GA-6VMM7 is based on the VIA PM601 chipset. The PM601 chipset is sort of like a Slot-1/Socket-370 version of the old Super7 MVP4 chipset. The similarity extends from the fact that the PM601 features the same integrated Trident Blade3D AGP core as the MVP4.
With the PM133 chipset (integrated Savage4) already available from VIA, it doesn't make much sense for Gigabyte to pursue a PM601 based motherboard since the PM133 would most definitely outperform it as far as integrated video is concerned.
The GA-6SMZ7 was one of many SiS 630E based motherboards we saw and continues the string of Gigabyte boards with integrated video features at their booth and in their suite. It'll be interesting to see how much of the market SiS can claim with their new integrated chipsets (630/730E) but it is entirely too early to judge their success right now, we'll just have to wait and see.
In the upper right of the above picture we have a regular PGA370 CPU Socket. It is overlapping a larger albeit different version of the socket called PGA370S, or Socket-370S. As you can see by the yellow circled areas, the pinout on the two sockets is obviously different which basically prevents Socket-370 CPUs from fitting into the 370S connector and vise versa. So what then fits into the PGA370S socket?
Intel's upcoming Timna of course. For those of you that aren't familiar with the Timna design let's take a look at our explanation from our Spring IDF 2000 Coverage:
The Timna is the first chip that boasts a technology Intel coined as Smart Integration. The Timna will be Intel’s sub-$600 flagship CPU made possible because of this Smart Integration technology.
Smart Integration essentially takes the memory controller and the graphics controller and moves them off of the motherboard and actually integrates them onto the CPU. This will definitely be a poor gaming solution compared to the dedicated 3D graphics accelerator solutions that will be available around the release of the Timna, but for the entry level market the Timna should be quite successful.
As you can tell by the above picture there is no North Bridge or Graphics/Memory Controller Hub on the motherboard because those functions are integrated into the CPU itself. The orange heatsink is actually covering up a memory translator hub which is used to extend SDRAM support to the RDRAM native Timna platform, however the actual shipping version of the GA-6TMM7 as well as other Timna boards will most likely not feature an MTH and will simply be RDRAM-only solutions.
Nothing too special here just the ATX version of Gigabyte's microATX Socket-A Motherboard the GA-7ZM. This will be available shortly after the GA-7ZM hits the streets.
Gigabyte was the only manufacturer we stopped by that had an AMD-750 based Socket-A motherboard on display. If you recall from our Thunderbird review the AMD-750 chipset supports the Thunderbird/Duron so this design makes sense, although there hasn't been any word as to whether or not the AMD-750's performance issues under professional OpenGL applications under Windows NT have been fixed.
A subsidiary of Gigabyte, called Gigatech, actually had a pretty impressive line of laptops on display at Computex including this touch screen model below which will shortly be getting a 10.4" touch screen monitor instead of this 8.4" model the unit currently boasts:
Iwill
In spite of having one of the strongest R&D teams in Taiwan, Iwill is still one of the smallest if not the smallest motherboard manufacturer in the area. Regardless of size, they have a very interesting set of products that are set to debut in the upcoming months including what could become the world's first DDR Athlon motherboard. Iwill also claimed that they were shipping 500 i840 based motherboards each month which isn't a lot at all but they are at least shipping the boards whereas most other i840 designs have failed to even hit the market yet.
Just like every other manufacturer, Iwill had an i815E motherboard on display. It does feature a CMD controller that allows it to boast ATA 100/RAID support. Another interesting tidbit of information Iwill left us with was that the CMD controllers you're seeing on motherboards are actually using RAID technology developed by AMI, which is why you will see Iwill boards with either CMD or AMI controllers.
AMI has had quite a bit of experience with RAID, so you should feel quite confident that a board outfitted with an AMI/CMD IDE RAID controller should have a pretty solid RAID implementation. According to Iwill, HighPoint is still in a maturing phase and until their drivers/chips do mature AMI/CMD will be the solutions they use in their motherboards. As far as the likelihood of HighPoint maturing to the point where their on-board controllers are preferable to the AMI/CMD solutions, Iwill says its quite possible.
Iwill's VD133 Pro is pretty standard for a 133A based motherboard. The sample we looked at featured the HPT370 controller which provides ATA 100 support as well as IDE RAID functionality. The only complaint we had about the solution was the odd placement of the ATA 100 channels next to the 6th PCI slot. The VD133 Pro was the only Iwill board we saw that didn't use an AMI/CMD controller.
1U Servers were pretty big at this year's Computex, mainly for their ability to be targeted in large volumes at ISPs, etc... For those of you that aren't familiar with the terminology, 1U refers to the height of the rackmount case you see before you. In contrast, AnandTech is hosted by dual Xeon servers that each run in their own 4U rackmount case.
Before we move onto Iwill's Athlon products we'll take a look at the Slocket III. The Slocket III is a FC-PGA 370 to Slot-1 converter card with its own voltage regulator on it. While just about every other converter card just allows you to set the pins that control the voltage of your CPU, the Slocket III actually allows you to change the voltage supplied to the card on the card itself. This could come in handy for motherboards that can't quite deliver the proper voltage to the new Pentium III "Coppermine" CPUs or the new Celerons. But it has been a while since we've seen a motherboard that can't deliver the proper voltage to either of those CPUs.
The KV200-R is Iwill's first KT133 based Socket-A motherboard for the Thunderbird/Duron. The only thing that really sets the KV200-R apart from the rest of the Socket-A/KT133 boards that we have seen is that this board makes use of the AMI MG80840 controller that adds support for IDE RAID as well as ATA 100. Once again, since AMI has had quite a bit of experience with RAID, you shouldn't see any problems with this implementation.
We mentioned in our Day 1 Coverage that only one manufacturer would be producing an Athlon board based on ALi's upcoming DDR chipset. That one motherboard manufacturer happens to be Iwill, and above you can see a mockup of their KA266-R. The board they had at Computex wasn't functional but they expect to have it up and running by September.
No word yet on when you might be able to buy one, but Iwill was estimating that it will take at least another 3 months after the release of the ALi chipset (final revision) for the VIA DDR Athlon chipset to be complete. Whether or not that is true has yet to be seen.
Here we have the ALi M1535D South Bridge sitting alongside the AMI MG80840 ATA 100/IDE RAID controller.
The three 184-pin DDR SDRAM slots look just like the 168-pin SDRAM slots we've been used to, but if you want a DDR Athlon motherboard there's no easy upgrade other than to purchase new memory. Not to say that it can't be done, it's just that no one has announced plans to include 168-pin SDRAM slots on a DDR Athlon motherboard.
Another picture of the PCI slots, South Bridge and AMI controller.
And finally we have the ALi North Bridge on the KA266-R.
Microstar
Microstar actually brought some pretty interesting items to the show with them, but let's start with the usual first.
MSI showed us both their i815 and their i815E motherboards, above you see the i815E version. Nothing too special about it other than the fact that it has an ISA bridge and a single ISA slot.
The 694 Master is intended to be a 133A version of the popular BX Master except it features no on-board Promise controller like the BX Master, not even for ATA-100 support. The board has a CNR slot in spite of the fact that the 133A chipset doesn't support CNR, MSI is using the slot for AMR support instead.
While most of the dual Socket-370 boards we saw at Computex were Apollo Pro 133A based, the 6335 pictured above actually uses the i840 chipset which supports dual RDRAM channels. Also note the AGP Pro connector and the two 64-bit PCI slots that are present on the motherboard. The power connector next to the AGP Pro slot is necessary for AGP Pro110 operation and it doesn't hurt to have it there when running AGP Pro50 cards. Unfortunately that power connector isn't standard whereas most other motherboard manufacturers are simply using the 5/12V power connectors we normally use for hard drives.
The 694D Pro was the second dual processor board we saw from MSI and this one, just like the majority of other dual Socket-370 motherboards we saw at the show. This board ships with a Promise ATA 100/IDE RAID controller.
The second Timna board we saw was from MSI as you can see above. Once again, the final version of the board most likely won't have the MTH you can see in the picture above.
In our Socket-A Motherboard Preview we gave you a quick look at MSI K7T which was shown at Computex but in addition to that they showed us what could quite possibly be the first Athlon motherboard with on-board SCSI, the K7T Master.
MSI was also showing their MS-2000 Pocket PC which is driven by a 66MHz ARM 720 processor. The unit won't debut until sometime next year but it is interesting to see MSI branch out into this market.
Soyo
Soyo didn't have too much to show us other than their i815/815E boards and their new 133A based offering, all three of which of which are pictured below.
The Soyo SY-7ISA is their i815E based offering, with the 7ISM below being the regular i815:
The last thing Soyo showed us was the SY-6BA+100 which is basically the SY-6BA+IV with the HPT370 controller from HighPoint that offers ATA 100 and IDE RAID support.
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