Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1036
Comdex 2002 Motherboard Coverage - Part I
by Evan Lieb on November 19, 2002 11:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
This article first appeared on the AnandTech Newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Today marks the first day of our motherboard coverage at Comdex 2002. Most of the motherboard makers we visited seem to be big on Granite Bay (E7205) and SiS 655, although we were overwhelmed with Hammer boards as well.
Read on to find out what boards motherboard makers are banking on for the foreseeable future.
ABIT
ABIT didn't have a ton of interesting motherboards to show off, though there were a few worth mentioning.
Pictured above is ABIT's Granite Bay motherboard, dubbed the GB7. ABIT is still very much pushing the MAX series, and we are quite happy to see this dedication to MAX. Expect reviews of ABIT's 845PE and Granite Bay motherboards in the next few weeks.
Another board that we will be reviewing soon is ABIT's nForce2 board, the NF7, which utilizes the nForce2 SPP and MCP-T. It should be interesting testing out the capabilities of this board, which is supposed to be priced competitively against ASUS's nForce2 Deluxe motherboards.
ABIT is still evaluating the SiS 655 chipset. They're not exactly sure if it's worth it to produce SiS 655, but considering the huge price difference between 655 and E7205, they may just adopt it.
We had a chance to ask ABIT how they plan on remaining competitive in such a difficult period in the motherboard industry. Their response was that ABIT will attempt to differentiate themselves from the competition by focusing on the high-end desktop/enthusiast motherboards alone and branch off into server solutions as well. By refocusing ABIT as a niche manufacturer they hope to remain under the radar of a lot of the larger manufacturers and continue to remain an active player in this industry.
AOpen
AOpen showed off a large array of products. As far as we could tell from their sales pitch, they are concentrating on becoming a solutions provider more than "just" a motherboard manufacturer. This is further apparent by looking at their wide range of product offerings, which include motherboards, video cards, optical storage, networking, audio, computer cases, and laptops
.
Some of the boards AOpen showed off include this ATX nForce2 above, featuring the nForce2 SPP and MPC-T. AOpen expects retail availability of this board in the U.S. by the end of November.
AOpen of course has their Granite Bay (E7205) motherboard on display at Comdex. This board should hit the market relatively soon, although AOpen was unable to give us a more exact date at the time of publishing.
Finally, we have AOpen's Hammer boards. Both are based on VIA's K8T400 chipset. The first picture is AOpen's mATX solution, while the other is their full-sized ATX board. AOpen expects these boards to retail in Q2, which is when they believe ClawHammer will be available in sufficient quantity.
ECS
ECS is yet another motherboard manufacturer that that was showing off their Hammer solutions.
The first Hammer board pictured above is ECS's K8VTM (mATX) motherboard based on VIA's K8T400M chipset.
The second Hammer board is dubbed the ECS K8VTA (ATX) and is based on the VIA K8T400 chipset.
The third and final Hammer motherboard is based on SiS' 755 Hammer chipset and is dubbed the ECS K8S5A.
Moving on, we see that ECS has developed some fairly interesting integrated solutions that lots of system integrators should love. The motherboard pictured above is called the P4S8AG, and is based on the SiS 648 chipset.
What makes this board special is the on-board SiS Xabre 200 graphics (which comes with 64MB of Samsung memory). We'd be very interested in seeing how the 845GE stacks up against the Xabre 200 in 2D and 3D performance once we can get our hands on a sample.
The second motherboard pictured is ECS's K7S7AG (ATX) motherboard based on the K7 SiS 746 chipset. While we're sure nForce2 IGP boards will outperform Xabre 200 boards, it still doesn't rule out ECS's board as a low-cost solution, which is what ECS is famous for to begin with.
The final and most interesting board on display in the ECS showroom was their L4S55A based on the SiS 655 chipset. Granite Bay has already launched, but SiS still plans to have stiff competition for Intel's latest dual DDR chipset. Dubbed the SiS 655, this chipset supports dual DDR333 memory, meaning motherboards based on the 655 chipset will have a 4:5 divider in the BIOS that enables 333MHz memory speed assuming you're using a 533MHz FSB processor. However, having dual DDR333 may not be beneficial, as this would offer well over 1GB/s more than the P4's FSB can handle and could result in latency penalties which would lower performance versus dual DDR266 mode.
ECS is already selling limited numbers of SiS 655 boards on the market today. Their SiS 655 boards aren't selling in the U.S. yet, but they're definitely in Asia, though in limited quantities at the moment. ECS tells us that their 655 board will be ready for the U.S. this month, although we have our doubts, despite the close relationship between SiS and ECS. It is interesting to note that MSI cites a January timeframe for shipping their SiS 655 boards.
Gigabyte
Like ABIT, Gigabyte didn't have a whole heck of a lot to show off that we haven't already reviewed or covered before, but there certainly were a couple of boards worthy of note.
Click to Enlarge
Note: The original photos had a typo indicating that their boards supported Hyper-Threading. This was a typo on Gigabyte's part and we have been assured that the solutions do not support Hyper-Threading as the Athlon 64 does not use the technology.
The two boards shown above are Gigabyte's Hammer boards. The first Hammer board pictured is based on VIA's K8T400 Hammer chipset. This VIA chipset consists of the K8T400 North Bridge and VIA 8235 South Bridge, which has just recently started to become standard in KT400 and P4X400 motherboard lines. Next year, VIA will most likely update their South Bridge to something a bit more potent, perhaps something that supports Serial ATA or 802.11b.
The second Hammer board is based on AMD's very own 8151 chipset, which includes the 8151 North Bridge and 8111 South Bridge.
MSI
MSI showed off some very interesting Pentium 4, Athlon XP, and Hammer boards at their booths in the Venetian.
Most motherboard and chipset makers are ready to start producing their Hammer products if they really wanted to. At this point however, motherboard makers have to wait for AMD to get good enough Hammer yields to produce sufficient quantities of them.
Above we have MSI's SiS 655 motherboard; this board will be named 655 Max or 655 8Xtreme, but won't be available until January 2003 due to low supplies at the moment (more on SiS 655 supplies later).
It's interesting to note that SiS 655 is significantly cheaper than Intel dual DDR E7205 chipset. In fact, we were told that SiS 655 will sell for around $35-37 to certain motherboard makers while Intel is currently selling E7205 chipsets to motherboard makers for around $55. Since we know that fully-loaded E7205 motherboards will retail for between $175 and $190, this gives us a rough indication of how expensive SiS 655 motherboards will be.
Pictured above is MSI's 850E Max2 motherboard. This motherboard supports two RIMMs of RIMM 4200 memory. If you're not already aware, RIMM 4200 is essentially dual channel PC1066 wrapped up into a single module (a 32-bit RIMM). A RIMM 4200 module feeds about 4.2GB/s of bandwidth to the North Bridge, which is equal to the bandwidth provided by the 533MHz FSB. Despite the fact that RIMM 4200 motherboards aren't terribly interesting considering the low availability and high price of RIMM 4200 and 0% performance gain you get versus dual channel PC1066 motherboards, these types of boards are unique nonetheless.
Finally, we have MSI's nForce2 motherboards. The first pictured nForce2 board (ATX) uses the SPP North Bridge and MCP-T South Bridge. Availability of MSI's nForce2 boards in the U.S. is expected in the first week of December.
Final Words
We shope you enjoyed our coverage of these motherboard manufacturers, we'll be bringing much more over the course of the next few days.
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