Computex 2007 Day 1

[FarCry]

 

Thus, it's time for something new, which might be the RD790 chipset for quad PCI Express and socket AM2+ (HyperTransport 3.0) - with full support for the dual core and quad core Phenom X2 and X4 processors. You will be able to use four ATI Radeon HD 2000 cards.

 

 

We expect to see tons of P35, G33 and G35 motherboards, as well as the first products based on the new enthusiast chipset X38. In contrast to P35, X38 has twice the number of PCI Express lanes - which allows true dual x16 graphics - and it introduces PCI Express 2.0. While allowing up to 300 W power requirements for each x16 connector, PCIe 2.0 also supports twice the bandwidth: 500 MB/s per lane upstream and downstream. Support for all 45 nm processors, six SATA ports, DDR3 support and all the other new goodies such as integrated Gigabit Ethernet are mandatory.

 

 

Arctic Cooling's Freezer Extreme was already presented at CeBIT 2007, but the firm couldn't market the product until now. This unit has as many as eight heat pipes, 226 fins and an efficient 120 mm fan to cool any processor. The fan is located in between the two fin bodies. It's compatible with Intel's Socket LGA775 and AMD's AM2. The price will be about 50 Euros; we could not get an estimate for the US market

 

 

Chieftec presented new power supplies, which all feature one 120 mm fan and an 80 mm fan on the back. As a result, the dimensions aren't particularly small. The top model will deliver up to 1,200 W, which is far away from being impressive anymore, yet should be enough to power any multi GPU, multi core, multi hard drive system available today. The price for the 1,200 W model should be less than £80 / €100, which would be phenomenal.

 

 

Okay, this is the first 2,000 W power supply. It's so huge that it would never fit into your case, so it's external.

 

 

At the MSI and Foxconn booths we found two demos, which included a PCI Express card that holds 1 GB of NAND Flash memory to support the Windows Vista ReadyBoost and SuperFetch features.

 

 

Solid capacitors are more or less standard in the upper mainstream segment and higher. Abit is one of the first motherboard makers to deploy digital pulse width modulation (PWM) for more accurate voltage regulation.

 

 

It's not difficult to imagine what Aquatank is: liquid cooling that Asus has added to its top-end ATI graphics card. The GPU waterblock is made of copper and is surrounded by a large and fancy heat sink structure. The Aquatank is an optional addition to Asus' EAH2900XT graphics card

 

 

This is probably the most sophisticated motherboard we've ever seen, and we expect it to be even more expensive than the gamer motherboards Striker and Commando. First of all, Asus wanted to have the motherboard "talk" to the user by providing a LCD display instead of a double-digit hexadecimal LED display. Hence you will be able to read about any problems during POST. The next feature is LEDs: there are five blue LEDs to indicate the current clock speed status; the higher you clock your systems, the more LEDs will light up. Finally, the main components are also accompanied by LEDs, which can light up green, yellow or red, depending on how much voltage you apply. Red is close to the component maximum, yellow is somewhat critical and green represents a safe level. Another feature called COP EX shuts down the northbridge or southbridge in the event that either overheats. The Crosslink feature allows Asus to distribute the 16 PCI Express lanes across two x8 PCIe slots rather than having to run two x16 slots at x16 and x4.

 

Overclocking can now simply be selected by choosing an existing processor speed grade. Overclock your Core 2 Duo E6300 to E6700 speed by simply making the appropriate choice, and the Blitz Extreme will automatically increase voltages and clock speeds to reach it.

 

 

The P5K3 Deluxe comes with 2 GB of integrated DDR3 memory (by Quimonda/Infineon), which runs DDR3-1600 speed. According to Asus, the integration of memory onto the motherboard allows the memory controller to run tighter timings and much higher clock speeds.