Taiwan Pre-CES Technology Tour Part 2

by Gary Key on 12/12/2006 12:05 AM EST
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  • mikedice - Monday, December 18, 2006 - link

    When will we see these Generation 2 P965 boards start showing up and what can we expect from them? Are they worth waiting for?
  • sprockkets - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link

    Are you going to review any of the Via C7 cpu boards either? I'd love to see if they do have more performance per a watt than the older PM chips, as via claims.
  • Gary Key - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link

    We talked to VIA about this, hoping to get a complete system from them after the first of the year. They are still discussing where they want to go as a company at this time.
  • therealnickdanger - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    I have been waiting for a review of this thing for quite a while! I'm glad Intel is finally releasing a driver for it. I hope it pans out!
  • MadAd - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    Is it just me or are others getting fed up with these honking great heatpipe setups on motherboards?

    Ok the Abit NF-M2 solution is quite neat and compact, definately +1 to them for making a sensible design consideration but the rest? omg give me my space back, ive enough damn fans to cope.

    I mean what about the gigabyte board? Looks like it wraps around the backside too!! What are they thinking?!?

    I know joe consumer thinks they vanish away the heat with some voodoo magic but we all know they just move it from one place to another in an attempt to catch a better airstream from power high/airflow low systems without having to re-site components.

    Its a cludge dressed up as enthusiast parts and I for one are sick of them already.
  • kleinwl - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    The heat pipes are just doing what your fans are doing... moving one heat source to another area to diffuse it. If heat pipes reduce the heat concentrations inside the case so all I have to worry about is evacuating the air from the case I am for one happy. All those small fans on the motherboard to keep things cool were annoying. Heat pipes are much better solution in my estimation.

    In addition, I like the fact that the motherboards are uping the phase calibration for cpu voltage. A more accurate signal means that I can potentially achieve higher overclocks with lower voltage. Now if we could all agree to change the PSU so it only outputs 12V and let the motherboard do all the voltage regulation, I for one would be happy. After all the motherboard is already doing voltage regulation... let the PSU become simplier!
  • MadAd - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    But fans evacuate it as well as move it about, heatpipes are just moving it from one place to another _inside_ the case (and taking up space doing it) and has no access to the outside world.

    There is no more or less heat being produced by the components nor is there any more or less heat evacuation to the outside world. You still need the same amount of in>out airflow with or without them.

    Its a cludge made to look all shiny and colourful. This cannot be the best way to replace the cheap and nasty wizzy noised little fans (that you rightly notice as annoying) can it?
  • sprockkets - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link

    True, but have you felt how hot those 6150 chipsets get? The MSI one doesn't have any active cooling on it, and you can burn your finger on it. The heat moves up to a larger heatsink on the mosfets, and is near a rear fan for cooling.
  • MadAd - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link

    yes of course, my a8n32-sli has a hot southbridge too but where can I point the finger for these hot chipsets? Inefficient power planning, the Prescott of the mobo world.

    Instead of moving to a more efficient chipset design when the power densities rise, we get the same old process redesigned with a gargantuan heatpipe setup dressed up as something for the enthusiast. Its spin.

    Its like Intel trying to push BTX over a year ago because of their own power density troubles, except that one did'nt wash, noone bought the spin and intel stayed in the doghouse until the more recent C2D developments.

    Shame heatpipes are not also seen for what they really are- a cludge to keep selling us new designs of old processes.
  • sprockkets - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link

    True, but those chipsets from SiS, and perhaps even via are very cool.
  • JKing76 - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    Good lord, first AMD and now Intel are fully on the "performance per watt" bandwagon, when will the GPU designers join? We can have incredibly fast machines now, with lots of storage, that are still quiet and stay cool, but if you want even last generation graphics the machine becomes a screaming space heater (or you use an after market GPU cooler that runs the card just shy, if you're lucky, of meltdown).
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    Define:

    quote:

    The board features dual PCI Express based Gigabit controllers from Marvell that can be teamed together


    Will this support 802.3ad link aggregation ? Or is this another nVidia ruse in ATI clothing . . . ?
  • Gary Key - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link

    I am still discussing this with Marvell tonight. I do not have an answer so let's assume for the time being that the answer is no. ;)
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    Err whoops, "inquiring propeller heads want to know" ;)
  • bob4432 - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    i highly doubt people are going to jump on the ATI bandwagon when all they do is offer competition, and not kill the 8800series from NVIDIA. ~440W for a gpu is ridiculous, they may as well wait until they can make them work with even the enthusiasts rigs which usually have 500-600W psus in them. looks like NVIDIA is still winning since it 8800series is rather efficient compared to ATI offerings - kind of like intels presshots :(
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    quote:

    ~440W for a gpu is ridiculous, they may as well wait until they can make them work with even the enthusiasts rigs which usually have 500-600W psus in them


    Another person who either doesn't bother to read the article...

    "We heard power consumption numbers hovering around 430~450W for the high-end CrossFire setup while under full load."

  • Pythias - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Another person who either doesn't bother to read the article...


    "We heard power consumption numbers hovering around 430~450W for the high-end CrossFire setup while under full load."


    erm...maybe YOU should read the article.

    quote:

    Those are power requirements just for the cards according to our sources who said the first silicon spins actually consumed even more power.
  • cornfedone - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    With the countless defective mobos we've witnessed from Asus, DFI, Abit, Sapphire, et al over the past several years, I'll reserve judgment on these products until the actual production mobos are in consumers hands and have been thoroughly tested.

    We've seen too many hand-picked review boards with special BIOS that were provided for blatantly misleading favorable reviews of defective mobos. Won't get fooled again. It's clear the PC industry has become very dirty and manipulative so it can generate huge profits thru glowing hardware reviews and consumer fraud. As far as I am concerned, nothing a mobo company claims is true until I can document it myself with a production product anyone can buy off the shelf. Anything else is hype and B.S.
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    *looks for edit button*

    "They're" . . .
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    Its not so much the Product their touting, as the new up coming technology that is going to be out soon. For instance, read up on the PCI-E 2.0 specification, and salivate :)~
  • Avalon - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    I'm a bit disappointed that OCZ wants to debut the Cryo-Z at the $400 price point, when all the articles I've read on it have quoted OCZ as targeting $250. Even $300 wouldn't be bad. Then again, it isn't that expensive for phase change, but we'll just have to see how it performs I guess...
  • Gary Key - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link

    Their original intentions was to introduce a $300 unit but that design did not work out. This one was actually working so I think they will make it this time.
  • Gigahertz19 - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link

    The $400 Phase Change cooling system from OCZ looks very interesting. I wonder how far you could push a Core 2 Duo? $400 is still a little steep and it looks pretty big, basically a small tower sitting next to your computer. I guess this is for the way extreme crowd, I heard phase change coolers make alot of noise...I'm curious what the dB output is on this thing....definitely be able to max out a processor's overclockabilility with this thing and heat would not be a problem

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