Computex Taipei 2007 - Part 2
Our coverage continues with our visits to abit, Gigabyte and DFI booths, along with a number of sidetracks to Microsoft, Sparkle and Triplex. Find out what these companies have in store for the coming months and beyond.
abit's Booth
Jonathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel was merciless in his utter destruction of his opponent in this public match with a member of the audience. Of course, the game was played on systems using abit's Fatality series of hardware, including the motherboards and graphics cards.
Quake 4 is Fatal1ty's favored hunting ground.
abit's IX38-Max has all the expected premium features of this new top end Intel chipset, like support for DDR3 memory (up to 1333MHz), Core 2 Quad support including 45nm processors, eSATA connectors, dual PCIe x 16 lanes. Other abit enhancements are the use of solid state capacitors, external CMOS reset switch and uGuru technology.
The P35 motherboards are entering the marketplace and abit's Dark Raider dubbed motherboard comes with the company's custom Silent OTES technology, the copper heatsink contraption on the board. It has 4 DIMMs capable of DDR2 800 support and has a FSB of up to 1333MHz.
With slightly enhanced features, the abit IP35 Pro, nicknamed the Snake comes with additional HDMI output, CMOS reset button and uGuru technology. It also has one more Gigabit LAN ports than the 'mainstream' Dark Raider. There are also two PCIe x 16 lanes on this enthusiast class, overclocking oriented board.
A slightly lesser X38 motherboard, the abit IX38 QuadGT has only DDR2 memory support and the vendor's passive, Silent OTES cooling solution onboard. Besides these differences, it has similar specifications as the IX38 Max.
Meant for the digital home, the abit AN-M2HD motherboard uses the latest GeForce 7050PV/nForce 630a chipset. Highlights include its integrated GeForce 7 graphics, HDMI output, SPDIF and IEEE1394 outputs. Its micro-ATX form factor also appeals to its target segment.
DFI's Booth
A favored brand of enthusiasts for its focus on overclocking, DFI naturally has the latest motherboard developments at its booth.
We are only aware of DFI as the only vendor to have actually put ATI's ill-fated Intel Core 2 Duo chipset, the RD600 into production. The DFI LanParty UT ICFX3200-T2R is found in a system demo at the DFI booth for those seeking a glance of this rare breed. A Radeon HD2900 XT graphics card completes the system.
A more conventional chipset from DFI, its new P35 board does have all the features enthusiasts are looking at, like DDR3 memory support, built-in 8-phase Digital PWM, CrossFire support, dual Gigabit LAN and up to eight SATA 3.0 ports.
AMD's new RD790 and SB600 chipset is also available from DFI, with the vendor adding in a Bernstein 8-channel audio, dual Gigabit LAN, eight SATA 3.0 ports and up to 10 USB ports.
Similarly, Intel's high-end motherboard successor, the X38 chipset will also be available from DFI. Again, there are some DFI additions to the standard specifications, like the choice of audio codec and DFI's own overclocking and CMOS/BIOS tools.
A display of the lesser known products offered by DFI, from accessories to motherboards for more exotic form factors.
Gigabyte's Booth
With demos of Supreme Commander to showcase the performance of its motherboards and graphics cards, the Gigabyte booth was one of the more lively booths in the hall.
Gigabyte's GA-P35T-DQ6 embodies the company's approach towards motherboards now, with the presence of Silent Pipe passive cooling and Japanese solid capacitors.
This G35 motherboard (GA-G35M-DS2R) comes with integrated graphics from Intel (GMA X3500), high quality HD audio codec and full support for 45nm Intel Penryn processors with 1333MHz FSB.
AMD's new platform for its Phenom processors as envisioned by Gigabyte. That means that copper based, Silent Pipe passive cooling and the use of solid capacitors on this RD790 motherboard (GA-M790-DQ6)
The GA-M790-DQ6 is the official model of Gigabyte's RD790 board and shown in this demo system, with ATI's Radeon HD 2600 XT GPU.
Gigabyte is really trying hard to get its message of having superior, solid capacitors across to consumers and the media. It seems that other vendors are also competing on the same basis nowdays.
media
The low-end Radeon HD 2400 PRO looks well paired with a 'screen cooling' system from Gigabyte.
The slightly faster Radeon HD 2400 XT also gets the passive cooling treatment from Gigabyte, a rather common practice, especially for a low-end part.
This looks like the reference design of the Radeon HD 2600 XT, with the single slot cooler courtesy of ATI.
Our first glimpse of Gigabyte's idea for the mainstream Radeon HD 2600 XT. The passive cooling shown here made us feel very optimistic about the promise of this graphics chipset compared to the R600.
More Gigabyte Goodness
The exterior has been revamped to reflect the new design but the Gigabyte Mars reminded us of Gigabyte's previous enclosures, the Aurora 3D in particular. The interior structure of the chassis just looks too identical to us but we appreciate having something different to look at.
A modern PSU in many respects, like its modular cable management system, SLI certification and quad +12V rails. The OdinGT also has a new patent pending software tool known as P-Tuner that allows real time monitoring of temperature and power of the system.
The graphical display of the P-Tuner. Notice that there are two blank 'Test 3' and 'Test 4' at the bottom of the display for temperature? Users are able to decide where to place the temperature probes for them within the system, so locations like the memory or hard drive are feasible.
This USB gauge is an alternate method of keeping track of the system vitals. Especially useful if you don't fancy opening the P-Tuner interface everytime you want to check your CPU temperature. Only works in conjunction with the OdinGT.
A universal CPU cooler for both AMD and Intel platforms (AM2 and LGA775), this new cooler, Volar has a copper core supplemented with aluminum fins. The angle which it is tilted allows for adequate airflow and cooling to the MOSFETS surrounding the CPU.
Gigabyte's version of the UMPC, the U60 uses a Via C7-M processor running at 1.0GHz. Petite as it looks, it weighs only 740g with a 2-cell battery and a 6.5-inch display.
Gigabyte also has a couple of the newer notebooks on display, like this Santa Rosa based W566N. It comes preloaded with Windows Vista and the 15.4-inch is complemented by GeForce 8 Mobility graphics. In total, it will weigh around 2,7kg.
Grandtech's Booth
Grantech's booth.
The various digital cameras available from Grandtech. The company also produces digital photo frames with sizes ranging from 7 to 10 inches.
Grandtech's EZshot series of cameras is decked in classy silver and black and have CMOS sensors from 3M to 10M mega-pixel.
The EZshot E700 is a 5M mega-pixel camera weighing a slim 81g and comes with 4x digital zoom.
Liantec's Booth
Liantec specializes in providing custom embedded PC solutions to its clients. We took a peek at its booth to find out what's new.
The basic Mini-ITX foundation motherboard of Liantec's embedded system is found on the left, where the processor (up to an Intel Core 2 Duo) is found. Additional functionality is enabled by installing the required TinyBus modules onto the motherboard.
Some of the available modules for the Mini-ITX board. There are Ethernet, MXM graphics and even video capture modules.
In case the clients do not intend to use Liantec's products under its brand with their own enclosures, here are some of Liantec's own chassis for its ultra small PCs. Temperatures were quite decent despite the packed internals; we observed a reading of between 35 to 40 degrees in the demo system.
Microsoft's Booth
It was all about the mobile arena at this particular Microsoft's booth (there are a couple of Microsoft booths 'strategically' placed at various convention locations at Computex.
As usual, attractive young ladies presenting the virtues of Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.0 operating system. Users had to shout 'Microsoft' before they received a small gift from the ladies.
Some of ASUS' mobile products that are already using Windows Mobile 6.0.
And we all thought that BenQ Mobile had gone bankrupt. It seems that BenQ has not given up its mobile phone ambitions, as we spotted this BenQ phone running on Windows Mobile 6.0 at the Microsoft booth.
Shuttle's Booth
Sparkle's Booth
Graphics vendor Sparkle is next on our itinerary as we take a booth tour of this NVIDIA partner.
Instead of the black, standard cooler from NVIDIA, Sparkle has gone for its Calibre cooler for this GeForce 8800 Ultra. We can't tell if it can match the quiet efficiency of the original.
Passive cooling is found on this GeForce 8600 GTS (SF-PX86GTS256D3-HP) from Sparkle.
A set of reference based GeForce 8800 series graphics cards from Sparkle.
Triplex's Booth
Triplex's modest booth is where you should drop by if ATI graphics card is your fancy, as you'll get to see the latest Radeon HD series.
These cards on display seem to be the reference models, with the lower-end cards requiring no active cooling.
A flower shaped, copper heatsink is found on Triplex's Radeon HD 2600 XT card.
This Radeon HD 2600 PRO uses the same cooler as its XT counterpart. The main difference lies in the lack of a power connector on the PRO.
Tyan's Booth
Based on NVIDIA's nForce Pro 3400, the Tyan Tomcat n3400B (S2925) is an entry level server/workstation motherboard, supporting a single AMD Athlon 64, 64FX or X2 processor. It has dual PCIe x 16 lanes for SLI support, integrated audio and video, Gigabit LAN ports and 4 DDR2 DIMM slots.
Up to 2 AMD Opteron 2000 series processors can be installed onto this Tyan S2932 motherboard, which uses a nForce Pro 3600 chipset, giving it allowance for up to 16 DDR2 DIMM slots (64GB). There are also eight SATA 3.0 connectors with RAID support.
The Tyan S5396 has support for next generation 45nm Xeon processors. It uses Intel Seaburg and 6321ESB chipset and has eight DDR2 FBDIMM sockets, six SATA 3.0 ports and 2 Gigabit LAN ports.
X-Micro's Booth
X-Micro focuses on digital multimedia devices and wireless communication like Bluetooth and WLAN.
The X-VDO F810 MP3/4 player is a polished device that can play MPEG4 files directly without any software converting, Capacities vary from 512MB to 4GBand there's even a FM radio included on this portable media player.
With its fingertip touch-screen interface, this GPS Navigator GP3000 has a 3.5-inch TFT screen and SD/MMC memory card expansion slot. There's even media (MP3, video) playback functionality and users can also view photos on it.
Yuan's Booth
YUAN High-Tech is a significant OEM for many vendors for multimedia, TV and wireless products. Examples shown at its booth include a USB based TV tuner for HP.
This wireless media gateway (WL625) works by streaming analog sources to any wireless device within its range, so you can watch TV on your computer conveniently.
With this Vista Media Center plugin device, users can connect their analog or digital devices to their notebooks or desktops and view/video capture the outputs. Users can also watch DVB-T on their computers through it.
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