by Anton Shilov
03/14/2005 | 03:41 PM
ABIT Computer is primarily known for its high-end mainboards designed for overclockers and enthusiasts, but those are not the only products that the company makes and yet intends to make. At CeBIT 2005 the firm showcases its RM-11 remote controller that is capable of controlling ABIT’s future mainboards as well as various home appliances.
<%BANNER[article]%>
ABIT says its future mainboards, such as the one based on Intel’s upcoming 955X chipset will have a capability to be equipped with an infrared receiver and be controlled by the remote. Once set up, the RM-11 controller will not only be able to interact with ABIT’s EQ and Guru tweaking and overclocking capabilities, but also will do email and messaging alerts as well as control consumer electronics, such as DVD players, TV-sets, receivers, amplifiers and other.
One of the strong points the RM-11 has is context sensitive LCD touch screen, which vastly improves its functionality without significantly increasing complexity of the operation.
ABIT has never addressed the market of the so-called digital home and the introduction of the RM-11 alone is unlikely to change that. Nevertheless it is clear that the mainboard maker recognizes the ongoing trends and potential the market that converges home equipment and the PC has.
In addition to the RM-11 and Intel’s 955X mainboard, ABIT shows off its NI8 SLI and AN8 SLI mainboards based on NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI Intel Edition and nForce4 SLI chipsets respectively. Both mainboards are tailored for enthusiast users: they are equipped with cooling systems for power supply circuitry and will come with ABIT’s special control panel – ABIT’s Power Panel which provides additional USB and FireWire connectivity, as well as traditional overclocking options.
Foxconn, who decided to go into the channel business in addition to its contract manufacturing a year ago, this year shows off an assortment of products designed specifically for gamers. But Foxconn’s products are traditionally a bit different to what other makers of computer components showcase.
One of the highlights of Foxconn’s booth is its WinFast NFPIK8AA-8EKRS mainboard based on NVIDIA’s nForce Professional chips 2200 and 2050. The main idea behind the mainboard is to provide two real PCI Express x16 slots for graphics cards without limiting the bandwidth to x8 lanes per card, like the nForce4 SLI chipsets do.
While the mainboard seems to be positioned for gaming enthusiasts, it more resembles a workstation platform, as it sports Socket 940, which is used for AMD Opteron processors.
Foxconn connects the nForce Professional 2200 and 2050 chips in a rather logical way: via the HyperTransport bus. While NVIDIA suggests that the chips interact via the HyperTransport bus in a system that has two AMD Opteron CPUs, the WinFast NFPIK8AA-8EKRS can plug in only one AMD Opteron chip and the secondary – nForce 2050 chip – I/O chip is connected directly to the processor.
The system with the nForce Professional-based WinFast mainboard ran the 3DMark05 demo without any problems. Still, it is unclear whether the AMD Opteron platform will get any popularity among gamers.
Another interesting product in Foxconn’s booth is eBot barebone for AMD Athlon 64 processors.
The barebone is based on NVIDIA’s nForce4 chipset and can support up to AMD Athlon 64 3700+ processor in PGA754 form-factor. The machine also has some capabilities that will be useful for the living room – CD and MP3 playing while operating system is off.
The products for gamers attract a lot of attention, nonetheless, Foxconn’s booth is mainly devoted to showcase the company’s products intended for more conservative customers. The maker of hardware components exposes its forthcoming 955X and 945P/G chipsets-based mainboards as well as numerous cases and even thin clients.
Two premium partners of NVIDIA Corp. – Gainward and XFX – are showcasing their GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics cards with 512MB of memory. The boards from both makers are among the highest-performing produced today and are expected to deliver absolutely highest performance when working in multi-GPU SLI mode.
Gainward will sell a bundle of two GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB graphics cards, which also run at higher speeds than NVIDIA suggests – 450MHz/1200MHz as opposed to 400MHz/1100MHz for core/memory – for whopping 1100 Euro. This is a kind of a luxury that very few computer enthusiasts can afford, but Gainward believes there is still a market for this type of solutions.
According to Gainward, it still needs some time to tweak the BIOS on its GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB graphics cards, but even now the boards operate well enough. Hans-Wolfram Tismer, the head of the company, said 512MB onboard memory buffer gives a rather significant speed boost once 1600x1200 resolution with FSAA 4x and 16x anisotropic filtering are activated in the latest games.
The mania for multi-GPU is around the whole show – nearly every maker of more or less advanced mainboards has a platform that supports two graphics cards in its booth and at least three companies have dual-GeForce 6600 GT graphics cards in the lineup. The maker of barebones that are supposed to be small and quiet – Shuttle Computer – also has its dual graphics card capable product that is meant to deliver exceptional performance in 3D applications.
Shuttle is fairly tight-lipped over its barebone powered by NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI chipset. The machine is exposed in a backroom and the company does not allow taking pictures of the product. Still, some details about the world’s most powerful PC barebone have been revealed.
The nForce4 SLI barebone theoretically allows installation of two GeForce 6600 GT, 6800 or 6800 GT graphics cards. Shuttle is expected to provide a special cooling solution for reference design GeForce 6800 GT boards. But this is not an easy task: the GeForce 6600 GT graphics cards used to render the 3DMark05 benchmark during the showcase were extremely hot – it was impossible to touch even their print circuit boards, not talking about memory or areas close to the backside of the graphics chip itself. Given that the GeForce 6800 GT consumes even more power, cooling it down is probably a more tough job.
The multi-GPU ready barebone will come in Shuttle’s well-known P-series chassis with 350W power supply unit, which, according to the company, will be enough for two GeForce 6800 GT graphics card and almost any AMD64 microprocessor.
The barebone is expected to emerge for sale within the next month or two, if the development proceeds properly.