X-bit labs

Friday, February 18, 2005

First Review of Serial VIA K8T890 PRO Mainboard Hits the Web. Albatron K8X890 Pro II K8T890 Motherboard Review Launched

VIA Technologies is still a major player in the chipset market despite of somewhat lukewarm welcome of its latest products. The Taipei, Taiwan-based chipmaker clearly has a lot of experience in creating stable and at the same time innovative and high-performance chipsets. But are those qualities enough to actually offer an unbeatable rival for NVIDIA’s premium nForce4 Ultra and SLI offerings? PCStats.com is here with its analysis about Albatron K8X890 Pro II K8T890 mainboard, the first mass product based on VIA’s latest AMD64 chipset reviewed.

“We were very pleased with the Albatron K8X890 Pro II when it came to performance. It was near the top of its class in every test and was especially impressive on the more demanding 3D applications. It looks like the K8T890 might just be a great gaming chipset, and the Albatron K8X890 Pro II is certainly an excellent motherboard for the hardcore gamer. If you're looking for a new PCI Express equipped AMD Athlon 64 motherboard, the Albatron K8X890 Pro II can deliver the goods, so watch for it in stores,” PCStats.com claims.

• Albatron K8X890 Pro II K8T890 Motherboard Review.

IWILL’s 2-Way PC Barebone Reviewed. IWILL’s Dual-CPU SFF Explored

Cube-like barebones and personal computers have been gaining popularity in the recent years thanks to efforts of companies like Shuttle Computer, who was the first to bring out its XPCs into the market. A lot of makers of computer components quickly realized the advantages of idea of compact and quiet PCs and were rapid to follow Shuttle with their small form-factor offerings that resembled the original XPCs.

Now that the market of desktops recognizes the SFF pretty well, it seems that it is not enough to offer small, stylish and quiet, but something very powerful, which could be used for the market of workstations. IWILL’s ZMAXdp is a perfect example of such small form-factor PC barebone: it is capable of installing a couple of AMD Opteron CPUs and a powerful graphics card. But there is a disadvantage: only single-channel memory controller for each processor.

“The real question is, do you need a dual-CPU SFF? And are you willing to pay $600 US dollars to get one?  Most users looking for a server class multi-CPU system would typically opt for a ‘1U’ rack mount box, where there’s typically no regard for things like noise. After all, the typical ‘server’ class system sits in a lab someplace inside the corporate environment. And for those enthusiasts looking for superior performance out of their own workstation, it’s unclear why you’d opt for an Opteron versus the clearly superior Socket 939 based processors or an equivalent Pentium 4. Furthermore, few mainstream applications will make effective use of multiple CPU’s,” Sudhian web-site states.

• Sudhian Media: IWILL ZMAXdp Review – SFF goes Multi-Processor!