![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , June 03, 2002
- Author:
- Kyle Bennett
- Editor:
- Steve Lynch
- Google +1
Computex Edition I
KT400, NV18, Hammer, Serial ATA, New VIA GPU & Chipset, and get a load of this; vacuum tubes make a debut back into the tech market.
These are the sights we saw on our first day of the Computex show here in Taipei, Taiwan. Computex is one of the largest buyer's shows in Asia, meaning that system integrators and OEMs are all here to see new products and place orders after making their deals. They also let us "Press" guys roam around. Bottom line is that if you don't show at Computex, you're most likely not a player.
ABIT:
A quick look at the ABIT booth will show that AMD's Hammer is definitely on everyone's minds here. While not pictured, Intel i845G did get a quick mention over one doorway, but hardly in the same style that Hammer was being shown off with.
The first mainboard you see plastered on the wall when you walk in the door is a board simply named the "K8" at this time. This is, of course, the Clawhammer desktop board based on the AMD 8151 chipset that ABIT is working on. Closer inspection will show you the "Clawhammer" logo featuring none other than a clawhammer...gofigga.
Reaching up to the board to see if the Clawhammer CPU was attached, we quickly found that it was glued into the board, so we took it off and snatched some quickie pics and stuck it in our pocket. No, they made us give it back.
The Clawhammer samples that you're seeing now are locked 800MHz parts. This way the board builders get working parts, but don't get to leak benchmark numbers at this time. No word on whether or not these Clawhammer CPUs will allow multiplier adjustments at this time. Certainly the heatspreader adds an element to make those changes if even possible with it removed.
The bottom of the CPU is more impressive than the top in many respects, sporting the 754 pins needed. Lastly is a picture of the S754 itself.
AMD was not the only company being spotlighted by ABIT. Intel was also in the mix, but more for I/O than chip advances. The upcoming ABIT IT7-S, another member of the MAX family, will be providing two Serial ATA headers.
A clear picture is shown of the headers. Round cabling, smaller headers, and better data transfer rates are sure to be a hit with the enthusiast crowd. While 150Mbps transfer rates will debut, they're going to grow tremendously over the next few years.
AOpen:
AOpen, a company owned by Acer, has built solid and reliable mainboards with good features for years now, but they never seem to get the push they need to get popular in the US. They really started to get noticed in 1999 with their "Millennium Board", as it was one of the first colored-PCB boards we saw in the marketplace.
The AOpen booth certainly is showing off plenty of current AMD and Intel platforms along with a bit of water-cooling as well. These AOpen guys like to play about as much as we do when it comes to cooling.
Today AOpen shows us something that, while it could be considered revolutionary, may also be very "old school" to many of our readers out there. AOpen is putting vacuum tubes back onto the desktop platform.
The pictures above are of the AOpen AX4B-533Tube. It's an i845E based board that supports both 400MHz and 533MHz bus Pentium 4 CPUs with DDR RAM up to PC2100 spec. The ICH4 hub is used with the i45E at this time which brings native USB 2.0 support to the board. While this board hosts a myriad of overclocker features, what's really the attention getter is the audio system on-board.
One of the greatest gripes about onboard sound today in the mainboard market is the quality of the sound. While there have been solid advancements and onboard sound has certainly grown leaps and bounds in the last year, AOpen wanted to come in and do it like no other company has.
While no full specs were yet available to us, AOpen has taken a lead from the high-end audio component producers and used a vacuum tube system on their mainboard which they say produces overall sound quality that cannot be duplicated on silicon.
The first picture shows the overall board layout. The sound components are clearly visible at the lower edge of the board. You might also notice only three PCI slots. AOpen has also included an onboard NIC on this board. Considering that, and the fact that anyone purchasing this board is very likely to use the onboard sound, AOpen sees three PCI slots as being plenty.
Close ups of the tube and other components show off that this isn't just for decoration. The header that you see in the second picture above is not a power header, but rather the plug that handles the audio out jacks.
You old guys will remember that vacuum tubes need some high-end power as well. AOpen has fitted the board with components spec'ed at twice the 200 volt power requirement by the tube system in order to produce a solid and stable platform. Seems to be no skimping here.
This last picture shows the AX4B-533Tube running an audio system in the AOpen booth, and from what we heard, their tube board seems to be just what the audiophile may be looking for. Another interesting software feature that will be shipped with the board is CD Player software. While this does not seem to be anything new, AOpen's solution can run the CD player without booting into a Windows OS. The CD Player loads immediately after the BIOS.