[H]ardNews 2nd Edition - Mobo Edition

Component Shortages:

The Digitimes reports that Motherboard manufacturers may be facing shortages of entry level core-logic chipsets and even even printed circuit boards (PCBs).

A serious power shortage in China has sent top mobo makers rushing to book capacity or place orders in advance with PCB makers whose China plants are likely to be affected. PCB supply has become tight due to precautionary measures, the sources said.

The Demise Of BIOS?:

The news of BIOS imminent death where greatly exaggerated a few years ago, but Cnet covers a recent development with the Extensible Firmware Interface which may hasten BIOS as we know it into the great beyond.

The United EFI Forum will essentially try to pave the way for EFI to succeed the basic input/output system, or BIOS, inside PCs. Though the BIOS was once relatively straightforward in its design, over the years it has morphed into a figurative bowl of spaghetti as it's been changed and updated to accept new technologies.

ECS PF88:

Depending on who you talk to the ECS PF88 is either a Hybrid, an Extreme Hybrid or just plain Schizophrenic.

In the spring of 2005, EliteGroup Computer Systems Ltd. (ECS) sent word that they were completing work on releasing a motherboard that supported both the INTEL LGA775 platform and the AMD 939 platform. Able to support all current and future CPU's, the ECS PF88 was born to allow enthusiasts to easily change from the onboard INTEL platform to an AMD platform with just a simple addition of a piece of hardware that housed the AMD CPU on a daughterboard that plugs right into the existing board.

ECS 915P-A:

Viperlair fires up another ECS and from the name you might have guessed this is an Intel 915P Express chipset board for the socket 775. But again flexibility has been built in with a PCI-E x16, two PCI-E x1, two PCI and an AGP Express slot. Then there is the memory supported.

The board itself is much more interesting, as it provides both DDR and DDRII memory options, as well as PCIe x16 and "AGPExpress" video card connections. As for cards that work in the "AGP" slot, ECS has a list of supported video cards. The fact that only one IDE channel exists is fairly annoying for those who still have a IDE based hard drive and optical drive as well, an add-on IDE controller like that included with the Albatron board would be nice, especially for a board aimed at those just wanting to move to a new socket design.

Head To Head:

BitTech stages a death match between the MSI P4N Diamond & Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI.

It wasn't all that long ago when Intel and NVIDIA agreed to sign a broad cross licensing agreement. At the time, many wondered what that would mean in terms of products – what could NVIDIA add to Intel's line up? Of course, Intel are keen to get some credibility back with gamers and enthusiasts after a number of weak products turning many of them over to AMD. This meant one thing: SLI.

Iwill DK88:

Now for something completely different Digitimes has a picture and the specs for the new Iwill dual Opteron workstation and server motherboard that get this supports not four, not eight not even sixteen gigabytes of RAM, try sixty four gigabytes.

The DK88 offers 16 DDR memory DIMMs (eight DIMMs per CPU) on board, with each DIMM supporting up to 4GB of memory. It also supports registered memory with ECC and chip-kill functions, the company stated. Iwill chose to use digital VRM (voltage regulator module) instead of traditional aluminum electrolytic capacitors for delivering the maximal memory capacity for the motherboard.