Live from Taiwan: Cebit 2006 Preview
by Wesley Fink on March 7, 2006 12:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Cebit 2006 in Hanover, Germany is certainly Europe's premier Electronics show. Some would even say that it's the best Consumer Electronics show in the world. Cebit is fun to attend, but it is spread over many buildings in a city with inadequate hotel space, which means that you often have to stay many miles away from the Hanover show. From a press viewpoint, this makes Cebit a tough show to cover.
This year, AnandTech went to Taiwan just before Cebit to visit manufacturers who will be some of the top exhibitors at Cebit because most, if not all, of the new products at Cebit were born in Taiwan or China. This means that our readers are the first to see many of the new products, which will be producing all the buzz at Cebit this year.
It is still about 3 months until AMD is expected to launch their new Socket AM2, but this time gap has only made the AM2 information search that more frantic. Most major manufacturers will be showing a working AM2 board at Cebit, but they won't be displaying any benchmarks. Our guess is that AMD is still not ready to hang its hat on benchmarks. The second spin of the AM2, widely called DVT or DeVelopmenT, combined with the latest NVIDIA MCP55, Rev. A02 or the ATI RD580, is widely reported to bring AM2 performance very close to Socket 939 levels. The earlier EVT chip fell far short of Socket 939 performance levels.
It appears that an issue remains with the latest DVT AM2 in that single channel and dual-channel memory performance are virtually the same on the latest DVT spin. If this is corrected, AMD may finally see the performance gains that they told the industry to expect with the move to AM2 and DDR2. Another AM2 spin is expected in the next few days, and until performance is more representative of the final shipping product, AMD likely does not want benchmarks leaving the wrong impression.
This year, AnandTech went to Taiwan just before Cebit to visit manufacturers who will be some of the top exhibitors at Cebit because most, if not all, of the new products at Cebit were born in Taiwan or China. This means that our readers are the first to see many of the new products, which will be producing all the buzz at Cebit this year.
It is still about 3 months until AMD is expected to launch their new Socket AM2, but this time gap has only made the AM2 information search that more frantic. Most major manufacturers will be showing a working AM2 board at Cebit, but they won't be displaying any benchmarks. Our guess is that AMD is still not ready to hang its hat on benchmarks. The second spin of the AM2, widely called DVT or DeVelopmenT, combined with the latest NVIDIA MCP55, Rev. A02 or the ATI RD580, is widely reported to bring AM2 performance very close to Socket 939 levels. The earlier EVT chip fell far short of Socket 939 performance levels.
It appears that an issue remains with the latest DVT AM2 in that single channel and dual-channel memory performance are virtually the same on the latest DVT spin. If this is corrected, AMD may finally see the performance gains that they told the industry to expect with the move to AM2 and DDR2. Another AM2 spin is expected in the next few days, and until performance is more representative of the final shipping product, AMD likely does not want benchmarks leaving the wrong impression.
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kilkennycat - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
With the novel location of a PCI socket in a position between the CPU and the first PCIe X16 slot, the passively-cooled Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe will safely accommodate at least 2 PCI boards, even with 2 high-end single or double-width PCIe video cards present. I believe that none of the other PASSIVELY-COOLED 939-pin nVidia 'X16 chip- set' boards currently available nor the other pasively-cooled AM2-based nVidia 'X16' boards pictured in this article will do this. (Note that single-width high-end video cards, such as 7800GT/GTX need a full DOUBLE-space for adequate ventilation.) The current passive-cooling Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe (nF4 X16 chip-set) is restricted to one usable PCI slot under the same circumstances. Also, the M2N32-SLI Deluxe, like the current A8N32-SLI Deluxe, has 8-phase CPU power (runs very cool indeed) -- see the dual mosfet heat-sinks. Put that board at the top of the potential shopping list if you are contemplating building a nVidia chipset AM2 system. I have a A8N32-SLI and am very pleased indeed, after having been an exclusive purchaser of Abit boards for many years. Asus' support of enthusiast-level systems has grown very strong indeed during the past year.KorruptioN - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
More and more boards are coming with the EPS12V connection standard. It's not the 4-pin ATX12V connection anymore, but 8-pins. DFI used to do this on their high-end boards, and I remember seeing Asus put the EPS12V connectors on their high-end LGA775 boards, to accomodate for a more power-hungry CPU. Seeing how the "lowly" MSI AM2 board is coming with EPS12V, we can expect more boards to follow suit in the future. More +12V for the CPU is nice.I am liking the passive cooling for the chipsets. The nightmares we saw with the first-generation A8N-SLI is something Asus probably doesn't want to deal with again...
Von Matrices - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Did anyone else notice that there is no 4-pin ATX 12V or 8-pin EPS 12V connector on the DFI SLI X16 motherboard? I wonder why.Von Matrices - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Never mind, it's in black and is hard to see.Omega215D - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Anyone else notice the Asus board with the PCI slot on top of the PCIe 16x? This would be good for me to put my X-Fi in... just can't get a videocard that has a heatsink on the back of the card.latino666 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
It's a good thing there is not real need to have a PCIe slot. Most of those slots would of been blocked by video card fans.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Yeah, what is with the morons who design the motherboards at Asus? They put a single PCI-E 1x or 4x slot on the board, and then place it so that it's useless when a dual slot video card is installed. DFI and other makers don't seem to have this issue. They did the same thing on the A8R32-MVP.Ecmaster76 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Okay, I like your articles.But I like em better when they are published in finished form and stay published (of course minor corrections and updates are fine).
It wasn't too bad until recently, but the RD580 articles went up and down like yo-yos and the RD580 chipset overview piece is still gone.
This one gets posted and the 7600 info was linked but gone, and by the time I finish the 7900gtx stuff has dissappeared. I know that things have to go through revisions, but its a little aggravating to try to read a work in progress. It shouldn't be too hard to keep the incomplete stuff of the public page.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
We are under NDA for the nVidia information. This means more than just publishing benchmarks this time. I was told we also could not mention names of the cards or specifications until the NDA lifts. I apologize for the quick deletes.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I think they purposefully post it so that Google's cache will grab it, then pull it real quick. Then they can say "oops", but still have the article out there. :-)