CeBIT 2001 Coverage
Apr 15th, 2001 | By Archive
CeBIT 2001 Coverage
Date
: 04/15/01 – 04:17:54 PM
Author
:
Category
: Misc
Event : CeBIT 2001
When? : 21th – 28th March 2001
Where? : Deutsche Messe AG @ Hannover, Germany
Introduction
‘With 8015 exhibitors (3000 from abroad) and a net display area of more than 422000 m, CeBIT 2001 will once again assert its singular role among the world’s IT and telecoms trade fairs.’ This copy/paste from the CeBIT 2001 CD-ROM gives you a perfect idea of the importance of fairs like CeBIT, Computex, etc. And if I tell you that approximantely 830000 visitors were counted during the seven days of the show, your will realize that manufacturers from all over the world simply cannot ignore a trade fair like CeBIT!
How’s CeBIT in real life? Well guys, there are moments that you will say : ‘Man, a nice warm bath (or a cold shower) and my own soft bed would be all I need right now!’ But those moments are very rare! I guess, Tim and I can consider ourselves very lucky persons because we managed to get ourselves a room within 30km from Hannover. We also chose to go to the Hannover Messe (CeBIT) by train because of the major traffic jams every day.
Let’s have a quick and brief peep at CeBIT’s history :
CeBIT started as a piece of the ‘Hannover Fair’ by the late 50s untill it, in 1986, finally evolved into an independent fair called ‘CeBIT’. With 334400 visitors it certainly took a very good start. Over the past 15 years, CeBIT kept on growing and attracting thousands of suppliers, manufacturers and end-users from all over the world.
One more comparison before we head on to the interesting stuff (finally!) :
- CeBIT 1986 : 2142 exhibitors / 200000 m / 334400 visitors
- CeBIT 2001 : 8015 exhibitors / 422000 m / 830000 visitors
You can see that over the last 15 years, the amount of exhibitors on the fair has been multiplied by 4 while the display area has only doubled. So that results in less space for each exhibitor to show his goods and less freedom for the visitors :( But heck … this is CeBIT … this is life!
CPUs
Intel
Url: Intel website
Intel was a real bummer this year. First of all, we couldn’t find Intel anywhere in Hall 13 (that’s also the main entrance hall). Why did we find manufacturers like AMD, Transmeta and VIA in Hall 13 and Intel in Hall 11 surrounded by networking solutions and stuff like that?? Is Intel hiding from its enemy? Are they affraid? Very weird stuff going on there guys! There really isn’t much to say about Intel’s performance at CeBIT. In fact Intel didn’t demonstrate anything new to the public. Northwood? Brookdale? Tualatin? Sorry folks, we can’t give you any information on these new CPUs because Intel didn’t show them @ CeBIT. Intel didn’t even show of with the Pentium 4. Luckely for Intel they had a nice large logo on top of their booth because otherwise you would think it’s just another booth trying to sell its networking products.
AMD
Url: AMD website
We did expect quite a whole lot from the AMD peeps, but when we arrived at the AMD booth, we didn’t see anything new really! :( Yeah sure, AMD showed of with their brandnew Athlon 1.3GHz (200MHz FSB) and 1.33GHz (266MHz FSB) CPUs but they were already announced before the fair so that wasn’t something to write home about. We actually wanted to see the new Palomino CPUs and the Dual Athlon server based on the AMD-760MP chipset, but we couldn’t find them anywhere UNTIL … we spoke to a couple of PR guys from AMD. They took us upstairs into a small room (scary huh!) and there they were : The Dual Athlon Palomino 900MHz working on a reference motherboard based on the AMD-760MP chipset, a Palomino 1.533GHz CPU and the mobile Palomino 1GHz working on an ALi MAGiK platform. Very cool stuff there dudes! The dual cpu rig they were displaying was really showing of its true power in a 3D program … Good work guys!
We were also pretty impressed by the mobile Palomino system @ 1GHz and even more by the use of a new technology called PowerNow! 2.0. Compared to Intel’s Speedstep technology, PowerNow! offers better clock speed adjusting and faster switch-over times. On top of all that, these mobile AMD CPUs will generate much less heat than mobile P3s of similar speeds. Is it ‘Bye bye Intel’ for good now?
Transmeta
Url: Transmeta website
Yep folks, we also passed by the Transmeta booth. These guys were introducing their new Crusoe processor. This CPU has especially been designed for the world of mobile internet computing. Why? Well, because it has a really low power comsumption allowing to run cooler and longer than a mobile P3 or Celeron. Crusoe also learns while it is working … the Crusoeprocessor actually consist of 2 major parts : a hardware engine surrounded by a software layer. That’s what makes this CPU so special! The Crusoe powered notebook that we’ve tested certainly was powerfull enough to run everything you need to run on a notebook. I mean … Don’t run 3DMark2001 on the poor thing! :) but stuff like internet browsing and office applications will perform very well! The cpu was even powerful enough to run a MPEG4 movie without stuttering.
VIA CPUs
Url: VIA website
Besides its chipsets, VIA also showed its new C3 processor to the public. The C3 is the successor of the VIA Cyrix III. With the 0.15 C3 processor, VIA will continue to try and conquer the low-end market. Good luck to VIA!
Motherboards
If you think about it for a few seconds, then it does become clear that there is a huge amount of chipsets on the market or still under development! The most popular chipset on CeBIT had to be the VIA KT266 for Socket A CPUs sporting DDR RAM. Nearly every mainboard manufacturer who respects himself has built a motherboard based on the KT266 chipset. Many manufacturers like Asus, Gigabyte, EPoX, Soltek, Chaintek, MSI, Abit, etc. already had samples of their KT266-based mainboards to show of with.
What the VIA KT266 does for Socket A CPUs, does the VIA Pro266 chipset for the Socket 370 CPUs like the P3s and the Celerimines: offering DDR RAM support for Socket 370 CPUs. A lot of Pro266-based samples did entered the CeBIT arena of course. The presence of motherboards based on ‘older’ chipsets like the VIA KT133(A), VIA Apollo Pro133(A), Intel 815E(P), etc. was also inevitable but nowhere that interesting as mobos based on the new chipsets of course! And what about Tualatin and Pentium 4 motherboards? Well, there will be solutions with Tualatin support available based on the Intel i815E (B-step) chipset, SiS635T chipset and the VIA Apollo Pro133T and Pro266T chipsets. We only saw the Tualatin sporting boards from Abit : the Abit ST6-RAID based on the I815E (B-step) and the Abit VH6T based on the VIA Apollo Pro133T chipset. Are mainboard manufacturers interested in engineering Pentium 4 solutions? Well, the answer is yes and no actually. Everyone knows that Socket A motherboards will sell better than Socket 423 ones. That’s why most of the manufacturers place their bets on these Socket A boards although they also have Pentium 4 solutions available.
Because the launch of the new Socket 478 together with the new P4 chipset from Intel, the i845 Brookdale, isn’t so far away anymore, mainboard manufacturers will probably wait for that chipset to arrive. The high-end server Pentium 4 Xeon, called the Foster CPU, will have to be installed in yet another socket, which Intel calls the Socket 603 (i860 Colusa chipset).
Video & Graphics
NVIDIA
Url: nVidia website
The Topic Of Discussion :
The GeForce 3
When you just walked through the halles @ CeBIT this year and your eye fell on a video card, then it was most likely a GeForce 3-based graphics card. Every visitor wanted to see a real GeForce 3 card and every card manufacturer wanted to show his GeForce 3 card and tell you why theirs is better than these of the competition. Actually this was pretty funny! Every time we visited a video card manufacturer we heard the same story : Our GeForce 3 is better than the others because … . Almost all manufacturers start shipping their GeForce 3 cards within the next few weeks and folks … their will be quite a lot of GF3 cards to chose from.
The GeForce 2 MX
: Now Available In 3 Different Flavors
Not all GeForce 3 @ the NVidia cabine! NVidia also did their best to promote the two new additions to the GeForce 2 MX range : the MX400 and MX200. What’s the freaking difference here? Well, the MX400 should be slightly faster than the original GF2 MX and sports 128bit SDR memory or 64bit DDR memory. The MX200 is the slightly slower brother in the GF2 MX family and sports only 64bit SDR memory. We’ve heard some rumours that NVidia is working on the (even slower) MX100 but we cannot confirm this rumour in any way.
The GeForce 2 GO
: Raw NVidia Power?
One last NVidia product to tell you about is the GeForce 2 GO. This modified GeForce 2 chip will be NVidia’s first attempt to create a graphics chip that allows the notebook users to enjoy complex and fluent 3D shows on their TFT screens. I must say that I was really impressed by the 3D performance of the GeForce 2 GO. But how much energy does this chip drain from the battery? How long will you be able to enjoy these wonderful 3D images with a full battery? 10 minutes? This will all become clear in the near future, I guess.
STMicroelectronics – The Kyro II
Url: STMicroelectronics website
In the shadow of NVidia’s huge GeForce 3 show of, we must not forget to take a look at the new Kyro II graphics chip from STMicroelectronics. According to some first benchmark results, the Kyro II performs way better than NVidia’s GeForce 2 MX and the best part is that cards based on STM’s Kyro II chip are very cheap! Video card manufacturers expect this cards to be a huge succes and that it could endanger NVidia’s GF2 MX leading position on the low-budget market. I say, let’s wait and see. Due to our lack of time, we could only take a peep at the Kyro II-based 3D Prophet 4500 from Hercules (pictures l8er in this article) but I heard that Videologic also had one in its showroom. PR peeps from MSI told us that MSI will also bring a Kyro II-based video card on the market in the near future.
Matrox
Url: Matrox website
Matrox had nothing NEW to show really. Alright, they demonstrated their good old G450 with DualHead technology but that was about it. They has a great show though … Oh yea … before we forget: there is NO G800 coming. The successor of the G450 will be called the G550.
ATI
Url: ATI website
Same Matrox story here … ATI showed us the Radeon and Radeon VE but these aren’t new products and that way they aren’t real CeBIT products, if you know what I mean! They had a pretty boring show if you ask me … They auctioned a Radeon VE, the new low budget card that has some sort of dual head feature built in, on E-BaY every 30 minutes.
Manufacturers
Gainward
Url: Gainward website
Gainward really surprised us this time. When we arrived at the booth, we immediately saw the lovely Gainward GeForce 3 card with the nice red PCB. As you can see on the picture below, the model they showed us had green memory heatsink, but Gainward told us the final version of the GeForce 3 card will be totally red … pretty neat huh! The GainWard GeForce 3 PowerPack comes with 64MB DDR memory and a S-video-out connector and should be available within the next few days. Besides the GeForce 3, Gainward also were very eager to show us their highly overclockable GeForce 2 MX TwinView with or without VIVO with 32MB of resp. 4.5ns/4.8ns (!!) memory. These new GF2 MXs are based on the new GeForce 2 MX400 chip from NVidia. The VIVO version features 2 VGA outputs for dual-display applications plus 2 video-in and 2 video-out connectors for digital video-recording and digital video-editing applications while the ‘normal’ version will only sport 2 VGA outputs plus S-video-out. GainWard has also told us that they will bring these GF2 MX cards in versions with TV tuner and with 64MB of 5.5ns SDRAM instead of 32MB of 4.8ns memory. I wonder what all these video cards will do in the benchmarks guys.
Elsa
Url: Elsa website
I must say the boyz and girlz @ Elsa are really, really friendly. They told us about the launch of the Elsa Gladiac 920 based on the GeForce 3 core. The card will ship with 64MB DDR RAM with 3.8ns access time and a 460MHz memory clock. This baby also features TV-Out and bundles with a GeForce 3-optimized version of the popular game : Giants. The Elsa GeForce 3 solution is definately something to look forward to. Elsa will also be making a new Gladiac 511 product range based on the GeForce 2 MX400 chips. They will ship these cards with TV-out / Twinview / DVI in both 32MB and 64MB versions and also a special PCI version will be available. These Gladiac 511 boards will cost around $100 – $120.
Expect a review of the Elsa Gladiac 920 / GeForce 3 sometime next week!!
Hercules
Url: Hercules website
Two interesting new ‘blue’ cards at the Hercules booth : the 3D Prophet III GeForce3-based video card and the Kyro II-based card, the 3D Prophet 4500. Visitors showed a lot of interest for the new Kyro II-based card actually, but to be completely honest, nowhere near that much interest as for the 3D Prophet III GeForce 3 video card! These Prophet III cards will come with DVI-Out, TV-Out and VGA Out and sport 64MB DDR RAM. Why are people interested in the Kyro II cards? Easy! The Kyro II chipset is offering very good performance compared to the price you will be paying for the card. This is a true GeForce MX killer if you ask me …
Hercules also informed us that they will not release a GeForce MX with 64MB RAM and also no GeForce MX PCI will be released. The reason is that nVidia cannot keep up the pace and supply Hercules with chips. Another important factor is, again, the Kyro II ;).
ABIT
Url: Abit website
Abit certainly wants to show the world that they sure can make damn fine motherboards, think about the KT7 series of boards. We all know the KT7(A), VP6, SA6R, BX133Raid mainboards from Abit … but Abit also showed us a couple of new mobo’s that will be available in the nearest future. For example, we were able to view to upcoming Socket A KG7-RAID based on the AMD760 chipset and supporting DDR RAM and RAID 0/1/0+1. The KG7-RAID is like the A7M266 for Asus. Another new DDR mainboard from Abit will be the Socket 370 VR6-RAID based on the Apollo Pro266 chipset which also adds DDR RAM and RAID support to the board. So far the new DDR boards from Abit, let’s head over to their new Tualatin supporting mainboard, the ST6-RAID. This will be exactly the same board as the older SA6R, but with Tualatin support. The Tualatin is the ‘new’ PIII that Intel is releasing in a few months. I don’t think it will be an interesting cpu as Intel will sell it for more $$$ than the P4!! We’ll have to wait and see …
Finally, Abit will also have its own Pentium 4 motherboard, the TH7-RAID based on the i850 chipset. OF COURSE, this board also sports RAID 0/1/0+1. I’d say : ‘RAID FOR EVERYONE’ Although Abit’s concentration goes mainly to motherboards, they did demonstrate us some other cool things like their new sound system, the Home Theater SP-60 speaker system. This is the improved and better looking version of the older SP-50 speakerset which we reviewed some time ago. Abit has also developed its USB Theater 5.1. What the f…? The Abit USB Theater 5.1 is a palm-sized USB device that enables your PC or notebook to become a complete Dolby Digital system. Very kewl stuff indeed!
Here is a small recapitulation of all Abit boards showed at CeBIT 2001:
VR6-RAID
Like we said, this is the socket 370 board that comes with DDR support, IDE RAID 0/1/0+1, ATA100, AGP 4x, … The usual stuff :). If I am not mistaken, it will feature Soft Menu III which means that overclocking will be very easy with the VR6 (what’s new with Abit?). It is based upon the VIA Pro 266 chipset in case you were wondering …
ST6-RAID
Yet another socket 370 board from Abit … but this time it is based upon Intel’s own 815EP chipset. 6 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, Soft Menu III, onboard RAID and some other stuff make this a good candidate to run your PIII or Celeron on. Why buy this board and not the VR6? Well the ST6 also has support for the upcoming Tualatin from Intel, which is basicly a new version of the P3 …
TH7-RAID
Ahaaa … Abit is building a P4 board! This is the exact same board that Kyle from HardOCP was using to give his little P4 overclocking workshop. Just like all latest Abit boards, this mofo comes with onboard RAID, Soft Menu III, 4 RIMM slots and 5 PCI slots. Kyle overclocked a P4 1.5GHz up to 1.8GHz with this board, so I guess overclocking shouldn’t be a problem heh.
KG7-RAID
Of course Abit has to think of a successor for the very popular KT7A board for the AMD cpu’s … and this one is it! Can you say socket A board with 4(!!) DDR DIMM’s, Soft Menu III, onboard RAID, 6 PCI slots and one AGP slot. This board has it all! It is based on AMD’s 761 chipset and should kick some serious butt!
KR7-RAID
Another socket A board with DDR support but with a different chipset. This one uses the VIA KT266 chipset and also comes with 4 DDR DIMM’s and onboard RAID. 6 USB ports are present so you shouldn’t run out on expansion options with this one … Of course there will be plenty overclocking options on this board, but since Abit has overclocking options on ALL boards, this is nothing new!
Apart from the boards I just talked about, Abit was also showing us a very nice looking KT133E based motherboard with a ‘Hercules-blue’ PCB. The KT133E equals the KT133A but has no official 133MHz support. You can run your memory at 133MHz but the cpu stays at 100MHz FSB … Should be a nice budget board that would go well with a Duron … unless … someone figures out a way to run a 133MHz FSB …. hehehe ;).
On monday, our close friend, Kyle from HardOCP, did some kind of TH7-RAID workshop at the Abit booth. With a little help of a Vapochill case, he was able to overclock a P4 1.5GHz to 1.8GHz on a TH7-RAID motherboard. 1.8GHz? The peeps from Vapochill showed us a P4 1.5GHz @ 2.0GHz on a Asus P4T mobo … what does this mean? Doesn’t the TH7-RAID overclock as good as the Asus P4T or were they just affraid that the system might crash during the show? I would have loved that :)) The best part of the entire workshop was the fact that some PR guys from Intel were actually PROMOTING overclocking and putting up P4 stickers everywhere. Are they feeling the hot breath of AMD in their neck? Is Intel supporting overclocking? Wouldn’t that be great ;).
AOpen
Url: AOpen website
Everybody know that AOpen manufactures great cases and AOpen has also managed to create a name in the motherboard market. But have they demonstrated something new @ CeBIT this year? Well, sure! They have some redesigned PC cases and a couple new motherboards like the Pentium 4-sporting AX4T and the new KT133A board, the AK73 Pro (A). The PR guy for Germany was also very eager to show us their full range of very impressive soundcards based on the professional ForteMedia chip and Yamaha technologies. These soundcards should be able to compete with the well-known Creative soundcards like the SB Live!. Of course they also have value soundcards to put in low end systems; something like the PCI64/128 from Creative.
Let’s describe some new AOpen motherboards :
AOpen AX4T
AOpen finally have theirselves a P4 board, the AX4T (in case you didn’t know yet). Like all other P4 boards, this Socket 423 AX4T is also based on the Intel 850 chipset supporting all current P4 CPUs. The AX4T is a jumperless design featuring 1 AGP/ 5 PCI slots, Dr.LED, onboard LAN controller, onboard audio, UDMA/100 support and 4 RIMMs for up to 2GB RDRAM. How does this board perform? Time will tell, I guess …
AOpen AX37 Pro
The AX37 Pro is AOpen’s new Socket 370 DDR motherboard based on the VIA Apollo Pro 266 chipset offering DDR RAM support, 1 AGP/ 6 PCI slots, Dr.LED, DIE-HARD BIOS, black PCB, onboard audio, overclockers friendly BIOS with CPU Vcore adjustments (1.3V – 3.5V). The mobo has room for 3 DIMM socket for a maximum of 3GB DDR RAM.
AOpen AK73 Pro(A)
This motherboard might just be the most interesting AOpen board to look at at the moment. Why? Isn’t that obvious, guys? Because it sports VIA’s KT133A chipset featuring support for the 200MHz/266MHz AMD Athlon and 200MHz Duron Socket A CPUs, 1 AGP (non-PRO) / 5 PCI / 1 AMR slots, DIE-HARD BIOS, onboard audio, overclockering through the BIOS and UDMA/100 support! Like most other Socket A motherboards on the market today, the AK73 Pro(A) has 3 DIMMs supporting up to 1.5GB PC100/PC133 SDRAM. AOpen supplied us with a sample of this board, so expect a review of it within the next few weeks.
More AOpen Motherboards
Cases
Video Cards
Apart from the new PA256 MX Platinum GeForce 2 MX, AOpen had no new videocards to show us :( They did tell us that a GeForce 3 based on the Nvidia ref design is on its way and will arrive very soon …
Others
MSI
Url: MSI website
Just next to the Abit booth, was the MSI booth. MSI is becoming a very interesting manufacturer because they are really supporting a lot of features on their new boards! We were very lucky to have made an appointment with Angelique, one of the nicest PR people we talked to @ CeBIT. After a very warm welcome and a small presentation given to us by another nice lady called Piyal, we talked about the new MSI products … (BTW: there were some very good looking babes at the MSI booth ;)). Let’s see what MSI was showing of at CeBIT this year:
MSI K7T Turbo
This is the KT133A board from MSI which offers onboard RAID 0/1, overclocking through the BIOS, 6 PCI slots, 3 DIMM’s and much more. Reviews have showed that this board is a very stable and high performing socket A solution. OCOnline did not get a sample yet, but we are expecting it really soon so stay tuned for the review of this board.
MSI K7T 266 Pro
MSI’s DDR board based upon the new VIA KT266 chipset. The board has 3 DDR DIMM’s which is one more than most other boards offer! This results in a total support of 3GB DDR memory!Aside that, the K7T 266 Pro also features onboard RAID, 6(!) USB ports and again the fully tweakable BIOS that we are used to from MSI. Did I mention it also supports the new USB 2.0 standard? Definately a board to keep our eyes on …
MSI 815EP Pro
This is the king of the socket 370 boards that MSI is building. Based upon the Intel 815EP chipset, this board has 6 PCI slots, 4 USB ports, ATA100 support and 4 DIMM’s for a total of 512MB SDRam. One of the most interesting features this board has is the new PC2PC feature that MSI has introduced. This lets you connect to computers with each other through the USB port!! Only one computer needs PC2PC support, the other one can be a normal board. Very interesting if you want to play a game or just share some files with a friend without the hassle of setting up IP addresses and stuff. Expect to see the PC2PC feature on all future MSI boards.
There is also a -R version of this board available which means the board has onboard IDE RAID and comes with an AGP Pro slot. You also need the -R version if you want the PC2PC support.
MSI 850 Pro
Aaah finally … the P4 from Intel gets support from MSI. This board does not come with the cool D-LED feature other MSI board do have, and that helps you locate the possible problem when something is wrong. The 850 Pro supports ATA100, comes with 4 RIMM sockets for a total of 2GB RDRam and runs on an internal speed of 400MHz. Only 5 PCI slots are available which might be a problem for people who own a lot of cards. I doubt that the current P4 will be a success because the socket 423 it is using will be dissapearing when the ‘new’ P4 codenamed Northwood, will be released.
MSI delivers the 850 Pro with onboard 6 channel audio, integrated LAN adapter, D-LED, … the whole lot :). If you really want the P4, I suggest you check out this board as it seems to be one of the best P4 boards available.
MSI 694D Master-S
A new dual cpu board is born in the MSI engineering labs! This board is equiped with an Adaptec Ultra160 SCSI controller, 4 DIMM’s for a total of 2GB SDram, fully tweakable BIOS and more!! I truely think that this might be the new champion of all dual boards out there! And the good news is that OCOnline already reviewed it here :). Definately take a look at the Master-S if you need a good & stable dual socket 370 motherboard.
Now where is that dual AMD board? Hehehe …
MSI Pro 266 Master
Last but not least, this is MSI’s socket 370 board with DDR support. The beauty of this board is that it comes with 3 DDR DIMM’s and 2 SDR DIMM’s which means you can still use your old PC133 RAM with this board :). 6 USB ports are available and ATA100 is of course supported. There exists a Plus version of the Pro 266 Master that comes with 6 PCI slots and 3 DDR DIMM’s … instead of the 5 PCI’s and 3+2 DDR/SDR that are on the normal version.
MSI Video Cards
Not a long list actually … besides the already known GeForce 2 Pro and the GeForce MX that MSI sells, they will also release a cool GeForce 3 card soon! It is called the MSI StarForce 822 Graphics Accelerator card and of course it uses the nVidia GF3 GPU. It has a 200MHz core and 64MB of DDR memory that cruises at 460MHz. The card will be bundled with MSI DVD software, 3D Turbo; a program that allows you to configure and overclock the card and do some other cool stuff with it.
IWill
Url: IWill website
To be honest … we almost missed the IWill booth because it was a lot smaller than the other motherboard manufacturers’ booths. Does this mean that their products are worse? Not at all! IWill has been gaining in on the big players out there lately with some quality motherboards like the KK266, the KA266 but also their very nice dual cpu board called the DVD266-R.
The PR people from IWill were very kind and immedialtelly gave us a tour through all their motherboards. Lets see what boards are ‘hot’ @ IWill …
IWill KK266-R
This is a socket A motherboard that uses the VIA KT133A chipset, features onboard IDE RAID, overclocking options, 3 phase power just like Abit (increases stability a lot), … There have been several reviews of this motherboard already and most of them were very positive!!
The board also comes with onboard sound which will do just fine in case you are no audio freak and games are not your kind of thing.
IWill KA266-R
Another board that caught my attention, was the KA266-R, which is almost identical to the KK266-R except that it uses the ALI MAGIC chipset instead of the KT133A chipset. This means that this board has DDR support which results in even higher memory scores!
Apart from the DDR support, the KA266-R comes with onboard 4.1 channel hardware sound which is way better than the normal onboard sound ;). Of course this board also features a fully tweakable BIOS to let you overclock the living daylights out of your system.
IWill DVD266-R
I loved this board best at IWill … This is their latest dual socket 370 motherboard that uses the VIA Apollo Pro 266 chipset and that means this board has DDR support! A total of 4 DIMM’s let you install up to 4GB PC1600/PC2100 DDR memory. And that is not all! IWill also includes 6 PCI slots, onboard IDE RAID, the same 4.1 channel onboard sound that comes with the KA266-R and again the fully tweakable BIOS! This will be a killer dual board if you ask me … Expect a review of this baby soon!
VapoChill
Url: VapoChill website
Yeppers folks, we also visited the Asetek booth in hall 2. What did you say? Never heard from Asetek? Shame on you! Maybe if I describe these guys as the manufacturers of the famous and so badly wanted VapoChill, you’ll know what were talking about. It’s actually very easy to explain what the VapoChill does … It’s a case with a neat cooling system built inside that cools your CPU to temperatures far below 0C! I’m not going to bore you with all the technical details of this VapoChill (We’ll do that in our VapoChill review later!). I’ll just give you an easy illustration that I found on the VapoChill website which explains the cooling cycle :
The VapoChill cooling cycle consists of four easy steps of operation as shown in the illustration above : Compression, condensation, throttling (pressure reduction) and evaporation of the refrigerant.
We’ll be getting a VapoChill case over for a review very soon now, so expect a review of this case in the near future on Overclockers Online.
The peeps from Asetek showed us a new product which they will be launching in Q3 of this year … The Vapochill Case Cooling for servers. It works like an airconditioning system at home, but instead of airconditioning a room, this product cools the inside of your case. Looks very promising in these hot exotic server rooms … It is also interesting for overclockers because this device will cool down the air that is blown onto your videocard, so you wil be able to overclock it more! One downside … the price. Asetek told me that it will be twice (or more) as expensive as the VapoChill, but since they aim at server markets that’s not a problem I guess ;).
Some Other Products @ CeBIT
Of course we didn’t only visit video card and CPU/motherboard manufacturers, we also tried to get some information on new and upcoming CD-Writers/DVD-Writers, cases, hard drives (RAID?), soundcards, monitors, memory, cooling and stuff like that … but nothing really interesting and revolutionary is to report here :( I do like to note that we’ve seen quite a lot 20x CD-writers @ CeBIT like the one from Ricoh on the picture below. Apart from the fact that some hard drive manufacturers will be paying much more attention at creating 10k RPM IDE HD drives, nothing important is to report about the hard drive evolution at the moment.
Conclusion
That concludes our CeBIT 2001 coverage article for today folks! Tim and I have attended CeBIT for 6 days and let me tell ya that we haven’t seen half of what we wanted to see. That gives you an idea of how big this trade fair actually is. We hope you liked the article and if you have any questions about CeBIT that you want to ask us or something that isn’t quite clear in the article, you can always email us!
Grtz,
The Overclockers Online Staff
aka Steven and Tim!