Computex 2006: Abit is back, Biostar expands, and Thermaltake dazzles
by Gary Key on June 10, 2006 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
We spoke at length with Tomasz Swatowski, Marketing Assistant Manager; Kenny Tseng, VGA Marketing; and Jason Li, Marketing Specialist during our visit with Biostar. Biostar has been in existence since 1986 and has a long history of providing good products at very competitive price points. They have recently branched into the video card market with a wide array of offerings, and they continue to offer new SFF systems.
Their current focus is on expanding their business by offering higher quality products targeted towards the gamer and enthusiast markets. This includes top of the line NVIDIA based video cards along with higher end motherboards in the performance sector with their TForce series of products. Our recent review of their TForce 590 SLI Deluxe board certainly impressed us with the strides they have made recently in addressing this growing market segment.
Biostar: Intel Motherboards
While Biostar offers a wide variety of AMD based products, their focus at Computex was clearly on the Core 2 Duo boards.
Biostar was one of several manufacturers demonstrating the reference NVIDIA SLI 590 board with full support for Core 2 Duo.
One of the more interesting boards we saw was the Biostar G965 Micro 775 board featuring the Intel 965G (X3000 integrated graphics) and ICH8 chipsets. Although Intel will not be ramping up the 965G chipset production until August, it appears that Biostar is one of the first to have working samples available for display.
Biostar's budget minded Intel chipset board is the 946PL 775 featuring the Intel 946PL and ICH7 chipsets.
Biostar is offering two different VIA based boards that support Core 2 Duo with the P4M890-MY PCI-E board sporting the VIA P4M890 (IGP) Northbridge and VT8237R+ Southbridge. Expect this board and the more performance oriented PT890 775 (for VIA) to be available around the US $45~$55 price points.
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Gary Key - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
The on-board sound on this board will be the Realtek ALC-882M that is placed on a riser card. The sound was significantly better audio quality wise than some of the 882m solutions we have heard placed on the motherboard. We also spoke with Abit about utilizing the new Realtek ALC-888 which sounded a generation better to us and that was on a $85 ASRock board the same day. We are hoping the transition to the ALC-888 will be a quick one for most manufacturers as it would suffice for about 90% of the users. The balance will want a X-FI or something else discreet.
My issue with Abit, the Product Managers agreed, is that the buyer for these boards will typically not only want a discreet sound solution but also a slot for a TV tuner card or a professional audio interface card. PCI is not dead until the multimedia companies move over to PCI-E, it is that simple and until such time, the board should have two if not three PCI slots that are not blocked, take one of the PCI-E x1 slots, combine the lanes, and give us a universal x4 slot if need be to make room but do not block this slot also. We were able to play with the 975x board before the show opened and although it was pre-production, it ran like a banshee. ;-)
xsilver - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
any indication of what the prices are going to be?hopefully prices will stay the same and just replace a 600w one with a 1200w one?
or if the price is going to be 2x the 600w one, who could afford it??
Gary Key - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
Pricing was not set yet but we would estimate in the $250~$325 range at this time. Yikes.....
emilyek - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
You'd think 50 engineers could rub their heads together and come up with something decent.Have the Thermaltake boys been watching 'Pimp My Ride' or something? The only decent thing in their lineup as shown is the HTPC.
Xenoid - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
The Thermaltake cases were all very nice (and I'm sure very expensive), but is it just me or do the LAN-style carry cases still look ridiculous? Same with that big box for 2 systems in one..I'd rather just have 2 full-towers..they'd take up a lot less room and cost less too.toyota - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
what a waste of ram. i guess this means we will start seeing 1 gig on next gen cards that might actually utilise it.JarredWalton - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
We've already got the GX2 with 1GB, though granted that's really 2x512MB. Vista may actually be able to use the GPU RAM for lots of other things, though - that's the theory anyway. Imagine, no longer getting the slow background refresh when Windows decides to swap some of that information out of RAM and into the page file....