NVIDIA are preparing to pull out of the motherboard business, according to a report by DigiTimes. Citing “sources close to the situation”, it’s claimed that NVIDIA called a meeting with manufacturing partners earlier this week to examine what degree of support their ongoing chipset development would receive; the partners’ response was apparently poor enough to prompt the company to cut its losses.
VIA have done a little extra shaving and come up with their latest Pico-ITX motherboard, the EPIA P700. By replacing the traditional ports with in-line I/O header pins, there’s been enough room for VIA to include an integrated power adaptor, while still keeping the whole thing down to just 10cm x 7.2cm. Accessory boards add normal ports, or you can simply wire up whichever connections you need.
Centrino 2 processors were slated for August, but it might not be that long until we see the new chips in some upcoming mainstream notebooks. Intel is now anticipated the chip to be available to manufacturers as early as mid-July.
Owners of computer components that use the PCI Express 2.0 standard will be pleased to hear that their existing hardware will still work once motherboards switch to the PCI Express 3.0 standard. At a recent press conference discussing the interface, SIG chairman Al Yanes disclosed more details about the upcoming connector, which has previously been quoted as managing 8.0 gigatransfers per second.
As VIA’s energy-efficient mobile processor range gets faster, the chips become more suited to applications other than basic ultraportable notebooks. That’s why the company has developed a new Mini-ITX 2.0 standard, an updated version of the 17cm square motherboard which has proved so popular with case modders and small-form-factor HTPCs. Mini-ITX 2.0 specifies a CPU such as VIA’s own Nano, a 16-lane PCI Express slot for high-definition video support, and a minimum of 2GB DDR2 RAM.
Last year ASUS released a motherboard, the P5E3, with an embedded compact Linux distro it called Express Gate. Basically a fast-boot alternative that, in just five seconds, bypassed Windows and gave you a web-browser, media player and other apps, it was developed by a company called DeviceVM (under the name Splashtop). ASUS were obviously pleased with how the mini-OS performed, as they’ve now decided to add Express Gate to all of their motherboards.
VIA has dropped its already-compact Pico-ITX boards into a hot wash and come up with the PX5000EG, measuring in at just 3.9 x 2.8-inches. The small size is due to VIA dropping the processor speed down to just 500MHz (compared to the existing 1GHz PX1000G) and thus being able to leave off any active cooling. It’ll still support up to 1GB of RAM, though, and has hardware MPEG-2/-4 and WMV9 hardware decoding acceleration.
Processor manufacturer AMD is being forced to field criticism from some users, after reports of compatibility issues between a number of their quad-core Phenom X4 chips and motherboards using a certain chipset. The company confirmed that the issue arises when the 9750 and 9850 Phenom processors, which have a Thermal Design Power (the maximum amount of power the cooling system is required to dissipate) of 125 watts, are used with motherboards based on the 780G chipset. Such boards – which AMD describes as “mainstream” – are only capable of dealing with the lower, 95 watts TDP processors, such as the 9600 and 9550.
AMD are planning a refresh to their 790FX motherboard range that should satisfy power users and overclockers’ demands for a better-performing Southbridge. Currently ‘boards using the 790FX chipset rely on the SB600 Southbridge, which in comparison to more recent chipsets has relatively poor PCI and SATA performance. Fudzilla have found the reference design for the upcoming relaunch, which swaps out the SB600 for the newer SB750; codenamed “Hawkfish” it also includes broad RAID support and increased connectivity.
For some reason the announcement of a newer, thinner OLED TV by Sony and the attention of an event gave someone cause to disassemble an 11-inch OLED TV that costs $2500. It’s 3mm thick, so reassembly was probably harder than disassembly.
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