Fall 2004 Motherboard Preview: A Sea of New
by Wesley Fink on June 4, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Intel 915 with BOTH AGP and PCI
We posted pictures of Gigabyte's "impossible" Intel 915 with both PCI Express (PCI-E) and AGP 8X in our preview coverage of Computex. As we reported, PCI-E and AGP on the same 915 board is supposedly an impossible engineering feat. Well, Gigabyte is not alone with the bright idea of AGP 8X and PCI Express slots on the same Intel 915 board. ECS has a similar feature on one of their new high-end 915 boards.
Click to enlarge.
ECS calls their AGP slot on the 915 "AGP eXpress". Both ECS and Gigabyte claim they have not used a bridge chip in their new design - deriving the AGP 8X support from the PCI Express signals. We've done some digging and it appears this is only part of the story. We've put together a separate news story explaining how ECS and Gigabyte accomplish this task of bringing AGP and PCI Express to their Intel motherboards. Read our article entitled: AGP on Intel 9xx Chipsets? We explain how.
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Wesley Fink - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
#1 -Based on what we now know we expect the new graphics integrated in 915 will be the best performing integrated graphics we have tested. We are told performance is roughly equivalent to 5200FX. That will not excite many of our readers, but it is still a fact that 60% of motherboard shipments are integrated graphics.
Cygni - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
Depressing is when you see the performance "gain" PCI-E 16x was supposed to offer in real life. Hint: Its not there.JGF - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
September at the earliest for A64 nvidia PCI-E is more than a little depressing. :(Bozo Galora - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=858&s=2Speaking of 4 phase power...
Is that 5 phase power on the shuttle board?
RyanVM - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
On page 3: "As we reported, PCI-X and AGP on the same 915 board is supposedly an impossible engineering feat."PCI-E!!!!!!!!!
jrphoenix - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
Good to see all the news on the Athlon 939 boards and PCI-Express. Does anyone have an idea when we will see these boards? It was kind of depressing hearing that Nvidia may not support this until Q3 or Q4 :(Heck... when will we see any socket 939 boards?
SDA - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
"A Sea of NEW"?Hm. Problem with an A64 with decently powerful integrated graphics is that the A64's so expensive that I don't see much of a need for it. .. ehm, but OEMs would like that, I'm sure. Save them money on cheapo add-in cards, for sure, and they could still advertise "64-bit power!"
DDR2 and DDR1 on the same board, eh. What, is the yellow slot DDR2? What the hell? I thought the purpose of a key was to make it HARDER TO STICK THINGS IN THE WRONG WAY? It's practically in the fscking middle! Rrrrr. And I thought DDR1 was bad. Also, "Intel's excellent new integrated graphics"? Excellent must be a relative term.
Also, Tyan now has nine Opteron boards. On one hand, that's an amusingly diverse selection.. on the other hand, it's great that there are so many choices there, and Tyan boards ARE quality.