www.Viperlair.com - Chaintech Reloaded

New Orleans is known for Jazz, Cajun Food, and Mardi Gras; and this year was the site, at the DoubleTree Hotel, of Chaintech's first US press/media conference: Chaintech Reloaded. Also present at the conference, were Nvidia, Corsair, and Intervideo. These awesome companies, combined with a kickass city, resulted in quite a rocking conference.

After a long travel day from New Jersey, I arrived in a humid, 80 degree Fahrenheit New Orleans. After throwing my luggage into my room and heading upstairs, I was greeted by a box that said "Motherboard Chaintech".

Unfortunately, I had been cleverly deceived. After flipping the box around, I saw the actual top said "Marketing Kit" in big yellow letters. Damn. I threw the box, along with a nifty (unless you're in hot and sweaty New Orleans) blanket in my room and continued to dinner. A good majority of the people who attended all got up and out, and Milton took us all on a nice walking tour of New Orleans.

11:00 AM:

After a good nights rest, we all congregated at 11:00 to eat brunch. Unfortunately, I didn't get too much grub in me, as the same room that we were eating in was also the room which was set out to be the showroom for Nvidia, Corsair, and Intervideo. I grabbed my camera, and set off to taking shots of the room:

You can barely make out the computer on the left… There was more than just that to pique our interests though.

The first thing that caught my interest was Corsair's HydroCool setup. I had seen preview shots of the unit on [H]ardOCP, and might even get to review it - I was intrigued by the product, to say the least. The HydroCool is similar in function, though not necessarily in design to the Koolance Exos.

It is a completely self-contained cooling unit, which is located outside of the computer case.

The sleek black Plexiglas was stunning, surely an eye-turner. (who originally came up with the idea) also showed off how the hoses could be detached and reattached without water spilling everywhere. He claimed that he actually transported the computer without taking any of the tubes out of the computer. He simply disconnected the HydroCool from the computer (the two tubes and data/power connection,) and when he got to the conference, put the tubes back into the unit, and presto - it worked. The unit bleeds itself, and Robert was pretty damn sure that the tubes wouldn't come loose from their fittings… I don't know about you, but from my experience, if you're going to move a water-cooling PC, you had better take the whole water-cooling setup apart, reassemble and run on-site without turning on the computer, and then when confident that there are no leaks, proceed to install into case, and turn on computer. With the HydroCool, that whole process won't be needed…

Nvidia was showing off their new GeForceFX 5900 in Koolance's PC2-601BW case. Regardless of the mess that was the inside of their computer, they ended up showing us some pretty nifty stuff - all of which was demo'd after the presentations. Intervideo was also reluctant to say anything until after their presentations.

For the next two hours, all of the guests gathered in a conference room in which the four companies at Reloaded made their presentations, all of which took approximately four hours.

From Left to Right: Simon Ho: President, Chaintech Worldwide; Daphne Su: VP of Sales and Marketing, Chaintech Worldwide; Cathy Liu: President of Chaintech America; Brennan Chow: Technical Manager, Chaintech America

NOTE: [to readers] Sorry for the poor image quality. Icrontic has a better image .

By far, Chaintech had the lengthiest presentation - and rightfully so, as it was their conference - they were footing the bill. The presentation started off with the well known blue pill/red pill choice; I guess it was kind of corny, but fitting. Chaintech then lead us through the "Time tunnel" - an abbreviated history of computing from EC1 (1960) through Chaintech's first motherboard, the 286-12.

It was kind of nice to see some old computers I hadn't thought about for a while - although I have a feeling most people just wanted the damn presentation to get going.

Chaintech's President, Simon Ho, walked us through Chaintech's HQ (located in Taipei), and Factory and testing facilities (located in Dong-Guan, China). Simon claimed that their factory has the capacity of 200,000 Motherboards and 250,000 VGA cards per month.

I believe Chaintech's primary goal for even having this conference was to get its name out. Simon showed 2002 and 2003 Q1 sales revenues, and expressed his interest in climbing out of a Tier 2 manufacturer position. He also spoke of the "Late PC Era" versus the "Post PC Era" - the (supposed) shift that technology is taking now.

Unbeknownst to me, Chaintech has also been setting their sights on more than just motherboards and VGA cards. They presented their DBS-2000, DBS-1000, DST-1000FTA, D-A-DTT-1000, iMO-DESK PC and LCD-PC. Whoo, that's a lot to take in. The DBS units are digital satellite converters.

The DBS-2000 is a bit larger than its smaller brother, the DBS-1000… But other than that, there seems to be no difference between the two (although not much detail was given for many of these items.)

The DST-1000FTA and D-A-DTT-1000, both are TV-Tuner cards, however the DST-1000FTA is specifically for digital [satellite] programming, and the D-A-DTT-1000 is for both digital and analog programming - the first of its kind!

Finally we come to the iMO-DESK PC and the LCD-PC. The iMO is what is referred to as a desk-note - a desktop replacement in the form of a notebook. Although Chaintech didn't want to reveal much, we were able to find out that the iMO will feature a 6-in-1 card reader, use (a) motherboard(s) with desktop chipsets, and therefore support desktop CPUs. It may also feature a Xabre600 or Nforce2 chipset, with possible VGA enhancements. The iMO can also support a 3.5" hard drive - the kind found in most desktops. Looks quite promising if Chaintech can pull it off without somehow letting the thing burn your legs off due to heat dissipation. The LCD-PC utilizes the same LCD as the iMO, and Chaintech hinted that the LCD could be modularly switched between the iMO and LCD-PC. The design, however, would be different from that pictured in this article.

It was now time to expand upon what most of the attendees of the conference were eager to learn about - Chaintech's Motherboards and VGA solutions. Although a bit off topic and perhaps even kooky, the colors of the different motherboards were stressed quite a bit, and were later used in the day to quiz some randomly selected attendees. Remember, Yellow is K7, Blue is Canterwood, Orange is K8.

Chaintech also elaborated on how exactly their product lines were designed. Quite simply, Zenith is the highest end product they make, Apogee is their best bang for buck, and Summit is their budget or "cost-effective" line. However, their high end VGA line is Apogee. Chaintech didn't have a rock-solid answer for their reasoning behind using Apogee instead of Zenith for the product naming of their high end VGA card - they sort of hovered between reserving the prowess of Zenith for very high quality motherboards, and also hinted that perhaps there could be a Zenith VGA card, which would be an improved version of the Apogee.

The Zenith line is the highest quality, and highest priced product line. The Zenith motherboards are made specifically for those who are willing to pay for the extra features and control (overclocking, etc.) You may also be pleased to notice that the connectors on the Zenith motherboards are 24 Karat gold plated.

There are quite a few things bundled with the Zenith motherboards: The CBOX3, Handigator, Round Cables, 5-Language Manual, EZ (Lazy) Manual, DigiDoc utility (AMD Platform Only), APOGEE OC Utility (Intel Platform Only), and a nifty included screwdriver.

The CBOX3 is the Communication Box, revision 3. It has a ton of features, and interchangeable faceplates.

Apogee represents Chaintech's best bang-for-buck - it is not exactly the middle ground between Zenith and Summit - that is, high and low end - the Apogee line is directed for the power user who wants good performance, but can't afford the best there is out there. As seen previously in the "hourglass" image - Chaintech believes that there will be a shrinking of the performance user, and therefore has moved their Apogee line towards the enthusiast demand.

The Summit line of products is Chaintech's answer to low cost, rock-solid motherboards. The designers cut things out like overclocking to minimize costs - but instead of simply cutting corners, makes sure that all the components used are still high quality.

Chaintech wasn't sure which of the boxes (pictured below) is more appealing to the masses - so they asked us.

The Apogee series has an upgraded layout design, very low noise levels (less than 30 dB), and a blue LED illuminating the card. Honestly, it's the first time I've seen stock video card illumination - I think I like it.

The FX61 (above) has a BGA memory configuration, while the FX60 (bottom) has a TSOP memory configuration.

I believe the fact that the FX61 doesn't take up two slots is a feat in and of itself - I the reduced noise is also something I graciously welcome. The FX61 is based on the FX5600, has 128MB of DDR ram, and has VGA, DVI-I output, as well as VIO, a temperature sensor, an 8 layer PCB, and BGA memory.

Chaintech also has incorporated "Gas-Turbine Technology" into their cooling design.

Included with their FX61 Turbo is a DVI->VGA adapter, a VIVO cable, S-Video cable, Composite Cable, an Anti-Static Brush, and a Q Ball (which is essentially a monitor cleaner.)

A question that was asked earlier in the presentation was - what kind of memory will be used on the Apogee cards? The answer was 2.8 nanosecond memory. Some people were a little surprised by the justification that "the chipset cannot handle faster memory" - for there are other manufacturers running at speeds up to 2.2 nanosecond memory. In any case, it could be interesting to look into.

Next, nVidia stepped up to the plate to discuss their nForce2 Ultra 400, nForce2 400, and nForce 3 Professional chipsets.

The nForce2 Ultra 400 is the dual-channel DDR chipset that people are raving about today.

The nForce2 400 is a single-channel DDR chipset, and is aimed at low end motherboards.

The nForce3 is designed for professional computing environments, and is optimized for Opterons. It supports ASF (an error messaging system,) onboard gigabit Ethernet support, IPv6 compatibility, as well as TCP Segmentation and TCP/IP Checksum offload. The latter two are extremely important when running a mission critical server - the Segmentation and Checksum routines are done in hardware, which relieves a lot of CPU time in a TCP/IP intensive computer. The support for Raid 1 and 0+1 is built in, as is 64-bit win32 and linux support.

Next, nVidia brought out the big guns - the FX5900. The features are damn near endless, but here is what I was able to write down in the short period of time I had to look at the features list:

- Higher memory bandwidth.
- 2 times the shader operations.
- A 0.13 micron fabrication process
- Optimization for raytracing and shadow tracing
- Hardware Shadow Acceleration (Doom 3 takes advantage of this greatly)
- Visual Quality improvements (Drivers released on Monday, May 21)

Also, nVidia announced that with the driver release on May 21st, there would be a significant boost in performance during audio operations, as less bandwidth would be taken up due to memory paging optimizations in the drivers.

And with that, we were subject to some awesome looking renders from the 5900. After which, nVidia quickly left the stage.

Corsair took the stage quickly, and didn't take any time to start displaying their fantastic statistics. They have 80 employees, and have (somehow) been profitable every year since 1997. 61% of Corsair's business is XMS memory, 15% is value memory, and the rest is OEM business. Corsair also works with resellers in 23 different countries. Their 6 layer PCB, and tight impedance control allows Corsiar to proudly say they have less than a 1% failure rate.

As quickly as Corsair got on the stage, they got off. Intervideo stepped up last, to try to convince us that Intervideo is not just about WinDVD. Products like WinDVD Creator allow for a clean video editing and authoring experience. WinDVD Recorder allows for TV viewing, DVD Playback and "Direct video recording" (straight from video to DVD/CD - Recorder will chose the best codec for the space allotted.) Intervideo HomeTheatre allows for the user to "Record, Play, Enjoy, all in one." Their Unipass method of rendering (only rendering images during actual video compilation) allows for a shorter creation time than that of other products. I must admit, the Unipass idea that was presented does seem pretty logical to me - there's no reason to render an effect twice…

The presentation portion of the conference was over. Now we were free to walk around and visit each company. I got to play with Chaintech's HandiGator and gawk at their motherboards, check out exactly what was going on with Intervideo, as well as take quite a few pictures of the HydroCool, and find out some more about nVidia's 5900 and Ultra 400 platform.

Intervideo showed off WinCinema and their IR remote control (which is completely compatible with Windows Media Center.)

Tubes run in and out of a modified PCI slot cover to the PC, and cool the CPU. Although Corsair said they had chipset and GPU coolers in the making, neither debuted at the conference.

The only other object connected to the HydroCool was not an A/C power cord - it was a black cable which connected the HydroCool to a custom-made PCB on the modified PCI slot cover, which feeds the HydroCool power, and allows the HydroCool to have some access to the PC. The CPU cooler sports a thermistor, which allows the HydroCool to monitor temperatures, and, in dire situations, shut down the computer.

I got to see just how fast the HydroCool could actually cool the CPU - Robert pulled one of the hoses out, a little water dropped out, and the CPU temperature started steadily climbing from its' constant 28.5 degrees Celsius to 35 degrees Celsius or so, at which point Robert put the hose back on, and about 10 seconds later, the temperature was once again down to 28.5. However, that is a rough estimate of the time it took for the HydroCool to cool the CPU down. The cooling block is made of copper, with a nickel plating.

Robert also told me that he had more ideas in store for a possible second revision of the HydroCool, one of which is easy to remove fan filters.

At nVidia's side, I got to see the woman with the butterfly wings dancing around (quite nice shadows, might I add…) as well as the fire-monster demo. We also got the privilege of seeing something nVidia has been working on for about ¾ of a year - overclocking from windows. If the motherboard manufacturer allows for it, certain BIOS hooks can be accessed from windows, and changed. We watched a quake3 demo go by, a simple change in a slider, and all of a sudden, 50 more fps appeared. The only thing that was not accessible was the multiplier and the AGP clock [I believe.]

Although the interface is said to possibly change, slider-control for FSB is quite nice.

We had a chance to sit down with Milton Fang to ask him a few questions passed through our forums...

Q: You said that after many heated debates, that your high end video card was decided to be called Apogee, mainly, due to the fact that Zenith was a revered product line, and there might be more to put into the VGA cards than what is in them now. What can we expect in later dates, feature-wise from Chaintech?

A: Suggestions from media, but some things we think about is maybe even better cooling solutions, or perhaps tv-out, DVI, tv-tuners. A lot of our ideas come from the media and our end users, which is how we came up with our features.

A: It is still undecided, but it will be between the VIA and the nVidia nforce2.

A: Gas Turbine is a technology used in Jet Engines, which might or might not have been proprietary, and we have implemented it into our fan designs. The interaction with the air, it creates a sort of vortex that funnels the air up to 30% better. It is angled differently, and is missing a corner, which enhances the cooling.

Q: Will there be revisions to allow the top buttons on your remote control to be programmable?

Q: When do you expect your Canterwood and K8 solutions to be out (respectively)? Your Apogee video cards?

A: Canterwoods - retail channel by June, K8 - up to AMD, Apogee VGA retail by mid June.

Q: Was the move to gold plating simply for the looks, or do you honestly believe it will enhance transfer rates?

A: Gold has been proven to enhance the transfer rates, which is why they have gold fingers (connectors). It might help, but it also helps the aesthetics.

All in all, Chaintech reloaded was a whole lot of fun. Going out to Bourbon Street was quite an experience, as was the private Jazz concert we all went to. I got to meet some of the people I had only known through writing, got to experience New Orleans, and learn a hell of a lot about stuff I like. I don't think I would have missed it for the world.

WeI'd like to thank Chaintech for inviting us, and thanks to the manufacturers who were nice enough to demo some cool stuff.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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