|
APOGEE
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.
SUMMIT
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.
Apogee VGA Design (VGA Reloaded)
Chaintech wasn't sure which of the boxes (pictured below) is more appealing to the masses - so they asked us.
Chaintech's nVidia product line includes the following boards:
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.
Chaintech's cards include the FX61 and the FX60:
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.
After all of this, Chaintech's presentation was complete.
nVidia
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.
More Corsair
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.
Intervideo
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…
Previous Page - Chantech Product Line
Next Page - Taking a walk around
|
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.
