W1zzard
03-17-2005, 05:33 PM
[page=AOpen]
Welcome to our Cebit Report Day 4 with news from AOpen, Foxconn, S3 and Soltek. Also in this report you will find all R520 and ATI's SLI info we could get.
Read our previous coverage of Day 1 (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day1/), Day 2 (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day2/) and Day 3 (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day3) here.
AOpen
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/aopen_i915gmm_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/aopen_i915gmm.jpg)
Running on Intel'S i915GM mobile chipset the i915GMm-HFS boasts with these features:
Socket 479 for Intel Pentium M
400 / 533 MHz FSB
Support for DDR 300 / Dual Channel DDR2 533, up to 2GB
1x PCI-E x16, 1x PCI-E x1, 2x PCI
Integrated Intel Video Card
2x SATA RAID, 2x SATA II RAID
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 Channel Audio
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/aopen_i915pa_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/aopen_i915pa.jpg)
The AOpen i915Pa-PLF is based on Intel's 915P chipset:
Pentium 4 LGA 775 Socket
800 MHz FSB
Dual Channel DDR 400 Support
1x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
Integrated Intel Video Card
Gigabit Ethernet
4x SATA RAID
7.1 Channel Audio
This board also offers AOpen's Power Master feature.
Power Master dynamically changes the CPU frontside bus based on the CPU's current draw (Amperes). When the CPU is idle, the FSB is reduced down to 100 MHz or less. When current is now increasing, the Power Master circuitry pumps the FSB back up in a fraction of a second - no lags are noticeable.
In very high-load situations the CPU FSB can be overclocked above 800 MHz as well.
[page=Foxconn]
Foxconn
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_955x7aa_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_955x7aa.jpg)
Foxconn's new high-end board is the 955X7AA-8EKRS2. It's using Intel's i955X chipset.
Intel Pentium 4 LGA755 Socket
1066 MHz FSB
Dual Channel DDR2 667 Support
1x PCI-E X16, 3x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
4x SATA II RAID, 4x SATA RAID
Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 Channel Audio
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_945p7aa_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_945p7aa.jpg)
A bit less expensive is the 945P7AA-8EKRS2 using Intel's i945P.
Intel Pentium 4 LGA755 Socket
1066 MHz FSB
Dual Channel DDR2 667 Support
1x PCI-E X16, 2x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
4x SATA II RAID
Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 Channel Audio
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_945g7ma_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_945g7ma.jpg)
the third new board is the 945G7AA-8EKRS2 using Intel's i945G.
Intel Pentium 4 LGA755 Socket
1066 MHz FSB
Dual Channel DDR2 667 Support
1x PCI-E X16, 1x PCI-E x1, 2x PCI
Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics II
4x SATA II RAID
Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 Channel Audio
[page=Soltek]
Soltek
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_nf4pro939_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_nf4pro939.jpg)
Powered by NVIDIA's nForce4 Chipset the SL-NF4Pro-939 offers:
AMD64 Socket 939
1000 MHz HTT
Dual Channel DDR 400 Support
1x PCI-E x16, 3x PCI-E x1, 2x PCI
4x SATA RAID
Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 channel Audio
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_855gei_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_855gei.jpg)
For the Pentium4 M the SL-855GEI-FDGR is equipped with Intel's i855GME chipset:
Socket 479 for Intel Pentium 4 M
400 MHz FSB
DDR 333 Support
Integrated ATI Extreme Graphics II
1x AGP 4x, 3x PCI
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
2x ATA 133, 1x ATA 133 Promise RAID
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_r480pro_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_r480pro.jpg)
The Soltek SL-R480Pro-939 uses ATI's RS480 chipset and ATI's SB400 southbridge:
AMD Socket 939
1000 MHz HTT
Dual Channel DDR 400 Support
Integrated ATI video card
1x PCI-E x16, 3x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
Gigabite Ethernet
4x SATA RAID
7.1 channel Audio
[page=S3]
S3
S3 presented us their brand-new PCI-Express GPU chip called GammaChrome S18.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_products_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_products.jpg)
Image taken from hkepc.com. Not confirmed by S3
In the past some websites speculated that S3 will use a PCI-E bridge chip, this is not the case as we verified. The chip has a native PCI-Express interface with support for x1, x8 and x16.
Full support for DirectX9 (4 pipelines) is included as well as HDTV and video acceleration. As S3 told us, they spent considerable time in improving video output quality for a best multimedia experience.
Their 400 MHz RAMDAC supports resolutions of up to 2048x1536 with two simulaneous outputs (Dual DVI / Dual CRT / CRT&DVI).
A unique feature in that price range is that the video card will support 10-bit-per-color which allows 1024 shades of color compared to only 256 shades of 32-bit display modes. While this is not important to home users (yet) it is a very important feature in scientific and medical applications.
At the moment only DDR1 memory with 128-bits interface is possible, during 2005 support for DDR2 and DDR3 will be added.
Targeted performance is a bit above X600XT levels, with targeted clock speeds of up to 500 MHz core and 450 MHz memory.
S3 says first boards should be available in march for ~$100, Club3D who will produce OmniChrome boards talks about Q3/2005.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_s18nitro_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_s18nitro.jpg)
The "normal" version of the S3 GammaChrome will be called Nitro and uses BGA memory with 400 MHz GPU clock.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_s18pro_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_s18pro.jpg)
A low cost version of the S18 with TSOP memory, called "Pro", will be available as well. Core clock is 300 MHz.
[page=ATI R520 & SLI]
ATI R520
ATI's new GPU chip R520 is internally called "Fudo". The design has been ready for quite some time now. One source is telling us "the chip is working, now ATI is designing the boards, and after that they have to fix the boards to get them working [laughs]".
The chip is produced using a 90nm process at TSMC and will have 300 to 350 million transistors.
We have confirmed the 24 pipelines rumors from several independant sources. However, these 24 pipelines are not comparable to 24 of today's pipelines - multiply by 1.3. So the 24 pipelines will have the performance of 32 "normal" pipelines.
The result of this is that the R520 will be two times as fast as the currently fastest X850s.
ATI will most probably present the chip in June at Computex, Taiwan.
The most important architectural change is support for the Advanced Driver Model of WGF 1.0 (Windows Graphics Foundation). This is the successor to DirectX9, often called DirectX Next. WGF will be included as standard in Microsoft Longhorn.
WGF offers new exciting features for game developers like "unlimited" shader length, Geometry Shaders, Much lower overhead than DirectX9 and many more.
Existing hardware will support the Basic Model of WGF once the manufacturer writes a driver for it. Features like resource virtualization etc. will only be available when using the Advanced Driver Model. R520 is the first GPU we know of to support it.
Obviously ShaderModel 3.0 is supported by R520 as well.
Memory configurations will be 256-bit memory interface (definitely not 512-bit) with 256 MB and 512 MB GDDR3. The internal registers of R520 support even 1GB memory size. With current GDDR3 prices we will definitely not see a 1GB design at least not in the near future and not for gaming cards. However, this shows that ATI is planning for the future.
The boards will be available in PCI-Express only. When asked about an AGP version, one source said "most probably not". Please note that this is not a definite "no". My guess is that if the market really demands an AGP version, it will be implemented via the Rialto bridge chip.
In the S3 part of this report we talked about OmniChrome supporting 10-bit-per-color display depths, so does R520. HDTV and HDCP output will be supported as well.
Clocks are not finalized yet, but expect something around 700 MHz core and 800 MHz memory (1.25ns).
The first boards will be VERY expensive people are talking $600-$700 range. It all depends on how the graphics memory prices develop in the next months and if TSMC can get good yields out of the 90nm process.
ATI SLI
Not much is known on this topic. Some people say the name is AMR "ATI Multi Rendering", others say MVP "Multi Visual Processing".
Our information differs from source to source. MVP and "neither AMR nor MVP" being the most popular answers.
ATI's technology is superior to NVIDIA's SLI in several ways:
While NVIDIA SLI splits the screen into two parts and one GPU renders each half, ATI's solution breaks the screen into little squares. Remember the chessboard effect you had when pipelines were bad with the softmod?
That's how it is going to work, just on a bigger scale, called "Super Tiling". Any GPU from R300 and up supports Super Tiling in hardware and they can be mixed when in SLI mode.
However, ATI most probably will not enable SLI for GPUs other than the R4xx and R520 series.
ATI's SLI is also not limited to two video cards. There will be one master card which presents the rendered data to the screen and coordinates the slaves which transfer their rendered data into the master's framebuffer. A physical PCB to link the video cards is not required, everything is done via PCI-Express bus.
Continue to Day 5 (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day5).
Welcome to our Cebit Report Day 4 with news from AOpen, Foxconn, S3 and Soltek. Also in this report you will find all R520 and ATI's SLI info we could get.
Read our previous coverage of Day 1 (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day1/), Day 2 (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day2/) and Day 3 (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day3) here.
AOpen
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/aopen_i915gmm_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/aopen_i915gmm.jpg)
Running on Intel'S i915GM mobile chipset the i915GMm-HFS boasts with these features:
Socket 479 for Intel Pentium M
400 / 533 MHz FSB
Support for DDR 300 / Dual Channel DDR2 533, up to 2GB
1x PCI-E x16, 1x PCI-E x1, 2x PCI
Integrated Intel Video Card
2x SATA RAID, 2x SATA II RAID
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 Channel Audio
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/aopen_i915pa_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/aopen_i915pa.jpg)
The AOpen i915Pa-PLF is based on Intel's 915P chipset:
Pentium 4 LGA 775 Socket
800 MHz FSB
Dual Channel DDR 400 Support
1x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
Integrated Intel Video Card
Gigabit Ethernet
4x SATA RAID
7.1 Channel Audio
This board also offers AOpen's Power Master feature.
Power Master dynamically changes the CPU frontside bus based on the CPU's current draw (Amperes). When the CPU is idle, the FSB is reduced down to 100 MHz or less. When current is now increasing, the Power Master circuitry pumps the FSB back up in a fraction of a second - no lags are noticeable.
In very high-load situations the CPU FSB can be overclocked above 800 MHz as well.
[page=Foxconn]
Foxconn
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_955x7aa_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_955x7aa.jpg)
Foxconn's new high-end board is the 955X7AA-8EKRS2. It's using Intel's i955X chipset.
Intel Pentium 4 LGA755 Socket
1066 MHz FSB
Dual Channel DDR2 667 Support
1x PCI-E X16, 3x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
4x SATA II RAID, 4x SATA RAID
Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 Channel Audio
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_945p7aa_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_945p7aa.jpg)
A bit less expensive is the 945P7AA-8EKRS2 using Intel's i945P.
Intel Pentium 4 LGA755 Socket
1066 MHz FSB
Dual Channel DDR2 667 Support
1x PCI-E X16, 2x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
4x SATA II RAID
Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 Channel Audio
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_945g7ma_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/foxconn_945g7ma.jpg)
the third new board is the 945G7AA-8EKRS2 using Intel's i945G.
Intel Pentium 4 LGA755 Socket
1066 MHz FSB
Dual Channel DDR2 667 Support
1x PCI-E X16, 1x PCI-E x1, 2x PCI
Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics II
4x SATA II RAID
Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 Channel Audio
[page=Soltek]
Soltek
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_nf4pro939_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_nf4pro939.jpg)
Powered by NVIDIA's nForce4 Chipset the SL-NF4Pro-939 offers:
AMD64 Socket 939
1000 MHz HTT
Dual Channel DDR 400 Support
1x PCI-E x16, 3x PCI-E x1, 2x PCI
4x SATA RAID
Gigabit Ethernet
7.1 channel Audio
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_855gei_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_855gei.jpg)
For the Pentium4 M the SL-855GEI-FDGR is equipped with Intel's i855GME chipset:
Socket 479 for Intel Pentium 4 M
400 MHz FSB
DDR 333 Support
Integrated ATI Extreme Graphics II
1x AGP 4x, 3x PCI
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
2x ATA 133, 1x ATA 133 Promise RAID
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_r480pro_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/soltek_r480pro.jpg)
The Soltek SL-R480Pro-939 uses ATI's RS480 chipset and ATI's SB400 southbridge:
AMD Socket 939
1000 MHz HTT
Dual Channel DDR 400 Support
Integrated ATI video card
1x PCI-E x16, 3x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
Gigabite Ethernet
4x SATA RAID
7.1 channel Audio
[page=S3]
S3
S3 presented us their brand-new PCI-Express GPU chip called GammaChrome S18.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_products_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_products.jpg)
Image taken from hkepc.com. Not confirmed by S3
In the past some websites speculated that S3 will use a PCI-E bridge chip, this is not the case as we verified. The chip has a native PCI-Express interface with support for x1, x8 and x16.
Full support for DirectX9 (4 pipelines) is included as well as HDTV and video acceleration. As S3 told us, they spent considerable time in improving video output quality for a best multimedia experience.
Their 400 MHz RAMDAC supports resolutions of up to 2048x1536 with two simulaneous outputs (Dual DVI / Dual CRT / CRT&DVI).
A unique feature in that price range is that the video card will support 10-bit-per-color which allows 1024 shades of color compared to only 256 shades of 32-bit display modes. While this is not important to home users (yet) it is a very important feature in scientific and medical applications.
At the moment only DDR1 memory with 128-bits interface is possible, during 2005 support for DDR2 and DDR3 will be added.
Targeted performance is a bit above X600XT levels, with targeted clock speeds of up to 500 MHz core and 450 MHz memory.
S3 says first boards should be available in march for ~$100, Club3D who will produce OmniChrome boards talks about Q3/2005.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_s18nitro_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_s18nitro.jpg)
The "normal" version of the S3 GammaChrome will be called Nitro and uses BGA memory with 400 MHz GPU clock.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_s18pro_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day4/images/s3_s18pro.jpg)
A low cost version of the S18 with TSOP memory, called "Pro", will be available as well. Core clock is 300 MHz.
[page=ATI R520 & SLI]
ATI R520
ATI's new GPU chip R520 is internally called "Fudo". The design has been ready for quite some time now. One source is telling us "the chip is working, now ATI is designing the boards, and after that they have to fix the boards to get them working [laughs]".
The chip is produced using a 90nm process at TSMC and will have 300 to 350 million transistors.
We have confirmed the 24 pipelines rumors from several independant sources. However, these 24 pipelines are not comparable to 24 of today's pipelines - multiply by 1.3. So the 24 pipelines will have the performance of 32 "normal" pipelines.
The result of this is that the R520 will be two times as fast as the currently fastest X850s.
ATI will most probably present the chip in June at Computex, Taiwan.
The most important architectural change is support for the Advanced Driver Model of WGF 1.0 (Windows Graphics Foundation). This is the successor to DirectX9, often called DirectX Next. WGF will be included as standard in Microsoft Longhorn.
WGF offers new exciting features for game developers like "unlimited" shader length, Geometry Shaders, Much lower overhead than DirectX9 and many more.
Existing hardware will support the Basic Model of WGF once the manufacturer writes a driver for it. Features like resource virtualization etc. will only be available when using the Advanced Driver Model. R520 is the first GPU we know of to support it.
Obviously ShaderModel 3.0 is supported by R520 as well.
Memory configurations will be 256-bit memory interface (definitely not 512-bit) with 256 MB and 512 MB GDDR3. The internal registers of R520 support even 1GB memory size. With current GDDR3 prices we will definitely not see a 1GB design at least not in the near future and not for gaming cards. However, this shows that ATI is planning for the future.
The boards will be available in PCI-Express only. When asked about an AGP version, one source said "most probably not". Please note that this is not a definite "no". My guess is that if the market really demands an AGP version, it will be implemented via the Rialto bridge chip.
In the S3 part of this report we talked about OmniChrome supporting 10-bit-per-color display depths, so does R520. HDTV and HDCP output will be supported as well.
Clocks are not finalized yet, but expect something around 700 MHz core and 800 MHz memory (1.25ns).
The first boards will be VERY expensive people are talking $600-$700 range. It all depends on how the graphics memory prices develop in the next months and if TSMC can get good yields out of the 90nm process.
ATI SLI
Not much is known on this topic. Some people say the name is AMR "ATI Multi Rendering", others say MVP "Multi Visual Processing".
Our information differs from source to source. MVP and "neither AMR nor MVP" being the most popular answers.
ATI's technology is superior to NVIDIA's SLI in several ways:
While NVIDIA SLI splits the screen into two parts and one GPU renders each half, ATI's solution breaks the screen into little squares. Remember the chessboard effect you had when pipelines were bad with the softmod?
That's how it is going to work, just on a bigger scale, called "Super Tiling". Any GPU from R300 and up supports Super Tiling in hardware and they can be mixed when in SLI mode.
However, ATI most probably will not enable SLI for GPUs other than the R4xx and R520 series.
ATI's SLI is also not limited to two video cards. There will be one master card which presents the rendered data to the screen and coordinates the slaves which transfer their rendered data into the master's framebuffer. A physical PCB to link the video cards is not required, everything is done via PCI-Express bus.
Continue to Day 5 (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day5).