Biostar

Biostar is more focusing on the retail enthusiast market now with their T Series motherboards. To make the products more appealing to end users the packaging has been completely redesigned. I really love the light colored elegant approach of the packaging. The colorful highlights (check the full-size version of the image) are embedded using a special process which puts little reflective elements into the paper.


The inside has also been revamped. Inside the mesh bag you will find the accessories very neatly arranged. This is the first time I have ever seen so much love put into making accessories a bit more than just some cables and manuals flying around inside the package. On the right you have some special things like a mobile phone battery charger powered by USB. The charger is universal, adapters for pretty much all cell phones on the market are included.


The TForce4 U 775 uses NVIDIA's nForce4 Intel Edition and looks like it could be a solid budget motherboard for the Intel platform.

• Intel Socket LGA775
• NVIDIA nForce 4 Ultra Intel + nForce 430
• 4x DDR2 667
• 1x PCI-E x16, 4x PCI, 2x PCI-E x1
• 10/100 Ethernet
• 10x USB 2.0
• 4x SATA, 2x UDMA

Intel has announced new chipsets for their Conroe CPUs, the P965 powers the TForce P965.

• Intel Socket LGA775
• Intel P965
• 4x DDR2 800
• 1x PCI-E x16, 3x PCI, 3x PCI-E x1
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 10x USB 2.0
• 6x SATA-II, 1x UDMA

For the AMD side of things the TForce 550 is using the recently announced NVIDIA nForce 550 chipset.

• AMD Socket AM2
• NVIDIA nForce 550
• 4x DDR2 800
• 1x PCI-E x16, 4x PCI, 2x PCI-E x1
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 10x USB 2.0
• 4x SATA-II, 1x UDMA

Also for Socket AM2 but using the older nForce 4 is the TForce4 AM2

• AMD Socket AM2
• NVIDIA nForce4
• 4x DDR2 800
• 1x PCI-E x16, 4x PCI, 2x PCI-E x1
• 10/100 Ethernet
• 10x USB 2.0
• 4x SATA, 2x UDMA

There is also a T Series motherboard with integrated VGA: TForce 6100 AM2

• AMD Socket AM2
• NVIDIA GeForce 6100 + nForce 410
• 4x DDR2 800
• 1x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI, 1x PCI-E x1
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 8x USB 2.0
• 2x SATA-II, 2x UDMA

Except for motherboards, Biostar is also making small form factor barebone cases. There is a wide variety of designs available to fit into your living room style. Not only do they look good but the cases are also very aggressively priced.

ASRock

At the budget motherboard division of ASUS you could find the 939SLI32-eSATA motherboard in an AM2 version. I wonder what use the add-in card CPU port has here, on the regular 939SLI32 the port is used to allow the upgrade to AM2 CPUs which obviously isn't needed here.

• AMD Socket AM2
• ULI M1695
• 4x DDR2 800
• 2x PCI-E x16, 3x PCI, 1x PCI-E x1
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 8x USB 2.0, 1x Firewire
• 4x SATA-II, 2x UDMA

The 775Twins-HDTV seems to be a very promising media PC motherboard. It uses an integrated ATI X300 with on-board HDTV output via component.

• Intel Socket LGA775
• ATI Radeon XPress 200 + ULI M1573
• 2x DDR2 & 2x DDR1
• 1x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI, 1x PCI-E x1
• 10/100 Ethernet
• 8x USB 2.0
• 4x SATA, 2x UDMA

As mentioned before ASRock has implemented a future CPU upgrade port on several of their previous motherboards, including the famous 939Dual-SATA2. The addon card for AMD Socket AM2 has been shown here. It comes with the memory slots on-board because AMD has switched to DDR2 with the new architecture. Please note that the way the card has to be installed limits the use of big aftermarket CPU coolers.

Sapphire

At Sapphire you could see two new HDMI + HDCP capable video cards. The card is a Radeon X1300 with additional logic chips on the PCB that allow the addition of audio which is supplied via SPDIF to be mixed into the HDMI stream. Other solutions, for example a DVI to HDMI converter can neither do HDCP nor audio. The audio input is just an input, it's not an extra sound card.


The yellow connector is the SPDIF input for the audio signal multiplexing. The VGA connector is there for backward compatibility and to make system installations easier, because not all TVs may run at text mode resolutions.


Here you can see the chips Sapphire uses. The big chip on the top is the Silicon Image Sil1930 HDMI transmitter. Below that is an Atmel 8051 microcontroller which is running a custom software that controls the transmitter chip.


In order to make it easier for the visitors to realize what difference HDMI makes, these two TVs were showing the same video. The top TV was connected via HDMI and the bottom TV was running via SCART, which uses a composite signal. Even though you can't see the difference on the photos, in reality the difference was like night and day. These video cards will be available in 2-3 weeks for a price of around $150-170 with 2m HDMI cable included. An AGP version is planned and may become available in the near future.


Another novelty was the Sapphire Blizzard cooling. Sapphire uses a customized version of the Thermaltake Tidewater (our review here). Beyond the visual changes, the fan has been improved, so that it is a lot quieter on the fast setting.
This completely self-contained, pre-filled, maintenance-free system should be an easy way for enthusiasts to get more overclock out of their cards, without losing their warranty. Of course the price will also be very competitive - cheaper than buying the Tidewater and installing it yourself I hear. Right now this is available for the X1900XTX only, but if demand is there, there will be X1800 based Blizzard products as well. A Crossfire version is not possible because there is not enough space for two if these coolers in most cases.


Also on display was this 512 MB USB stick which is supposed to go on the market with an aggressive pricing, but still using high-performance components.