Computex 2007: Walton Chaintech Review 5

Computex 2007: Walton Chaintech Review

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Walton Chaintech has a large, red booth at Computex with three up and running demo systems. These mainly show off their Apogee memory. Walton Chaintech uses large headspreaders on all of their memory modules, while others only ship the high-end variants with the most elaborate cooling solutions. The first utilizes the red Apogee GT DDR2 memory running at 1100 MHz, CL5-5-5-15 and 2.3V. The second is equipped with the blue Apogee GT DDR3 with a speed of 1333 MHz. There is no mention of the actual CAS latency used in this case. The thrid also has DDR3 as well and features Thermalright cooling, both on the CPU and GeForce 8600 GTS.


As mentioned before, all of the Apogee GT memory uses either red and blue colors to differenciate between DDR2 and DDR3. The first starts at 800 MHz and CL4-4-4-12 and scale up to the 1100 MHz shown in the demo system. The blue DDR3 is available at the usual 1066 MHz at 1.5V and 1333 MHz at 1.6V (+/- 0.1).


Walton Chaintech used to be a well known brand in the mainboard market, but the company exited that segment a few years ago. Besides memory products, they offer NVIDIA graphic cards which still carry the Chaintech brand. You will not find a GeForce 8800 Ultra just yet at their booth, but I was told it will be offered in the future. Their current high-end model is the GeForce 8800 GTX which is fairly reference. The same goes for the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB and the 320MB variant. These cards feature a Chaintech sticker on the reference cooler, while running at the usual speed.


The same trend continues in the mid-range segment. There is a GeForce 8600 GTS, GT and the GeForce 8500 GT. These are all based on the reference design and utilize a reference cooler.


Walton Chaintech also offeres the GeForce 8600 GT with passive cooling. There is a heatpipe connected to a heatsink in the back of the card. The second is a GeForce 8600 GTS with a very elaborate and all copper, dual heatpipe heatsink from Zalman. There is a large fan on top to actively cool the card silently. One interesting aspect to point out is the fact that both cards seem to have a slightly different layout and utilize different type of components than the reference boards.
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Apr 25th, 2024 02:48 EDT change timezone

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