Asus Announces Xtreme Design Motherboard Series

Motherboard design hasn't changed that much in the 15 or so years I've been building computers. Sure, there've been a few tweaks here and there—out with AGP and in with PCI Express, out with LGA775 and here's LGA1366 coming now—but the same basic ideas have always applied. With the new Xtreme Design series it announced on Monday, Asus wants you to believe those days are coming to an end. We're not so sure, although if the series lives up to its promises there could be some noticeable gains for serious system builders and overclockers.

The changes start with the introduction of the Stack Cool3+ cooling system. This copper-heatpipe system builds on the unique Stack Cool2 mechanism used on the P5E64 WS, using an enhanced, eight-layer printed circuit board (PCB) instead of that system's six-layer version. Asus says that the extra layers improve regulation of the motherboard's operating temperature and can increase heat dissipation by up to 17 percent.

Also new is the Xtreme phase feature, which stabilizes and optimizes power delivery based on the current processing load, and a Turbo V software interface that works with a processor on the mainboard to let you overclock by dynamically adjusting clock speed and other variables. Asus says this feature alone can increase processing throughput by up to 51 percent. You may be able to achieve another performance boost with the new Turbo Key, which lets you automatically configure your system for different performance profiles with a single click.

And yet another claim: Xtreme Design series boards achieve an unusually low Electrostatic Discharge by way of exclusive antistatic chip, circuit, and I/O shield designs that mitigate negative health impact and potential damage to components. Asus brags that the Xtreme Design series boards pass "stringent" EMI testing that's 30 percent more rigorous than standard industry benchmarks.

Maybe it's just a case of first-impression-itis, but most of these new features don't seem like particular game-changers. True, everyone is concerned with safety, for themselves and their components, and in tough economic times, maximizing energy usage and squeezing every drop out of every CPU cycle is nice. But overclocking profiles on their own aren't big news, and some of these performance gains demand testing before we believe them.

That, however, will have to wait. We couldn't convince Asus to tell us when any of these motherboards would be released. The best we could get out of the company was that the P6TD Deluxe—a revamped version of the P6T Deluxe, one of the earliest (and best-selling) Core i7–ready boards—and the upcoming M4A785TD-M EVO, based on AMD's 785G chipset and utilizing "some" Xtreme Design technology, will be available at roughly the same time. If we had to guess, we'd say within the next few months, but that's purely speculation based on the fact that we can't imagine this much information being made public about a motherboard series that wasn't ready to hit fairly soon.

At least Asus supplied us with some specs for the P6TD Deluxe. They include:

Exclusive Photos: Asus Demos First Intel P55–Based Boards

Intel's X58 chipset is the platform of choice for enthusiasts, but Intel serves a heck of a big audience. To please that larger crowd and bring down prices, the company is planning a mainstream iteration of its Nehalem architecture: the P55 chipset, codenamed Ibex Peak. It's designed to work with the forthcoming Lynnfield CPUs, and offers performance close to LGA1366 chips at a much cheaper price. Intel claims it should be a leap ahead of dual core, and Asus confirmed some of those performance numbers for us. Asus claims to have run its new boards with engineering samples of the Core i5-750 at a 77 percent overclock, boosting speeds from 2.66 GHz to 4.7 GHz. Asus admits this wasn't necessarily stable, but still—that's fast. And on liquid cooling, the boards reportedly hit speeds of 5.1 GHz.

The P55 chipset brings with it some bad and some good news. On the bad front, in my opinion, is a new socket: the LGA1156. That's right, something new even though Core i7 motherboards just introduced a new socket of their own last fall—LGA1366, also called Socket B. The two sockets will coexist for a while, since the new LGA1165 wasn't designed as a replacement. Intel explains that a new socket was necessary to handle the new processors' features (such as integrated graphics, and so on) which the LGA1366 isn't equipped for—the logic being that anyone likely to want a high-end 1366 processor probably isn't going to feel any particular need for integrated graphics. As one of those target users, I have to admit I can understand that! That said, the introduction of CPUs with integrated graphics isn't coming as a surprise to Intel. It seems like the company could have designed a single chipset that would support both types of CPU, making life easier for users, manufacturers, and third-party developers (of, say, CPU coolers).

All of this won't really be announced and demonstrated until later this year, but manufacturers aren't waiting around, and we're as eager as you to see this stuff. Thank you, Asus. Company reps dropped by last week to show off Asus's P55 offerings.

The P7P55D series won't officially be out until sometime this Fall, but we got an early look at the line of boards, which will start in the mid-$100s and run over $200, depending on which features the board includes. Asus will also offer P55-based boards in its Republic of Gamers line. Off the bat, you'll notice Asus has changed the way its boards are named: Names start as they use to, with a P and a number that indicates the socket design—P6 for LGA1366, P5 for LGA775, and so on. Immediately following that is the actual chipset name, a big change for the company; the old naming convention had a letter that designated the chipset, such as "Q" for the P45. A second major change is the suffix "T" on a motherboard that supports only DDR3 even though the chipset has both DDR2 and DDR3 capability; in the past, it would be a "3" such as on the P5Q3 Deluxe.

Speaking of names, the "D" in the product name indicates that this series of boards will be part of the Xtreme Design series, which boasts a slew of extra features that may (or may not) evolve motherboard design. What we saw were a handful of welcome design additions that demonstrate smart engineering and should aid ease of use, such as the new T.Probe, a chip that keeps heat levels uniform across the board by monitoring the temperature of the board's mosfets in realtime. This chip can dynamically regulate their powerphases to ensure mosfets don't run too hot, which prolongs their lifetime and that of your board. Other features: the Stack Cool3+ system (Asus has added extra layers of silicon and copper to certain areas of the board for more effective cooling and heat dissipation), and Turbo.V overclocking, a hardware system to ensure consistent and safe overclocking—I'll describe it in a bit more detail shortly.

What we really like is Q-Design, a catch-all term to describe smarter placement of connectors and slots. You'll note in the slideshow that just a single tab holds each DIMM in place—that makes sense, no? And the tabs that secure cards in PCI Express x16 slots have been redesigned for easier access. You'll also find actual toggles on the motherboard rather than jumpers, and start-up LEDs for various components (CPU, RAM, etc.) to simplify troubleshooting. Nice work, Asus!

The basic board in the line, the Asus P755D, supports DDR3 2133 (an overclocked speed), the LGA1156 socket, 3-Gbps SATA, AMD's CrossFireX, and other good stuff. Plus there's all the fun of Asus' Xtreme Design features: The Turbo.V EVO overclocking processor, which had been a software feature, is now embedded in hardware. It auto-tunes CPU and memory speeds,through real-time overclocking of voltages and frequencies, by overclocking your system until it blue-screens and then stepping everything back to the maximum stable levels. Another proprietary chip, the EPU (or energy processing unit), is a real-time auto-optimized power management chip that regulates CPU, memory, fans, and other things. According to Asus, it can save 10 to 30 watts by running parts of your system in power-saving modes.

Moving up the line, look for the Asus P7P55D Pro, which adds a Gigabit Ethernet chip to the mix, and the P7P55D EVO, a higher-end model that adds SLI support and dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers. Finally, enthusiasts will flock to the P755D Deluxe, which adds 16+3 onboard memory and a Turbo.V wired remote, which attaches to a dedicated header on the motherboard and adds real-time control of the turbo key speed booster, the CPU bus speed, and the EPU chip.

Radeon HD 4770--The First 40nm Desktop GPU

We certainly recommend that people interested in playing modern games on their PC prioritize putting in a good graphics card. Not everyone needs or wants a big power-hungry $400 pixel-pushing monster, but the $200–$250 price point seems to be the sweet spot in terms of the price/performance ratio and overall game-playing satisfaction.

Still, not everyone can go that route—or wants to. Many people have older systems, and don't want to spend a lot of money when most of their games will be limited by a slow CPU or limited RAM. Some are on a limited budget. Others have a system that the OEM provided with a modest power supply that can't run what we would call "mid-range" graphics cards.

And of course, there's the OEM market: pre-built PCs. Even in some of the pricier configurations, most system builders will boost CPU speed, RAM, or hard drive capacity while still including a fairly entry-level graphics card.

Whatever the reason, the least "interesting" but highest volume of sales for PC graphics happens in the <$100 price range. Thanks to a new 40nm manufacturing process and the use of GDDR5, ATI's new Radeon HD 4770 manages to bring impressive performance to the $99 price point.

A Pair of Overclocked Radeon HD 4890 Cards

Not long ago, ET editor Jason Cross took a close look at AMD's new Radeon HD 4890 graphics card. AMD's latest graphics offspring is pitted against several cards in Nvidia's lineup, including overclocked GeForce GTX Core 216 cards and the more recently released GeForce GTX 275.

When the original 4890 shipped, ATI suggested that substantial headroom for both core and memory overclocking existed. They noted that, while the architecture was the same as the older Radeon HD 4870, a lot of tweaks were made at the engineering level to more easily dissipate heat, minimize voltage leakage, and other pesky issues. In other words, they were encouraging factory overclocked cards.

Today, we look at a pair of these cards: the XFX Radeon HD 4890 XT and the Diamond Multimedia Radeon HD 4890 XOC. Both cards use the AMD-designed, stock cooler. The XFX card clocks the core frequency up to 875MHz, a paltry 25MHz, and pushes the memory clock 100MHz, to 3.9GHz QDR (as compared to the default 3.8GHz). Diamond is a little more aggressive with the core clock, pumping it to 925MHz, as well as driving the memory to 4.2GHz QDR.

Which of these cards are better? That's not a simple question. Setting clock speeds is often a delicate dance between core and memory clocks. If a mismatch exists between memory and core multipliers, you could see stalls in the pipeline as the GPU waits for memory to feed it data. Then there's the issue of cost: usually, highly overclocked cards cost more.

AMD Improves Graphics in New 785G Chipset

Word of AMD's newest chipset has leaked all over the Web more completely than water from a shattered glass. With this morning's launch, the new 785G chipset is officially released. It's AMD's latest mainstream offering, which aims to bring affordable performance to a wide range of desktop PCs—especially forthcoming ones running Windows 7.

So what's new, relative to last year's 780G chipset? The biggest news is improved graphics; the older chipset used the Radeon HD 3200 graphics, while the current one updates to HD 4200, enabling the motherboard to support DirectX 10.1. The new chipset also updates the HDMI port, from HDMI 1.2 to HDMI 1.3. The 785G chipset is in most respects pretty similar to the 780G, carrying around 205 million transistors and 40 stream processors; it's also built using the same 55nm process technology.

A quick peek at the block diagram reveals all the connections you'd expect: The 785G supports PCI Express graphics, 3-Gbps SATA connections as well as USB 2.0, and HD audio. It would be nice to see support for USB 3.0, but you wouldn't expect to see a cutting-edge technology like that in a mainstream chipset.

We spoke with Adam Kozak, Desktop Marketing Manager for AMD, about the new chipset. He explained that a lot of the company's efforts had gone into building in support for Windows 7, which AMD understands is very important: "We recognized that inflection point and realized we needed a product for that timeline. One of the things with AMD, there's a lot around this, and our driver schedules and everything are part of the proof that we value this transition. That's why you'll get the WHQL drivers way ahead of launch. We've worked hard with Microsoft to ensure that all these features work. It's been a long process to get to where we are now."

If the 785G chipset doesn't sound like a particularly interesting update, that may be because it's so focused on improving the Windows 7 experience for everyone. It allows for better dynamic power savings, and the nicest, out-of-the-box graphics and 3D animations on budget or midrange computers—requiring (comparatively) a lot less juice than Vista did at launch.

Boards using the 785G chipset also support ATI Stream technology, which will provide noticeable performance boosts in software written to take advantage of it, such as Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft PowerPoint. This list should include Windows 7's Accelerated Video Transcoding feature, which allows for hardware-supported on-the-fly video transcoding. AMD has shipped a proprietary app to enable this feature in the past, called the Avivo Video Converter. Windows 7 incorporates this functionality directly into the OS.

The graphics improvements in the 785G chipset also result in more vibrant, realistic colors, as well as improved HD video playback and post processing. This makes the chipset a good choice for those thinking of building home theater PCs. AMD admits the 785G, like the 780G before it, isn't intended for power users and gamers—its graphics capabilities are well-suited for mainstream titles like World of Warcraft and The Sims 3, but not for power-sucking FPSes—but for lower-level builds along those lines, it could be a well-suited, economical choice. (AMD says that good Athlon II X2 CPU and 785-G–based motherboard combos can be had for under $200.)

Look for motherboards from Asus, Asrock, Biostar, Gigabyte, MSI, and others immediately.

Intel P55 Details Emerge: Nvidia Nside

We've been awaiting the arrival of Intel's forthcoming Lynnfield chips as hungrily as you have, so every little detail that sneaks out gives us something to gnaw upon. Today, Nvidia announced that Intel—as well as a slew of major hardware partners such as ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI—have licensed the company's SLI technology for inclusion in upcoming products. This means the chipsets that power those new socket LGA 1156 motherboards, which are based around the next-gen Nehalem architecture, will let you build systems using two or four Nvidia-powered GPUs.

Details on this next generation of boards has been slowly leaking out, as companies like MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus ready their product lineups. I've included a photo of the forthcoming ASUS P7P55D Deluxe motherboard, which will be among the first P55 based boards to hit the market.

This announcement is the latest in a series of power plays between the two companies, which reached a head back in February. At the time, the two sparred over whether Nvidia could make chipsets that work with Intel's next-generation microprocessors. Nvidia claimed that a 2004 agreement with Intel allowed it to do so; Intel alleged that the four-year-old chipset license agreement between the two companies did not extend to its Nehalem products. Intel sued Nvidia, Nvidia promptly countersued, and a battle was born….which quickly ended.

This announcement seems to indicate a fresh agreement (though no word on new Nvidia chipsets), but it's not all wine and roses. Several web sites are reporting that in the upcoming Intel chipsets, GPUs will be limited to 8 lanes of data, rather than the 16 lanes supported through a specific Nvidia chip.

Nevertheless, hardware manufacturers certainly seems excited by the news. "Since NVIDIA introduced it back in 2004, SLI has become required equipment for any serious gaming platform" said Kelt Reeves, President of Falcon Northwest. "Clearly the combination of the Intel P55 chipset, Core i5 or i7 processor, and SLI will be the dominant recipe for any high-performance PC from this point forward."

Sure, that's good news for those who tend towards the Nvidia side of the gaming world, but what about ATI/AMD fans—and yes, there are still a few people out there who believe in the power of AMD chips. No word from AMD about where you can use your Crossfire cards, but you can certainly use Nvidia cards on systems built for AMD processors.

AMD's New Top-End: Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition

You have to give AMD credit for its resilience. Strictly in terms of innovation, the company has been lagging behind Intel for a while now, getting a few swift kicks where the thermal grease don't shine from releases like last year's Core i7 line of Nehalem-architecture CPUs to run with the X58 chipset. AMD's saving grace, with processors across the performance range, has been its price—for a while now you've been able to get a top-performing AMD CPU for a lot less than you could a super-fast Intel one. But now Intel's upcoming Core i5 chips and P55 chipset (with the capacity for Nvidia technology) promise to bring that Nehalem performance into the mainstream—and that could cause problems for price leader AMD.

Or maybe not. Undercutting the competition's pricing structure is always extra sweet if you have additional room to maneuver. And if you thought AMD didn't, based on its release of the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU back in April, think again. That 3.2-GHz, quad-core unlocked processor started at $250. The one AMD released today, the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, is priced only slightly lower ($245), but offers a slightly faster clock speed (3.4 GHz). If this isn't primed to supercharge all the Dragon platform PCs out there, it should give a nice little nudge for performance junkies who really want every extra bit of speed they can get.

Don't expect the 965 Black Edition to deliver much in the way of additional surprise, however. The silicon itself hasn't changed at all from the 955, so most of the specs haven't really changed that much. This maximum TDP on this chip is slightly higher (140W), however, and AMD estimates that its overall power draw shouldn't be that much different from what the 955 put out. The company's own testing suggests better overclocking; we imagine the extra 200MHz of stock speed probably doesn't hurt much in that department.