All on display at Computex

Jun 2, 2010 12:34 GMT  ·  By

The multitude of tablets and other mobile electronics on show at the expo currently going on in Taipei did not exactly take anyone by surprise, since it was only natural for the Tegra 2 SoC, the Qualcomm Snapdragon and Intel's Moorestown, among others, to spawn such prototypes. What did come as something of a surprise was a certain platform whose chipset isn't going to become commercially available until early next year.

It was ASRock that first brought out a motherboard powered by the upcoming Intel P67 chipset. This core-logic is the one that will support the Santa Clara CPU maker's Sandy bridge CPU series, the next generation of 32nm chips with integrated graphics. Now, the bandwagon brought along by the hardware maker has been joined by ASUS, MSI, ECS and even Gigabyte.

The MSI and ASUS boards each have two PCI Express x16 slots, four DDR3 memory slots, USB 3.0 connectivity, the LGA 1155 socket, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 channel audio and, most importantly, SATA 6.0Gbps connectors. Furthermore, the ASUS model features a 14-phase power design, whereas the other uses 8+1 Hi-c CAP PWM. The platforms developed by ECS are mostly similar to these models. As for Gigabyte's so-called GA-SB, this model comes with a single PCI Express and four memory slots.

It is quite interesting that so many prototypes would be demonstrated, even though the actual chipset won't arrive for quite some time. It can also be noted that none of the models showcased so far can really be considered true enthusiast grade, simply because they have limited expansion capabilities. On the other hand, they integrate USB 3.0, even though the chipset doesn't natively support it. This means that, at the very least, the mainboards are somewhat future-proof. At least, until 2011 arrives, end-users will have enough time to save up for not just such a motherboard, but also a new CPU, since the LGA 1155 socket won't be compatible with existing units.