Computex 2006: Abit is back, Biostar expands, and Thermaltake dazzles
by Gary Key on June 10, 2006 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
We spoke at length with Tomasz Swatowski, Marketing Assistant Manager; Kenny Tseng, VGA Marketing; and Jason Li, Marketing Specialist during our visit with Biostar. Biostar has been in existence since 1986 and has a long history of providing good products at very competitive price points. They have recently branched into the video card market with a wide array of offerings, and they continue to offer new SFF systems.
Their current focus is on expanding their business by offering higher quality products targeted towards the gamer and enthusiast markets. This includes top of the line NVIDIA based video cards along with higher end motherboards in the performance sector with their TForce series of products. Our recent review of their TForce 590 SLI Deluxe board certainly impressed us with the strides they have made recently in addressing this growing market segment.
Biostar: Intel Motherboards
While Biostar offers a wide variety of AMD based products, their focus at Computex was clearly on the Core 2 Duo boards.
Biostar was one of several manufacturers demonstrating the reference NVIDIA SLI 590 board with full support for Core 2 Duo.
One of the more interesting boards we saw was the Biostar G965 Micro 775 board featuring the Intel 965G (X3000 integrated graphics) and ICH8 chipsets. Although Intel will not be ramping up the 965G chipset production until August, it appears that Biostar is one of the first to have working samples available for display.
Biostar's budget minded Intel chipset board is the 946PL 775 featuring the Intel 946PL and ICH7 chipsets.
Biostar is offering two different VIA based boards that support Core 2 Duo with the P4M890-MY PCI-E board sporting the VIA P4M890 (IGP) Northbridge and VT8237R+ Southbridge. Expect this board and the more performance oriented PT890 775 (for VIA) to be available around the US $45~$55 price points.
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soydios - Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - link
Does anybody know when we can expect to begin seeing Socket AM2 motherboards based on RD580 in the retail channels? I'm still waiting for the M2R32-MVP. =\Gary Key - Thursday, June 15, 2006 - link
End of June for MSI and ECS, probably a week or so later for Asus. These schedules might change but they are still working with ATI on bios improvements.
Pythias - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Thats a lot of juice. I though the industry was headed towards power conservation....poohbear - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
man abit needs to drop that Fatl1ty nonsense if they're trying to cater to enthusiasts. who's gonna buy an overpriced mobo just because of some gamers name attached to it?! we're not rabid teenagers who have a loyal following to some pop star like computer geek, we're mostly in our 20s/30s, so start catering to adults w/ quality mobos that dont need some geeks name attached to it to stand out. Let the quality and features speak for themselves please, not "fatal1tys" name. have they even done any market research to see if ppl actually buy products because of this guys name attached to em?darklight0tr - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
I agree. In fact, I avoid any product that has the Fatal1ty name on it, no matter how good it looks. All of these companies think gamers slobber over the name Fatal1ty, when in fact they don't give a crap. We want quality products, not marketing pieces.Gary Key - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
I agree also, this is all marketing and you will see more FataL1y products from Zalman and others in the near future. I would just assume Abit use the color scheme on the boards, add a couple of PCI slots, lower the price, and call it a day. However, these companies assume his name has leverage in the marketplace, whether it does or not, only Abit and others will know at the end of the day.
Abit recognizes this to some degree which is why they will be promoting the Max line heavily into the upper market tier segments. While the board needs a couple of PCI slots, I can tell you it has reached 435FSB with a "B" revision Conroe. ;-)
Missing Ghost - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
sincerely, I don't see what's the big deal about the products they show. They all seem to have ugly layouts and bad design choices.cornfedone - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
All of these new, useless, over-priced mobos are intended for what? As noted by others, the mobos don't have a practical number of USABLE PCI slots, the prices are way excessive, you can bet they will have long lists of defects based on virtually all Asian designed consumer mobos shipped in the past three or more years and there will be little if any customer support for the malfunctioning mobos customers will be stuck with if they purchase these POS. Instead of fixing the defective mobos properly the mobo companies will crank out new POS to great fanfare by the hardware review sites.It's as if the mobo makers are working in a vacuum and don't care that their products do not meet consumer demands and that they don't function properly. I say they can keep their defective products as I don't need them.
koomo - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
The PC world is increasingly becoming a common consumer item, and seems just a few years away from joining VCRs and microwave ovens as disposable-when-broken houseware.Conroe and the K8L seem like logical, traditional progression along the better/faster/cheaper curve.
But now we're looking at 1000W power supplies? How will the PC gaming developers handle this, with a smaller-and-smaller piece of the overall video gaming pie requiring such power-hungry and expensive toys?
I'll take a PC game over a console any day, but I wonder it would be best to take a holiday for a year on the latest software/hardware until the future lower-energy video cards are supposedly due. And in the meantime, spend more time playing boardgames with VASSAL ;)
dhei - Saturday, June 10, 2006 - link
Another day, another voltron inspired case. Honestly are people buying these? Or is this some sick joke from case manufactors. I want the guy who started this trend to be fired.:)Hey Thermaltake, 1960s Sc-fi movies called, they want there computer props back.