Introduction
The Coputex is the annual computer show in Taipei, Taiwan. In Taiwan you find about 75% of the world’s motherboard manufacturers and a lot of other manufacturers in the computer business as well.
I would like to apologise to A.I.R. , Biostar and several other companies that I didn’t visit. I tried my very best, but I can’t be at two places at the same time. Please don’t hesitate to contact me.
I will list all companies that I have visited in alphabetical order.
Abit was of course one of the no. 1 companies to visit here in Taiwan. They took me to their R&D department to show me that the latest revision of the AN6 is working flawlessly with SCSI host adapters. I’ll receive a sample for my own testing by next week. There’ll soon be a new revision of the PX5, which will run more stable. The next revision of the successful IT5H will include a switching voltage regulator and will eventually enable ECC. We can expect this revision (seemingly 1.7) in August. I can hardly wait for their new board PL5, which is using the new SiS 5582 chipset, that is meant to be at least as fast as the Intel TX chipset. Abit had actually a nice ‘happy hour party’ on Wednesday June 4, but you prabably don’t want to know about this, hehe. I would personally like to thank Michael, R.T. and Florence for taking care of me so nicely.
My visit at AMD’s booth was quite amusing. Although they got a big wall with press comments there, quoting me as number one, nobody at AMD’s booth knew who I was. However who cares about this anyway? The interesting news about how AMD’s doing I get directly from the US and the news are sounding good. If anybody should think that the K6 233 was all that AMD has to offer, or if anybody should think that they are really afraid of the 6x86MX now will proven to be quite wrong. AMD has now cranked up their K6 production and they are doubling the yield monthly now. The original comment is ‘we are currently only producing K6 233 anymore. The quarter micron ‘shrink’ is very close and hence the K6 266 and low voltage (2.8 V or less) versions. The most important thing however is the 100MHz bus speed project of AMD. Have you already forgotten about it? Remember my announcements before the CeBIT? Well, this will be reality in very short time and it will get the Pentium II as well as the 6x86MX into trouble. AMD is also getting on well with their own AGP chipset, so you see there’s still quite a lot to expect from them. Special thanks to Brent, who is one of two company contacts who I consider as my friend.
AOpen took also very good care of me. I spend almost one complete day in their building. They showed me their R&D department and I got several lectures by the directors of the different divisions of AOpen and Acer. This included CDROMs (Acer has a new 24x CDROM) as well as telecommunications (video conferencing, modem and sound hardware). The latest revisions (3.x) of AOpen’s TX motherboards now include switching voltage regulators and the AX5T does now eventually include 83 MHz bus speed settings. AOpen will also produce a SiS 5582 chipset based motherboard soon. Special thanks to James, Jeb, Hunter and Marc.
A lot was going on at Centaur’s/IDT’s booth at the Computex. Everyone wanted to know about their new C6 CPU. Unfortunately there aren’t any 200 MHz samples available yet, so that even the demo systems were only using 150/50 or 180/60 MHz version. However Centaur is very sure that it will be able to supply us with 200 MHz C6 CPUs really soon. The most important thing of the C6 is it’s small size. This fact is responsible for the very low power consumption of the C6 as well as the ability to reach really high clock rates (Centaur is already now talking of >300 MHz). This makes the C6 very interesting for notebooks and at clock rates of more than 300 MHz it will even get into Pentium II performance dimensions. Don’t ask too much of the FPU or MMX unit though. Centaur is honest enough to straight tell you that this CPU was not designed for high end applications that require high FPU power. I’m waiting impatiently for my sample … Thanks to C.J.!
Eventually I was making my contacts with Chaintech. They are a fairly well known and successful mainboard manufacturer here in Europe, but I haven’t heard much of them in the US. Well, this might be subject to change soon. I’m waiting to receive samples soon.
Eventually Cyrix knew who I was this time!! I got a very warm welcome at their booth. Cyrix has assured me that the 6×86 will start shipping in decent numbers very soon. They are very positive that higher clock speeds (which will directly attack the Pentium II) will be reality in a short while. Thanks to Kyle and Graham.
The latest news from FIC are actually not just based on the Computex. I’ve got some new boards of them for testing here, all using VIA chipsets, and these boards are all performing exceptionally well. The PA-2010+, based on VIA’s Apollo VPX chipset is running the new 6x86MX faster than any Intel chipset board, due to the linear burst option. The PA-2011 (latest revision) has got some stability problems with the 6x86MX, but it runs it even faster than the PA-2010+ in case it doesn’t crash. The K6 233 runs on this board also a consioderable bit faster than on Intel chipset based boards. The PA-2007 is as well as the PA-2011 using the VIA Apollo VP2 chipset but it comes with 1 MB L2 cache. This board makes the K6 scream. Now I’m waiting for a new revision of the PA-2011 that runs stable with the 6x86MX and hopefully comes with 1 MB L2 cache onboard as well. Thanks to Richard, although he was horribly busy this time.
ENPC
This company is probably as unknown to you as it was to me. Through one of my sponsors I met their CEO Linus Lee. ENPC is a very young company producing high quality motherboards and they will supply me with test samples soon. Let’s see how good these new motherboards are.
I didn’t visit IBM at the Computex (my apologies), because after I came back from Taipei I was leaving one day later for an invitation of IBM Microelectronics to Geneva for the Design Forum 97. IBM introduced their NPC there as well as their 6x86MX. As most of you know it’s up to IBM to produce enough and fast 6x86MX silicon for supplying Cyrix as well as IBM customers. IBM was sounding very positive as well as Cyrix before, although I don’t appreciate IBM’s policy of putting the 6x86MX CPU down as one of their ‘standard products’. Thanks to Christian, Juerg and Jim, hope I’ll meet John here in Europe in July.
Although I was visiting Intel’s show room in the IWC at the Computex I wasn’t meeting any representative there. I’m happy for my press kit that included a nice CDROM box with MMX logo on it though. The funny thing however was that eventually at VIA’s booth I got the chance to speak to Intel’s ‘Director of Marketing’ Mr. Jag Bolaria. I asked kindly about the chance of testing Intel motherboards and in response I could enjoy a lovely statement: ‘Why don’t you drop me an email where you could tell me why it is of benefit for Intel if you should test our motherboards? You see, we are selling lots of motherboards all over the world, so why do you want to test them? Even though other companies try to compete with us [making an contemptuous gesture towards the showcase with the VIA Apollo VP2 chipset] we don’t have any problems to sell our own products. [….] In case we should agree to a testing, we expect you to send us your results so that we can authorize you to publish them or ask you to not publish them. And by the way, you can buy our motherboards yourself if you really want to have them.‘ I answered him that I don’t really need any more motherboards than I already get from all the other companies that are not afraid of my reviews and hence I’ll probably never know if the Intel motherboards are any good. I only wonder why they want me to tell them my results first. Doesn’t Intel have faith into their own products?
I just wonder why on the one hand really friendly people at Intel want to have a meeting with me, why the German spokesman is so nice to supply me with a Pentium MMX 233 CPU for testing, whilst some guys in that company still act in this kind of incredible arrogance. This talk between me and Mr. Bolaria took place only half a yard from two other press people who followed our whole conversation. They were just as shocked as I was about the attitude of this ‘Director of Marketing’. I really would like to shake hands with Intel and I know that quite a few people of Intel are thinking the same way, however statements as the above are really jeopardizing any good will to think positively about Intel.
Micro Star International (MSI)
MSI si doing pretty well in motherboard reviews here in Germany and if you remeber last year you’ll know that MSI boards were under my top ten motherboards as well. Hence it was about time to start testing them. I made a very nice contact in Taipei, actually a guy from the German division and he’ll supply me with several boards next week. I look forward to testing them.
My visit at Soyo’s booth was really kinda funny. I arrived there and showed my business card and then a German voice was saying ‘Well, well, at last the famous Tom is visiting Soyo here as well!!!’ I sat down to the German Product Marketing Manager and spend about 3 hours with Soyo then. I really wouldn’t have expected this in the first place, but let me tell you what I mean. Soyo (also a very strong motherboard manufacturer in Europe, seemingly not quite as well known in the US as yet) is soon offering a TX chipset (Soket 7) board that comes with a strange thing that looks like a COAST socket. This socket is actually designed for a EDRAM controller module, designed and patented by Soyo. This EDRAM controller switches off the TX chipset’s memory manager as well as the L2 cache and now you can plug in EDRAM into the DIMM or SIMM slots, which is as fast as L2 cache, giving you the L2 cache speed for your whole memory. As long as the EDRAM controller isn’t plugged in, you can use the usual EDO or SDRAM. Now the only current problem is the price of EDRAM (which actually has its own little cache on chip to ensure the higher speed). EDRAM is currently three times the price of EDO RAM. Let’s see if this technology will make it. I sincerely hope so. Soyo is planning to implement this technology on their Pentium II boards as well. Anyway, I can’t wait to test these Soyo boards.
Better late than never!! My long term visitors will remember what trouble I had getting information from SiS about their chipsets. I was totally unsuccessful in establishing contact with SiS for almost a complete year. This has changed now. SiS supplied me with the data book of their latest and eagerly awaited SiS 5582 chipset, which is meant to be faster than the TX chipset from Intel. I guess it’s really about time to update my chipset guide now. SiS is also working on a AGP chipset.
You see I haven’t promised you too much!!! In Taipei I could have a look at the first Tyan boards with 75 and 83 MHz bus speed option! The Socket 7 boards will now also come with switching voltage regulators. It’s actually always a pleasure to go out with the Tyan crew as well, something I know already since my visit to Silicon Valley in April this year. Special thanks to Klaus and Larry!
Last but not least I have to tell you the latest news about this chipset manufacturer. VIA has already been in the news at CeBIT time, when AMD announced their AMD640 chipset, which is based on the VIA Apollo VP2 chipset. Now VIA has shown me their Apollo VP3 chipset which will inlcude AGP for Socket 7 boards. They also got some really good deals with popular motherboard manufacturers now, so that there will be more board with VIA chipset apart from FIC boards very soon. VIA will probably have their VP3 chipset ready at the same time as Intel’s 440LX Pentium II AGP chipset, so that owners of Socket 7 CPUs won’t have to wait using AGP in with their CPUs as well. VIA is also already working in their VP4 chipset, but currently I can’t tell you what new features will be incvluded in it. Special thanks to Sean, my good old buddy!
