Computex Taipei 2006 Coverage Day 0 - EPoX
Bluetooth 5 June 2006
EPoX
EPoX introduces a number of high end boards for Intel and AMD platform. For the
AMD platform, there are ATi RD580+SB600 mainboard, NF590 SLI mainboard. For the
Intel platform, the new boards will be based on 965P chipset supporting the
upcoming Conroe processor. There is also a RC410+SB600 board that supports
Conroe too.
Lets take a look at the AMD boards first.
EPoX MD580 XR (ATi RD580)
AM2 mainboard
We saw this earlier in our CeBIT coverage. IT was with a weird looking heatsink
then. With this new Optimus heatsink, it promises better heat dissipation and
definitely makes the boards outstanding among all the other offerings.
This mainboard is based on the ATi RD580 + SB600. As we all know, SB600 was
launched in May to replace the ULi 1575 which is highly 'sought' after. ATi has
definitely sped up its development of the Southbridge and it is ready to strike
back.
This board supports 4 DDR2-800 modules up to
16GB. It has 2 PCIex16 and supports CrossFire. It also has a
One x4 lanes A-Link Express interface (PCI Express
1.0a compliant) for connection to the IXP600. There are 8 USB ports,
1IDE+4SATAII by SB and 1IDE+2SATAII by Jmicron 363. GbE and 8 ch audio is on
board. Overclocking features is definitely the tradition of EPoX boards. This
board is claimed to be a super overclocker, managing up to 1.5GHz HTT. (without
the need to lower the HT multiplier of 5x)
CPU Socket:
Support Socket-AM2 (940 pin) based AMD Athlon-AM2 2GTs 16X16 Hyper Transport
processors
Support VMM (Virtualization-Machine-Monitoring)
System Memory:
Four 240-pin unbuffered non-ECC DDR II SDRAM
DIMM sockets
Support single-sided or double-sided 1.8v DDR II-533/667/800 DIMMs with dual
channel architecture in 256/512Mb/1Gb technologies
Support up to 16 GB system memory
Support Asynchronous clocking mode between FSB and DIMM
Chipset：
ATi RD580 + IXP600 chipset
(ATi RD580 colayout RD550)
Expansion Slots:
Three PCI connectors compliant with PCI v2.2
Two PCI Express (x1) connectors compliant with PCI Express 1.0a
Two PCI Express (x16) connectors compliant with PCI Express 1.0a to support ATi
Crossfire technology
One x4 lanes A-Link Express interface (PCI Express 1.0a compliant) for
connection to the IXP600
USB:
Eight USB connectors compliant with USB2.0 from embedded USB controller (4
connectors at rear panel).
P-ATA IDE:
One IDE ports (up to 4 IDE devices) with UDMA-33, ATA-66/100/133 support from
embedded IDE controller.
S-ATA RAID:
Four S-ATA ports with up to 150MB/s from chipset with RAID 0,1,0+1 support.
More S-ATA and P-ATA IDE :
Two S-ATA II ports and One P-ATA port from JMicron’s JMB363 PCI Express to 2S1P
controller and e-SATA support. (Optional)
LAN:
One Gigabit Ethernet from Marvell 88E8055 PCI-E controller (Co-Layout with
88E8056/88E8038)
Audio:
Selectable 2, 6 or 8-CH audio from ALC883 (colayout ALC880/861) HDA compliant
CODEC with 20-bit ADC and 24-bit DAC
Support Aux-In, CD-In, S/PDIF-in and S/PDIF-out
Coaxial S/PDIF-out available on rear panel
Support Jack detection for fool-proof audio device installation
I/O:
Onboard EPoX EP-1308 LPC I/O controller
Legacy peripheral interface for PS/2 keyboard & mouse, FDD, COM, IrDA (v1.0
compliant), …
Support Hardware Monitoring function such as fan speed monitoring and CPU
temperature sensing.
Intelligent fan speed control for CPU-fan (PWM) and Chassis-fan for quiet
operation
Support GHOST BIOS
BIOS:
4Mb Flash EEPROM with Award Plug & Play BIOS
Support EZ Boot for fast bootable device selection
Support Magic Health for system hardware status report during system boot-up
Special Features:
Support KBPO (Keyboard Power ON) function
Support Wake-On-LAN by PME
Onboard Ledion display
Support CPU Over Heat protection
Support CPU, Chassis and Power FAN speed control.
Support Thermo stick digital thermometer
Onboard EZ-Button for convenient power-on
PowerBIOS for excellent over clocking features:
Support Asynchronous FSB/DIMM timing mode
Support BIOS adjustable CPU clock and voltage, DIMM frequency and voltage
settings.
Powerful utilities for Windows:
Thunder Probe for system hardware monitoring
Magic Flash for BIOS update without requiring DOS flash utility and bootable
diskette
Magic Screen for personal bootup screen design
Discuss
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