THERE WAS A story at Digitimes about a week ago about ASMedia, an Asus subsidiary getting ready to launch its own USB 3.0 host controller, which went on to suggest that Asus was getting ready to move away from NEC/Renesas and go with its controller instead. We can now confirm that Asus is indeed going to start implementing the ASMedia controller on some of its upcoming motherboard models.
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IF YOU’RE a regular SemiAccurate reader, you’ll most likely have read about Gigabyte’s On/Off Charge feature. Well, Asus is readying its own version called Ai Charge, although it seems to have some slight differences from what we understand compared to Gigabyte’s On/Off Charge for Apple devices.
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EARLIER TODAY ASUS revealed its AMD 800-chipset range of motherboards and unleashed no less than 12 different models based on the 880G, 870, 890GX and 890FX chipsets, well, that’s if you don’t count the ROG board. There actually was also a 14th board, but it wasn’t using an AMD chipset, yet we’ll give you what we’ve got on that board, too, towards the end of what is a very picture rich coverage of today’s event.
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ONE PROBLEM THAT many owners of Apple’s iPad have found – if they don’t own a recent Apple computer that is – is that it only charges from a USB port when it’s switched off. Even so, it only trickle charges, just like Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. Well, a solution is at hand from Gigabyte, as the company has just announced its new on/off charge feature and we got an early look at it.
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ATI IS ON A ROLL, having taped out its next generation GPU family called Southern Islands. ATI might call it the HD6xxx series, and it could be out before Nvidia gets its GTX4xx line of GPUs fully fleshed out and to market.
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MORE DETAILS ABOUT Gigabyte’s upcoming GA-890FXA-UD7 motherboard have tipped up online and this XL-ATX motherboard is the first motherboard outside of EVGA to use this slightly longer ATX form factor. This is far from a standard mainboard form factor and only a handful of cases will be able to accommodate the extra length.
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NOW THIS IS interesting. After Intel “gave away” its motherboard design business and manufacturing to Foxconn, as it wasn’t cost effective enough for Intel to design and manufacture its own branded motherboards, it now appears that Intel has decided to pull out of what is potentially one of the biggest markets in the world, namely China.
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LAST WEEK WE reported about AMD’s Turbo Core, which is a feature of the upcoming Thuban based processors that allows half of the cores to go into idle mode while the remaining cores are overclocked to boost the performance for poorly threaded applications. It now appears that Asus isn’t satisfied with the performance boost on offer, nor the fact that it’s limited to Thuban CPU’s, so Asus has gone and done its own version called Turbo Unlocker.
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DEPITE THE FACT that Apple once again went with Nvidia graphics solutions for its updated MacBook Pros it looks like Apple and AMD are considering a much closer relationship than they’ve had so far. At least if we’re to believe a story from Apple Insider which is suggesting that Apple and AMD are in talks about Apple using AMD’s processors and chipsets in upcoming machines.
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INTEL APPEARS TO BE be sticking with its two tier CPU socket system for the foreseeable future, as details of Intel’s X58 platform replacement have made their way online. The upcoming LGA1155 platform with the Cougar Point chipset and the Sandy Bridge DT processors will target the entry level and mainstream market, while the Patsburg chipset and the Sandy Bridge E processors should use a new LGA2011 socket for the high-end market space.
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NVIDIA SEEMS TO BE telling porkies again, this time in an area where it is quick to criticize others. Its OpenGL 4.0 driver promises once again suggest that honesty is not a core corporate value at Nvidia.
Updated: They are out, sort of.
Updated 2x: Failed by 2 weeks according to their own words.
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ALTHOUGH SOMEWHAT BEHIND its main competitor, AMD has today revealed its Turbo Core technology that allows for automatic overclocking of CPU cores under the right conditions. It will only apply to AMD’s upcoming Thuban based Phenom II processor, although we’re fairly certain that we’ll see this technology making its way into other product lines from AMD in the future.
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IT LOOKS LIKE Nvidia’s legendary honesty is matched only by its counting skills, at least that is what it looks like after the GTX470 and GTX480 launch numbers leaked. If you believed the 30,000 number, well, it was off by a lot.
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WE ALSO MANAGED to dig up some pictures of MSI’s upcoming 870A-G54 AM3 motherboard which is based on AMD’s 870 chipset and SB850. This looks set to be MSI’s first AMD motherboard with support for both USB 3.0 and SATA3 6Gbps, although the latter is of course a standard feature of AMD’s SB850.
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OUT OF THE three big motherboard manufacturers, MSI has been the most reluctant to add onboard USB 3.0 and SATA3 support to its motherboards, but the company is now getting ready to launch its first product with both features and it looks like it will be an Intel P55 based motherboard.
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