It may seem strange to host an event with Cebit coming up very soon, but Chaintech will not be attending Cebit this year. In place of Cebit they have decided to now host their own show, the ?Chaintech Evolution Event.? This was an event for primarily European resellers and distributors, but Sudhian and a few other US media were fortunate to be able to attend as well. They were able to get speakers from Intel, AMD, VIA, Nvidia, and Microsoft for the event to show off their up and coming products

VIA-

VIA was gearing up for Athlon 64. In the meantime their KT400A chipset will be sampling soon which brings a refined memory controller and official DDR400 support. They are hoping this pushes them over the edge in terms of raw performance against Nvidia?s nForce2. The VIA rep during the presentation was pretty sketchy on their upcoming Pentium chipsets and small form factor plans. We know that VIA has had trouble cracking big into the Pentium IV chipset market because of lack of an official license from Intel despite offering a very competitive product for the price

There was no sign of VIA?s C3 processor anywhere in the presentation. This fact combined with VIA?s inability to scale the C3 processor to competitive speeds makes it likely that we?ll see less focus on the processor in a retail aspect and instead see the C3 emphasized as an integrated device

SiS-

Despite SiS?s recent success with their officially licensed Pentium IV chipsets, the roadmap they displayed at the Evolution Event was a little less promising. SiS is currently shipping their dual-channel DDR333 655 chipset and they hope to release the 655FX sometime in May which will add dual-channel DDR400 support. Although this will bring a nice performance gain and keep up with competing (and more expensive) chipsets from Intel, their roadmap lacked any insight to the transition to the 800MHz FSB which the Pentium IVs will soon have.

The AMD market has been a tricky one for SiS to enter. VIA has continually dominated the Socket A chipset market and with the VIA KT400/A and Nvidia nForce 2 chipsets on the market, it makes their 746 chipset look old. SiS will soon be sampling their 746FX however which will bring modern features such as DDR400 support, 333 FSB, and AGP8x. SiS, like everyone else, was gearing up for the release of Athlon 64. With that date pushed back six months or so, it made for a lot of confusion on SiS?s part.

Chaintech-

Even though Chaintech is one of the top seven motherboard makers and one of the top five VGA makers in the world they are not widely distributed yet in the US. Their recent release of their Zenith 7NJS, which targeted higher end users more than their prior product, has been met with great success across Europe and may soon be showing up more on the local shelves soon. Chaintech has made some good partners along the way and were ready to show off their new products. Even though some delays from AMD with Hammer and Nvidia with their GeFORCE FX Ultra line hindered their event, Chaintech was still able to show off some impressive technology and share their ideas for the future.

Chaintech?s Zenith line of motherboards seems to be the wind beneath their wings into the high end global market of motherboards. The sales of the Zenith are 5-7% of their total sales and are about three times the amount that was predicted to sell. This is the main stimulus that is allowing Chaintech to slowly push up their position in the market.

The Zenith 8VJS looked to be the big release for Chaintech but with the delay from AMD on Hammer Chaintech took the board back to the engineers who now have an extra six months to work on it. Before the setback the board was based on the K8T400M chipset with the VT8235 south bridge. It was set to include 2 DIMM slots, AGP 8x, gigabit LAN and serial ATA RAID. USB 2.0, Firewire and SPDIF audio.

There was also a Hammer Apogee board based on the Nvidia Crush K8 line. It was set to include 2 DIMM slots, AGP 8x, 10/100 LAN, USB 2.0, Firewire and SPDIF audio. AMD?s decision to delay Athlon 64 until September really put a big thorn into the party. The major focus of the Chaintech event was to promote their Athlon 64 boards and we were even told we would be able to take a sample home. However, without an Athlon 64 processor, the board would do us little good. With the massive delay, it is likely that something will change on the existing boards.

Fortunately we were able to talk with the AMD rep at the Event and here is what he had to say about the reasons for the Athlon 64 delay:

• A holiday launch is better for sales.
  
• Integrated graphics would increase in availability on Hammer boards.
  
• The Athlon 64 and the Hammer mobile platform will be release at same time.
  
• A release of Hammer now would just be in direct competition with Barton

The GeFORCE FX 5800 Ultra turned out to be the biggest product at the event and rightly so. Even with the rumors around the net that the ultra line may be cancelled or severely limited, Chaintech has something to show off and it will either be released with their Ultra card or soon after.

The biggest complaint with the Nvidia line of FX cards is the noise. Chaintech worked hard on this complaint and from the pictures you can tell that their cooling system is very different. They make use two fans that filter the system air for cooling.  This allows the sound to be greatly decreased. Chaintech claims the sound to be in the low 30s db and the rpm of the fans to 3000.  This is opposed to the 60s db of NVIDIA?s card.  Chaintech also claims that because the fans filter the system air, that in their tests it has cooled the system temperate on average of three degrees.  I should also mention that even as cool as the lighting is on the card it will not fit into most SFFs because of the additional slot the FX cards require.

Even though the current delay of Hammer and the possible problems with Nvidia and the GeFORCE FX 5800 Ultra, Chaintech was able to put on an informative event and show off what they can do.

I would like to thank Chaintech for hosting the event. It is always good to meet new people from the industry and have new experiences. Listed below are the delegates from tech-report, amdmb, hardocp, and monkeyreview.

 

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