Our main criticism with Biostar in the past is PCIe and feature placement.  On one series of products, Biostar has to a certain extent listened – the Z68 series have spaces between the PCIe x16 and space for a PCIe 1x and PCI.  However, the video outputs on the TZ68A+ are all spread out – meaning a lack of USB ports (two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0), only 2.1 channel audio, and no space for multiple LAN connections.  The SATA ports are also odd:

The TA990FXE however goes the other way – the video outputs are nicely positioned, as well as the SATA ports.  But the board offers four full length PCIe all next to each other and no other PCIe available if two dual slot GPUs are used.

Jetway has been producing motherboards for quite a while – if you’ve ever searched Newegg, you’ll find a few products in various categories and price points.  In terms of recent developments, Jetway has surprisingly produced a P67 and a Z68 board – what they deem their ‘Hummer’ series for their enthusiast consumers.  Two main features stand out when looking at the board – one if they have the rights to use the Hummer name in North America, and two that the memory compatibility is only to DDR3-1333 MHz.  You would expect higher-end products for enthusiasts to support the higher end memory speeds, but it’s up to the consumer to decide if they need it apparently. (Apologies for the images, Jetway decided to put a highly reflective glass in front of all their motherboards.)

Jetway have a series of Q67 products, mainly aimed at business and industry: one in particular has up to 10 COM ports possible – at the expense of only having one SATA port.  For AMD, they actually had a Hudson-D3 platform at the booth – again with the Hummer branding, and with 1333 MHz memory compatibility.  Though one thing I do like is that the extra power for the PCIe is at the bottom – as is becoming more common, the PSU is at the bottom of the case, so having this extra 4-pin power at the bottom of the board makes sense.

Giada is a division of the Shenzhen Jiehe Technology Development (JEHE) company based in China.  They have been selling in Asia for a while, and I noticed them starting to sell product over at Newegg for the US market.  So out of curiosity, I stopped by the booth at Computex to examine their range of products and a talk with the sales rep.  Giada’s current situation is to slowly move into various low-level motherboard segments within North America – currently they focus on mini-ITX platforms and the OTX form factor for all-in-one PCs (which is contrary to Intel trying to utilise thin mini-ITX).

For mini-ITX, Giada had an H55, H61 and H67 motherboards on show, all using one PCIe x16 and mini-PCIe.  At first glance the only thing that looks fairly odd is that the SATA ports are found just inside the DIMM slots, presumably making it hard to fit in cables if the slots are filled with memory and/or a large GPU is used.  An E350 Fusion board was also on the show, offering two mini-PCIe, using SO-DIMM memory and a rather odd SATA positioning as well.  I would also point out only one fan header on most of these models, suggesting that no serious coolers or fan controls would be present.

There was an ATX size Z68 on show, but apparently Giada has no intention of releasing this in North America just yet.  From the design, it doesn’t look too bad for the color scheme – there didn’t see much in the way of power delivery for overclocking however, and presumably no support for memory greater than 1333 MHz.

Introducing the Danshui Bay concept:

Simply put, ASUS are wanting to combine two chipsets on one motherboard – the X58 socket 1366, and the X79 socket 2011.  If we completely disregard the technical challenges this faces, it provides the interesting idea of something that might be possible in the future:  You want to upgrade your machine to the latest chipset and processor.  Rather than throw your old processor away or sell it on, you could buy a motherboard that lets you harness the power of the old processor and a new processor together, in some form of chimerism.

As for the technical challenges in producing such a product, I could reel off a whole list.  For a start, chipsets are not designed to talk to each other.  Processors need dual QPI links to talk to each other of the same model – how that would work with different socket processors with different caches and core counts is also a mystery, as with 1366 you would need an appropriate Xeon.  With two chipsets, you’ll have to have a different set of memory for each processor, and possibly getting a mismatch there based on dual/tri/quad channel memory.  Each processor requires its power and a set of PCIe each – unless you disregard the PCIe of one of the chipsets but then you would have to have at least the processor of the other socket in order to run a discrete GPU.  The same goes with SATA ports, I/O connectors, USB headers, and so on.

Obviously, this board presented is a mockup – merely bits and pieces put together.  It’s showing sixteen SATA 3 Gbps and six SATA 6 Gbps for a start, as well as no significant power delivery and an obscene form factor.  ASUS only want to know that if there was a demand for such a product, despite the technical limitations.

MSI’s Z68A-GD80 (G3) features new circuitry and switches between the CPU socket and the x16 slots that will apparently allow the motherboard to operate at PCIe Gen 3 speeds. The problem seems confined to the switches that motherboard makers use to automatically divide the 16 PCIe lanes coming from the CPU into 1 x16 or 2 x8. MSI claims that when Ivy Bridge comes out, the Z68A-GD80 (G3) will be fully PCIe Gen 3 compliant.

Of course MSI had a Socket-2011 X79 motherboard on display in addition to a pair of Socket-FM1 Llano boards. I’m hearing late summer for the desktop Llano launch at this point.

Those of you waiting for Bulldozer performance results from Computex, I’m afraid we’re not going to see anything representative of final hardware. I did hear that the upcoming B2 stepping would restore performance to Bulldozer’s original targets, however it’s unclear how those compare to Sandy Bridge. The other thing I did hear at the show floor regarding Bulldozer was about its clock speed. Current B1 stepping parts are easily hitting 3.8GHz which is what the high end SKU may actually ship at (with turbo support up to 4.2GHz). I’m waiting for more confirmation but it sounds like Bulldozer will at least clock very high.

The ROG Maximus IV Extreme-Z and ROG Maximus IV GENE-Z use the Intel Z68 chipset and ASUS’ overclocking system, but the GENE-Z shrinks things down to the microATX form factor. Both support both NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFireX, but can also intelligently switch between discrete and integrated graphics using the Lucid Virtu virtualization engine. Finally, there’s SupremeFX X-Fi 2 audio and Intel Ethernet with GameFirst for prioritizing online gaming network traffic.

Both new graphics cards use NVIDIA’s GTX 580 GPU, with the ROG MATRIX GTX 580 getting one of them and the ROG MARS II getting a pair. Each packs GPU Tweak for easier overclocking, as well as 19-Phase Super Alloy Power. Dual fans keep things cool, with ASUS claiming the MATRIX pulls through 600-percent more air and makes for 20-percent cooler operation than the NVIDIA reference design.

Finally, ASUS throws in some accessories, including the ROG Vulcan ANC Headset with an active-noise-cancellation system, and the VG278 3D 27-inch display, which has HDMI 1.4 and a built-in infrared emitter. No pricing or availability for any of the new ROG range.

Both boards feature four SATA ports, WiFi and accept standard ATX power (4-pin 12V and 8-pin 12V connectors on the B and A models, respectively).

The A model has two HDMI outputs and one miniDP out, while the B model has two DVI, HDMI and one DP output thanks to the on-board GT 430.

Known as the Z68ITX-WiFi (rough MSRP of $244) and Z68 GT430 ITX-WiFi ($295), both boards are brimming with features, including an unoccupied LGA1155 processor socket, two SATA 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s ports, an assortment of USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports and headers, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and 7.1-channel audio with an optical S/PDIF output.

Despite their similarities, each board has its own perks. The former offers a second Gigabit Ethernet jack, two HDMI outputs and a Mini DisplayPort connector, and a spare PCI Express x16 slot. Additionally, the Z68ITX-WiFi has a pair of full-size DDR3 DIMM slots and passive cooling enabling a silent machine with the right CPU heatsink and case fans.

Conversely, the latter comes with an embedded Nvidia GeForce GT 430 graphics processor that relies on heatsink and fan combo for cooling. It loses the second network and HDMI ports, but gains two DVI outputs, one eSATA port, and a full-size DisplayPort connector. It also “downgrades” to an open-ended PCI Express x4 slot and DDR3 SO-DIMM slots.

The new board, dubbed the Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-iSSD, uses Intel’s new Z68 chipset and will feature a tiny m-SATA SSD module that effectively functions as a small Intel Solid State Drive 311.

‘We are thrilled to deliver the world’s first motherboard to come pre-bundled with an Intel SSD 311,’ said Richard Chen, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Gigabyte. ‘The Z68XP-UD3-iSSD is the easiest way for [Gigabyte customers] to instantly take advantage of the performance boost [of Intel Smart Response].’

We’ve tested Intel’s Smart Response technology and found that it successfully delivered SSD speeds for commonly used data.

The only concern was whether the technology was appropriate for a high-end motherboard, although Gigabyte’s UD3 branding indicates that this board may be keenly priced. We’ve asked Gigabyte for pricing information, but haven’t had a response yet.

With only one chipset, which is located in the typical Southbridge position, Gigabyte has placed the m-SATA connection in the historical location of the Northbridge. This is clever thinking, as the SSD is just a bunch of ICs on a PCB – you won’t need to swap the SSD in and out, and it won’t clash with connectors or cards there either.

Elsewhere the board looks fairly typical. It uses Gigabyte’s blue and white colour scheme (the company’s high-end boards are black these days), but still uses the chunky, curved heatsinks that look a bit like the power stations of Hoth.

Given the UD3 branding, we were surprised to see a chunky heatsink on the VRMs and the overwhelming number of features advertised on the box. With two 16x PCI-E slots, three 1x PCI-E slots and a pair of PCI slots – plus four SATA 6Gbps ports and at least a pair of USB 3 ports – it’s hard to see where Gigabyte has skimped. There’s even Lucid Virtu support, if you fancy trying it