CES 2010 Highlight Wrap-Up In Pictures and Video

Name: CES 2010 Highlight Wrap-Up In Pictures and Video - Page 3
Brand: CES

by Mathew Miranda — Saturday, January 16, 2010, 12:25 PM EDT

Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI

Page 3: Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI

As you probably know, Gigabyte is best known for its motherboards, but the company also makes numerous graphics cards, laptops, heatsinks, and other peripherals. The Taiwan based manufacturer invited us to their suite to check out their new products for 2010.

Gigabyte Videocards, Motherboards, and Peripherals

Gigabyte was showcasing a number of new products that are sure to be popular amongst enthusiasts. The company had their second wave of Radeon HD 5800 series cards on had, complete with custom cooling and factory overclocks. Visible in the pics were a Radeon HD 5850 and 5870. While you can see the design of the new coolers in the shots, Gigabyte hasn't settled on final overclocked speeds for the cards. Also on display was a leather-wrapped luxury mouse, adorned with jewels, along with a number of motherboards and current-gen graphics cards. Gigabyte's big push, however, had to do with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G. In the suite, the company had a number of demos on hand that showed the high performance offered by USB 3.0 hard drives / SSD in comparison to more common USB 2.0 technology. Gigabyte has a whole line-up of motherboards on hand, featuring virtually all of today's popular chipsets from AMD and Intel, that were outfitted with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G controllers. One some of the boards, the USB 3.0 and SATA 6G controllers were hung directly off the PCIe lanes connected to the chipset or CPU (i.e. in Lynnfield), while one some other boards a PLX PCIe 2.0 switch was used. Gigabyte's message was that of a company committed to pushing the envelope, which is why they plan to release motherboards at virtually every price point, outfitted with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G.

EVGA's Dual Socket 5520 Chipset Monstrosity

Extreme enthusiasts make up only a fraction of the consumer market, but that fact hasn't stopped companies from catering to this niche crowd. Leading the way in the push for insane performance, EVGA showed us its next generation motherboard that left us in awe. This creation supports two 45nm Xeon 5500 series processors, features Intel's 5520 chipset, includes 12 DIMM slots, and has 7 PCIe sockets. Wow. EVGA hasn't settled on a name for the board quite yet but expect it to fall within the Classified product line up.

MSI's Motherboards, GPU's Laptops, and Nettops

There was a lot going on at the Micro Star International--MSI--booth on the show floor. MSI makes motherboards, graphics cards, and notebooks among other things. But one of the products that caught our eye was the Big Bang Fuzion motherboard which features Lucid's Hydra chip and supports the combination of ATI and NVIDIA videocards.