Biostar recently launched a VGA business, with a special card series called V-Ranger. We recently had the pleasure to review one of these boards that offer incredible overclocking headroom and software based voltage control. Even though there were no new V-Ranger models at CeBIT we got confirmation that Biostar is looking into expanding their V-Ranger to more powerful cards as well. The only thing holding them back right now is NVIDIA, who are not opening the design of the 8800 GTX/GTS cards yet, so manufacturers can't make changes to the PCB. Hopefully this changes soon. Future products like G84 and G86 will see a V-Ranger version much faster, because traditionally NVIDIA is more comfortable with opening those designs shortly after the launch.
An extremely potential motherboard is the T-Series TA690G AM2 new based on the AMD RS690 chipset. Unlike most other motherboard manufacturers this board has DVI, Analog and HDMI all on-board in the ATX IO Area. However, like on all other implementations you can only use on digital output at one time, so either analog + DVI or analog + HDMI but not analog + DVI + HDMI.
The board has the following features:
Support for all AMD AM2 processors
AMD 690G + AMD SB600
4x DDR2, up to 4 GB, DDR2 533/667/800
1x PCI-E x16, 1x PCI-E x1, 2x PCI
Onboard VGA with HDMI, TV-Out, VGA out, DVI out
4x SATAII 3Gb/s
Gigabit Ethernet
8+2 Channel HD Audio
Based on Intel's future P35 performance chipset, the T-Series T35D3-A7 Deluxe has been created. It is designed to be Biostar's new highest-performance T-Series board. It comes with support for DDR3 and 45nm CPUs, the P35 will be the first chipset to support DDR3. Intel is building massive stock of the new Bearlake chipsets so they can quickly ship out huge numbers to replace the P965/G965.
This demo was showing Quimonda DDR3 running at 1066 MHz, future DDR3 versions will go up to 1600 MHz.
A DDR2 version of the previous board is available as well of course since DDR3 is going to start slow, just like DDR2 did. The board essentially has the same features, like 45nm processor support and P35. Just the cheaper ICH9 is used instead of ICH9R, so RAID support is missing.
The MicroATX sized G33-D2 775 is based on Intel's upcoming G33 chipset from the Bearlake family.
Support for all intel LGA775 CPUs, including upcoming 45nm processors
Intel G33 + ICH9
4x DDR2, up to 8 GB, DDR2 667/800
1x PCI-E x16, 1x PCI-E x1, 2x PCI
Onboard VGA
4x SATAII 3Gb/s
Gigabit Ethernet
8+2 Channel HD Audio
NVIDIA's nForce 630a powers the T-Series TF7050-M2. The board is MicroATX and is a direct competitor of the RS690 motherboard.
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