Gigabyte United is set to introduce its next generation Ultra Durable 2 series motherboards in early June. There will be five Ultra Durable 2 series motherboards powered by Intel's P35 and G33 Express chipsets - the P35-DQ6, P35-DS3R, P35T-DQ6, G33M-D2SR and G33-DS3R in full and micro ATX configurations. All motherboards will feature ferrite core choke coils, low RDS MOSFETs and all-solid capacitors for increased reliability and longevity.

Gigabyte, a company well known for manufacturing computer components such as motherboards, has lost $5 million due to an internal scandal. A factory manager at Ningbo Gigabyte Technology in China, named Chang Chaosong, listed the company as a guarantor for a bank loan of $5 million towards a third party, meaning that Gigabyte would be held responsible for repaying the loan if the third party did not. As things happened, the third party company (which is not named) did not repay the money, leaving Gigabyte out of pocket. The deal had been carried out by Chaosong without the company's permission, leading to him being fired whilst Gigabyte investigates deeper into the matter. Gigabyte commented that this loss greatly damaged its shareholders' rights and interests and that the company now intends to strengthen its management of human resources to prevent such incidents in future.

As AMD launched the 690G and 690V chipsets at the beginning of this March manufacturers were upset with their long postponement. Today all all the fuss is forgotten and Gigabyte introduced three mainboards based on those chipsets. Two of them are micro ATX sized boards(GA-MA69VM-S2, AMD690V; GA-MA69GM-S2H, AMD690G), the third is a full ATX sized one (GA-MA69G-S3H, AMD690G). The mentioned motherboards support DDR2-800, all have four memory slots, of course the Socket AM2 for the CPU, a single PCIe x16 slot, at least a single PCIe x1 slot, two PCI ports, four SATA II connectors, one PATA port and Gigabit Ethernet and 8-channel audio.
The difference between the two µATX boards besides the different chipsets used is the support for HDCP (over HDMI) and an IEEE1394a port featured by the 690G based Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2.
The ATX sized Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H features a single PCIe x4 slot (CrossFire ready) and three PCIe x1 slots in total.

I came across a funny mistake on Gigabyte's German website. There it reads the GA-MA69VM-S2 I was just writing about is actually powered by an Intel 975X chipset. Look at the last picture or if you don't trust me follow this link.

Update: If you would like to see real life pictures of the AMD 690 board, check out our Gigabyte coverage during the CeBIT.

On Aug 8, 2006, GIGABYTE and ASUS together announced they have entered into a joint venture to produce GIGABYTE branded motherboards and graphics cards. A spokesman of GIGABYTE said a resolution of the board of directors was passed on the Mar 22 to call off the plan of forming joint venture. It's explained the confusion of clients and suppliers, together with the changes of both internal and external factors has lead to this hard decision. In the present environment, the necessity of forming joint venture is no longer as strong as expected, and thus suspension is the best solution for both shareholders, said GIGABYTE's spokesman. Although the joint venture has given up, GIGABYTE intends to keep its move on transferring part of its businesses onto the new subsidiary, meaning that a new GIGABYTE brand will come out soon after all.

After teaming up with Asustek Computer Gigabyte is forced to minimize contracts Foxconn Electronics. Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, was producing around 30% of Gigabyte's motherboards. In order to fulfill the joint-venture with Asustek Gigabyte cuts the orders from now on it disclosed to a Chinese news magazin (Economic Daily News).

New GIGABYTE v3.3 Boards to Support 1333MHz FSB

GIGABYTE will be launching their new revision 3.3 boards end of January and it is the first in the industry to deliver native 1333FSB support on 965P series. It will be able to support the next generation 1333FSB E6x50 Core 2 Duo processors like E6850 (3.0GHz), E6750 (2.66GHz), E6550 (2.33GHz) coming out in Q3 this year. The keyword here is "Future Proof". GIGABYTE claims a CPU performance jumps up to 5% comparing with FSB1066 and boost a 10% enhancement for Memory performance. Check out the VR-Zone interview with GIGABYTE United for more information.

GIGABYTE UNITED INC., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today launched the highly anticipated GIGABYTE GA-N680SLI-DQ6 high end gaming platform, featuring the advanced NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI MCP chipset, support for the record-setting Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad Core processors and delivering the uniquely innovative GIGABYTE 6-Quad technologies.

GIGABYTE plans to introduce its latest NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI MCP chipset based motherboard, the GIGABYTE N680SLI-DQ6 by the end of January 2007. Designed specially for enthusiasts and gamers, this motherboard has All-Solid Capacitors, Quad-Triple phase power, Quad BIOS and Quad Gigabit LAN, the first one to have four Gigabit LAN cards. Other features include Silent-Pipe2 and Crazy Cool2 technology by newly design Triple-Heat pipe, 3x PCIe slots (two x16 + one x8) for SLI+ Physics, 4x eSATA2 ports, 8 channel Realtek ALC888DD High Definition Audio.

GIGABYTE announced today the launch of a full range of 945 series All-Solid Capacitor motherboards completing a total product line up of All-Solid Capacitor motherboards based on 945 through 965 chipsets. The brand new 945 series All-Solid Capacitor motherboards qualify GIGABYTE as the first motherboard maker to provide a full range of ultra durable motherboards from high-end to mainstream products. Generating less heat than their electrolyte counterparts, solid capacitors last on average 6 times longer, helping to ensure that PCs stay reliable for longer. Additionally, solid capacitors have a higher tolerance not only for higher temperatures, but they also perform better with higher frequencies and higher current than electrolytic capacitors. Adopting an all solid capacitor design include also Intel 946 and Intel 965 chipset motherboards made by GIGABYTE. All solid capacitor parts will be recognized by the new revision 2.0.