Chaintech and Gigabyte

Chaintech

While Chaintech is probably best known for their high-end Zenith motherboards, they’ve also brought the Zenith/Apogee formula to their graphics cards as well. Currently NVIDIA’s board partners must purchase their high-end 6800 Ultra and GT cards directly from NVIDIA, so Chaintech is no different than the other board manufacturers on these lines.

Chaintechs 6800 lineup

Second wall of Chaintech graphics cards

Chaintech has plans for a PCI Express 5900 board

One aspect that did stand out was Chaintech’s mockup GeForce 6800 GT card: it was outfitted with dual DVI connections! This was surprising, as NVIDIA’s reference 6800 GT card relied on the more traditional DVI/VGA combination for video output. Even the 6800 GT card in Chaintech’s VGA brochure sported dual DVI, so Chaintech’s 6800 GT card could be unique in this aspect among first generation 6800 GT cards. Chaintech’s base 6800 card is also NVIDIA reference-based, which is a bit of a surprise as most board manufacturers have implemented their own cooling designs for their GeForce 6800 cards.

Besides the 6800 boards, Chaintech also had their Personal Cinema FX 5700 and GeForce PCX cards on display in their booth. We’ll be providing a review of NVIDIA’s latest Personal Cinema solution in the coming weeks.

PCI Express variants of the FX 5700 and FX 5200

Chaintechs latest Personal Cinema board

Volari and DeltaChrome graphics here

In addition to NVIDIA, Chaintech has also decided to partner with S3 and XGI. Chaintech will be providing 128MB and 256MB versions of the DeltaChrome S8 and 128MB and 256MB Volari V8 variants. On the low end of the market, Chaintech provides Volari V3 cards.

Gigabyte

Like ASUS, Gigabyte plans to continue their status as a dual graphics provider, with cards based on ATI and NVIDIA graphics on display in their booth. Prior to the show we were under the impression that Gigabyte was closer to NVIDIA than ATI, as Gigabyte announced their 6800 boards on launch day whereas their X800 cards weren’t officially announced until the week before Computex, but you couldn’t see a preference for either vendor at Gigabyte’s Computex booth.

Gigabyte GeForce 6800 Ultra card

Note the all-copper heatsink and heat pipe on the Gigabyte card

Standard RADEON X800 PRO reference design

Gigabyte is in the same position as other board manufacturers – they’re forced to rely on reference designs for their first generation GeForce 6800 and RADEON X800 boards. Gigabyte has two RADEON X800 XT Platinum SKUs planned, one based on the AGP interface and a second PCI Express X800 XT Platinum. Both boards will provide identical feature sets with the sole difference being the interface. Gigabyte has the same strategy planned for X800 PRO, although four SKUs are planned as Gigabyte will be offering PCI Express and AGP PRO boards with and without video input capability (all XT Platinum cards will offer video-in).

Gigabyte X600 XT graphics

GV-RX60P128D meant to serve the mainstream segment

Passive cooling on the RADEON 9550

For X600, Gigabyte plans to offer the RX60X128V, which is based on the RADEON X600 XT and ships with video input support, while their PRO card, the GV-RX60P128D won’t provide video-in. Currently, Gigabyte has no plans for an X300 board, relying on the X300 SE instead with their GV-RX30S128D.

On the NVIDIA side of Gigabyte’s lineup, the entire 6800 series is available. Gigabyte’s GeForce 6800 card will ship with a transparent fan enclosure, revealing an all-copper heatsink and heat pipe underneath.

This could turn out to be a pretty nice cooling solution, as NVIDIA’s reference heatsink and heat pipe for the 6800 line are composed of aluminum, even on the high-end Ultra card. Gigabyte’s marketing material pictures a GV-N68U256D GeForce 6800 Ultra card with the transparent all-copper cooling as well, so it’s possible they may adapt the cooler for their Ultra line in the near future. Their 6800 GT card is based on the two-slot aluminum-based reference design we tested in our 6800 GT article.

GeForce FX 5500 from Gigabyte

Gigabyte 5700 LE card, the GV-N57L128DP

The big news from Gigabyte is their new V-Tuner 2 software for overclocking. All next generation Gigabyte cards from ATI and NVIDIA will ship with V-Tuner 2, as well as a new game bundle: Spellforce, Rainbow Six 3: Ravenshield, and Counter Strike: Condition Zero.