Albatron Lays Out Nforce 4

LAST YEAR, ALBATRON HAD several monitors and TVs on display that were vastly better than the majority of the items on display elsewhere. The rest of the stuff didn't stand out all that much in my eyes, but that is by no means a criticism. This year, it was reversed, the TVs were not a standout product, however nice, but some of the motherboards were.

The most important one is the Albatron K8SLI motherboard. A lot of companies have NForce4 SLI boards with a twist, usually something that blinks. Albatron went the smart way and laid the board out differently from the reference designs. They vastly shortened the board, and moved components around.

The first thing you notice is the location of the RAM. Not only is it turned 90 degrees from many implementation, but it runs to the edge of the board, this is where they cut out a lot of area. They also swapped the position of the PCIe slots, it goes 1x 16x 1x 16x instead of 16x 1x 16x 1x. This can pay real dividends if you have a long GPU with a monster heatsink on both sides.

The last bit is not all that obvious, there is no SLI 'paddle' connector. The paddle is not only expensive, but it adds a bit of latency to SLI, signals have to go through the board, to the paddle and back. By implementing an auto-switch, they cut out the transitions making it faster by a decent margin. Along with the other savings, it should be an inexpensive board that is quite fast.

The next part is a three fan GPU, in this case the PC6800/Q GeForce 6800 card. It has three fans, two main ones and one in case of overheating or failure. There are heat pipes on the top, and a big heatsink on the back, the goal is cool and quiet. Cool is probably achieved, but as usual at Computex, it is impossible to say if it was quiet over the roar of the show.

[image_library_tag 8456/Albatron-PC6800-Q.jpg' hspace='3' alt='Albatron PC6800, ,default]

Last up is the Widio media player we told you about a few months ago. This little wireless media center in a box is a lot more versatile than I originally thought, it can have up to seven channels going at the same time, and can multicast. It would be perfect for conferences, events and other corporate functions. Someone should have them do a custom version, they are more than willing to oblige. µ