What's up with this?

[Mercutio]

Well, 1. Newegg is no longer listing GA-7VAanything, and 2.) there are a number of new Gigabyte nforce2 boards, some at up to $200.

That in itself is a little odd (and annoying, since I just bought a second asus one), but Looking at the product link, can anyone tell me what the weirdo card thingy is, by the CPU socket? It looks a little like a sloketed CPU with a fan on it, but Gigabyte's web site doesn't talk about it, either.

 

[Buck]

Could that have something to do with the Dual Power System? For the GA-7NNXP, Giga-byte states: "With the Voltage Regulator Module (VRM), the Dual Power System delivers a total of 6-phase power circuit design to provide more solid and durable power supply for the new generation AMD platform." This is the only nForce2 board with this feature from Giga-byte.

 

[Mercutio]

Yup. I downloaded the manual and that's basically what it said. I'm just having a hard time with "six phase power" being worth $65 more than the "1 model down" version of the same board.

 

[Buck]

Indeed. My supplier doesn't even have the high-priced version.

 

[Tannin]

Tannin's Rule:

The weirder a motherboard looks, the less likely the thing and its ilk are to stay around on the market for any length of time and be generally liked by the people who have to work on them, the sillier they will look a year or three later, and (eventally) the more fun I will have when I write them up as "silly idea that people actually used to spend money on".

Tannin's rule is never wrong.

 

[Tea]

But Tannin, I can think of any number of things that looked really odd when they first came out and rapidly became the orthodox, standard way to do stuff. "Tannin's Rule" is obvious nonsenze.

 

[Tannin]

So these examples you mention are in common use now?

(Yez.)

Then, speaking as a (minimally competent) technician, they don't look "weird" to you?

(Of course not.)

Well there you go then: they ain't "weird", and Tannin's Rule doesn't apply.

(Oh.)

 

[Adcadet]

it's obviously a flux capacitor.


Doc: “I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock, the porcelain was wet, I slipped hit my head on the edge of the sink, and when I came to, I had a revelation, a vision, a picture in my head, a picture of this (points to the flux capacitor). This is what makes time travel possible, the Flux Capacitor.”



http://rp_gamer.tripod.com/BTTF/1.html

 

[Clocker]

WHat's up with all these feature filled and jazzed up Gigabyte motherboards these days?

 

[Mercutio]

I don't know what's up, but it doesn't make me happy. Gigabyte is traditionally closer to the Tyan/Intel/SuperMicro side of things, rather than the Asus/Soyo/Abit. That voltage-regulating thing is certainly an... interesting choice for a weirdo feature, but motherboards are not something I want to be eccentric.

Around seven years ago, Asus had a motherboard that, instead of having a CPU socket, had a special interface for a proprietary card. The card would hold your CPU. As I recall, that board supported Pentium and PPro chips, and users would be able to upgrade easily.

Asus also gave us the... was it a Dcard? A diagnostic module that plugged into its own weird interface.

And we have the half-dozen or so manufacturers that convinced people to pay extra for a RAIDPort.

In the P54C days, we had COAST modules - for the one end-user in the whole wide world who might someday want to upgrade the L2 cache on their mainboard.

Even now we have the alphabet soup of "ways to integrate a REALLY crappy modem": ACR, CNR, AMR.

Man, I avoid(ed) all that crap.

This looks to me like it's going to be gigabyte's own special festering boil.

 

[blakerwry]

I believe the coast slot was more beneficial to OEMs, as they saved a few dollars on each mobo by not including an L2 cache. If someone was smart enough to know what L2 cache was and that it was "better than not having any" the OEM could charge 5x the market rate for the upgrade that was standard on most motherboards.

My Compaq presario 486s didn't come with L2 cache (have coast slots) and a friend's Gateway pentium classic didn't have an L2 cache either, luckily a local computer shop just gave us some spare COAST modules and said we could basically do whatever we wanted with them.

I think one of the benefits of COAST was you could upgrade to faster L2 cache(or simply remove the L2 cache) if you used a faster bus speed (overlocked) .