MSI and ADATA at CES

Peter G. 8 Jan, 2010 at 6:42pm ET Article published in Tech

The show floor at CES is buzzing today as the Vegas weather has taken a turn to the cool side. Down in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, Robert Hallock and I had a chance to stop by MSI and ADATA’s booths for a quick look at new and upcoming products.

H55 and H57 boards.

MSI is showing off new H55 and H57 chipsets for Socket 1156 processors. Two new boards were on display, including one mATX one marketed for media center and HTPC use. The H55-GD65 and H57M-ED65 both feature onboard graphics along with power savings and basic overclocking features. They’re general purpose at the core, but pack some nice features you wouldn’t expect to find in something targeting mainstream users.

ATI and NVIDIA together wut?!

On the cool side of things, we also saw their new upcoming Hydra motherboard. The board features a trick Quantum Wave sound card, overclocking dashboard, and solid caps. Called the Big Bang Fuzion, it hits shelves in February and can run AMD and NVIDIA cards together in a multi-GPU setup. Sadly, they demoed it with Quake 3 so we’ve got no idea just how well it works as the HD 4890 and GTX 260 both play Quake 3 without breaking a sweat by themselves. Together, it was hardly a taxing choice. Somebody should introduce them to Crysis.

The MSI USB 3.0 and SATA 6 GB/s board, left, and the new AMD board, right.

Also of note was an AMD 890FX-GD70 motherboard on display. Finally we’re going to have a new series of AMD chipsets after years of working with the 700-series. This board features six PCIe slots and promises to unlock the unused cores in AM3 processors. It also has USB 3.0 and SATA 6 GB/s. They’re marketing it as a value option but we can’t help but wonder what it’d be like with a Phenom II X4 965.

ADATA's new SSD with TRIM support.

ADATA’s booth is nearby. They weren’t showing too many new things, but we spotted the Windows 7 TRIM-compatible S599 solid state drive. It’s available in 64, 128, 256 and 512GB sizes and boasts 280/270 MB/s read-write speeds. Not bad at all. ADATA’s prices are usually pretty good compared to other companies so we’re pleased to see this coming to market.

We’re off to meet Thermaltake now. Busy day.

Comments

8 Jan 2010 ~ 7:07pm SPIKE09 teh ADATA piccie says 512GB not MB schoolboy error
9 Jan 2010 ~ 8:04am photodude ATI and NVIDIA together in multiGPU via the motherboard??? craziness

it would be interesting to see how that might work with workstation GPUs or with top Firestream and Tesla cards running together.
9 Jan 2010 ~ 11:44am mas0n Hydra. OMG Yes.
9 Jan 2010 ~ 1:42pm GooD About the Hydra : AnandTech did review the new hydra chips and well to what i've seen it seems like it will be working, but it will take a long time before every game works flawlessly with the Hydra technology (driver) and the performance boost seems like it will never get anywhere near the performance of real crossfire and real SLI. At least not until they do a lot of work on the driver.

The main positive point on the first look of the results seems to be able with Hydra to keep our "old" video card when we buy a new one. Couple a 5850 with a 4890 gives a <= 30% boost overall over the the 5850 alone... and and 5850 coupled with a GTX280 gives < 10% bonus in fps overall in the game tested (Call of Juarez, RE5, Batman, etc... there's not a ton of game actually supported by Hydra it seems, Crysis is not one of them).

Also they had weird result with any game with GTX280 + 9800GTX with hydra, like 30% or more FPS lost with this couple in everygame and some the just wont work.

It's too soon to talk about real bench since its not release atm but i think it will take a long time before i can consider Hydra a viable solution.

It's frustrating enough when i cant play a game without crashing to desktop because of my video card driver... if you add to that an Hydra drvier... You double the chance of something that goes wrong =/

On a side note, the new MSI board doesnt come with SLI on it, so if you don't like the result of your Hydra settings, you're forced to go into ATI crossfire. Not a big deal but it's good to know.
10 Jan 2010 ~ 9:55pm Rofl Waffle On some benchmarks the Hydra setup with two of the same cards can out perform conventional SLI/Crossfire.

As mentioned some games they just flat out suffer or lack support because of driver issues.

If there is a price premium, I don't think it is worth it... yet.