Gigabyte AM2 Motherboard Lineup

[Kougar]

I guess the theme for Gigabyte this year will be "Dual Everything!"... If you keep on reading further though, those are some impressive specs when combined with that new Dolby Digital sound and "Tritium-Ready" option. I'm looking forward to seeing some real "Tritium" benchmarks...

ASUS isn't the only company gearing up for a massive AM2 motherboard launch. DailyTech just got a hold of the Gigabyte internal roadmap with the full lineup of upcoming Socket 775 and Socket AM2 motherboards.

Gigabyte has five "tiers" of upcoming AM2 motherboards, each denoted by an "S." An "S5" motherboard is more high-end than an "S4" motherboard. Each "S" denotes a different feature, such as SLI, Silent, etc.

Like the ASUS offerings, Gigabytes best of breed motherboards for AM2 will feature NVIDIA's nForce 590 SLI chipset. The M59SLI-S5 has dual x16 PCIe graphics, dual eSATA ports, dual BIOSes, ten USB 2.0 interfaces and eight SATA 3.0Gbps interfaces. One UDMA PATA interface is provided for legacy optical storage devices. Like other nForce 590 motherboards, the motherboard also features dual Gigabit LAN but over the Marvell Gigabit PHY. Gigabyte has two Firewire-400 headers on the motherboard with an additional third interface on the rear I/O panel.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2328 (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2328)

[mousiness]

I wonder if thats the actual socket for the am2 is it? If it is theres really not much of a difference between the am2 and current 939 sockets, this still isnt getting me into amds future im still rooting for conroes

EDIT: Heres some asus am2 motherboards

http://themes.belchfire.net/index.php?showtopic=12511

http://www.tbreak.com/forums/showthread.php?p=263954

I dont see any major difference between these two technologies.

[Kougar]

The difference is negligible in terms of the actual pins themselves. AM2 uses a 940pin socket that is not compatible with todays 940pin Opterons. They changed the pin outs around to prevent anyone from trying either those or a 939pin CPU in an AM2 socket.

The socket retention bracket is completely different though, so most past coolers won't work without some additional hardware updates.

You can view some up close shots of both respective sockets and retention cages HERE (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2688&p=1) ;)

[werty316]

Very sweet that all the highend boards are using heatpipe heatsinks. The NF4 chipset has been notorious for being loud and not very efficient.

[mousiness]

oh yeah those ASUS boards are amaizing, not only do they look really cool but theyre technologies are world class, until more board manufacturers decide to own again

[werty316]

The only design I don't like about the AM2 is the CPU bracket. Pretty much all previous coolers are incompatible but coolers that are compatible with all sockets like the Thermaltake Big Typhoon could be possible with a bracket upgrade.