MSI

Motherboard maker MSI was on hand with their entire product line, including several upcoming boards. Of primary interest was a pre-production NVIDIA nForce board in micro-ATX format. Also on display was an AMD 760MP board, called the K7D Master-LR. With far fewer features targeted towards a server environment than Tyan's K7 Thunder, the K7D should appeal more to the performance enthusiast. Four DIMMs, AGP Pro, PCI64, optional LAN, and optional IDE RAID complete the package, which should be available before the end of the year. Even more exciting is the fact that MSI is shooting for a sub-$200 price point, making a dual Athlon system an attractive option indeed.

On the graphics front, MSI featured the MS-822 GeForce3 with 64MB of DDR memory clocked at a 460MHz equivalent. According to MSI, the GeForce3 is now cheaper to produce than the GeForce2 Ultra, so they have discontinued their Ultra product in favor of a GeForce2 Pro. Based on their product roadmap, the 64MB GeForce3 should remain MSI. s graphics flagship for the rest of the year.

ASUS

One of the largest (and busiest) booths at the show belonged to ASUS. Like MSI, ASUS showcased their platform built around the nForce chipset. Intel's i845 platform also littered the product display in addition to a micro-ATX variant based on the i850 chipset called the P4T-M.

FIC

Without an i850-based board, FIC has focused their attention on the i845 Pentium 4 and universal Socket 370 Tualatin boards. Even more interesting though, was the presence of ATI's RADEON card in the FIC graphics display.

Recently, ATI announced that they would exit the board manufacturing business, opting instead to focus resources on chip design. With this decision comes the obvious need for outsourcing, in much the same way as NVIDIA has done. FIC's interest in becoming a board manufacturer is significant in that it should aide ATI in remaining competitive with NVIDIA's aggressive product cycle. Of course, this means that ATI has less control over the quality of components used - a problem NVIDIA has encountered with poor filters resulting in sub-standard 2D quality.