Computex 2003 - Day 4: XGI, Motherboards, and cheap Itaniums

DFI

This year, DFI was all about their patented “CMOS Reloaded” BIOS options. CMOS Reloaded was created by the lead engineer who designed ABIT’s famous BH6 motherboard from the old PIII Celeron days of yore.

As you can see above, CMOS Reloaded allows users to save BIOS settings of their choosing using the Backup command. High-end DFI motherboards will have the ability to save a total of four different sets of BIOS settings depending on what the user would like to do with their machine. For example, if someone wants to have aggressive BIOS settings for gaming, all they have to do is create that configuration and save it to CMOS and they’ll be able to use that setting every time instead of having to change their settings each time they enter the BIOS. All in all, CMOS Reloaded is an interesting idea and a very useful BIOS feature.

Some other motherboards DFI had displayed at Computex included an Athlon 64 motherboard based on ALi’s Hammer chipset. This is the first motherboard we’ve seen based on ALi’s Hammer chipset at Computex. However, DFI says that it performs well and they even believe they can make it their flagship Athlon 64 motherboard. We’ll have to wait and see how this chipset develops.

DFI’s VIA K8T800-based motherboard, pictured above, is ready for prime time and should ship in quantity in about two weeks. So far, DFI says that they have been able to get K8T800 to work better than nForce3, which they are delaying due to driver issues. It’s really quite odd that there all motherboard makers seem to be split right down the middle on nForce3 and K8T800 performance numbers and stability issues.