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More on BTX Motherboards

Posted by michael on from the running-hot dept.

venger writes "Anandtech has an article on the new standard of cases and motherboards that is soon to be released. Looks like they are trying to cater for the increase in heat devices are now producing while keeping the noise levels down!" We mentioned BTX earlier.

10 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. you use cases? by Brahmastra · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just have the board lying on the table and a bunch of wires going all over the place. Have a pedestal fan blowing right on it for cooling. That is the sign of true geekiness.

    1. Re:you use cases? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just have the board lying on the table and a bunch of wires going all over the place.

      You use boards? Weak.

      I solder the chips together, directly. Barefoot. Everyday. 30 Miles. In the snow. With a knife in my thigh. And I like it.

  2. Since dust can be a problem by zymano · · Score: 5, Interesting

    why not a air filtration system ?

  3. Big Water by geoffspear · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ooh, they're going to start making the cases out of water? That's even better than making them out of cheese graters.

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  4. I see a pattern developing !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am going to be proactive in registering "CTX.com" through "ZTX.com"

    Nothing to do now but sit back and wait for the checks to arrive

    1. Re:I see a pattern developing !! by bhtooefr · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ATX.com - ATX Communications (no relation to Intel's ATX)
      BTX.com - BTX Technologies (A/V equipment)
      CTX.com - CTX Corporation (down, but I think they're a monitor company)
      DTX.com - DTx (an embedded computer manufacturer)
      ETX.com - ETX (down)
      FTX.com - Drug portal
      GTX.com - GTX Corporation (CAD software)
      HTX.com - Marksmen (down)
      ITX.com - ITX Design (web design/hosting)
      JTX.com - Farrier Marine (boat manufacturer - second server for downloads)

      There's the first ten from A, so you'll need to be quick if you want one...

  5. why? by obsid1an · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think the adoption of BTX is going to come very slowly. For the 90% of computer users out there, a 3Ghz P4 is already a huge overkill to browse the net and check email. What are these BTX computers going to run that will make them appeal to current users.

    Gamers, like usual, will be the biggest target for BTX. They are the only ones that will need the higher bandwidth bus for gfx and the faster cpus.

    1. Re:why? by sweetooth · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This has less to do with processor speed and computing capabilities than it does with size and noise. There are a great many people buying smaller cases like the shuttle xpc because computers do everything they want and footprint, noise, and style are the things lacking now.

      Gamers won't care much about BTX unless there is a killer video card that will only be released in PCI Express form factor. At least initially.

  6. Maybe someone knows by Apreche · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The big change that I see with this new BTX spec is video cards will be PCI Express and not AGP. I think I can safely assume that PCI Express has a bandwith that is much faster than that of AGP can ever have, which is why it would be desireable. But isn't the point of AGP that it allows you to set an arperture and use some of the system RAM as an extension of the memory on the graphics card? So unless every PCI Express Video card has like 256MB plus video ram on it, wont AGP still be better? I really know nothing about this PCI Express thing except that expansion cards go in it, and it's fast.

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    1. Re:Maybe someone knows by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think I can safely assume that PCI Express has a bandwith that is much faster than that of AGP can ever have

      The AGP 8x spec has a max bandwidth of 2.1GB/s, while PCI Express x16 has a bandwidth of 8 GB/s. It might be theoretically possible to create a AGP 32x spec (although I doubt it), but the obvious question would be why?

      . But isn't the point of AGP that it allows you to set an arperture and use some of the system RAM as an extension of the memory on the graphics card?

      No, the point of AGP was to give a single slot increased bandwidth that's needed for modern graphics cards. PCI just isn't fast enough. Intel wrote into the spec that you could get away with sharing main memory as video memory in order to reduce system costs, but in practice nobody does this except for the absolute bottom tier PCs. The performance hit is huge.

      wont AGP still be better?

      No. Although it's questionable that PCI-X will really provide any speed increases. AGP 8x has a negligible speed improvement over AGP 2x, and quadrupling the bandwidth again isn't likely to do much either. I'm pretty sure PCI-X can still do the main memory-as-video memory trick, but there's really no need or desire to do so. If your card doesn't have enough memory to hold the textures then you're going to have a massive speed hit when you need to get them from memory. In practice this speed hit is so severe that the amount of bandwidth has relatively little impact on things -- it's the latency that kills.