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A Look Inside the Labs of Asus
Kez writes "While in Taiwan, we had the rare opportunity to take a look around the Research and Development labs of ASUSTeK, well known motherboard and graphics card manufacturer. They had their latest dual chip 6800GT and 6800Ultra cards on the test beds (only two boxes full of which had passed quality control at that point,) and so grabbed some benchmarks while we were there."
The article appears a little short on details for such a tour. I mean.. just two pages? They don't even mention which cities the headquarters are in.
see a Text Widget
Super hi-tech graphic cards with 50 cent mechanical fans cooling them, is that really the best manufacturers can do ? if that crappy fan fails it kills the card, all those m/billions of dollars of R&D, all that hard work resting on a 50c "fan"
thats bullshit i tell you and we shouldnt fsking stand for it
Isn't ASUS the company that does not play well with Linux? I am not very interested, sorry.
Hey, they have this neat power strip with each outlet has its own switch. You can see it real well in the upper-left corner of the third picture ("testbed.jpg"). Where do I get one of those? It would be real useful for lab testing (like Asus is doing, duh). The closest I've seen are those under-monitor jobs, but those take up too much room and can't be wall-mounted. What I see here could be.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I honstely doubt that ASUS does anything that could be dubbed as "research", especially not in the graphics card section. Testing different variations of the reference design and altering fans is hardly even development.
This is not news in the slightest. Regardless of the details or lack thereof, this architecture nears the end of its life. While extremely powerful, the power draw and heat generation is positively killer for the average system, and an annoying hurdle to jump for the serious custom PC builder. I had to fully watercool every 6800 I have owned just to keep the operating temperature at something that wouldn't be worrisome.
Let's be fair, the X800 is no slouch on power draw either. I am not trolling in the slightest.
What I am saying is that the future architectures that are down the pike, while designed for greater performance, also give much consideration to power draw and heat generation. The X850 series with its liquid metal cooling stock is a step in considerations of heat generation and power consumption. Nvidia's new core uses significantly less power if I read the latest buzz correctly.
This is the next great fight in the graphics card market: power and heat vs performace. Round 1, fight.
The Crimson Dragon
The Hexus.net article is just an advertisement, with links to places to buy the cards that were reviewed. The writer didn't have any technical insights because he apparently has no technical knowledge. For example, read this sentence, "35A from the two 12V rails on the ASUS PSU keep things ticking over." First, it says on the label, which is clearly visible, that the maximum is not 35A times 12V = 420 Watts, but 324 Watts. Second, neither the graphic card nor the motherboard nor the hard drives require that much 12V power.
Manufacturers make so much money from taking advantage of the technical ignorance of customers that it has in some cases corrupted an area of the industry.
that Asus are anti-linux, and extremely uncooperative to anyone trying to write drivers for their dodgy boards.
Reading a number of Hexus articles I must say that some of their content is questionable in the sense that it's just a marketing or PR release from the company itself with little true critque of the product.
It's a shame because sites can be a good source of information but a lot of their articles just seem a little too lacking on technical detail and leave a sour taste in the mouth of people that want facts and proper critque in their articles.
Now I understand why all of those pretty lights are being put on to hardware that gets locked up in my fully opaque case - so the testers have something nice to look at while the hardware is on the bench!
"Are you serious? Just about every office/computer/electrical store here sells boards like that."
Of course I'm serious. If they were readily available, I wouldn't have asked. I haven't seen anything like that in any of the stores I frequent. Those include CompUSA, BestBuy, Circuit City, Staples, and OfficeMax. I also haven't seen them at either the local PC sales shows or the local hamfest. Of course, I didn't know such a thing existed (although it seems obvious now), so I wasn't asking after it in particular. But none of the displays had anything like it. I live in the North-East USA, if that matters.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I used to be a know nothing when it came to building computers. Typical wanna be computer geek was what I was. I would go places like the Slackware boards and Tom's Hardware to get information so I could further understand how to build a computer. In my search for knowledge I always came up with a top three motherboard manufacturer.
1. Asus
2. Abit
3. Who knows... long time ago.
So I bought Asus over Epox and continued with every upgrade swearing by Asus. What I got was crappy boards with no life span. It might have been the type of board I chose. It might have been a run of badluck. No matter what board I have gotten from Asus, they have a lifespan of about two years before utterly crashing completely. I kid you not.
I had a board that for no reason, after two years, decided that it didn't like the North Bridge chipset and decided to make it not work.
I had a board that was so bugged against one specific Nvidia card that no Windows or Linux OS could run with this video card and mobo combination. It has been nothing but badluck with about three of their boards total. (One was my fault but still amazed me that one power surge could fry the whole board but keep every other component intact and working properly)
So forgive my apathetic and very sarcastic "yea... an Asus article... yea..."
Does not work with Mandriva 10.1
I have not had problems with other boards.
I returned the K8S board and bought a more expensive one.!!
bit-tech.net took a look at corsair's memory factory in shanghai last year, a similar type article, i think they had videos of a machine putting motherboards together too
a ctory_tour/1.html
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2004/09/20/corsair_f
The engineers at ASUS completely missed the idea behind a faraday cage!
Second, neither the graphic card nor the motherboard nor the hard drives require that much 12V power.
No, they don't require that much power. But what particularly a video card does require is CLEAN power. HDs spin up and down, so their power usage varies... and since there's no such thing as a 'real' voltage source, the voltage supplied by the PSU does vary (however slightly) with amps drawn.
Putting your HD+Mobo and Videocard on a seperate rail prevents these fluctuations from affecting the stability of your (overclocked!) video card.
Get it now?
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Who read the title as "A Look Inside the Labs of Anus"?
/. with a hangover....
I guess it's what you get for reading
And you where thinking that they would have Taiwanese power sockets? Last time I was there, the hotel I stayed in had UK socket, but that's all I know, could have been a mutant hotel... Who knows, the Brits where pretty active in that part of the world a few years back.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
...what do you expect?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
How exactly are you supposed to review a product at the labs of the manufacturers?
The article is a series of photos from inside the labs of Asus, along with some benchmarks to give you an idea of the performance of the cards.
For Hexus to do a proper review they'd need it on their own test systems with their own test software and without an Asus guy staring over their shoulder, and given the article remarks about the QC passed parts going out to media around the world, I expect that's what we'll see in due course.
Take an article for what it is - it's a look at a product, not an in-depth analysis - rather than criticising it as something it isn't.
After seeing all the cooling that the boards need and the small fan, I get the feeling these boards come with complementary earplugs.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Nope, I don't get it. Wouldn't you want just your overclocked videcard on a rail by itself? Surely overclocking the mobo will cause possible fluctuations as well.
Where's the oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and various probes required to test designs? Not much of an "R&D" facility really. This looks more like a product-test bench. A stage that occurs far after the "R&D" portion.
First, it says on the label, which is clearly visible, that the maximum is not 35A times 12V = 420 Watts, but 324 Watts.
Not to mention, I'd like to see anyone get 35 Amps out of a standard home or commercial outlet. Most houses in the US are wired with 14guage wire, and are designed to handle 15A comfortably, which is usually the size of the breaker. Commercial outlets usually are 20 amps, using 12guage wire.
If anything in your computer used 35 amps, it would require a dryer-type NEMA plug and a dedicated circuit.
~Wx
sig?
Methinks your forgot your physics. If you draw 35A at 12V you are essentially drawing ~3.8A at 110V.
"These are very special tools only supplied to special electrical appliances shops, and usually not available within handreach from your chair..."
:) I am seriously unable to find anything like the strip in the picture referenced in my original post.
If they were readily available, I wouldn't have asked. I haven't seen anything like that in any of the stores I frequent. Those include CompUSA, BestBuy, Circuit City, Staples, and OfficeMax. I also haven't seen them at either the local PC sales shows or the local hamfest. Of course, I didn't know such a thing existed (although it seems obvious now), so I wasn't asking after it in particular. But none of the displays had anything like it. I live in the North-East USA, if that matters.
I also have tried some Google seaches, and the only one I was able to find was this one http://www.hammondmfg.com/1580.htm, which doesn't even have TVSS.
(The above is a near-repeat of this post, but the parent and the mod's apparently think I'm just a lazy bastard. While I may be a lazy bastard, I'm not just a lazy bastard.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Just a desk? Where do you think they got the bench marks?
good point, my bad.
ort.
sig?
A home outlet can easily supply 3.5 amps...3.5A at 120V = 35A at 12V. P=IV -> Watts = Amps * Volts 12 * 35 = 420 420 = 120 * 3.5 Power draw stays constant across voltage/amperage conversions, so when you decrease the voltage (to 12V) the amperage increases by the same factor. Grandparent post was correct that they didn't check their math against the pic, though.
Price of every new generation of video card goes to new heights while the old hotness and everything below stays relatively the same. It's been the "new" trend/business model for awhile now(years). For me, even though I can afford it, I've not upgraded out of disgust, but obviously the majority have no self control, so we get more of the same overpricing and continuous elevated price trends. A positive way to look at it is it says one could do well by starting a business because the majority of people readily submit to being perpetually ass raped in the wallet. Hell, they even defend being taken advantage of with all sorts of justifications too. And your product doesn't even have to work right! Now that's clientele!:)
I also suspect that I own the last board put out by anybody which still had an ISA slot. Last one out the factory door in a long, long while. I needed it for my trusty scanner's proprietory card.
It was that, or trying to get a decent scanner with a viewing bed larger than a sheet of typing paper. Sheesh.
-FL
Er.. I'd suggest you reread your "electronics 101" book.
35A at 12V will just draw ~4A from the wall plug (depending on conversion efficiency) and won't be a problem at all.
It sucks! Ever tried downloading drivers from them? I spent an hour trying to find the latest drivers/BIOS for my motherboard recently. I had to try servers in several countries before I found one that wasn't down for "database resyncronization" or something like that. And then I found two versions of "beta BIOS" (whatever the hell that is) that both claimed to be the "latest version".
Also, my motherboard came with a utility that will check for the latest version of the drivers and BIOS from the website. It has never worked.
Yes, we get it indeed. You don't know shit about electronics.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
what the hell is wrong with her nipples? if I had nipples like that I think I'd probably not flash them around the net.
Oh, and you're an expert in the field? I'm a third year computer engineering student, and I've taken my share of electrical classes to know that an "Ideal" Voltage Source exists only in principle. There are however ways of simulating the ideal case in various ways, by making the voltage across the source vary very slightly with the current drawn.
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
You're forgetting that the voltage is being stepped down. Your household wiring can supply 15A at 110V, i.e. 1.65kW. A transformer which takes the 110V down to 12V could, in the theoretical best case (assuming no losses/impedance/resistance) supply 138A to the PC without exceeding 15A on its inputs. In practice, you won't get anything like this, but 35A won't be a problem.