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AMD Aims At New Standard for Motherboards
alexwcovington writes "CBC reports that AMD is launching DTX, a new motherboard layout about the size of micro-ATX. Their goal is to provide a small, energy efficient board that's compatible with as much hardware as possible. In the DTX, they're hoping to produce a new standard for desktops, and somewhat reverse the decline in consumer interest. From the article: 'Most desktops still have motherboards that operate using a standard laid out in 1995 by Intel called ATX, which stands for Advanced Technology Extended. ATX was designed to allow everything from memory cards to mouse ports to have a standardized spot alongside the central processing unit on a typical desktop motherboard. While there have been other standards since, ATX remains the most common standard for desktops, though its design is not suited for smaller, more energy-efficient desktops, AMD said.' Ars Technica has further details on the board."
But this topic is worthless without pics.
I couldn't find any of these... But I could be missing something
(1) Does it provide something that is not encompassed by one of MicroATX, MiniITX or ATX
(2) Does combine advantages of any of the above listed form factors?
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Their goal is to provide a small, energy efficient board that's compatible with as much hardware as possible.
If that's the goal, then with ISA, PCI, AGP, PCI-X, IDE33/66/100/133/SATA and a few hundred flavors of SIMMS and DIMMS, I can see this becoming a very large board indeed.
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"and somewhat reverse the decline in consumer interest"
Let's hope for the sake of AMD, their level of excitement is greater than the submitter's. The new boards will have to deliver something effective if they are going to be of any use. Scale down component infrastructure, increase speed and decrease power requirements. Intel could stand to do the same, but still...
HP launched small form factor PCs called Slimlines, and I had a few customers buy them from me -- so far no complaints, but it will be nice to see these models reduced further and then pushed for speed as well, in the future.
AMD seem to really have their eye on the ball, IMHO.
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"...so I sure hope that includes the Case. "
I have alway hoped that if a supplier could make the mobo in 2 section connected by flexable cable it would (assuming cost a performance are equal) really help create way more interesting cases.
Why they even bother? Notebooks and rack servers have won. Not quite yet maybe but I don't know everyone who's gonna buy a new "big" desktop PC anymore. The death of CRT (totally happened already, right?) is just one step away from death of your typical desktop block.
Now - if they would come up with modular notebook design, mmmm.... Standardize on some internal configs (12", 15", 17") and sell cases with different design that I would be able to stuff with motheboard, RAM, HDD, optical drive, etc. Like current PCs. Wouldn't that be great?
I completely disagree. I work with plenty of OS's that don't have USB support at ALL when you need it.... like at the installer phase.
There is more to this than using your new sparkly USB keyboard via Windows.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I don't see much point in yet another desktop standard. We've laready got a number of good standards there. ATX, MicroATX, BTX, Mini-ITX, Nano-ITX, etc...
What I'd really love to see is a motherboard standard for the laptop. Let me choose the motherboard, the CPU, and other features on it, and let me choose the shell, and let me choose the screen to put into the shell with this chosen motherboard. Why is thre no LTX?
That'd be wicked cool.
Cases are part of the problem. Intel realized this and that's part of what BTX is about, and I have to say the design really makes sense.
While the design of BTX did make more sense in particular for cooling, for Intel it wasn't just a "better ATX", it was a way to make the increasing power demands of the Pentium 4 acceptable as it was becoming near impossible to sufficiently cool them. Now that Intel has dropped Netburst, the need for BTX isn't there. Not that there's anything wrong with a better ATX, but the industry doesn't want to switch from something that works.
Then it says the DTX will have ONE pcie slot. What is DTX trying to accomplish? A platform trying to capture the Mac Mini market I'm guessing (however big that is).
They're trying to create a larger small form-factor market. Like all those cool Shuttle small form factor cases that cost more than normal sized ones. The idea behind DTX is to provide a standard that can lead to mass-produced, cheap, commodity cases and motherboards just like we enjoy with ATX, and with the minimal amount of retooling of existing manufacturing. There is certainly a demand for smaller, cooler, quieter computers which don't need a lot of expandability (and other than a video card, with networking and sound built in, what do most people need at minimum?), and AMD wants to bring commodity economics into that market (so they can sell more chips to it).
That's the point. Whether it will work, I don't know. The technical details aren't even out yet I don't think, and it remains to be seen if the industry accepts it.
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A very creative idea. But it isn't correct, I argue: We put the CPU inside the box because the box is a controlled environment. Many times I run computers with their boxes open, but only when I know that the external airflow is more than the internal airflow. However, having an industry standard with the CPU dependent on external airflow is not correct because people won't know how to properly place their computer, and thus this is a recipe for tech-ignorant people to burn their CPU. If you know what you are doing, then it is really better to have the CPU outside the box, but only if you are smart enough to set up your space in such a way where the CPU will receive more airflow externally (some people use a big room airfan or an aircondition blowing cool air directly against an open box).