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."

Comments

Might be just me

[Anonymous Coward]

But this topic is worthless without pics.

so, which of these advantages does it have?

[jimstapleton]

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?

Re:so, which of these advantages does it have?

[rm999]

I may be mistaken, but I don't think any of the current ATX implementations have this specific goal:
"The DTX standard will be designed to embrace energy-efficient processors from AMD or other hardware vendors, and allow an optimally designed small form factor system to consume less power and generate less noise," the company said in a release Thursday."

How AMD intends to implement this is beyond me. It seems that is more of a case layout and CPU issue than motherboard

Re:so, which of these advantages does it have?

[arivanov]

Intel's BTX has the same goal (besides a few others) but for Intel. Airflow and component positioning with respect to airflow is part of the spec. IIRC it does not account for having industrial heaters (AKA modern videocards) in the case, but this can be taken care of by amending the spec. It is clearly a good hardware spec and it fixes most ATX problems.

miniITX has a similar goal in theory and it has the advantage of being nearly 100% backward compatible with ATX, but fails at making a good small factor PC as it does not specify an airflow across the MB. It is also severely limited in its expansion capabilities as it supports only 32bit PCI. Every single ITX MB out there has slightly different positioning of thermally active components and different airflow requirements. Why Via did not make the airflow and the thermals a part of the standard is beyond me as it often defeats all the advantages of having a quiet motherboard and multiple bad case designs give Via's otherwise excellent Eden based MBs an undeserved bad name. Classic example are older Cubid cases where the CPU and the disk overheat while the case emits hovercraft like noise because it has 3 fans to blow air from nowhere to nowhere. There was an even more horrible one which used a 1U rackmount PS with 40+db noise (forgot the manufacturer). And all this to power a 7W fanless CPU system...

So now AMD has joined the fray. By the way, it is still mostly vapourware as there is nothing on their website. Personally, I would like to see a spec, especially the thermal,ps,expansion and airflow part of it. Without this it is not possible to compare it to the existing competition. AMD has plenty of experience aquired via Geode as well as a clear picture of the failures in the miniITX, nanoITX and BTX specs so it should be able to make a better one if it wants to. I somehow doubt it. It is more likely going to end up as another marketing initiative like Live!

Reversals

[mfh]

"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.

I'd rather have a laptop standard board

[amigabill]

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.

Re:hmm BTX style?

[Chris Burke]

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.

Re:Put the CPU on the backside!

[wikinerd]

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).