MSI Europe showed a nice screenshot of Elmor’s latest overclocking feat and overclocking experience with MSI’s recently announced HD 7970 Lightning card.

MSI’s Radeon HD 7970 Lightning overclocked up to 1800MHz for the GPU. Apparently all it took was some LN2 and Swedish overclocker Elmor, which proved his OC skills at various overclocking events.

The card was normally chilled by LN2 and stable core clock ended up at 1800MHz with 1700mV of voltage. Memory ended up at impressive 1925MHz (7.7GHz effective). Elmor used MSI’s Big Bang XPower II X79 motherboard and Intel Core i7 3960X Sandy Bridge-E CPU overclocked to 5207.8MHz. The 3DMark 11 score ended at 15035 marks in Performance mode.

MSI has definitely made dream graphics card for any overclocker and that custom PCB is surely doing a nice job.

Click for full resolution screenshot.

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A while ago a preview was already shown at a colleague website. eVGA however is close to launching its EVGA X58 Classified motherboard.

The Classified edition will be the cream of the crop X58 motherboard for the uber-highend PC enthusiasts. A design feature of this motherboard the power-circuitry that fuels its various components. A 1.33 MHz 10-phase digital PWM circuitry with dual 8-pin 12V inputs, along with 4-phase circuit for the DDR3 memory, and 3-phase NB power. Four PCI-E x16 slots driven by the Intel X58 chipset in conjunction with NVIDIA’s

NF200allowing four x16 PCI-E slots. As many of you already know, the NF200 is a PCI-E 2.0 x16 bridge-chip solution, which does add extra latency to the data transfer process.

That offers 3-way SLI + an additional slot for a GeForce accelerator dedicated to process PhysX.

Elaborate heatpipe based coolers over the board’s northbridge and VRM areas keep temperatures under check. The launch price is expected to be around $400~$450, putting it off the radar for most. EVGA provides a plug-in remote PCB, supporting power, reset, CMOS clear, a hex POST code LED display, on-the-fly VCore adjustment, and PCI-E disable jumpers.

The remote buttons come in handy when benchmarking the board out of a PC case, especially when the lowest PCI-E slot is occupied.

The AMD 880G (RS880) motherboard chipset, which is expected in the second quarter of the year will have an enhanced integrated video feature, with support for DVD upscaling to Full HD.

NVIDIA is promoting this right now for CUDA ready GPUs, as you can purchase a software package for this.

It is said that this new chipset have the features of a RV620 or HD3450 class level features. It supports DX10.1, UVD2, hardware decoding of H.264, VC-1, MPEG2. It also has a DVD Upscaling function that transforms existing DVD by upscaling them to Full HD of 1920×1080.

This North bridge can be paired with existing SB 750 or SB 710 chipset south bridge.

Though ECS has no presence on CeBIT they did announce a couple of things on-line. Among them, to much surprise, the first AMD 880G chipset based motherboards. The board comes with a pair of beefy chipset and MOSFET coolers, being an AM3 board supporting DDR3-1333 memory instead of DDR2/AM2/AM2+.

AMD 880G chipset will form part of the AMD Live! “Pisces” platform.AMD 880G will feature a integrated Radeon HD 3450 (RV620) DX10.1 graphics core, DDR3 support, HyperTransport 3.0, Universal Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2), Hybrid Crossfire with a discrete Radeon HD 3450 graphics core through a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot, Display Port/HDMI/DVI/SurroundView support. AMD 880G will be paired up with SB710 Southbridge offering 12 USB ports and 6 SATA ports.

AMD is also touting much on their new OverDrive 3.0 that support AM3 platforms featuring Smart Control that boost clocks on demand, Application Specific Profiles that optimise system settings upon application detection and Hardware Monitoring support with fan control.

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Although the current CeBit 2009 reports 25 percent less exhibitors and an about 20 percent smaller floor space, there are some interesting things going on. Just have a look at the “P6T7 WS Supercomputer” motherboard from Asus, for example:

Besides supporting the new Core i7 processors from Intel, this X58 motherboard features seven PCIe 2.0 x16 slots. While three of these are “only” running at x8, the other four slots support full x16. Whether this makes sense or not is questionable, of course. Other specifications include: six Dimm slots for up to 24 GB of DDR3 RAM, six SATA 150/300 ports (supporting SATA RAID 0, 1, 10, 5), two SAS ports (supporting SAS RAID 0, 1, 10), two eSATA 150/300 ports (supporting SATA RAID 0, 1, 10, 5) and two Gigabit-Ethernet-Ports.

Other interesting news today. Apparantly Asrock opened up Crossfire compatibility with their nForce 740 motherboards. They are demonstrating this at CeBIT.

As you know, ATI and NVIDIA are not exactly keen on each other. As such, NVIDIA always has prevented to allow Crossfire setups to run with their motherboards. Currently the only chipset platform that doesn’t support CrossFire is the NVIDIA nForce series.

ASRock devised a BIOS for its nForce 740i based N7AD-SLI motherboard that enables support for CrossFire. AMD’s Catalyst drivers were able to detect the motherboard as a qualified platform and enable CrossFire between two installed ATI Radeon accelerators. The setup was able to show performance increments during a 3DMark06 session. ASRock is reportedly working out similar BIOS firmware for several other motherboards made by it, and wants to enable CrossFire, CrossFireX for all its nForce motherboards.

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That is a pretty sick design really. Our colleagues from Tech PowerUp report that ASUS will intro a new motherboard concept, the Marine Cool series.

The Marine Cool series design goes far ahead from current Republic of Gamers (R.O.G.) mainboard products. For starters, the new motherboard has a new back plate that utilizes “micro-porous ceramic” technology and spreads across the whole PCB. The heat-pipe system that cools the motherboard’s main components is also different, compared to current shipping products. Although the cooling technology remains the same, the whole look of the system reminds of a robot armour.

The weirdest thing is this though, ASUS engineers have decided to use SO-DIMM modules to cope with current Core 2 processors (if I’m right that appears to be LGA775 socket). I know it sounds a bit crazy, but pictures don’t lie. Have a look and write what you think.

The ASUS Marine Cool prototype will first appear during this year’s CeBIT 2009 in Hannover, Germany.

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Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS introduces the latest cutting-edge M.I.B. II (Motherboard Intelligent BIOS II) tweaking utility for new-born Black Series motherboards, providing solutions to meet the demands from the market without high price tag.

Unleashing the full potential of hardware components that brings great benefits to users, ECS M.I.B. II incorporates plenty of detailed tweaking options especially in voltage control to enhance the overall system performance. In addition, gathering every tweaking option all in a single page is extremely convenient for users that spending precious time in searching merely a BIOS setting is never necessary. Just buy ECS’s Black Series motherboards now and enjoy the tweaking pleasure immediately.

For many users, getting additional benefits is always their concern which makes overclocking considerably popular nowadays. ECS M.I.B. II allows users to get higher system performance simply by several steps in entering certain numbers in BIOS if they’re not familiar with the BIOS settings. Comparing to the previous version of M.I.B. tweaking utility, more options and bigger range of voltage control are added as well for power users to reach the hardware limit. Moreover, it’s extremely convenient that options for system tweaking are gathered all in a single page that power users can focus on pushing the limit without searching required options in various pages.

Targeting at the performance segment, ECS Black Series motherboards stand for excellent solutions with the best price/performance ratio which always features all-solid-capacitor design for better durability, specifically designed cooling solution for faster heat dissipation, 4 or 6 phase power design for power stability, ECS Ultra I/O rear panel for USB peripherals connectivity, ECS Easy Button for easier installation, and ECS exclusive M.I.B. tweaking utility for sure. With great enhancement and advancement, ECS Black Series motherboards such as A780GM-A Ultra, A790GXM-A, X58B-A, and the latest A790GXM-AD3, now phase in the latest M.I.B. II tweaking utility to provide a powerful platform for users.

ECS launched the A890GXM-A2, their second revision of the AMD 890GX based Black Series motherboard.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) introduces AMD 890GX based motherboard – ECS Black Series A890GXM-A2 supports the latest six-core CPU to bring users an impressive visual experience with its tough features.

Totally Release Your Energy

By “One-step Unlocking” function in “ECS M.I.B. III” overclocking interface, users are able to unlock the hidden cores of CPU easily, and it reaches over 238% CPU performance boosted than default setting by unlocking cores with overclocking; moreover, it is also easy to reach 146% gaming performance boosted by overclocking GPU – ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 graphics processor’s core clock and SidePort memory speed; ECS A890GXM-A2 fully supports the latest AMD Turbo Core technology which is essential for power-desired users to get extra performance automatically.

ECS A890GXM-A2 is also the first motherboard provides a real PCI-E Gen.2 bandwidth SuperSpeed USB 3.0 controller enhanced by a world-leading IC manufacture in Taiwan, with this perfect solution, ECS A890GXM-A2 features attractive price in the performance segment.

Solid Products are made of Solid Features

* “ECS Anti-crash Connector Covers” protect the rear I/O like video outputs perfectly against powder, dust even and static electricity;
* Bundled “Norton Internet Security 2011” to protect system against virus and spyware;
* “ECS 15 ì Gold Contact” offers 3 times extra protection to secure the motherboard stability and durability;
* ECS 4most™ Display Design” contains HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI and D-Sub connectors on the rear panel at once;
* “ECS eBLU and ECS eDLU” applications provide the most convenient way to update BIOS and Drivers;
* “ECS eGS and ECS eSF” applications decrease power consumption and increase cooling efficiency;
* “ECS eOC” overclocking utility offers an easy and safe way to overclocking under operation system;
* “ECS eJIFFY” utility speeds up boot time and allows users to surf the internet without virus attack;
* “ECS Qooltech™ III” comes with twin-heatpipe design to enhance cooling efficiency for PWM;
* “ECS Easy Button and Easy Clear” offer an easy way to enjoy boosting system performance without hassle;
* “All solid capacitors and lower RDS(on) MOSFET” improve durability and increase up to 50% efficiency and decrease the temperatures by 16%;
* “eSATA 6.0Gbps solution” provides 2 times faster speed in accessing external storage than eSATA;

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EVGA introduced the X58 Classified3 motherboard, this model is nearly similar to it’s predecessor but now features SATA 6Gbps as well as USB 3.0 support.

Based off of the original record-shattering “Classified” design, EVGA has pushed the envelope even further on design and performance by adding the next generation high speed USB3 and SATA 3/6G Ports. These additions allow the extreme performance potential of this highly overclockable motherboard to be unleashed without reservation or delay when paired with a lightning fast SATA3/6G SSD or other high performance drive.

With the capability to RAID the two attached next-generation SATA ports, you can get even more from the ultimate high performance experience.As more devices appear with the USB 3 and SATA 3/6G interface, gamers and overclockers alike will have the ultimate in overclocking performance now and be ready for the next generation.

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