I was just wondering what people thought of the new intel BTX motherboards. With these new Mobos, people will need cases that open on the other side, but they will be much easier to keep cool. The Future is here.

When i looked in this post I went and did some research into the new btx style form factor, great idea and engineered well to control heat disipation, overall a great idea, but I can see SERIOUS Problems during changover, we are not really talking bout changing from at to atx where the slots and everything were in the same place, they just adapted some cases for both and adapted for the new psu's, this is almost an entire case redisgn, but what we may see good come out of this is manufacturers will build cases that MIGHT be able to have the motherboard on either side, now that would be interesting

Later

I read an article in my magazine about the new standard. Although temperature is one advantage with the new standard, the primary improment is in chip locations. Currently, the P4 has to jump around, over and through all sorts of connections to connect with north and south bridges. The new BTX standard moves the processor so that fewer lines overlap, and electrical currents have a more direct route to where they want to go. This is a big deal, especially when we start approaching the 5Ghz mark... using the current standard you would see serious performance bottlenecks occuring becuase of MoBo phyisical constraints. As with all major upgrades in computing histroy... expect that you'll have to completely change all of your hardware to accomidate the new standard. (That's why I make my cases out of strange inatimate objects.)

It may be a starndard in the future , however it will no doubt be expensive at it's release. I can really make a conclution with out some benchmarks.

regardless of performance, atx will still remain popular for a little while after the release of btx due to incompatibilities with switching to new hardware. unless they are smart and create backwards compatibility for things.

imnuts wrote:

regardless of performance, atx will still remain popular for a little while after the release of btx due to incompatibilities with switching to new hardware. unless they are smart and create backwards compatibility for things.

i concur, i also realize that it will take much time for everyone to adopt this new mobo style. As for the backwards compatibility, there is only one case that i know of put out by CooLerMasteR that is compatible with both Atx and BTX formfactor. I hope the introduction to btx goes over as smooth as the intro to 64 bit .

Two reasons why k10wn's a fan of the new architecture:

1.) One word: PCI Express...the slowest BTX boards will transfer standard PCI data (at 1x) at a rate of 2.5 GIGAtransfers per second. High end boards (32x) will be capable of 80 GIGATRANSFERS per second. Better yet, Intel built the PCI Express so as the medium evolves, a 1x PCI lane will be capable of handling 10 Gigatransfers per second by itself (the theoretical limit of a single copper wire)...if you do the math (which I did for you), that's a BTX board with a PCI bus capable of 320 GIGATRANSFERS per second...just slightly better than my Commodore 64, but my great, great grandfather always used to say, 'k10wn...there will be a day.'

Btw, the top of the line PCI board out right now is capable of just over 2 Gigatransfers per second.


B.) Two words: obnoxious penguins

Graphics...graphics graphics...at launch, the BTX form factor will support, at the low-end, 16x AGP graphics transfers...instantaneously doubling the best AGP bus from the start...and that's a big chunk o' data to double...we're talkin 4 GIGABYTES of data pumping across the BTX board with every passing second.
And with the AGP architecture capable of quadrupling as technology advances, we may soon never need to set foot outside again...

IIII.) The first BTX boards will ship with integrated 10 Gigabit bandwidth for networking...no more bottlenecks when downloading internet porn....I mean pork...internet pork...

IIII.) PCI and AGP cards will ultimately be hot-swappable....stupid non-hot-swappable cards....

Basically, every component in a desktop PC is atleast five generations deep...except the form factor. As often as CPU's go through a major overhaul and graphics cards leapfrog each other, a new standard for the whole architecture every fifteen years shouldn't be asking to much.

I say, "If Intel brings the form factor, I'll bring the jelly...and it'll probly be strawberry."