Computex 2013: Day 0 - The Pre-Show Spotlight

The other type of pre-show is a tour.  Tours are exactly what you think and are usually reserved for VIPs who want a more personal approach to the products they are looking at.  Gigabyte typically has a pre-show tour for the Media and lets editors who have landed early to get a jump start on their show coverage.

Gigabyte has also refined their product lines.  The OC line now features two styles of motherboards with one designed with many features onboard to compete with products like Asus Rampage and a second board designed to be a streamlined overclocking system.  Both products feature the black and orange color scheme and are almost completely different under the surface.   For instance on the lower end OC board the power connectors are solid metal for a better contact patch and feature gold plating on the power connectors. Memory slots and CPU socket.

The Gigabyte G1 Gaming line has also been expanding to feature four motherboards.  The top end board features a later PWM and PLX chip for 4-way graphics setups.  The connections are also gold plated and feature something I haven't seen on a motherboard in quite a while, the physical separation of electrical components.   Typically when onboard components are etched on the PCB they leave signal paths to connect them to the rest of the system, this allows the device to work but also introduces signal interference which can be static or a whine in an audio system.  The only way to prevent this is to use an add-on board.  Well, Gigabyte has solved this problem by physically removing the onboard audio from the rest of the system.  If you look carefully in some of the photos you'll see a line running down the left side of the motherboard near the sound chip, this is blank PCB space with no color and no traces.

On the other side of the suite is the VGA and Server division and they had some really good products on display.  The most exciting (for me) was the fully custom GTX 770 graphics card complete with a new version of the Windforce 3X cooling system.  Not surprising the top fan cooler we saw last year has been replaced with a dual slot cooler with 3 fans and 8 heatpipes!. 

Some of the other products on display include the GTX 780 OC which is currently a hot-clocked version of the reference GTX 780 which also features the Windforce 3X cooler  and a new scissor switch gaming keyboard called the Force K7.  The keyboard is similar to the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium but with a different switch type.

There were two mice on display including the Uranium-Gaming mouse with OLED display and Neon-Mouse which is an air style controller designed for presentations.