ASUS Readies Latest Motherboards for Upcoming Six-core CPUs

Full Range of AMD-based Motherboards are Ready to Support Six-Core for Next-generation Personal Computing

ASUS today announced a full range of motherboards that are ready to support the upcoming six-core AMD® Phenom™ II X6 processors to herald a new era in ultra-powerful personal computing.

Early Praises from Media Organizations World-wide

Ready for AMD six-core processors, the ASUS M4 Series motherboards deliver maximum performance on a mainstream platform. Other than the readiness of supporting six-core processors, Joe Hsieh, General Manager of ASUS Motherboard Business said, “the ASUS M4 Series also gives users of every level the best performance and value with its Core Unlocker feature. This has received notable recognition from many of the world’s top media organizations for delivering a phenomenal boost in performance.” M4 Series motherboards with exclusive Core Unlocker technology have also garnered global media accolades for being the best motherboard for AMD processors.

Simple BIOS Upgrade For Six-core Activation

ASUS’ M4 Series motherboard is ready for the AMD® Phenom™ II X6 processors. To enable 6-core CPU and achieve maximum performance, users simply need to update the BIOS of their existing M4 Series.

Five Overclocked GeForce GTX 560 Cards, Rounded-Up

We were foiled in our quest to find the best vendor-provided GPU cooler for Nvidia's GeForce GTX 560. But out of the ashes sprung a round-up of cards armed with those very same solutions. Which of these five GF114-based boards is right for you?
            This story was conceptualized as a means to compare graphics card coolers from different vendors. Because no two GPUs have the exact same overclocking headroom, we wanted to take one GeForce GTX 560 and drop solutions from Asus, ECS, Galaxy, MSI, and Zotac onto that bare board. With thermal, acoustic, and performance data, we would have been able to give you a definitive answer as to whose heat sink and fan combination does the best job of pulling heat away from Nvidia's GPU. Surely, this would have been great information to have when overclocking.
Unfortunately, that plan was foiled by a number of variables that we simply couldn’t overcome to our satisfaction. For example, the cooler designers employ a surprisingly diverse range of fan power cable plugs, which aren't interoperable with any one card's connector. Moreover, fan temperature profiles vary from one card's firmware to another's, affecting our thermal and acoustic results.

With five GeForce GTX 560 cards in-hand, though, we still had the makings of a respectable round-up. So, we abandoned the idea of isolating cooler/fan effectiveness and forged ahead to bring you a comprehensive look at five examples of Nvidia's roughly-$200 contender.

	Asus GTX 560 DirectCU II TOP	ECS Black GTX 560	Galaxy MDT4 GeForce GTX 560	MSI N560GTX Twin Frozr II OC	Zotac GeForce GTX 560 AMP!
Graphics Clock	925 MHz	870 MHz	830 MHz	870 MHz	950 MHz
Shader Clock	1850 MHz	1740 MHz	1660 MHz	1640 MHz	1900 MHz
Memory Clock	1050 MHz	1000 MHz	1002 MHz	1020 MHz	1100 MHz
GDDR5 Memory	1 GB	1 GB	1 GB	1 GB	1 GB
Cooler	DirectCU II	Reference	Custom	Twin Frozr II	Custom
Size	10.25" x 5"	9.5" x 5"	8.75" x 5"	10" x 5"	9.5" x 5"
Connectors	2 x DL-DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI	2 x DL-DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI	4 x DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI	2 x DL-DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI	2 x DL-DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI
Form Factor	Dual-slot	Dual-slot	Dual-slot	Dual-slot	Dual-slot
GPU Voltage	0.912 V Idle 1.012 V Load	0.950 V Idle 0.987 V Load	0.912 V Idle 0.987 V Load	0.912 V Idle 0.987 V Load	0.912 V Idle 1.15 V Load
GPU Voltage Adjustment	Asus Smartdoctor	Not supported (MSI Afterburner)	Galaxy Xtreme Tuner HD	MSI Afterburner	Not supported (Stock 1.15 V)
Special Features And Software	N/A	N/A	Quad-Display Support	Includes game: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light	Includes game: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Warranty	3-Year parts & labor	2-Year labor 3-Year parts	2-Year labor 3-Year parts (if registered in 30 days)	3-Year parts & labor	2-Year Standard, Limited Lifetime Extended (if registered in 30 days)
Newegg Price	$219.99	$192.99	$229.99	$199.99	$219.99

As you can see, there’s a wide range of specifications applied to these cards, none of which match Nvidia’s reference 810 MHz core and 1002 MHz frequencies. The Galaxy model comes closest with its 830/1002 MHz clocks, but Zotac's AMP! edition goes all the way to 950/1100 MHz.
There’s a lot more distinguishing one board from the others than operating clock rates, though, as all of the coolers are unique as well. There's only one that matches the reference design. Some cards also include value-adds like games, and the Galaxy MDT supports as many as four display outputs and triple-monitor surround gaming. Of course, we also have to gauge how far our samples can be overclocked.

IC Fabrication

Thermal Power Plant

Thermal Power Plant Layout

Active and Passive Devices

What are Active Devices?
                An active device is any type of circuit component with the ability to electrically control electron flow (electricity controlling electricity). In order for a circuit to be properly called electronic, it must contain at least one active device. Active devices include, but are not limited to, vacuum tubes, transistors, silicon-controlled rectifiers (SCRs), and TRIACs.
                 All active devices control the flow of electrons through them. Some active devices allow a voltage to control this current while other active devices allow another current to do the job. Devices utilizing a static voltage as the controlling signal are, not surprisingly, called voltage-controlled devices. Devices working on the principle of one current controlling another current are known as current-controlled devices. For the record, vacuum tubes are voltage-controlled devices while transistors are made as either voltage-controlled or current controlled types. The first type of transistor successfully demonstrated was a current-controlled device.

What are Passive Devices?
                   Components incapable of controlling current by means of another electrical signal are called passive devices. Resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, and even diodes are all considered passive devices.
                    Passive devices are the resistors, capacitors, and inductors required to build electronic hardware. They always have a gain less than one, thus they can not oscillate or amplify a signal. A combination of passive components can multiply a signal by values less than one, they can shift the phase of a signal, they can reject a signal because it is not made up of the correct frequencies, they can control complex circuits, but they can not multiply by more than one because they lack gain.

Using Universal Gates to Form Logic Gates