By Chris Hall

     Mainboard production is fiercely competitive and dominated by high-volume production, but Hong Kong makers are continuing to turn out high quality offerings. Action Pro, for example, has developed a Mini-ITX board. Graphics companies such as Manli Technology and XFX are now offering motherboards that integrate both NVIDIA graphics and NVIDIA core logic.
     Hong Kong's Action Pro started out in 1999, making "traditional" motherboards for the PC. In 2007, Action Pro returned to motherboards, focusing this time on boards for mini PCs and AV PCs targeted for the digital home, with the emphasis on home entertainment. Action Pro has designed a set of Mini-ITX boards for these compact systems.
     Andy Fung, sales and marketing supervisor with Action Pro, commented that although the desktop PC market continues to see growth, this type of AV system or mini PC will eventually replace the traditional PC, the "beige box" in a tower format. In Fung's view, the advantages of this type of systems are obvious. They make less noise, they operate at lower temperatures, and they occupy less space.
     Currently, the company is using Pentium Mobile processors for its Mini-ITX based systems, but future versions, said Fung, will use Intel Core 2 Mobile CPUs in combination with a heatpipe cooling solution. Currently the company's Duosonic compact system, model DSM2, uses a traditional cooler, a heatsink with fan arrangement, to cool the unit's Pentium M1 processor.
     In total, Action Pro had five of these Mini-ITX boards in development, at time of interview, two of them using the Intel 965 chipset, and three fitted with the Intel 915G chipset.
     All five boards will accommodate mini-PCI add-in cards, which could include a Wireless LAN card or TV tuner. All five boards also support Ethernet networking, and some will have an integrated Gigabit Ethernet capability.

Desktop processors an option
     Fung indicated that Action Pro's strategy is to allow users to adopt desktop processors for these Mini-ITX boards, if they are building their own systems, to lower costs, and this is enabled by the Intel 965 chipset, which supports dual- and four-core CPUs.
     Two of the boards fitted with the 915 chipset are also equipped with a PCI Express slot, as also the two boards with the 965 chipset. This then allows users to fit discrete PCIe graphics cards in a low profile format, explained Fung. This boost in graphics performance would have obvious benefits for AV systems designed to appeal to consumers as primarily home entertainment and gaming platforms.
     At time of interview all five of these Mini-ITX boards from Action Pro were in final development, but scheduled to be available by CeBIT time in early March. Pre-release samples were scheduled to become available in mid-February.
     Action Pro International Ltd. has a website at www.actionpro.com.hk.
     Manli Technology is best known as a Hong Kong graphics card specialist, but the company has now added motherboards to the product lineup. Manli has been shipping around 2,000 boards a month, since November of last year. Lawrence Ho, a sales and marketing manager at Manli, commented that both the graphics card and motherboard markets are continuing to see growth, and there are significant market opportunities.
     It's the graphics card business, where Manli is an NVIDIA based card supplier, which is now providing the impetus for Manli's board offerings, with the company now offering three models of NVIDIA MCP73 motherboards. Ho is confident that although Intel has dominated the motherboard market, there is a niche for NVIDIA and its core logic offerings. Since Manli is an NVIDIA based add-in card company, NVIDIA provides good support on the manufacturing side and in the provision of chipsets and marketing resources.

MCP73 for all segments
     In offering three models of NVIDIA MCP73 based boards, Manli is following the NVIDIA roadmap, which is designed to meet the demands of the three main market segments, low end, high end and mid-market, while offering an integrated graphics capability. Manli is offering its MCP73D board for the low end. The mid-market offering is model MCP73PV, and model MCP73U is targeted for the high end.
     High-end model MCP73U has the front-side bus (FSB) clocked at 1333MHz. There is support for DDR2 800 memory, up to a total of 4GB. The MCP73 logic chipset comprises the NVIDIA nForce 630i and the GeForce 7150. The graphics clock is at 630MHz, and there is support for DirectX 9.0. The MCP73U board supports the full range of Intel LGA 775 processors, from the Core 2 Quad to the Celeron processor. That range includes the Core 2 Duo, in addition to the Core 2 Quad, plus the Pentium Dual-Core processors and the latest Celeron Duo.
     There are four SATA headers on Manli's MCP73U board and two DIMM slots. The logic chipsets are cooled by Manli's own-design heatsink, with a distinctive curved top surface that maximizes the area where heat can disperse.
     The mid-range board, model MCP73PV carries the GeForce 7100 chip, with the graphics clock at 600MHz. The FSB is again running at 1333MHz.
     The low-end model, MCP73D has the GeForce 7050, with the graphics clock at 500MHz. There is support for DirectX 9.0. The chipset also includes the nForce 610i. At interview, the FSB speed was 1066MHz, but this was scheduled to move to 1333MHz in mid-February. Memory, on this board is DDR2 667 SDRAM.
     All three boards will support the use of a discrete graphics card, and this "upgradeable" aspect of integrated graphics solutions could well appeal to users on a budget. If a card is fitted, the integrated graphics need to be switched off. All three boards are in a microATX form factor. These boards also have in common a solution for IEE1394a (Firewire) connectivity as also support for 10 USB 2.0 connectors. The USB 2.0 connectors come in the form of four sockets at the rear and four on-board headers. According to Ho, these MCP73 boards from Manli will retail for around US$53. At a later date, Manli intends to offer an NVIDIA based 780i motherboard. Manli Technology Company Limited has a website at www.manli.com.

Three-way SLI
     Another Hong Kong NVIDIA graphics company, XFX, is also turning its hand to NVIDIA based motherboards. The company has announced an NVIDIA 780i board that is bound to capture market attention with its support for three-way SLI. In other words, three graphics cards can be installed on the board's three PCI Express x16 slots. XFX has always promoted its brand image as that of a company committed to the needs of high-end gamers, and this motherboard continues that tradition. Both a two-way and a three-way SLI bridge are supplied with the board. DirectX 10.0 is supported.
     By the way, there are two additional PCIe x1 slots, plus 6 SATA II ports, 2 Gigabit LAN ports and 10 USB 2.0 connectors. Intel socket 775 processor support includes the Penryn, Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and Pentium. The chipset includes the NVIDIA nForce 780i MCP. The FSB has a clock speed of 1333MHz. Memory is DDR2 800, up to a total of 8GB, but, interestingly, the specs sheet for this board notes support for "Extreme DDR2 Speeds," stating that it will support up to DDR2 1200 "SLI-Ready" memory.
     Those gamers who also like powerful audio effects in addition to the graphics will like this board's support for high definition audio (HDA), delivering 192KHz sound at 32-bit over 8 channels.
     XFX has a website at www.xfxforce.com.