CES 2010: EVGA details latest motherboards, graphics cards

Our friends at EVGA hosted select members of the media to view their latest line of Classified series motherboards, video cards, and a few unique products that should appeal to overclockers and business-minded consumers.

We got a sneak peek at a new dual processor LGA 1366 board under EVGA’s Classified series that was massive. The part number on the board is 270-GT-W555. Some of the specs we uncovered on this board included a three phase PWM for each set of memory slots per CPU, dual NF200 chips for Quad SLI, ICH10R, and high quality solid state capacitors, chokes, and PCB. This board could go for around $500 and EVGA suggested that it will be available in April.

Another powerhouse we saw featured from EVGA was their X58 SLI Classified 4-SLI motherboard. This board was packed with 7 PCI-E slots for dual, triple, and quad SLI or CrossFireX graphics configurations. Power management is taken care of by a 10 phase digital PWM with switching frequencies of 1333KHz. It’s also one of the few boards that support EVGA’s EVbot.

EVGA’s first LGA 1156 motherboard that includes Intel’s new H57 Express chipset is plainly named the H57. This board boasts eight SATA 3GB/s headers, 14 USB 2.0 ports, and one of the first boards we’ve seen with an onboard DisplayPort. It also includes one PCI-E x16 slot, one PCI-E x4 slot, and two PCI-E x1 slots. Lastly, EVGA also included RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, and JBOD support. Sadly, we didn’t notice support for USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s on this board.

Another P55 solution we saw from EVGA was their P55 200 Classified motherboard. One of the unique aspects of this board was the ability to use LGA 775 and LGA 1156 heatsinks, which is pretty cool if you have an older LGA 775 watercooling setup that you want to mount to this board. Power users can also add up to 600 watts of available power to the CPU through two eight-pin poinwer connectors. EVGA also added triple BIOS support to have a backup if a power user’s overclocking attempts go south. It also supports up to 16GB dual-channel, DDR3 2600 memory. Lastly, we wanted to point out that EVGA added 300 percent in socket gold content plus a low ESR/ESL film capacitor.

One product that caught our eye was the EVGA EVBot overclocking device. The EVBot can adjust voltages and CPU clock frequencies in real time as well as monitor temperatures, voltages, and frequencies. It also can control up to four devices, but is only compatible with select EVGA products currently. It retails for $79.99, which is a little steep but definitely worth the investment for tweakers and overclocking junkies.

Another business-oriented product we saw was the EVGA Interview dual monitor. The display has two 17″ LCDs are connected to a single base. Both monitors can rotate 180 degrees and output resolutions up to 1440×990. EVGA also added a 1.3MB web cam and microphone. This display is currently available for $649.

A new addition to the Classified series is the EVGA GTX 285 Classified graphics card. This card has four-way SLI support, eight phase digital PWM, and a low ESR/ESL film capacitor. EVGA also included an X-Cool jumper for advanced overclocking. This card is power behemoth and requires three six-pin PCI-E power connectors. This card is also one of the first to support EVGA’s new EVbot overclocking device.

 

One of the coolest graphics cards we saw at EVGA’s suite was their new GTX 275 Co-op video card with PhysX. This beast has a dedicated GTS 250 PPU for PhysX and also has a combined 1280MB of DDR3 memory. It also has full DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 support.