The new SB700 south bridge also finally makes an appearance (incidentally the two engineering samples are numbered consecutively - 0743, 0744) and finally AMD has a native chipset that offers six SATA 3Gbps with RAID 0, 1, 10 support but still no RAID 5, 12 USB 2.0 and a faster I/O link between north and south bridges. SB700 still maintains a very small footprint and heat output (given the size of the heatsink needed), however we also hope AMD has improved the core features as well.

Since the SB700 is also pin-compatible with the current SB600, expect motherboard makers to possibly launch second generation 790FX/790X boards using the improved south bridge.

The Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H is a microATX board which features four DDR2 slots, an AM2+ socket for AMD Athlon and Phenom processors, as well as six SATA, one eSATA port and Realtek ALC889a High-Definition sound. A PCI-Express 2.0 port is available for graphics cards and there are some significant power regulation features for the memory and chipsets, in addition to the more normal 4-phase CPU socket. Whether this is a necessary addition or Gigabyte offering more reliable tweaking features than most remains to be seen (we haven't turned it on yet! We just got over excited and took some pictures).

The delay of Phenom 9700 and 9900 is due to the TLB bug and AMD is still working to raise core frequencies. The company will launch Phenom 9550 and 9650 in the second quarter this year. Other than Phenom 9900, whose launch date is not yet set, all other CPUs are currently scheduled to launch at Computex 2008 in early June.

AMD will also delay the launch of its second wave triple-core Phenom 8700, 8650 and 8450 CPUs by a month, from their original schedule in early second quarter.

Phenom 8700, 9700 and 9900 will be renamed to Phenom 8750, 9750 and 9950 by the time they are officially launched, noted the sources.

AMD responded in saying that in order to fulfill consumer demand, the company has made a decision with its partners to give launch priority to triple-core CPUs in the first quarter of 2008. The Phenom 9700 and 9900 will be launched in the second quarter of 2008.

The new high speed NAND can reach speeds up to 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) for reading data and 100 MB/s for writing data, achieved by leveraging the new ONFI 2.0 specification and a four-plane architecture with higher clock speeds. In comparison, conventional single level cell NAND is limited to 40 MB/s for reading data and less than 20 MB/s for writing data.

“Micron looks forward to unlocking the possibilities with high speed NAND,” said Frankie Roohparvar, Micron vice president of NAND development. “We are working with an ecosystem of key enablers and partners to build and optimize corresponding system technologies that take advantage of its improved performance capabilities. Micron is committed to NAND innovation and designing new features into the technology that create a powerful data storage solution for today’s most popular consumer electronic and computing devices.”

“The computing market is embracing NAND-based solutions to accelerate system performance through the use of caching and solid-state drives,” said Pete Hazen, director of marketing, Intel NAND Products Group. “At up to five times the performance over conventional NAND, the high speed NAND from Intel and Micron, based on the ONFi 2.0 industry standard, will enable new embedded solutions and removable solutions that take advantage of high–performance system interfaces, including PCIe and upcoming standards such as USB 3.0.”

Nvidia’s new Hybrid SLI technology has two modes that target different applications and usage models. The HybridPower mode switches off discrete graphics core or cores and uses only integrated graphics engine when high performance is not needed, thus, cutting power. The GeForce Boost mode make integrated graphics processor (IGP) assist discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) and boost performance when it is required. In both cases computer monitor has to be plugged to video output of mainboard’s IGP.

Apparently, the first implementation of Hybrid SLI technology not only does not support multi-monitor output capability, but also does not support dual-link DVI output, which means that such a system cannot support 30” high-end displays with resolution of 2560x1600.

Multi-monitor support is crucial for business and professional customers, who utilize two or sometimes even more displays to simultaneously access necessary information with their eyes without necessity to switch windows. In fact, multi-GPU SLI technology itself, designed strictly to boost graphics performance for gaming also does not feature multi-monitor capability, but since not many gamers require it, this was hardly a substantial disadvantage.