Any news on 939 PCIe based SFFs?

Z

zedpol

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I keep holding off buying a SFF till the 939 PCIe SFFs come out, anyone heard any dates or plans from the major SFF makers?

Thanks,'
Z
 
Shuttle has plans for a "P" style chassis with the nForce 4 sometime in the future. When and how much is anybodies guess, but it is coming.
 
I talked to someone at Shuttle the other week and said we should see nForce4 around Janurary.
 
why are ya waiting? what's out now is just as good if not better :p ... nf4 has only a few things different over nf3 if you even need them...

personally I can't believe why the built in firewall took so long 2 B implemented and whoopie about the hype on it. who needs one now. so many would have other things in place for firewalls...wee late IMO but I am sure it would help someone
 
G'ßöö said:
why are ya waiting? what's out now is just as good if not better :p ... nf4 has only a few things different over nf3 if you even need them...

personally I can't believe why the built in firewall took so long 2 B implemented and whoopie about the hype on it. who needs one now. so many would have other things in place for firewalls...wee late IMO but I am sure it would help someone
Click to expand...

The NF4 has PCIe, meaning you can update your graphics card later when highend cards only come in PCIe...that in itself is reason enough to wait. NCQ/SATAII support, hopefully better overclocking abilities, all the NVFirewall and junk... there actually is quite a bit of stuff that makes the NF4 worthwhile.

peace,
OriginalOCer
 
personal opinion I supose....an agp 6800gt or ultra will kick anything on pci-e for awhile yet or be just as good....my only point was to the waiting. I hate waiting and why I bought now too. I was gonna wait for sli but nah. buy now, love now and sell later! the upgrade cycle continues ..
 
How upgradable are shuttle mobos? Like can I throw in an nforce4 mobo into a new shuttle when it comes out?
 
No, the shuttle mobo's are specifically made for each model. So if you wanna upgrade, you have to replace the entire shuttle chassis.
 
Any idea of what PCIe configuration the SFFs are going to be? 16x and 8x slots perhaps? dual 16x? Just wondering if I can finally get a dual slot card in there without much modding or better yet - SLI!
 
I want to wait till Shuttle comes out with a 939 pin, and SLI mobo package. Not sure if what they plan to come out with is going to support SLI, but dual PCIe 6800s in a shuttle would be real nice! Then just pop in a dual core cpu once those become available. Then we are talking some serious power in a seriously portable setup!
 
Shuttle has stated they have no plans for dual PCI-E or CPU cores as that would negate their purpose of building small, yet functional and fast systems. Adding a second PCI-E and CPU slot would result in a larger case designs, more power requirements and thus it would basically become Mini-ATX and no longer a SFF and thuse negate the selling point of its XPC line.
 
Well dual core CPU is completely different! It's one cpu, but with dual cores on it, one chip stacked on top of the other plugged into the same socket so it doesn't require another CPU slot. Best of all is that if you have a 939 board then you will be able to simply upgrade to a dual core chip (probally require bios update too). So that means that the SN95G5 can support dual a dual core chip. As far as getting dual PCIe slots, well it wouldn't be very hard to do, but you wouldn't have a slot for anything else. I have to say that if shuttle doesn't try to do this with a future small form factor model then they will surely be dropping the ball on being the creative ones because some one else will.

I mean think about it, they currently have an AGP and PCI slot, so why would they not be able to do away with the AGP all togther, and make it as well as the other PCI slot both PCIe. I think there is enough room for this to be done in the P series XPC chasis. Also just because they currently have no plans to do this doesn't mean that some are not in the works right now!
 
I too am waiting for SFF 939 + PCIe. I'm currently running a Shuttle SN45Gv1 with a Barton 2500+ @ 2000MHz and a GeForce 6800GT (ultra bios). I would get a nice speed boost if I upgraded to a SN95G5, however since I'd be running the same video card, my video games would be faster but they would look absolutely the same. That and the growing pains currently experienced by SN95G5 users make me somewhat heasitant.

I'll wait for a 2.8GHz Athlon64 with 1MB L2 cache and core revision "D" or later (adds SSE3 but still no HyperThreading). Dual-core would be nice but I don't think we'll see that on Socket-939 until about Q4'05. That and AMD is currently predicting that you'll see dually chips with core speeds that range between 1.8GHz and 2.2GHz. If you want a performance estimate on how they run go look at a Socket 940 board paired with an Opteron 244-248 with only one chip that has access to the memory.

Personally a 2.8GHz Athlon64 with a GeForce 7800 PCIe and 512MB ram would be a substantial upgrade over my old fashioned Barton and GeForce 6800GT. I'd like to run Doom III (and Quake IV) in ULTRA mode at 1368x768 at 4xAA, 8xAF at 60FPS (now HQ mode, 1368x768 2xAA, 8xAF ~45FPS). Until I can find a system that can do that in an SFF package I'll wait.
 
|NOLAFF|-JD said:
Well dual core CPU is completely different! It's one cpu, but with dual cores on it, one chip stacked on top of the other plugged into the same socket so it doesn't require another CPU slot. Best of all is that if you have a 939 board then you will be able to simply upgrade to a dual core chip (probally require bios update too). So that means that the SN95G5 can support dual a dual core chip. As far as getting dual PCIe slots, well it wouldn't be very hard to do, but you wouldn't have a slot for anything else. I have to say that if shuttle doesn't try to do this with a future small form factor model then they will surely be dropping the ball on being the creative ones because some one else will.

I mean think about it, they currently have an AGP and PCI slot, so why would they not be able to do away with the AGP all togther, and make it as well as the other PCI slot both PCIe. I think there is enough room for this to be done in the P series XPC chasis. Also just because they currently have no plans to do this doesn't mean that some are not in the works right now!
Click to expand...

Thats a hell of an idea. Thanks man, you just restored my hope! :D
 
Yeah, waiting to put a dual-core hammer in an SFF here too- but right now I'd just settle for a P chassis NF4. but there's a couple more things on that upgrade list, like Seagate's 7200.8's, SATA burners, and 16ms PVA screens from Samsung. Oh, and whatever replaces the X800 Pro/6800GT price bracket.
 
IceWind said:
Shuttle has stated they have no plans for dual PCI-E or CPU cores as that would negate their purpose of building small, yet functional and fast systems. Adding a second PCI-E and CPU slot would result in a larger case designs, more power requirements and thus it would basically become Mini-ATX and no longer a SFF and thuse negate the selling point of its XPC line.
Click to expand...

Shuttle is going to offer a SLI solution soon. It just so happens that my lanparty which is sponsored by shuttle has recently had a representative register on our site, and he stated in one of his post "Look for Shuttle to offer a SLI solution this coming February or March 2005." That looks like they must have plans for releasing a SLI system to me. The shuttle rep also said "The Shuttle SLI solution will come with the 2 PCI-x slots." All of this was brought up while we (the shuttle rep, and various site members) were talking about the new shuttle XPC that was recently released (The new BTX one).
 
|NOLAFF|-JD said:
Shuttle is going to offer a SLI solution soon. It just so happens that my lanparty which is sponsored by shuttle has recently had a representative register on our site, and he stated in one of his post "Look for Shuttle to offer a SLI solution this coming February or March 2005." That looks like they must have plans for releasing a SLI system to me. The shuttle rep also said "The Shuttle SLI solution will come with the 2 PCI-x slots." All of this was brought up while we (the shuttle rep, and various site members) were talking about the new shuttle XPC that was recently released (The new BTX one).
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if that shuttle comes out with 2 SLI slots, and 2 PCI-x slot, that thing will be bigger than a micro-ATX, and smaller than a full ATX,
 
Probally not, just repeating and making no doubt that the shuttle will have SLI, and that it will be available from 2 PCI-x slots. Our shuttle rep said, "The Shuttle SLI solution will come with the 2 PCI-x slots." So if I had to take a guess I would think that the sff would only have 2 slots in it just like current shuttle sff, but the slots would both be PCI-x.
 
they are missing out if they don't go sli. it should help them in efforts for further reducing cooling and etc in the long run. if they don't push the envelope their young competition could claim more of the SFF market

it will be interesting to see specially since they have a good working mobo that is rivaling the big boys! go shuttle go!

my .02
 
I agree on the point that if they don't do an SLI offering, somebody else will. It may not be the same small footprint of current SFF, but I'm perfectly willing to give up an extra square inch or two on my desk for the added performace.
 
JGene said:
I too am waiting for SFF 939 + PCIe. I'm currently running a Shuttle SN45Gv1 with a Barton 2500+ @ 2000MHz and a GeForce 6800GT (ultra bios). I would get a nice speed boost if I upgraded to a SN95G5, however since I'd be running the same video card, my video games would be faster but they would look absolutely the same. That and the growing pains currently experienced by SN95G5 users make me somewhat heasitant.

I'll wait for a 2.8GHz Athlon64 with 1MB L2 cache and core revision "D" or later (adds SSE3 but still no HyperThreading). Dual-core would be nice but I don't think we'll see that on Socket-939 until about Q4'05. That and AMD is currently predicting that you'll see dually chips with core speeds that range between 1.8GHz and 2.2GHz. If you want a performance estimate on how they run go look at a Socket 940 board paired with an Opteron 244-248 with only one chip that has access to the memory.

Personally a 2.8GHz Athlon64 with a GeForce 7800 PCIe and 512MB ram would be a substantial upgrade over my old fashioned Barton and GeForce 6800GT. I'd like to run Doom III (and Quake IV) in ULTRA mode at 1368x768 at 4xAA, 8xAF at 60FPS (now HQ mode, 1368x768 2xAA, 8xAF ~45FPS). Until I can find a system that can do that in an SFF package I'll wait.
Click to expand...

If you were to toss in a Xp-m 2400-2600+ you could probably at least get 2.4ghz out of it, you would notice a good speed increase. wouldn't even cost you much.
 
Why wait for Shuttle? Falcon Northwest already has a SFF with Socket 939 and PCI-e.
http://www.falcon-nw.com/

And when a SLI capable micro-ATX motherboard comes along (Asus is supposedly working on it), just upgrade to it and you have a SLI SFF system. No need to get a complete new case/power/mobo package all over again (assuming the ATX power supply Falcon include is powerful enough)!
 
Yes the Falcon Northwest SFF does have PCI-X, but here is the key and that is it's only 1 slot PCI-X! That means no SLI, and by looking at the pictures that baby doesn't look to be all that small. Friggin thing has a 500 watt power supply, and well thats pretty dam bad ass, but power supply isn't everything. After reading about the new SFF from Falcon I'm not sure calling it a SFF is really what they should call it. It should be called a customizeable small computer. Dam thing is 2 inches wider, and 2 inches deeper, and that power supply is a full ATX power supply. I think they created a whole new bread of SFF. It should be called a LSFF, or large small form factor!
 
|NOLAFF|-JD said:
Yes the Falcon Northwest SFF does have PCI-X, but here is the key and that is it's only 1 slot PCI-X! That means no SLI, and by looking at the pictures that baby doesn't look to be all that small. Friggin thing has a 500 watt power supply, and well thats pretty dam bad ass, but power supply isn't everything. After reading about the new SFF from Falcon I'm not sure calling it a SFF is really what they should call it. It should be called a customizeable small computer. Dam thing is 2 inches wider, and 2 inches deeper, and that power supply is a full ATX power supply. I think they created a whole new bread of SFF. It should be called a LSFF, or large small form factor!
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Agreed, R O F L, is that new fragbox still SFF? If so, I'd like to put a handle on my PC65 and call it SFF.
 
|NOLAFF|-JD said:
Yes the Falcon Northwest SFF does have PCI-X, but here is the key and that is it's only 1 slot PCI-X! That means no SLI...
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umm... did you even finish reading what I wrote earlier? The FragBox 2 is the first 939 PCIe based SFF, the guy started the thread asking for one. There was no mentions of SLI until someone else came along and mentioned it. I went on to add that because the FragBox 2 case is not using any proprietary hardware, you can upgrade to a SLI micro-ATX board when it becomes available as opposed to waiting for Shuttle and buy an entire case/PSU/CPU cooler/motherboard combo box all over again. So wake up people!

Regarding the size of Fragbox, it is still much much smaller than any tower cases (even Micro ATX ones) available on the market. It's about the same size as the Antec Aria and smaller than Monarch's Hornet Pro, and both of them don't have standard sized-ATX power supply. It's just sad that people don't appreciate what an engineering feat this is simply because it isn't created by Shuttle.


Agreed, R O F L, is that new fragbox still SFF? If so, I'd like to put a handle on my PC65 and call it SFF.
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fb212.jpg

Looks like a SFF to me. Why don't you try putting your PC65 with the handle next to it and see how they compare? :)
 
Whats the point of going to a PCI-x slot for graphics if not for the intention of doing a SLI setup? I mean it's not that much faster than AGP. I for one will not make the transition to PCI-x without going straight for a SLI setup. I also hate having to do "mobo upgrades" as it gives me a potential computer that is just missing parts. I always find myself thinking of cheap ways to spend small amounts of money and come out with another system, and the problem is that I don't always need another system. Especially when it won't compare to the one I just built. I like to build a system and not need any upgrades for a good while. I have to say that I am intrested in that case design while it is pointted out that it is not as small as most SFF, it at that same time is not too big. My intrest comes from the fact that in future versions you could possibly see a dual CPU setup come from that (Hell it has the room, just hack off a PCI slot or two). So what I'm getting at is that it could possibly at least in that size better fit a dual 939 pin CPU setup, and SLI. That would then have the potential to fit 2 dual core CPUs, I.E. 4 CPU system with 2 fast ass video cards, and the power to back it all with just enough space. Now that would be a sweet system!
 
Shapeshifter said:
If you were to toss in a Xp-m 2400-2600+ you could probably at least get 2.4ghz out of it, you would notice a good speed increase. wouldn't even cost you much.
Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea and I poured over that suggestion a lot several months ago. I came to the same conclusion that I did about the SN95G5 - sure it's faster but my games still look the same. Yes I know it's $60-100 for the chip vs a whole new system with the SN95G5 but if I wait a little bit longer I can get something that's faster and will look better too.

I also still have to evaluate my needs as I'm wondering whether or not I would be better off in a SilverStone LaScala desktop case. I built my Shuttle with the full intention of using it as an HTPC but with SLI in the pipeline and fanless video cards having a hard time fitting into SFFs I might just go with a desktop this next time. What I'd kill for is an HTPC that runs at 25db or less at all times.
 
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