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Gigabyte "Churchill"

Prototype mini DTX chassis
Gigabyte announces "Churchill" mini DTX motherboard for AMD's Live! Home Media Server platform

Gigabyte today announced the first mini DTX motherboard catering towards home servers – Churchill. The new Gigabyte Churchill mini DTX motherboard serves as a base for AMD’s Live! Home Media Server platform. AMD’s Live! Home Media Server platform allows home users to have their own server for data storage, media streaming, communications and home control tasks.

The new Churchill motherboard supports AMD’s Socket AM2 Athlon 64 and Sempron single and dual-core processors. Gigabyte equips Churchill with a SiS761GX north and SiS966 south bridges. The SiS761GX features an integrated Mirage 1 graphics core with DirectX 7 support. Other notable features of the Churchill motherboard include one PCIe x1, one PCI, six SATA 1.5 Gbps/sec ports with support for native command queuing, eight USB 2.0 ports and high definition audio support. Gigabyte also equips Churchill with a header for an optional TPM chip for security purposes.

“We are proud to see the development of the world’s first motherboard in the Mini DTX form factor for the home server platform,” CEO and president of SiS Daniel Chen said. “With the solid performance of the SiS761GX/SiS966 chipset implemented in this ground-breaking home server platform, home users are now able to access their data much more easily and enjoy the flexibility afforded by a high-performance PC processor in an always-on home appliance.”

Expect Gigabyte to release the motherboard in July. Pricing of the mini DTX motherboard is undetermined. SiS has been gaining traction in the small form factor market lately, with Intel preparing its SiS-based D201GLY mini ITX motherboard.

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DTX?
By MatthewAC on 5/15/2007 2:19:58 PM , Rating: 2
Anybody care to mention to dumb old me what DTX stands for?




RE: DTX?
By noirsoft on 5/15/2007 2:23:29 PM , Rating: 4
It's like ATX, but substitute "Dinky" for whatever the "A" stands for. ;)


RE: DTX?
By killerroach on 5/15/2007 2:23:30 PM , Rating: 2
As far as I can tell, DTX is just DTX... unlike most other form factors, DTX and ITX seem to just be terms, not acronyms.


RE: DTX?
By marvdmartian on 5/15/2007 2:31:13 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, pretty sure it was just the next letter in the alphabet. ATX & BTX are common, think I remember hearing that Intel had fooled around with a format they called CTX, so DTX was next.

Those ITX guys just jumped the gun, is all. ;)


RE: DTX?
By protosv on 5/15/2007 3:09:20 PM , Rating: 2
IIRC, ATX = Advanced Technology eXtended, BTX = Balanced Technology eXtended, but it seems like ITX and DTX are just a bunch of letters, and don't stand for anything in particular.


RE: DTX?
By Visk on 5/15/2007 2:30:19 PM , Rating: 2
I guess D stands for "Discrete"


RE: DTX?
By AstroCreep on 5/15/2007 6:24:22 PM , Rating: 2
It stands for "aDorable", but since they can't use 'A', they went with the next letter.


RE: DTX?
By TomZ on 5/15/07, Rating: 0
RE: DTX?
By soydios on 5/15/2007 8:16:07 PM , Rating: 2
If it lets you use desktop processors and RAM, then yes it is.


RE: DTX?
By Talcite on 5/16/2007 1:10:16 AM , Rating: 5
The reason DTX was introduced was because current SFF providers have a hard time exploiting economies of scale. The current ITX mobo does not use the industry standard PCB size efficiently. DTX improves on that, because it splits one master PCB into 4 equal parts with no waste. There's an article somewhere on AT about this.


RE: DTX?
By FredEx on 5/16/2007 11:45:34 PM , Rating: 2
That is correct, no PCB waste. Existing PCB equipment can easily be used to make the boards. Also the boards will mount in an ATX case, no need for a system company to buy a special case for the mobo or for an individual to buy a special case. If one builds a multi drive server using the DTX board you will want a case larger than what is shown in this article...you can simply use an ATX case with enough drive space. Try and find an ITX case that can hold more than a couple HD's.


6 sata?
By Screwballl on 5/15/2007 2:37:39 PM , Rating: 2
What is the point of having 6 SATA drive ports on a small FF board when the small cases may have an SATA hd and disc drive using 2 ports?? This is something that could cut a few dollars off production and pass the savings onto the end user.




RE: 6 sata?
By erwos on 5/15/2007 2:40:51 PM , Rating: 2
File server using eSATA headers?


RE: 6 sata?
By MDE on 5/15/2007 2:41:52 PM , Rating: 2
I'm sure a few of them could be routed to the back panel for e.SATA drives.


RE: 6 sata?
By Screwballl on 5/15/07, Rating: 0
RE: 6 sata?
By Anh Huynh on 5/15/2007 2:53:14 PM , Rating: 2
The PCIe x1 slot is to the left of the PCI slot.


RE: 6 sata?
By hellokeith on 5/15/2007 3:19:44 PM , Rating: 2
Where is the 6th SATA port? External?


RE: 6 sata?
By mezrah on 5/15/2007 3:39:57 PM , Rating: 2
if you open up the picture you can clearly see the eSATA port labeled


RE: 6 sata?
By mezrah on 5/15/2007 3:39:57 PM , Rating: 2
if you open up the picture you can clearly see the eSATA port labeled


Looks Great!
By AmpedSilence on 5/15/2007 3:28:07 PM , Rating: 2
I can so seeing me putting a cheap X2 3600+ and a gig of ram on this thing and five drives in RAID5. throw the new Windows Home Server on there and tuck it away in a closet somewhere.

Price it right and my money is yours!




RE: Looks Great!
By Dactyl on 5/15/2007 3:49:35 PM , Rating: 2
and a gig of ram

Which will be very easy to install, because they have thoughtfully color-coded the RAM slots, so you don't get them mixed up.


RE: Looks Great!
By Homerboy on 5/15/2007 3:49:52 PM , Rating: 2
yes but as it stands, you wont be able to buy WHS as a standalone OS (its currently pegged for sale with OEM hardware "devices" only. Obviously that could change in the future.


RE: Looks Great!
By AmpedSilence on 5/16/2007 10:04:44 AM , Rating: 2
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070515-micr...

its been announced that they are making OEM sales direct to customers!


RE: Looks Great!
By JonB on 5/15/2007 9:52:55 PM , Rating: 2
I am with you, AS. This little board, a 500gb hard drive, 1GB of memory and Windows Home Server. I've got three small businesses that I already work with here that will jump at the prospect of real-time backup and restoration of their Point of Sale computers in case of hard drive death.


not SiS again
By mforce on 5/15/2007 2:26:48 PM , Rating: 5
What's with all the SiS in these mini boards ? I've got nothing personal against them. A friend has a MB with a SiS chipset and it performs pretty miserably though.
What really bothers me with these SiS chipsets are the features. DX 7 graphics ? SATA 150 ? A bit on the old side. There are good chipsets with integrated high quality graphics by both AMD themselves and nVidia. On the Intel side they could have went with their own chipsets as well.
On the bright side SiS is probably cheap and doesn't consume a lot.




RE: not SiS again
By MDE on 5/15/2007 2:40:17 PM , Rating: 3
You hit the nail on the head. Cheap, low power chipsets in plentiful supply.


My only issue.
By Mitch101 on 5/15/2007 4:24:15 PM , Rating: 2
My only issue is the Mirage 1 graphics core. Is that capable of 1920x1080i output at 30fps?

I would expect to put an HDTV tuner on the PCI slot so I wouldnt be able to use that slot for a more powerfull graphics card.

The PCI-E 1x slot is still pretty useless to me. Hopefully we will see some cards soon and for this sake hope they are half height.

I would have preferred a right angle connector so I could use full height cards in it instead.




RE: My only issue.
By TomZ on 5/15/07, Rating: 0
RE: My only issue.
By Mitch101 on 5/15/2007 5:49:57 PM , Rating: 2
Yea I just hoped for more as I consider my current media center more of a media server for home.


RE: My only issue.
By Scott66 on 5/15/2007 6:39:09 PM , Rating: 2
This is a home file server not a media center. All it has to do is push the data. Whatever device the data is getting pushed to needs to support the graphics and video playback.


RE: My only issue.
By soydios on 5/15/2007 8:17:45 PM , Rating: 2
I should imagine that any DTX motherboards destined for use in a home media center would use a more powerful chipset.


New ATI video
By OrSin on 5/15/2007 2:23:39 PM , Rating: 2
It seems neither Intel or AMD is using thier own integrated video for thier small form factors. They are not even using thier own chipsets for the north or south bridge.

I guess I need to rethink how I look at SIS chipsets, since i used to think they were all crap. I always knew they ran cooler and with less power I wonder if AMD and Intel is just to lazy to engineer for the low end.




RE: New ATI video
By raven3x7 on 5/15/2007 3:28:35 PM , Rating: 2
That was Gigabyte's choice really. Im quite sure AMD would have preferred them to choose a 690G chipset(And so would i). Im even more certain DTX motherboards with 690 chipsets will pop up sooner or later. You dont really need to rethink how you look at SIS chipsets, they suck. Fortunately due to the integrated memory controller crappy chipsets dont affect performance that much, only stability.


RE: New ATI video
By mxzrider2 on 5/16/2007 12:22:58 AM , Rating: 2
i don't see the haters of sis logic in saying they are bad. they aren't the best but the certainly aren't horrible.read this http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2531&p=1 little outdated but very similar to their current chipset ( basically the same thing)


Home media server
By ElFenix on 5/15/2007 9:06:41 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
AMD’s Live! Home Media Server platform allows home users to have their own server for data storage, media streaming, communications and home control tasks.
I'm glad AMD is finally allowing me to do this. I was worried that I would never get permission.




RE: Home media server
By Gul Westfale on 5/15/2007 10:33:12 PM , Rating: 2
so i have been leading a life of crime until now... please don't tell the AMD police...


Why PCI and No PCI-E
By KingofL337 on 5/15/2007 2:41:44 PM , Rating: 2
Why bother with a PCI slot instead of PCI-E? How can you make a multimedia box without a descent video card?




RE: Why PCI and No PCI-E
By Anh Huynh on 5/15/2007 2:54:20 PM , Rating: 2
Because its for a server platform. It's meant to stream media and store data for other systems and not used directly, so graphics don't really matter.


DTX ATX ITX oh my
By Flapper01 on 5/17/2007 10:22:36 AM , Rating: 2
Just remember - there's more in the middle of an Egg McMuffin than an egg in the middle of a muffin.

Think about it.




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