We sat down and talked to executives from Abit, ASUS, FIC, AOpen, and Microstar to ascertain the future of mainboards in 1999.

Everyone of them indicated that Intel's Camino chipset would be the focus of most production by late in Q3/99 as Intel's Katmai CPU grows in popularity. FIC even had a camino example on display in their booth, sporting the features that the upcoming AGPset will become famous for like 4X AGP, RDRAM DIMM bank, and a 133MHz FSB. The FIC board also complied fully with the stringent PC99 specifications by omitting any ISA slots in favor of a fully equipped 6 PCI slot configuration. Above the AGP 4X slot was a smaller slot, about half the length of a standard PCI slot, caller the "MMR" slot. MMR stands for "MultiMediaRiser" and allows for the shunting of an audio card or modem from a standard PCI slot, thereby freeing up resources for more PCI dependent components.

The first camino based mainboards will debut simultaneously with Intel's Katmai CPU in February 99.

Aside from all the camino talk, the other stories coming from the mainboard vendors came in the form of system integration. We saw boards with nVidia Riva TNTs built in, lots of audio equipped boards utilizing Creative's ESS 1371 chip, and even a few 440BX boards that come with 64MB of PC-100 SDRAM embedded permanently on the board.

Integrated SCSI Host Adapters were prevalent in several boards, using Adaptec's 7890 U2W controller chip. SCSI is being pushed towards the mainstream more than ever before, and if Windows2000 ships in 1999, you can bet the SCSI marketing hype will go into overdrive.

When talk turned to the upcoming AMD K7 CPU, the mainboard companies we talked to were of one mind: "Wait and see." With memories still fresh concerning the difficult teething process that the Super7 core logic sets had to go through before they were ready for primetime, mainboard manufacturers aren't in love with the idea of a very complex 200MHz EV6 compatible system bus (required for the K7 to whup some ass). They assured us though, that if the K7 does indeed sell in "appropriate numbers" during the summer, there would be plenty of boards from all of them to please the K7 buying consumer.

All the vendors we saw were very enthusiastic however about the AMD K6-3 CPU. This is because most mainboard vendors are already shipping their 2nd generation Super7 boards right now, and the K6-3 requires no hardware updates in order to be used appropriately with a standard Super7 mainboard. Look for the K6-3 to do well…actually very well, if AMD can produce enough of them….

Finally, S370 or "Socket9" based mainboards were very prevalent at the show, these are the jobbers that host the upcoming Celeron A CPUs that look like a standard Socket/Super7 CPU. Manufacturing of all Celerons that utilize the single edge contact process of the Pentium 2 will cease in early 99, as Intel converts the chips into the S370 variants they were originally intended to be. This move cuts both the Celeron's cost, and the cost of the boards they mount on, as both the previous 440BX and 440EX chipsets didn't break the magic "$50" cost factor for use with Celeron CPUs. The Intel core logic chipset that will replace the 440EX for low cost Celeron S370 use is called the 440ZX (yeah, it sounds just like a car to us too….) and will be found on the very limited 3 PCI boards that the S370 socket is intended for.

Mainboards will be a much hotter topic next year as the Merced looms, the K7 actually exists in the marketplace, and RDRAM/AGP 4X has had a chance to be adopted by the mainstream. Until then, look forward to further price reductions on the mainstream 440BX and Super7 based boards, especially in February through April 99.