Comdex Day Four came along, and by that time your THG staff were starting to feel the effects! Normally, most show vets start to think about going home by Day Three, but we couldn’t fit in all of our appointments, so we chose to stay over an extra day. Our lack of sleep was starting to show. So, here it is, our final show report for Comdex 2001.
DFI – New Products And The First Surprise Of The Trip!
We were able to spend some time with DFI, a company that many folks don’t know too much about. We spent time talking to the DFI team about their plans, and, boy, do they have a couple of special surprises in store for you! While they don’t plan to announce much prior to Computex, they did release the news that they have signed on with ATI to produce video cards based on the Radeon 7500 and 8500 chipsets. This was quite a surprise to us, as we had not seen any of the final production boards.
Because the glass was in front of the cards, we could not get as clean a picture as we would have liked, but you can see that DFI is building cards based on the ATI Radeon chipset.
As you can see in the above picture, the cards will all have a red-colored board. The 8500 at the far end of this picture was being shown in its pre-production state, but the final board will be red, also. DFI expects that most of the Radeon models should be availiable soon. Some are already shipping. DFI assured us that we will have the DFI 8500 for testing in our labs as soon as its ready. It will be very interesting to see if there is any performance difference between the ATI Radeon 8500 (I guess we should start calling it the ATI reference design) and the DFI 8500.
DFI’s Pre-Production Radeon 8500 seen here wasn’t the final version of the card. The final version will have a red-colored pcb board, like the rest of the Radeon cards in the DFI Radeon product family. We have to wonder what tweaks DFI has made to the card in order to squeeze a little more performance out of it.
DFI also showed us the AD70E, which they consider their new flagship board. The new board is based on the KT266A chipset from Via, which includes DFI’s new Thermal Guardian technology. So, this is the second board we have seen that specifically addresses possible CPU thermal issues. Although we didn’t get to see the board running, the specifications look impressive.
The DFI AD70E, based on KT266A, looks like a good bet for DFI. It sure does look like DFI is starting to move toward the performance segment of the motherboard market.
LSI Logic – SCSI 320 & IDE Raid
We stopped by for a visit with the team at LSI. The person handling LSI’s PR is a long-time THG reader, and has been trying for some time to convince us to stop by their booth at one of the many shows that they do, and take a look at their product line. If you don’t know much about LSI, you will: expect to hear more from them in the coming months, as they have many new products coming out, including the new SCSI 320. We had a good talk with them, and were very surprised to find out that they are now in control of the IDE raid technology that used to be known under the AMI brand name. LSI has a new IDE RAID card called the MegaRAID i4 which has some great, innovative features and includes support for up to eight drives. We will also hear more from them in the area of SCSI 320. We talked with LSI at length about testing their product and they are going to submit it soon. Once they do, you will get hear all about it.
Here Siamak Iranpour, Director of Marketing for RAID Storage Adapters poses with LSI’s new ATA Raid controller the MegaRAID i4. From the specs that we saw, it looks pretty impressive, but we won’t know for sure until we can get it in the lab for testing.
Iomega – New Places To Put Your Stuff…
Many readers have written in to ask why we don’t ever review any of the products from Iomega. The simple answer is that, although Iomega storage solutions are VERY popular in the U.S., this is not as much so outside the U.S. Hoping to change that, we scheduled an appointment with Iomega in order to get their products in for review. A great many users in the U.S. know Iomega, mostly for their removable media storage solutions like ZIP and JAZ. But Iomega has been hard at work expanding into new areas of the storage market. We spent some time looking at some of the new storage solutions from Iomega, hoping to help you find a place to store your stuff.
Iomega has released a new product that they call the Peerless Drive System. Peerless can best be described as a storage device based on hard disk technology developed by IBM. Peerless gives you the vast storage capacity of a hard disk in a removable form, for which you can buy additional cartridges. Peerless has three parts: the Peerless drive cartridge, which contains the hard drive platters; the Peerless sleeve, which contains the drive electronics; and the Peerless docking cradle, which allows connection to the PC.
Because the hard drive electronics are stored in the Peerless sleeve, you don’t have to purchase the drive electronics each time you add another Peerless cartridge, which helps lower the cost. The Peerless Drive System connects to your PC using either USB (with a transfer rate of about 1MB per second) or with Firewire (which improves the tansfer rate to about 15MB per second). Our best guess is that you can expect USB 2.0 support at some point soon, but Iomega would not confirm this. It however would be the next logical step with USB 2.0 ramping up. The Peerless cartridges are currently available in capacities of either 10GB or 20GB, you can expect additional sizes at some point in the future. The Peerless cartridge is housed in a rugged, sealed, go-anywhere design, which gives it an advantage. We will have Peerless in the lab for testing soon, but until then it might be worth looking into if you have the need for large, removable storage.
In this picture you can clearly see the three parts that make up the Iomega Peerless Drive System. Looks pretty good! Stay tuned to THG to find out how it performs in our test.
Iomega, Continued
Iomega has also released its more enterprise-oriented NAS (Network Area Storage) solution, which they call DataSafe. DataSafe is an Intel Cleron-based NAS solution that is available in 160GB or 320GB sizes. It provides a scalable, cost-effective design that competes with products such as the Quantum SnapServer. DataSafe uses Standard Windows 2000 technology that provides a reliable cross-platform solution. It appears to work well, and is bundled with a complete management solution from Iomega.
On the surface, DataSafe might appear to be just another NAS device, but it sure does pack a lot into a small, 1U rackmount package. We look forward to getting one into the lab for testing as it would make one heck of a good media server during the test cycle.
Iomega has also released a variety of CDRW solutions which they call Predator. Predator provides a unique-looking USB 2.0 CDRW solution. Predator is available in both a 16x10x40 and a 24x10x40 configuration. Predator includes the latest in buffer underun technology, and the new Iomega HotBurn software. When looking at the HotBurn CD Mastering software, I found it to be very easy to use which is a welcomed feeling – especially considering some of the other CD matering software that we have seen.
In this photo you can see Predator 16x10x40 and 24x10x40 drives. We think they look pretty cool, and they do seem to take up less space than other external solutions that we have seen.
Gigabyte – OK, OK. We’ve kept you waiting for long enough, so here it is!
We couldn’t wait for our meeting with Gigabyte! Gigabyte was not exhibiting on the main show floor, so we attended a private showing in a nearby hotel suite. Gigabyte does have the Nvidia-based nForce 420 chipset ready – it is currently in production, and will be shipping shortly. Gigabyte was kind enough to make sure to have it on hand for our viewing pleasure. All Comdex long, we have been hoping to see a board based on the nForce 420 chipset close-up. So now, without any futher ado, here is a look at the Gigabyte GA-7NTX motherboard, based on the nForce 420 chipset.
Yes, at long last, here it is, the GA-7NTX nForce 420 motherboard!
Although we didn’t get to see the GA-7NTX nForce 420 in action, here are the basic specs of this new motherboard:
- 3 DDR DIMM Support: supports up to 1.5GB of either PC1600 or PC2100 DDR memory
- 4X AGP Support
- 6 USB Ports (4 by included cable)
- UDMA ATA 100/66
- DualBIOS, EasyTune III, and @BIOS support
- Multiplier Settings
- Multi-CPU voltage settings by BIOS
- Hardware Audio With SPDIF output
Gigabyte had the rest of their AMD motherboards in attendence as well, and as you can see, once again the GA-7NTX is on the far right in this picture.
Here is the rest of the Gigabyte AMD motherboard lineup.
Gigabyte, Continued
Of course Gigabyte was not without their standard Intel offerings. In the next photo, you can see their complete line of solutions for the Intel Pentium 4.
Here is a look at the GA8 series motherboards for Pentium 4.
Gigabyte is still offering a complete selection of motherboards for Pentium III and socket 370. Here is a look at two of these offerings.
Socket 370 solutions are still availiable from Gigabyte, and include support for the Tualatin.
Gigabyte will also start offering a new AMD dual-processor board shortly. The GA-7DPXDW looked great and has a lot of offer. Like we told Gigabyte, this might be the sleeper product of the show. In addition, Gigabyte also showed us the new GA-6MXDR, which is a new motherboard based on the Micron Copperhead/Coppertail Dual Chipset.
Yes, it’s true: another vendor is going to start shipping a Athlon dual-processor motherboard. The GA7-DPXDW is pictured here with the GA-6MXDR.
Gigabyte, Continued
Gigabyte had their full line of video cards based on the Nvidia chipset on display. One thing that we liked about the Thundra products is that most of them include a pretty good software bundle that actually includes some good games, not the normal shovel-ware to which we have all grown accustomed.
The current complete Gigabyte video card product line.
In other news, Gigabyte told us about three more new netowrking products. The GN-BR401 is a new broadband router that will be shipping shortly. Then there is the GS-SW005, which is a new, five-port 10/100 switch. But the best news of all was the new Gigabyte GN-PGB801C 10/100/1000 gigabit over copper eight port layer two switch. The GN-PGB801C looks to be very impressive. We have asked Gigabyte to ship all of these netowrking products to the lab for testing, and we look forward to testing them. It will be interesting to see if these products can beat some of the more well-known leaders in this catogory.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. Done for another year. It really wasn’t that bad a show. In fact, the lack of hype and crowds probably made it easier to get things done, and it was certainly easier to get to talk to all the folks we wanted to talk to without being dragged from booth to booth and hotel suite to hotel suite. The pace was, obviously, more relaxed.
What is clear is that we are going to see a flurry activity from the middle of December onwards. Most vendors seem to be gearing up to stock the sales channels at dealers with new products in December in anticipation of the launch of a number of new mobos, CPUs, and futher price cuts in component pricing.
Until next year, we better go catch up on some sleep.
