Fall Comdex 2002 Day 2: Racing Into New Products – THG.RU

Introduction

HP had the Williams F1 car in display in their booth this year, and racing around Las Vegas was clearly the theme of the day as we ran from hotel suite to hotel suite to see what we could find outside of the LVCC.

The story of Day 1 of Fall Comdex 2002 was clearly the launch of the GeForceFX. On Day 2 however, the story was perhaps the race from meeting to meeting and hotel suite to hotel suite on the quest to get the latest story. Today we were able to shake the bushes to get two exclusive stories that perhaps give us a reason to get excited. You may find these two stories did not make the splash that GeForceFX did, but nonetheless, Day 2 proved to be pretty exciting in its own right, and we got some exclusive sneak peeks, more than we had bargained for.

NVIDIA

In addition to the visits that we made today, Lars is also back with a little more information and commentary on the GeForceFX. There is still no shortage of rumors about the launch of this product. The hallways and showfloor were abuzz with discussion of this product. NVIDIA clearly succeeded in getting people talking about this yet unreleased product. The only people who didn’t have a lot to say were clearly the NVIDIA OEMs that we visited with today, who in fact had little information to offer on the GeForceFX. Clearly the obvious question is, “When will cards become available?” and we asked more than one OEM for an answer. The party line was the same: as soon as we have chips from NVIDIA. So, no one has a more specific date for when we’ll be able to purchase this monster, and the mystery adds spice to the launch.

NVIDIA GeForce FX Benchmarks

During their launch event, NVIDIA showed the first game benchmark numbers for the GeForce FX compared with the GeForce 4 Ti. Just remember that this is NVIDIA’s data, and should be treated as much as a marketing pitch as a guide to future performance. It makes you wonder, though, what possibilities the FX holds.

The benchmarks were made on a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB RAM running Windows XP. The following benchmarks show the OpenGL Workstation performance tested with ViewPerf5 in 1280×1024-32 in CDRS03.

These benchmarks were run under Windows 2000 SP3 on a P4 system with 2GB RAM.

NVIDIA GeForce FX Memory Bandwidth

There was a lot of confusion about the memory bandwidth of the DDR2 Modules NVIDIA is using on their new GeForce FX card and how to calculate it. Most information available on DDR2 explains that DDR2 has twice the data-bandwidth than DDR – made possible by a four-bit prefetch instead of two-bit, used with DDR.

Let’s begin with the cards we already know:

GeForce 4 Ti:

16 Bytes * 325 MHz * 2 = 10.4 GB/s

The buswidth of the memory is 128Bit, which means that 16Bytes of data can be transfered by clock. Since the DDR memory is using a prefetch of two, the data rate is doubled. Letґs take a look on the Radeon 9700 PRO, also using DDR memory:

32Bytes * 310 * 2 = 19.8 GB/s

You have to take 32Bytes here, since the memory bus on the card is 256-bit wide. Now letґs face the GeForce FX. The card is using DDR2 memory, which means itґs using a prefetch of four and doubles the amount of data transferred again – in theory. If a card is running with 1GHz DDR2 datarate, the modules can be run at a quarter of that: moderate 250MHz. Thatґs what people mean when they say that DDR2 is a cheap solution with a lot headroom. You can also read that in this Jedec whitepaper on page 6.

But NVIDIA is using Samsung DDR2 modules with a dram cell frequency of 500MHz – only half the data frequency. This means that the DDR2 memory on GeForce FX behaves just like DDR memory with just higher clock frequencies.

So here we go:

16 Bytes * 500 MHz * 2 = 16 GB/s

This goes along with a Samsung whitepaper on the DDR2 modules NVIDIA is using for the GeForce FX. It says that one module (32Bit) has a single Bandwith of 4GB/s. This means 16GB/s for 128Bit. GeForce FX is using two banks with four modules each – if you wondered after counting the number of chips on the card.

Maxtor – OneTouch External Backup Solution

One question that we continue to receive here at THG is: “How do you suggest that I easily backup my RAID stripe set in case I have a failure?” Maxtor appears to have finally found an answer for what have considered till now a very difficult question. The Maxtor OneTouch external drive solutions is a 1394 or USB 2 external drive solution with a button located on the front of the unit. Once the OneTouch is connected to your PC, you are able to press this button, which will activate the included Dantz Retrospect Express software and proceed to backup your hard drive to the OneTouch external drive unit.

The 120GB 7200 RPM Maxtor OneTouch external hard drive solution.

Yes! That is right: you press the button, and it launches the backup software and backs up your system to the OneTouch external drive unit. In order to achieve the kind of performance to make this process fast enough for you to tolerate, you do have to have a Firewire or USB 2 connection on your PC. I don’t know how much simpler it could be. It is something that has been needed for a long time, and if backups are not your thing, you can still use the drive as a high-speed external hard drive. We think the true value is easy backup, but the easy ability to add more storage makes it sweeter. Available in 80GB, 120GB, and of course the new 250GB sizes, these new products are worth checking out. >From the demos that we saw today, this could be the best solution that we have seen so far for novice and experienced users who want the comfort that comes with the ability to backup without all of the headaches that go with other typical backup solutions such as CDR/CDRW/DVDR/DVDRW/Tape.

Gigabyte – Expanding Networking and Server Offerings

Gigabyte isn’t a company to rest on its laurels. We saw a variety of new networking and server offerings that marks the compay’s continued commitment to development of products in this space. In addition, Gigabyte had a variety of new motherboards, as well as its complete line of Radeon video card solutions. Unfortunately, NDAs stop us from talking up some of these new solutions, so it’s best to say that Gigabyte had one of the largest and most complete displays that we have seen from a motherboard vendor at Comdex. We’ll be keeping our eye on Gigabyte’s networking offerings.

The Gigabyte server motherboard offerings.

Here is a small selection of some of Gigabyte’s offerings in the network space. Note the new 802.11b wireless solutions.

On the left is the new VIA Ultra offering from Gigabyte, flanked by additional offerings for the AMD platform.

Transmeta – Astro is more than a dog in the Jetsons cartoon

In our first exclusive surprise today, Transmeta treated us to a VERY (and yes, I do mean very) secret demo of the new next generation processor from Transmeta. Perhaps the biggest knock on Transmeta in the past has been the inability of Transmeta processors to keep up with the current offerings from Intel and AMD. As we have said before, Transmeta’s value propisition continues to be the fact that it is low power and has excellent thermals. Low power and thermals means thinner and lighter notebooks like the new Sharp we saw today.

The new ultra slim and ultra light Transmeta based notebook that we saw today is one of the lightest notebooks that we have ever seen.

At the end of our meeting, the Transmeta folks led us through two doors into a darkened room. In this darkened room we were given our first glimpse of “Astro,” which is the code name for Transmeta’s new next generation processor. Sitting next to this Transmeta test unit was a new Sony 1.8GHz GRX notebook. We were shown a variety of applications, including: DVD playback, Office Applications, and some typical load and execute style demos. The new Transmeta Astro was faster in every demo that we saw than the Pentium 4m 1.8GHz chip that was in the Sony GRX. Sounds very interesting, right? The only problem is that Transmeta was unable to give us any additional details at this time, but it is clear that they have been hard at work on this new next generation processor. In the meantime, we can only speculate as to what Astro is or what Astro is capable of doing.

The Toshiba Libretto, which is another solution that is powered by Transmeta processor technology, is pictured above.

MSI – Going big into Tablets, networking and media servers

MSI continues its tradition of being perhaps one of the best-known names in the motherboard business. This is about to change, because MSI is also going to be known for the tablet PC, media server, and networking segments, as these are all new areas where MSI hopes to grow its business in the future. We were very impressed by the new media server, tablet PC, networking products, and of course the side by side racing demo that they had set up in their suite. It would have been nice to sit in MSI’s suite and race all day, but of course there is always work to do.

The new MSI MS-3281 Home Media Server. We really can’t offer you many details on this product yet, because MSI really isn’t sure where this product is headed. Development continues, but you will have to trust us when we say that the concept and the technology was cool.

The new MS-2831 Pen Tablet PC.

A member of the MSI Server group proudly shows off two of the new MSI server board solutions.

Here is a look at the MSI NetDancer networking product offerings.

The MSI NetDancer 802.11b wireless gateway and access point.

The MSI head to head racing simulator, not really… it in fact was a demo to show the differince between HyperThreaded enabled and non-HyperThreaded Pentium 4 CPU. I personally liked the racing idea better.

This is the new MSI Ti4800SE, that will be replacing the Ti4600 board that MSI was selling.

ECS – Xabre 600 Surprise

ECS continue to leverage its strong ties with SiS and other partners to provide a variety of new solutions. The latest is the new ECS graphics card featuring the Xabre 600 chipset. Beyond that we saw a new motherboard from ECS, which features an integrated SiS Xabre 200 video chipset. The one thing that we have learned to count on from ECS is a surprise, and this new board was a real surprise — we didn’t see this one coming.

A sample of some of the ECS Pentium 4 solutions.

Here is the complete ECS video card product line going forward. Notice the Xabre 600 on the left hand side.

This the new intergrated video solution featuring the Xabre 200 that we mentioned above.

SiS – License with Intel secure

We talked with SiS today and asked them about the rumors that continue to wind around the Internet saying that they are going to lose their Pentium 4 license from Intel. While of course they can’t discuss specifics of the current situation with Intel, they did say that SiS enjoys a good working relationship with Intel and hopes to continue to work them them in the future. And, the current agreement that they have in place does cover all of the P4 products that they currently have. Intel is pushing its own chipsets aggressively with vendors, so in a tight market we can expect a lot of jockeying for position. We’ll have to wait and see how the dynamics of a tough economic climate impact Intel’s licensing whims next year.

In other news, the R658 board from SiS is still in development. They contiunue to work on tweaking the performance of the board. We were told that it is still on track and you should be able to look for this board soon. In related news, it has been pretty well confirmed that at least two OEMs will be offering motherboards that will be based on the R658 chipset. Rambus’ future in desktop PCs might in fact weigh heavily on the success of this new chipset. As we explained at IDF, it will be very intresting to see what kind of performance is possible with this solution verses the other new solutions that are arriving.

From what we could tell the R658 reference board that you see here in the picture has not changed much from IDF. Still no exact word beyond “soon” on how much longer we will have to wait to get our hands on this baord for testing.

The new 648 chipset from SiS.

SiS, like pretty much all of the other chipset vendors, already has a “Hammer” board ready to go. Here is a close up of the SiS hammer motherboard solution.

Yes, here is the Xabre 600 and, much to our surprise, SiS is already in development with another next generation GPU to push the envelope byond what the Xabre 600 can offer. Of course the Xabre solutions will continue to offer an attractive price point.

D-Link – An Unexpected Exclusive From D-Link

A look at some of the product offerings from D-Link, including the new 1394/USB 2.0 Combo card and other additional product offerings.

At CES, D-Link introduced the DCS-1000, which was one of the first LAN based cameras that we had seen. Also at the time, we commented that it was one of the best products that we had seen. Later, our own Shawn Watter had the chance to put the DCS-1000 through its paces in his article LAN Camera Technology Offers A New View. Bradley Morse gave us an exclusive sneak peek at the new DCS-2000. What can we tell you about the new DCS-2000? Not much, because D-Link isn’t ready to tell us what will make up the new DCS-2000. What we were told is to expect the DCS-2000 to make vast improvements over the pervious DCS-1000 in just about every area. Bradley told us that they have an extensive round of product introductions planned shortly, but they are not yet ready to unveil all of the new things that they have cooking. In the meantime, we were able to snap a picture of the new DCS-2000.

The new DCS-2000. More detail to follow soon. In the meantime, you saw it here first.

VoodooPC

VoodooPC builds and sells fully configurable PC systems for the enthusiast gamer. At Comdex, VoodooPC showed their new E-Class system. The system they showed was equipped with a P4 3.06 GHz CPU running on a VIA P4PB400-FL mainboard and Lixquid cooling for CPU, graphics card and hard drive. The customer has free choice of a couple of components and case color, and it’s also possible to match the color of mouse, keyboard and monitor to the case. The system shown costs about $5000.

Monitor, keyboard and mouse in the same custom color as the case.

Liquid cooled Radeon 9700 PRO chip.

A look inside the case. Folded cables for a good airflow inside the case.

The other new product shown is the M-Class Notebook equipped with a Pentium 4 3.06 GHz and Radeon 9000 PRO graphics card. This notebook is also available in individual colors:

A notebook for hardcore gamers.

VIA

At a special press luncheon, Via showed the new Shuttle XPC SK41G, a Small Form Factor (SFF) system made by Shuttle. Itґs based on the VIA ProSavageDDR KM266 chipset for Athlon XP processors up to 2600+.

A “special” SFF system build up in a canister.

The new VIA P4PB600 mainboard with Dual Channel DDR for Pentium 4.

The reference design of the VIA tablet PC.

The VIA Hi-Fi PC based on the highly integrated EPIA Mini-ITX mainboard.

And Finally

At the same Press Luncheon, we saw some pretty cool stuff that we have documented below. So, until tomorrow’s coverage, we’ll leave you with this, and get ready for another round of meeting hopping:

Global Cachй shows home network adapters to control your home via PC. The devices are connected via RJ45 and can handle IR senders for TV, home cinema and even switches for lights etc.

htpc Works presents the Toba RV, a small multimedia PC for mobile users. htpc is focusing on mobile home owners, and equips the system with a 900MHz CPU, 60GB HD, TV tuner, GPS receiver, 12v inverter and wireless keyboard and mouse. The price of Toba RV is $1295.