Computex Taipei 2006 - Part 5
Part 5 is a rather meaty one. Memory manufacturers A-Data, Geil and Twinmos are in and we have sneak peeks at DDR3. ATI and NVIDIA have their own agendas and we also looked at CMC Magnetics, Ritek, Toshiba, Global WIN, Transcend, Promise, SuperMicro as well as XFX. Enjoy.
A-Data's Booth
A-Data attracting in the crowd with a cartoon theme, but there's nothing funny about their memory displays.
DDR2-800 memory modules are everywhere now. A-Data's Vitesta range is claiming to be the no.1 overclocking module in the world though.
A-Data's DDR2-1066 memory is also claiming the overclocking throne. Available in sizes from 256MB to 2GB and operates nominally at 1.8V.
Interestingly enough, A-Data has their Extreme Edition memory as well for the DDR2 lineup, which includes DDR2 667+, 800+, 900+ and the DDR2 1000+ seen here. These are the actual overclockers for the Vitesta range with higher bandwidth and optimized for dual channel operation.
So you thought DDR2 is all the rage. DDR3 technology has been making its round at Computex this year and A-Data has a DDR3-1333 module on display. DDR3 will have the same packaging design and pin-out as DDR2 memory, but almost double the data rate capabilities and uses lower power at 1.5V operational voltage.
A-Data also had a range of other memory technologies on display such as DDR2 FB-DIMM, SO-DIMM and Micro DIMM modules.
Besides DIMM memory, A-Data had a range of unique flash devices like a VoIP and biometric flash disk and this 'Show Me Disk', which has both numeric and pie chart display of remaining memory space. The cool thing is that it doesn't need a battery to operate the LCD as it uses a bistable cholestric display technology.
ATI X1K Physics and More
The star of the show, ATI unveiled their GPU physics engine. ATI's flexible physics processing really means that users can use a single GPU for both graphics and physics, dual GPUs for each, CrossFire physics and even a 2+1 configuration comprising of a CrossFire plus an additional x1000 series graphics card for physics processing. Because of this, users need not invest in too expensive a configuration as even the X1300 has more than enough raw power.
At the moment, ATI has only demoed rigid body collision and particle physics and will soon develop other physics processing as well like fluid dynamics. Running purely off CPU processing on the latest Core 2 Duo would average 10 frames or less, but with GPU physics turned on, we were looking at over 100fps peak. Of course, ATI's GPU physics is also tied in with the Havok API.
The other interesting launch at ATI was their new Theater 650 Pro video processor. At its heart is its 12-bit video decoder and hardware AVIVO processing for video and audio encoding. It also supports all three NTSC, PAL and SECAM TV standards as well as ATSC and DVB-T for digital TV.
Next generation RS600 is still at the hush hush stage, but available information is that it should have an x700 class video processor with HDCP and HDMI interface built-in. The demo here shows HD video decoding as well as 3D gaming at the same time. Note that the RS600 is the Intel version with a sister RS690 for the AMD platform. The RS600/RS690 is scheduled to be released with a Vista launch tie in.
The RD600 however is set to compete with NVIDIA's nForce 590 SLI. It actually shares many of the nForce 590 SLI features such as independent bus clocks and auto PCIe overclocking (ala NVIDIA LinkBoost). Of course you can bet that the RD600 will be supporting three PCIe x16 configurations for GPU physics and maybe even DDR3.
The Radeon Xpress 1100 sports the same RS485 specifications, but built for the AMD Turion 64 X2's S1 socket. Most Turion 64 X2 notebooks you see on the street today such as those from MSI and BenQ will already be featuring this chipset. There is also a higher end 1150 version, which sports a higher clocked graphics core.
The ATI Yokohama initiative is a highly integrated design co-optimized by ATI and AMD using the Radeon Xpress 1100 series chipset and Turion 64 X2 processors to build notebooks with above 4 hours battery life. ATI is claiming more than 5 hours using their next generation chipset as well.
CMC's Booth
CMC Magnetics is another participant going for a football theme.
While consumer electronics and the PC world will be fighting over which camp to go with, optical disk manufacturers can do both ways. CMD has their line-up of HD DVD and Blu-ray discs on display.
Up close of CMC's HD DVD and Blu-ray models. Here we have some mid-range 15GB HD DVD-RW and a 25GB Blu-ray RE.
CMC might be one of the world's largest optical disc manufacturers, but that doesn't stop them from going into the portable media player market. The PAV-2717 has real time MPEG-4 recording and playback, MP3 support, photo viewer and CF card expansion slot.
Ritek's Booth
Ritek gearing up for the high definition craze.
Ritek's range of HD DVD and Blu-ray montage.
Blu-ray rewritable in 25GB capacity.
HD DVD dual layer rewritable also on show with 30GB capacity. Ritek has a full range of HD DVD-R, RW and RAM including single and double-sided discs all ready.
Besides optical media discs, Ritek had a proof-of-concept product on display which was a USB flash drive cum dual-port USB hub. Pretty nifty even if it did look like a certain body part.
Geil's Booth
Geil showcases some of their new DDR2 memory modules.
As a performance memory manufacturer, Geil also had DDR3 technology on display at Computex, though it was cased in a rather plain yellow heat spreader.
The Geil Evo One series of memory makes a showing as well. If you haven't yet seen these babies, they allow users to directly connect power to them and fine tune voltage, giving overclockers the control they need.
The Black Dragon memory series is the DDR2 variation of Geil's Golden Dragon DDR memory, which is their highest end, lowest latency modules. Black Dragon memory comes only in 2GB sizes from DDR2-667 onwards.
As with most other memory manufacturers, Geil displayed their range of FB-DIMMs to support the Intel Bensley server platform.
Not really new, but also not something that is seen often enough, Geil's ultra sexy Mac line of DDR2 memory.
Global WIN Cooling
In a sense, this is a standard LGA775 cooler design. However, it carries the latest Global WIN cooling technology called the Heat Tube, used in both AMD and Intel cooler designs.
The Heat Tube is very similar to the traditional heat-pipe as it also uses liquid condensation techniques, except that it is in a tube (go figure!). Global WIN must have thought pipes weren't big enough. However, it does have its proprietary system that Global WIN says has a better cooling efficiency than heat-pipes.
Global WIN was also seen touting their new bearing design using Nanometer Ceramic, which is stronger, harder and longer lasting than regular steel bearings. Global WIN fans with the NCB sign as above will all carrying this new NCB bearing.
Promise Technology's Booth
Promise Technology's booth.
Promise was showing a stackable eSATA enclosure, the DS1300-EU, which can also be attached to their NAS products for capacity expansion and RAID 0/1. It also has a USB 2.0 interface if you don't have an eSATA port to reach a wider audience.
Transcend's Booth
Transcend's booth.
The StoreJet OTG is not only a portable 30GB HDD, but also supports direct input and data transfer from almost all USB and mini USB interface devices. Battery is supposed to last for 1.5 hours of continuous copying.
Really cool device, the StoreJet 2.5 portable HDD is wallet sized and only 13mm thick, packing up to a 120GB 2.5-inch HDD.
Twinmos' Booth
Twinmos' booth.
Twinmos also getting into high speed DDR2 memory. Their Twister performance models feature DDR2-1066 CL5 speeds.
While the regular value memory scales DDR2-800 speeds to CL5 as well.
NVIDIA PureVideo HD
With their partners all showcasing the GeForce 7950 GX2 and nForce 590 SLI, NVIDIA's own presence in Computex this year was more focused on the video processing aspect of the upcoming HD content wars.
NVIDIA today launched and update to their PureVideo technology called PureVideo HD, which now supports HD DVD and Blu-ray hardware content decoding. PureVideo HD will also feature two new post-processing technologies: Edge enhancement and Noise reduction.
More HD-ready notebooks from various manufacturers that are all using NVIDIA's PureVideo HD solution. Among them are the Toshiba Qosmio G30 and the Acer Aspire 9000 series.
The nefarious Sony Vaio AR Blu-ray notebook at NVIDIA's booth playing 'real' Blu-ray content. Yes, we checked.
The Vaio RC desktop is a Blu-ray enabled home theater system with a GeForce 7600 GT, which should also support PureVideo HD.
Partner graphics cards that are not the GeForce 7950 GX2, which are HDCP ready and have HDMI ports. Seen here is the Gigabyte GeForce 7300 GS.
Another manufacturer with HDMI onboard a mid-range board that was displayed is an MSI GeForce 7600 GT.
NVIDIA will also be enabling HD content on mobile devices with their MobileMedia Platform featuring the latest GoForce 5500. Of course, this is just a demo, not a really huge ugly naked mobile device.
SuperMicro's Booth
SuperMicro's booth carrying a full range of new Intel server platforms. This Computex, Bensley is the key.
One of the few Blackford server motherboards on display, the X7DBR-8+ supports 64GBs of FB-DIMM, dual channel Ultra320 SCSI and of course the Intel Woodcrest Core processor.
The X7DA8 on the other hand is a workstation class motherboard using the Greencreek 5000X chipset. The board will also support the Woodcrest processor, 32MB FB-DIMMs and has PCI Express expansion slots.
XFX's Booth
XFX has been quite aggressive lately with their gaming and overclocked graphics cards. They've even just recently tied up with you know who (Johnathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel) for a product tie-up.
XFX's booths are always highly themed and believe us. We walked around and looked into all the nooks and crannies, you're looking at the one product on display.
XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 570MXXX edition. This baby is stock overclocked to 570MHz core and 1.55GHz memory clock. Other specs like dual-link DVI and HDCP are standard.
Luckily, there were other attractions. Incedentally, this also rounds up part 5 of our Computex coverage.
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