Computex 2011 Show Coverage - Part 7
In our final installment of our Computex 2011, we cover Aiptek, Aten, AzureWave, Gainward, Palit, Galaxy, Seasonic, Silicon Power, Vantec, VIA and ZiiLabs. And of course, we'll wrap up our coverage with our yearly spread of Computex booth babes.
Aiptek's Booth
Aiptek, if you recall our previous coverage in CES, was the first to get a 3D handheld camcorder in to the market.
To further their leadership and create traction from their momentum earlier this year, they've now got a full HD 3D digital video camcorder with the iH3. As its looks and build suggests, it's a proper prosumer camcorder that can capture both stills and videos in either 2D or 3D. It's accompanied by a 3.2-inch glass-less 3D panel for capturing and play back of content. It's recording format supports 3D playback on notebooks and PCs in the red/cyan format.
To complement the 3D capturing devices, here's a 3D multimedia player called the P8. Basically an advanced digital photo frame, it even has a built-in battery for portable use. And it goes without saying that the 8-inch screen plays 2D or 3D content without glasses by using the parallax barrier 3D technology.
Aten's Booth
The Aten CS1782A is of the more interesting KVM devices. It's an NVIDIA 3D Vision-ready dual-link DVI KVMP switch. Aten added a "P" to the KVM abbreviation which likely signifies it's more professional usage or that it's suitable for projection devices.
Here's a diagram from Aten to illustrate how it works. Aside from having the right equipment, the only difference is that you would plug the 3D glasses transmitting devices directly to the KVM switch.
Aten also recently incorporated Deskew technology to their KVM products that operate over long distances of Cat5/5e cables.
AzureWave's Booth
AzureWave, a subsidiary of ASUS, deals with wireless and networking equipment. What's interesting this year is their cooperation with Welocity to roll out the industry's first wireless gigabit standard - WiGig.
And here she is - the world's first WiGig PCIe device. Its maximum transmission throughput is up to 7Gbps! Looking like any other wireless solution in appearances, this extremely high transmission rate is possible thanks to the new 60GHz operational spectrum in addition to simultaneously working on the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz bands. Tri-band Wi-Fi anyone? We surely like the sound of that and probably saying good riddance to wired networking for the masses.
Here's more details on this WiGig device.
Galaxy's Booth
Here's an interesting proposition - the world's first HQV enabled graphics card. The Galaxy GeForce GTX 550 Ti HQV is probably just the right mix for an enthusiast looking for the ultimate HTPC card or one who needs a no compromise video playback quality. It even has a HDMI input to route other external video sources via the graphics card to be processed by the HQV chip and then output it out again.
Galaxy has also designed a software interface to allow picture quality fine tuning for the advanced users.
A standard GeForce graphics card can only support two monitor outputs. However, the Galaxy GeForce GTX 560 Ti MDT X5 supports up to 5 displays. It does this by integrating an IDT VMM1400 multiplier chip for a pure hardware solution to drive four more displays via HDMI in addition to the fifth driven by the GPU directly. The four monitors driven by the IDT chip support a max resolution of 1440 x 900 in quad-monitor mode, or 1680 x 1050 in tri-monitor mode. Note that the extra sized card is due to an added daughterboard of this added functionality.
Gainward and Palit Booths
Gainward is stepping up to a new direction in recent times as they are focusing strongly on their new Phantom series where the heatsink is in front of the fans, reducing noise and improving temperatures according to Gainward. One other news, expect Gainward to be available in this part of the region and its likely back for good this time.
Seen here are up to six heat pipes to quietly tame the temperatures of the GTX 580 and GTX 570.
Meanwhile, parent company Palit is trying out a brand new turbofan blade with up to 15 blades and a total fan size of 9cm in diameter. Seen here is a GTX 560 card sporting this new cooler, but it's not yet finalized and you might see a more refined edition in retail.
Seasonic's Booth
You've likely seen many 80 Plus certied PSUs, but have you seen an 80 Plus Platinum certified PSU? Well, it's a small but growing list as more PSUs are able to easily achieve the previous laid out standards. At the Platinum level, the PSU has to achieve up to 92% efficiency. Seasonic will soon debut two PSUs that achieved this standard and it has even simply named the series as Platinum. As you can see, it supports full modular cabling.
Here's how it looks on the other side. The Platinum series from Seasonic comes in 860W and 1KW editions.
For an even more powerful PSU, Seasonic will soon debut this 1250W PSU that's 80 Plus Gold certified.
Silicon Power's Booth
Silicon Power focuses heavily on storage solutions and in this year's show, they've got some pretty hardware to show off, just like this Marvel M60 USB 3.0 thumb drive.
Well, the actual thumb drive itself didn't look as flashy as the marketing poster, but brownie points goes to Silicon Power to get consumers attention.
Even their new portable hard drives are taking on a flashy design such as this Diamond D10. Comes in multiple capacity points up to 1TB in size and all run on the USB 3.0 interface.
If you want something with more curves, the Stream S20 would be more ideal. The color schemes available would also appeal more to the ladies.
Vantec's Booth
Here is Vantec's upcoming dual drive SATA to USB 3.0 dock. Its name may yet be finalized, but for now it's just broadly categorized under the NexStar sub-branding.
Vantec is also expanding its product lineup into NAS devices by demand from their existing user base and customers. The top of the line option is shown here, the NexStar FX, a quad-bay gigabit NAS with RAID.
Here's one of Vantec's popular storage adaptors updated with the latest USB 3.0 support. It connects IDE and SATA based drives to help transfer content via USB.
The NexStar SE is a handy front panel bay that supports dual 2.5-inch drives with a card reader, USB and audio ports.
ZiiLabs' Suite
ZiiLabs was busy showing off their next generation tablet platform codenamed Jaguar. Consisting of 7-inch and 10-inch form factors, a Honeycomb OS and powered by the new ZMS-20 StemCell processor, this reference platform is almost ready for clients to use as-is or customize as required.
Here are some key specs of the new ZMS-20 processor.
This is the 7-inch Jaguar platform showcased with a Transformers trailer.
ZiiLabs came prepared with a laid out cross section of the internals - this one specifically reflects the 7-inch edition.
And here's the larger Jaguar 10-inch platform. One of the advantages of the ZiiLabs platform is that it can support and fully accelerate both VC1 and VP8 based media.
And this is the internals that make up the 10-inch edition. As you can see, a good portion of it is occupied by the battery.
VIA Technologies Booth
There weren't much going on at VIA's booth this year except for a couple of technology demos of their recently announced QuadCore processor. Essentially, the QuadCore processor is nothing more than just two 'Isaiah' dual-core dies in a single packaging. The 64-bit processors are available at 1.2GHz and beyond and it features Adaptive Overclocking, 4MB L2 cache and the 1333MHz V4 Bus. TDP is rated at 27.5 watts.
The VIA QuadCore running in a micro-ATX motherboard using nothing but a passive heatsink. It's scorching hot to the touch and we find it hard to keep our fingers on the heatsink for more than 3 seconds.
The VIA QuadCore's low power and heat dissipation properties make it suitable for running inside a slim All-in-One PC.
The VIA QuadCore demonstrated in a notebook.
The VIA VB8004 is the only VIA product launched at Computex 2011. The low power VIA VB8004 Mini-ITX board is based on the VIA VX900 media system processor paired with a choice of either 1.2GHz or 1.6GHz VIA Nano processor. It can also be upgraded to support four displays using an additional VIA S3 5400E graphics module, providing support for DX10.1, Shader Model 4.1, OpenGL 3.1 and OpenCL 1.0.
The Showgirls of Computex 2011 - Part 1
The Showgirls of Computex 2011 - Part 2
And that's a wrap folks! If you would like to make a trip down to Computex next year, mark these dates. Till then, this is the HardwareZone team signing off and heading back the HQ.
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.