X-bit labs

CeBIT 2007 Coverage: Part 1

Category: Editorial

by Anton Shilov

[ 03/18/2007 | 07:00 AM ]

CeBIT exhibition has kicked off in Hannover, Germany as usual and while a number of companies decided not to make their public appearance on the show floor we still have something to tell you about. Today we are going to show you Nvidia’s first DirectX 10 graphics cards for the mainstream market, samples of DDR3 memory with some thoughts about it, pictures of Art Lebedev’s Maximus, as well as take a close look at Sapphire’s dual-GPU graphics board.

Table of contents:

• So Near and So Far: DDR3 Memory Modules on Display
  
• The Jaws: OCZ Demos a Way to Control a PC Using Your Brain… or Jaws
  
• 10:1: MSI Shows Off Nvidia’s Mainstream DirectX 10 Graphics Offerings
  
• Quantity Matters: Sapphire Demos Dual-GPU Graphics Card
  
• Render Worth a Thousand of Words: Art Lebedev Shows Off Pictures of Maximus
  

CeBIT 2007 is not the CeBIT that everybody is used to. Several months before the event its organizer Deutsche Messe said that it would lose ?5 million on the show which was several months away. There are rumours on the showfloor that CeBIT is going to become a business to business show next year and even this year Deutsche Messe advertises CeBIT in the centre of the city as the best venue for making business.

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The reason for such situation is plain and simple: a lot of companies are unwilling to have booths at the show because the vast majority of end-users coming are teenagers with beer, cigarettes and the wish to get something for free. Last year Sony decided not to participate in CeBIT, this year Nvidia decided not to have a booth at all, while Intel moved its booth from an posh Hall 1 to Hall 21 located a hundred meters away from the main entrance to the show.

Exhibitors themselves also do not release exactly new products at the show, as they wish to announce strategically. For instance, Nvidia already has the code-named G84 and G86 GPUs at hands and, it seems, in production. But it does not allow its partners to display the boards (even though we’ve managed to get a picture of them) based on the new graphics processing units, as end-users would stop to buy GeForce 7-series. Advanced Micro Devices graphics product group ATI also has the R600, as some sources claim, ready, but the R600 seems to be nowhere to be found at the show, just like its 65nm derivatives, which are supposed to hit the market in several weeks.

So Near and So Far: DDR3 Memory Modules on Display

A number of memory module manufacturers, including Corsair, Patriot and Super Talent, are showing off their DDR3 memory modules which are expected to hit the market sometime later this year. While OCZ does not demo DDR3 memory modules, it says that it can release them commercially in late April with 800MHz and 1066MHz clock-speeds. The alarming fact is that mainboard manufacturers do not show off DDR3-based mainboards up and running.

There is no official information concerning the launch date of Intel Bearlake chipsets and motherboards. However, the launch of Intel’s new flagship chipset is supposed to be aligned with the release of the company’s new Core 2-series processors for 1333MHz processor system bus (PSB), which are expected to be released in the Q3 2007.

Usually, companies need to unveil fully-functional products in early June in order to be able to win contracts for the back-to-school season. However, to be able to officially release something at Computex, you need to be in position to show it several months before, at CeBIT. Back in 2004 there were loads of systems with DDR2 and PCI Express inside at the Hannover exhibition. The issue with DDR3 and Bearlake chipsets is that there are basically no systems running DDR3 memory at the show, which means that commercial launch may either be scheduled at late Q3, or is not supposed to be really massive.

Still, OCZ believes that the DDR3 ramp up will take less time compared to DDR2, as the fundamental infrastructure for the new type of memory is available already (e.g., since layouts for DDR2 and DDR3 are similar, mainboard makers do not need to spend additional time and funds designing new PCBs).

Obviously, computer enthusiasts and overclockers will love the speeds and performance of DDR3 running at 1333MHz, 1800MHz, 2000MHz late this year, but the vast majority of consumers will compare DDR3 against DDR2 in terms of price, but the price is not something that is going to be low, just like latency settings…