X-bit labs

February 2004 Hardware News Overview (page 13)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 02/23/2004 | 06:37 PM ]

This news is altogether pleasant as well as the fact they you’ll soon be able to use those Celerons with cheap chipsets. ATI has announced its signing a license agreement for the Pentium M bus with Intel, which would allow the company to use the current M1683 and CyberALADDiN-P4 chipsets as well as develop new ones. However, there was even louder news: VIA Technologies thinks its cross-license agreement with Intel gives it the right to develop chipsets for the Pentium M and is going to unveil two finished products in February: the single-channel PN800 and the dual-channel PN880, both with the integrated DeltaChrome graphics core.

Good news ends here, while bad news is related to Intel, too. They showcased working notebooks on the Pentium M on the 90nm Dothan core at CES 2004, and everybody was waiting for March when they had been supposed to come out. But just a few days after the presentation it transpired that the shipments of this processor were postponed from Q1 to Q2 as the chip needed some polishing off. You may remember that earlier they had promised it at the end of 2003. The ill-fated 90-nm tech process again…

Interestingly, the growth of complexity and frequency of the new chips fully neutralizes all possible gains in energy consumption. While the current Banias has a heat dissipation of 24.5W, the Dothan should approach 30W by the end of this year. Its successor, the Johan, is rumored to aim at something like 45W. With such big numbers, Transmeta may have its chance to live and even to be successful.

Overall, the future lies in the dark, and the only good news from Intel in January (save for the Celeron M) is the announcement of the 802.11b/g adapter for the Centrino platform. It means new models of notebooks will learn how to connect to wireless networks at a speed of 54Mb/s! You’ll have only one problem – thinking about the use of this bandwidth, save for watching movies across the network.

Well, these are upcoming models, but what do we have today? MSI has made its debut in the market (it was not effective, but meaningful). The company started out by releasing the M3000 system (Centrino, 15” LCD panel, MOBILITY RADEON 9600, integrated 4-in-1 card-reader and so on). Once again, you may think MSI is ashamed of its own child, seeing how it presents every piece of info about it.

As for mature players, they were more interested in the latest Intel’s desktop or desktop-related processors. Leviathans are quite popular among notebook users nowadays. Moreover, gaming notebooks are becoming more and more popular these days. Even corporate-oriented Dell launched its XPS notebook for gamers that integrates Intel Pentium 4 3.40GHz or Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.40GHz processors as well as ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9700 graphics MCM with 128MB of memory, 512MB to 2GB of dual-channel PC3200 memory, 60GB (7200rpm) or 80GB (5400rpm) HDD, UXGA Wide-Aspect 15.4” display along with plethora of connectivity features, such as 802.11b,g/802.11a,b,g WLAN controller, Gigabit Ethernet, 4 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire and so on.

The Centrino enjoys popularity among the manufacturers, too. Dell did well releasing two quite different Centrino-based notebooks. First, it is the Latitude D505 (14.1” screen, Celeron M 1.2GHz) for only $1050 and weighing just 2.3kg. Second, it is the more powerful Inspirion 510m with a 14.1” screen, faster processor, more memory and so on. For example, the configuration of a 14.1” LCD panel, Pentium M 1.4GHz, 256MB RAM, 30GB HDD, DVD-ROM costs $1450. Your choice is wide, but the Celeron M-based model looks best among all Centrino notebooks announced in January.

Fujitsu Laboratories made another step to making the notebook user absolutely mobile. The new material for power cells allows making battery elements where 300ml of 30% methanol provide the notebook with power for 8-10 hours. Regrettably, they talk about working prototypes only, and I only hope the idea will have its practical implementation in the near future.