by Anton Shilov
03/22/2004 | 11:01 PM
CeBIT 2004 show is rapidly gaining momentum here in Hannover, Germany, and the second day brought a lot more interesting than the previous one. There are crowds of people and a lot of exhibitors, but it is still pretty easy to get from one place to another – the only issue is that you get tired from traveling numerous kilometers by foot.
<%BANNER[article]%>What is indisputably good about the show itself is that there are a lot of interesting things all around – you just have to ask managers at booth to tell you more information about the hardware and be sure – you will learn a lot of new things. The drawback is that due to time constraints you have to pass some booths without getting into details, but that is it – at a big show you have to choose something that has chances to be absolutely the best.
The day took off from the meeting with ATI Technologies in a special booth located on the roof of the Hall 1. Since it is too noisy in the typical booths, some companies place special rooms on the roof of CeBIT’s buildings so to have meetings in relative quietness. This works – the meeting happens in a pleasant atmosphere and without any disturbance.
Even though RV380-based graphics cards are all around CeBIT stages, ATI keeps all the information about this part as well as about the R420 under wraps. What we can tell you beyond official comment “in the first half of the year” is that the announcement of the new R420 graphics chip is going to happen pretty shortly, according to current vibe, the time range is weeks, not months.
ATI believes that 50% or more computers shipped in late 2004 will have PCI Express x16 slot for graphics cards. As a result, ATI’s main concentration is to address those PCs with robust and fast graphics controllers, surely with native PCI Express interconnection and no bridges.
Since graphics cards are not the only business of ATI, chipsets are also worth taking a look at. In fact, the world’s largest mainboard maker – ASUSTeK Computer – believes that ATI’s RADEON 9100 IGP is the most sophisticated chipset for multimedia barebones that use integrated graphics at this time. The firm is going to broaden the range of its products featuring ATI’s RADEON 9100 IGP core-logic which obviously means a big push for the chipset.
Nevertheless, despite of being pretty happy with sales of the RADEON 9100 IGP, ATI plans a more powerful core-logic product to emerge in two months time. The revamped RADEON 9100 IGP will bring new memory controller as well as tweaked performance in addition to LGA775 microprocessors support. It also makes sense to expect this one to have more I/O options, but this is something ATI did not comment on. The new chipset’s code-name is RS350 and this is based on general architecture of the RADEON 9100 IGP (RS300). ATI’s totally new core-logic product, the RS400 with integrated DirectX 9 graphics, is likely to come at a very different date, sometimes within 12 months from now.
Given that the RS350 will be more or less compatible with the current infrastructure for ATI’s chipsets, the company plans to start its volume shipments once the product is formally released.
As I noted yesterday, ASUSTeK has loads of hardware in its booth: mainboards, graphics cards, barebones, notebooks, cell phones, PDAs and even servers.
The most interesting mainboards are probably those based on Intel’s Grantsdale (i915P, i915G) chipset series. To address practically all end-users and OEMs, ASUS plans to offer different kinds of mainboards based on the upcoming core-logic from Intel: with DDR2 or DDR support, and even with Socket 478 for better flexibility in compatibility with available CPUs right after the release and in future. All those mainboards will still have PCI Express x16 slot for graphics cards – no AGP support at all.
Platforms for AMD’s new PGA939 processors are also presented, but not widely, the only solution I noticed is based on VIA K8T800 Pro, not nForce3 or KT890. This is not a big disadvantage as at initial stages of the launch there will not be a lot of AMD64 processors for Socket 939 to put it midly
ASUS intends to begin shipping Socket T mainboards sometime in May, as it is awaiting for Intel to unveil the final specifications and chipset revisions. VIA PT890-based mainboards probably have a chance to emerge a little bit earlier.
NVIDIA nForce3 250 and nForce3 250Gb are still not quite ready to go, according to ASUS. The company’s final platforms based on these two chipsets will also be available sometime towards May, certainly not now, as some sources close to NVIDIA claimed in regards of some other mainboards.
Despite of indisputable interest of ASUSTeK’s mainboards, there is a thing that impresses even more in ASUS booth at CeBIT 2004. I am talking about the DigiMatrix II – the successor of the well-known DigiMatrix – a PC-based device that can serve both as computer and like a consumer electronics appliance.
The DigiMatrix II is based on the RADEON 9100 IGP chipset and is also expected to support Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron processors for Socket 478. Unlike the original DigiMatrix, the upcoming DigiMatrix II (or DigiMatrix 2?) is quite large so to match living room’s devices both by size and by style. The device has loads of connectors, some are needed out now, others are for some future needs. The personal computer is also not really prepared for commercial launch, but will definitely be available sometime in summer.
Initially ASUS plans to ship both DigiMatrix and DigiMatrix II, but at some point the former will be totally replaced by the latter. ASUS pins a lot of hopes on its second version of the DigiMatrix, even though even the first version is quite good.
One more thing for the living room is… ASUS M6000NE notebook! Created keeping in mind design of consumer electronics devices, this trendy laptop is especially suitable for various living room activities like DVD or CD playback, TV watching (it is equipped with TV-tuner) and so on. Surely, this Intel Centrino notebook is also capable of playing games, including the latest DirectX 9 titles, thanks to the Mobility RADEON 9600 PRO/RADEON 9700 graphics chip, as well as perform typical activities of a PC.
Despite of a not very successful enter into the graphics market, XGI Technology is quite optimistic about the future.
The company is now providing its graphics cards to various game developers so to make sure there are no problems with upcoming titles on Volari-based graphics cards. Additionally, its engineering team is constantly growing and we can expect higher quality drivers and more efficient hardware going forward. For instance, already in a number of weeks from now XGI plans to enable anisotropic filtering – a feature that has been disabled on SiS Xabre and XGI Volari graphics processors.
Sometime in mid-year XGI is expected to release its graphics solutions for PCI Express x16 bus. Just like NVIDIA, XGI is using a special chip to bridge its AGP graphics processors with PCI Express x16 bus. There are already prototypes of such cards, though, I am not sure whether they are capable of working or not.
Native PCI Express solution is only expected to emerge along with the new architecture from XGI. The company’s upcoming graphics processors scheduled for late year release will not be a refresh for the Volari, but something totally new. We should probably anticipate that the product code-named XG45 will deliver what every new graphics processor is supposed to, e.g. speed improvements, feature-set improvements, etc.
EPoX has a nice booth with quite a lot of interesting products inside. Basically speaking, PCI Express, DDR2 as well as new chipsets and platforms for Intel Pentium 4 and AMD64 processors are probably the major topics to cover about this spring’s mainboards.
Unfortunately, it really looks like Intel and VIA are a bit behind their schedules with PCI Express and DDR2 chipsets, there are very few companies at the show to demonstrate a lot of products with both technologies. For instance, the only Grantsdale-G solution EPoX has is EP-5EPA2+ mainboard with Socket T, four 204-pin DDR2 slots, PEG x16 slot, two PCI Express x1 slots and a lot of additional features, such as RAID. The platform is supposed to be available in very late April, although May is probably a more likely timeframe for the part.
As for Socket 939 mainboards, there are only a couple of them at the booth as well – EP-9VDA+ and EP-9NDA+ fueled by VIA’s K8T800 Pro and NVIDIA nForce3 Ultra. In fact, there will be three nForce3 products coming out this Spring: nForce3 250, nForce3 250Gb and nForce3 Ultra. The nForce3 250-series, according to EPoX, do not sport 1000MHz HyperTransport bus and thus is not the best solution for Socket 939 mainboards for sure. Specifically for the upcoming AMD64 processors NVIDIA has nForce3 Ultra chipset capable of handling AMD’s new chips properly with 1000MHz bus.
EPoX also said that it did not ship Prescott-supporting mainboards based on VIA PT800 and PT880 chipsets, as it has found some problems with them. Currently EPoX is awaiting new revisions of PT800 and PT880 to start commercial supplies.
Graphics cards is a new business for EPoX; the company states that it currently builds its graphics products fully according to reference design provided by NVIDIA. There practically three things EPoX does with the reference: it employs its own coolers, adjusts memory timings and installs a bit different memory chips than supposed by NVIDIA. We probably should expect something interesting from EPoX in this direction, but it seems that it is too early to discuss it.
GeCube was just another startup dealing with computer hardware only a year ago. Today this company is pretty well-known and respected among end-users and media. Moreover, the firm is not just copying graphics cards made by ATI, but tends to develop its own solutions.
For instance, already this spring the company will ship RV380-based graphics cards with TSOP memory chips in contrast to BGA chips recommended by ATI. Cards like these will be pretty affordable, but will not be intended for overclockers and enthusiasts. For these two kinds of end-users GeCube will have fully-featured RV380 solutions with copper heatsinks for increased overclockability.
Another impressive product GeCube has is a low-profile RADEON 9600 XT graphics card with two DVI ports connected via a special adapter. To make the only Powered by ATI consumer graphics card with dual-DVI GeCube had to install an additional TMDS transmitter from Silicon Image.
However, the most inspiring graphics card GeCube has in its booth is ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 9600 XT with ATI’s new REMOTE WONDER II controller. GeCube will use a rather powerful cooler and will bundle Yager game on DVD with its AIW 9600 XT.
This is not everything that happened during the 19th of March, the second day of CeBIT 2004, check out our coming coverage as well as the final digest of the show later.
