CeBit 2003

I think our readers know it very well what CeBit means for the IT industry. Briefly, - this is the planet's largest computer expo. Our Moscow's ComTech compared to that is like a petty shop versus a supermarket. Of the closest competitors, ComdexFall (Nevada), is not long for this world and takes only one expo hall, compared it to the 37th at Cebit. The Taiwanese Computex is growing from year to year, but its coverage can't be compared to CeBit. Hadware, Software, security, cellular phones, providers, Web industry, banking IT etc. etc. - all these were represented at the expo and distinctly partitioned into sectors. Nobody in the sound mind can walk through and explore all the 7000 expo stands at CeBit2003... But you don't have to. We are interested in hardware manufacturers which take 7 halls, which is more realistic...

Right by the Northern entrance to hall N2 being central, there is an Asus expo stand, close to Sony and JVC.

ASUS

Asus, the permanent leader of the motherboards and video market seems to have spanned over all the neighbouring areas. The retributive sword of this Taiwanese monster seems to have spanned over to the markets like notebooks, PDA and cellular phones, which the traditional players of the field strongly disliked. But - all in good time.

Motherboards

Before Cebit'2003, the top-end line of Asus motherboards looked like this:

1. P4G8X - Intel E7205
2. P4PE - Intel 845PE
3. P4GE - Intel 845GE
4. A7N8X - nVidia nForce2
5. P4S8X - SiS648
6. P4SDX - SiS655

But the official announce of new Intel's chipsets, Canterwood and Springdale, has amended the list. What can be said most briefly is that Springdale is a direct heir to i845PE/GE with the difference that the FSB has gone up from 533MHz to 800 MHz, and Canterwood is in fact the same Granite Bay (e7205) with the new 800 MHz bus and some slight cosmetic add-ons.

The upper line in the top list is undisputably taken by the P4C800 Canterwood motherboard. Featuring support for the dual-channel DDR400 interface, FSB 800 MHz, new ICH5R South Bridge, the board will be the most desired thing for hard-core overclockers.

Asus P4C800 - Canterwood

The Asus P4P800 (Springdale) board is a bit simpler and cheaper and has come to take the place of P4PE.

Asus P4P800 - Springdale

The potentials of the new chipsets are well demonstrated by the following photo:

Overclocked Asus P4C800

This time Asus has replaced its cryo-cooled demonstration with quite easily available Tt's air-cooling means. The results are on the screen :)

Video cards

To date, there are three new nVidia chips:

1. FX5800 - is the very notorious NV30. It is produced with extremely limited lots because of the very low chip yield, is very costly to manufacture and requires huge cooling systems. The marketing positions of the chip are very low, and the integrated options are not in demand on the market. Its production does not pay, and the only purpose of its release is to get the better ATI in pursuing higher scores. Plainly speaking, the chip was produced for presentation purposes. Should some readers come across an FX5800-based video card available on sales, that will be a really remarkable fact. Manufacturing companies receive such chips in so small quantities that the cards are not enough even for test labs, i.e. they are few. Most likely, there will never be any mass production of FX5800.
2. FX5600 (NV31) is a cut-down version of NV30. Unlike NV30, it uses the standard DDR memory controller; - reminding you that NV30 offers a controller for the DDR2 memory. It's just this chipset that is very soon going to be a favorite among nVidia produce fanciers.
3. FX5200 (NV34) is what used to be called MX. The video chip is simply for regular video cards, but with support for DX9. At sales volumes, the company is going to be an indisputable leader.

As Alan Tike noted in our interview, the number of nVidia's partners is as many as 20-25 companies, each representing a complete spectrum of video cards built on these chips. Now imagine how many various makes of this video card will hit the retail shelves in the nearest time... Immense quantities! Having run around numerous stands, we saw the forthcoming variety at first hand. Quite often the manufacturer even doesn't indicate it on the box as to which chip is in fact implemented in the solution and uses its own designation systems. The mess in consumers' heads is going to be quite immense, and we would have to find out precisely with sales assistant as to what we are going to buy. The rule of thumb is easy if we recall that there are always three chips - the FX5600 is priced between $300-$400 depending on the package bundle and the number of video Ins/Outs. FX5600 - 180-250$. The FX5200 is about $100-$150. Further on, the prices will be going down.

NVidia is most likely to expand the chip assortments based on the stably supported frequencies, which will be marked as Ultra. This will add more variety of cards on the market ...

This favorite of Asus is dubbed V9900 Ultra - only stars and five-digit amounts are higher than that. Evidently, that is just the very presentation-version FX5800(NV30).

Asus V9900 Ultra

And what is of real interest is the V9560. It is the FX5600 chip, and Asus will be manufacturing two makes of cards on its base:

Asus V9560 VideoSuite

The "VideoSuite" make - offers TV-In/Out.

Asus V9560 TD

The "TD" make - offers TV-Out and DVI.

Asus V9520 VideoSuite

And the last photo presents a video card based on the FX5200, which will be produced in three (!) makes - the already mentioned "VideoSuite", "TD" makes and a "T" make that offers a TV-out.

Notebooks

At CeBit, Asus prepared a couple of novelties for its recently introduced priority direction - notebooks. These are a line of Intel's new mobile processor Centrino, and a new technology for monitors manufacture dubbed in the purely Chinese was as "Best AsusView".

The Centrino line includes three novelties: S1N, M2N and M3N. The format of this article prevents from bringing in all the photos of new notebooks, but believe me they are all pretty stylish, light-weight (especially the single-spindled S1N) and are fully furnished to the full following the latest trends in fashion and Intel requirements. To acquire Intel's "Centrino" logo, it doesn't suffice to install the processor. The rigid certification requirements imply support for all the existing power-saving technologies and conformity to modern standards.

Asus S1N

Asus M3N

In the M3N model, a touch-pad is mounted right into the notebook surface.

If necessary, it can be detached with a single key press right on the screen.

Asus A2H "Best AsusView"

I was unable to get the technological details of that natural phenomenon, but outwardly it looks like a special anti-flash glass that adds deep black reflection to the image. It's been long known - the LCD technology does not allow getting the normal "black". The photo fully shows that Asus has succeeded in that...

Cellular (mobile) phones

AGP-60

The AGP-60 cellular phone whose sales are about to start in Russia as well costs around $150. In fact, it is a quite ordinary modern phone but made by Asus, but what makes it stand out among the counterparts is the prolonged operation life after a single charge, which can be as long as 8 hours. The thing is that the screen and its highlight in the standby mode are the major power-consuming factor, and the technology for highlighting only the "needed" pixels, not the whole screen, was first implemented in AGP-60.

On the photo, you can see a prototype of the future wired rig dubbed as AGP-600. Support for new WAP, Java, MMS, camera etc. etc. plus two screens. It's still premature talking about the price, the dates of the release have not yet been announced..

And the third one, AGP-100, a collapsible that supports all modern standards. Optionally, you can separately buy a camera for storing snapshots right in the flash memory of the camera itself. On the Russian market, it costs around $300.

Asus' PDAs

Users in Russia are already familiar with MyPal A600 which offers the least weight among other PDAs available on the market, the finest and most performance-wise solutions. It is complemented with MyPal A620 - yes, complemented, and not to take its place. Let's compare the characteristics, and all will be clear down to the details:

				MyPal A600		MyPal A620
Processor:			intel PXA250		intel PXA255
Processor clock speed:	400Mhz			400Mhz
Memory:			64 RAM; 32 ROM	64 RAM; 32 ROM
Slot:				SD			CF

MyPal A620

That is, the difference of both the models is in the cosmetic replacement of the processor with its modernized version and installation of CompactFlash instead of the SD slot. You simply got to choose what you need.

MyPal A620 is almost at the gates and will knock at the door these days, in the near future we are expecting a third Asus' model - MyPal A710, built on the same processor PXA255, but with both slots - SD and CF.

MyPal A710

Interview with Alan Tike (nVidia)

Q: nVidia has recently completed the financial year, what are your estimates of the totals?
A: Simply fantastic! If we look at the turnaround, we have grown from $1.4 mln to $1.9, i.e. a 45% growth. This figure is really good.

Q: Turnaround and revenues are different things. You completed the past year at a substantial gain in the incomes part, but was it attained due to settling the financial discords with Microsoft?
A: Well, not at all actually. Regarding the Xbox, all has been settled down, both parties have come to a compromise and we are all pleased with it.

Q: What are your chances of becoming a solutions provider for the XBox2?
A: Today, when making such key decisions large companies proceed from the term of two years... they are vital for launching projects of such a scale. It's business, and let's wait and see who will win eventually in view of three more years left until the release of XBox2 and a whole year for discussions and putting forward new suggestions :-)

Q: A curious analogy - your first graphics card based on the NV1 chip was an ignominious failure, the second chip - a matter of worship, TNT128 seriously moved 3DFX aside, and the third, GeForce took all the competition to town and even turned some down to dust. So what do we see now? The first nForce did not play a decent competition, but a year later there nForce2 was released which fully revealed potentials of the dual-channel memory and outperformed the close competitor, VIA KT400, at all the benchmarks. What's going to be next???
A: Then there will be nForce2 with support for FSB 400 Mhz for new processors. As soon as we get a say-so from AMD, we'll release a new version of drivers for this chipset. On the hardware level, all is in and works, now it's AMD's turn.

Alan Tike

Q: When will the nForce3 appear and which new features will it offer?
A: Can't tell it now :-) That is, no comments. But it will be ...

Q: The nV30 chip was announced in the middle of November at Comdex Fall 2002, 4 months have passed since then, but no FX cards have so far appeared in stores. Why so?
A: We invested incredibly huge amounts of money into that completely new chip. Now a time for returning the investments is coming. Additionally to NV30 (FX5800) we presented FX5600 and FX5200 last week... You see, what really matters in this - it's the first time for the whole history of the company that we have presented a complete spectrum of cards for the new API (I mean DX9) during as many as 100 days after its release, both for the performance sector and for the mainstream.

Q: On the topology level, is the chip the same or different?
A: Different. FX5800 supports DDR2, FX5600 - the first DDR, with FX5200 being the cut-down version.

Q: What are the current production stores for these chips?
A: By the end of April it's going to be 1.5 mln finished chips - quite enough for the initial saturation of the market. Most of them are mainly FX5200 - such is the structure of demands.

Q: Where has the abbreviation MX gone? Won't it be there any longer?
A: Yes, the MX index won't be used any more. FX5200 is in fact the same MX, but what's the sense of convincing the consumer that this MX is another stuff? :-) It's an absolutely modern card with support for DX9 and at affordable price.

Q: A year and a half ago, at Comdex'2001 there was a presentation of the NV17M mobile chip dubbed as "Breakfast with nVidia". But like its predecessor the chip wouldn't work. The priority left with ATI Mobile. Haven't you abandoned attempts to win this market?
A: You are bit late :-) Today there was a presentation of the mobile versions 5600 and 5200... you can have a look and touch new notebooks that came into batch production. By the way, to date we own a 25% share of the mobile video chips market. And our plans for the year 2004 is 50%.

Q: The current size of the unified Detonator driver has exceeded 20 megabytes. Maybe it made sense diverting the driver into old and new starting with the FX?
A: Currently there are over 100 million users of our graphics produce,we have around 20-25 partners manufacturing video cards on our chips, and any modifications made to the policies of releasing the unified driver will seriously hard our partners, their costs and finally the end users.

Q: Do you mean Detonator will always be there?
A: Yes.

3DNews: Thank you for your interview, we are looking forward to seeing your novelties in the retail!

Crowds at the nVidia expo stand

At the nVidia's stand, tens of product samples were demonstrated, but we'll dwell on them as we look deeper into the stands, the way we did with Asus, but you simply can't help passing by Leadtek's FX5800:

Just one more interesting exhibit for a photo collection. We have seen Intel's and AMD's wafers tens of times, but so far have not yet seen what the video chips are cut out from:

Konam's Home Theater PC Case

Our photo coverage of the last year's Computex, especially its part to do with new advancements in the computer case-building has caused an avalanche of letters. The opinions varied between "$200 for a case is too much" and "will buy it at whatever money, just tell me where.."

In any case, the problem is ripe and nobody likes the regular dirty-grey plastic anymore ... but why not to buy it for my son, a first-year schoolboy, for further mastering the computer down to the last screw.

This CeBit has distinctly demonstrated the trends forecasted a year ago. At the expo, there are no "regular" cases - all are either made of full aluminum with windows or completely transparent, which is the latest kink of the fashion :)

But cases made by Konam, a Korean company, simply stand out among the fantastic variety of gleaming coolers in transparent cases ... they are stylish, very stylish.

Model HT-100S (silver)

Model HT-100B (black)

The cost of this model without a power supply, but with all additional accessories (IR-Module, Remote Controller, VFD-Module) is around $300. The material is iodinated aluminum.

Konam also offers a more traditional mini-tower in the silver, golden and black make. The HT-300 series:

Model HT-300S

These cases are not yet on sale in Russia, but let's hope for the better. If some of our computer store monsters are interested, welcome to sales@konam.co.kr

Abit

3DNews: At the expo, Abit exhibited new motherboards built on Intel's Canterwood and Springdale chipsets. When will their official announcement be held?

Abit Initially, Canterwood (i875p) will be presented in about early April. As you see, the boards are ready by now, but we are waiting for an official announcement from Intel.

Abit IC7-G (Canterwood)

Close to it, there is an info plate
saying the chipset runs at 1000Mhz FSB

As for the release of Springdale P/PE, the boards will be announced somewhere in May, - at least such are Intel's current plans. I don't think they will be changed.

Abit IS7-E (Springdale P)

3DNews: What are the differences between these chipsets?

Abit Canterwood is aimed at the hi-end workstations market. That is, the ECC (support for memory error correction) implementation is mandatory. Another difference is the presence of Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT mod), a new technology of Intel's. Springdale offers neither this nor that, but FSB 800Mhz and Dual DDR 400 stay as before.

Notes by 3DNews: To attain nominal operation modes in Springdale and Canterwood, a combination of the following three factors is necessary - an FSB 800MHz processor (to be announced by Intel next week), DDR400 memory and not as a single bunch but two absolutely identical, and better than that - specially optimized for dual-channel operation.

3DNews: What is the performance difference between these chipsets?

Abit 4-5%.

3DNews: Abit was the first to announce the BH7 board built on the i845PE chipset designed for FSB 800 MHz instead of the required 533 MHz, now you are demonstrating the IC7-G with FSB 1000 MHz instead of 800 MHz. What should we call it? Is it simply overclocking or something else?

Abit Our engineers have invested lots of efforts into optimizing the most complex ever wiring of motherboards and we guarantee stable operation of our solutions at increased speeds. The most difficult part is calculate the critical points and distribute them over the board to eliminate mutual induction.

3DNews: Let's talk about the new VIA KT400A chipset ...

Abit Initially, VIA released a new version of KT400A, but as it always happens with them, they added the only addition - support for DDR400 in the North Bridge. The South Bridge remained unchanged. We decided to leave this chipset out since it doesn't offer any performance boost. Currently, VIA is working at next revision through introducing support for Serial ATA into the South Bridge, and Abit will present this board based on just this option. At least, it gives some increased functionality. All what is being demonstrated at the expo is the first revision of KT400A which doesn't make much sense to be produced and released. In any case, the single-channel memory is less productive. Today's industrial standard is dual-channel solutions and all companies except VIA have presented them.

3DNews: Like all nVidia's partners, Abit has presented new video cards on all the three GPUs - SiluroFX5800 (NV30), SiluroFX5600 (NV31) and SiluroFX5200 (NV34). How many modifications will be released and what are the differences?

Abit Each chip will be presented on two video cards - of the regular make and the Ultra make. The difference is in the frequencies of the core and memory. There are six cards altogether:

1. SiluroFX5800 Ultra - 500/1000Mhz DDR2
2. SiluroFX5800 - 400/800Mhz DDR2
3. SiluroFX5600 Ultra - 350/750Mhz
4. SiluroFX5600 - 325/550Mhz
5. SiluroFX5200 Ultra - 325/650Mhz
6. SiluroFX5200 - 250/400Mhz

SiluroFX5800 DOTH

SiluroFX5600 DT

SiluroFX5200 DT

3DNews: What do the DOTH and DT stand for in the card names?

A: D stands for DVI, O for OTES, T for TV-Out, and H for Hardware Monitor.

3DNews: Thank you for the interview and wish you a good luck for the other days at the expo :-)

Those interviewed are:
Lay Lu, research and development engineer;
Nora Lee, multimedia group expert;

Cooler Master

At the expo, Cooler Master announced two new series of coolers - Aero and XDream. The Aero turbocooler series is presented with two solutions, each for P4 and SocketA/370, which is well seen in the photo showing the way they are attached.

Aero 478 and Aero 7

Both coolers have external a variable resistor for adjusting the rotational speeds of the turbine fans. The adjustment range is between 1900 and 4500 rpm. The regulator can be placed either into a special cap for a 3.5 inch compartment and on a cap for expansion cards. Both caps are part of the bundle, their modification is about making a hole for the variable resistor regulator.

It isn't worth mentioning that both coolers are fully made of copper and are meant for the latest models of P4 and AMD Barton 3000+. We acquired an Aero7 specimen right at the expo, and its tests with the Barton processor will be part of the coming roundup on SocketA coolers for the first quarter of the year 2003.

The XDream series is more traditional and is a bit of lower rank than Aero, which expands its application area. The manual adjustment of the rotational speed is there. We'll surely see them in action.

Cooler Master HAC-V83 and HAC-V81

The aluminum keyboard is for freaks and bosses rarely using the computer. In real use, it will quickly get dirty in one places and polished to the mirror gleam in others. But it does look fantastic!

It's not so easy to make out what the device is meant for. But notebook owners will see it immediately that their knees are now fully protected against thermal burns.

The most necessary attribute for the beginner modder - system coolers with highlights - are in great shortage in Russia, but here they are all over the place. Its cost is about $10 a piece.

There are also kits of copper radiators for memory modules in the assortment.

We are taking a simple CD-DVD drive and with an easy motion turn its face panel into something worth of installation and put it into the aluminum case. Many companies produce this stuff for CD, but Cooler Master's solution stands out with its thickness and carefulness. Of course, they believe their brand is much more attractive on the PC's face panel than Plextor, TEAC, Pioneer and TDK :)
Produced in two makes - "aluminum" and black.

The best gift for the overclocker is an aluminum mouse-pad produced on the occasion of Cooler Master's 10th anniversary.

Cooler Master Mouse Pad

Geil: memory for overclockers

Geil, a young Taiwanese company is distinctly positioning itself as a manufacturer of non-standard memory for overclockers. "Standard" - is not their slogan, they are freely and bravely experimenting with timings, select best chip batches, invent their own cooling methods, intricate wirings using the six-layer design and are doing their best to be ahead of the whole planet... "Always Ahead!" is what written on their foreheads and all their produce.

Let me remind you that to date the most established standard is the DDR400 (PC3200), with similar memory type is also offered in the Geil assortment, but why should such petty stuff be brought to the CeBit? Geil brought only DDR433/PC3500 and DDR466/PC3700.

As the company representatives explained, the overclockers' memory is produced in two series - Platinum and Golden Dragon. The difference is in the presence of cooling attachments for the Platinum series and their lack in the Golden Dragon series, with the latter selling in exclusively golden make and in velvet packaging :-)

Geil PC3700/Golden Dragon

Mhz		466Mhz
Chip		Hand Picked Golden Dragon 4 ns
Capacity	Up to 512 Mb
PCB		6-layered design
CAS/Timing	2.5/7-3-3 2T@PC3700
Voltage	2.5v-3.1v
Life-long guarantee

Geil PC3700/Golden Dragon Dual DDR

The make for being used in the dual-channel configurations.

Geil PC3500/Platinum Dual DDR

Mhz		433Mhz
Chip		GL2000 4.5 ns
Capacity	Up to 512 Mb
PCB		6-layered design
CAS/Timing	2/6-3-3 1T@PC3500
Voltage	2.5v-3.1v
Cooling 	Copper alloy
Life-long guarantee

Geil PC3700/Platinum

Mhz		466Mhz
Chip		GL2000 4 ns
Capacity	Up to 512 Mb
PCB		6-layered design
CAS/Timing	2.5/6-3-3 2T@PC3700
Voltage	2.5v-3.1v
Cooling 	Copper alloy
Life-long guarantee

Such memory is not selling yet in Russia, but all may be..

Page 8 - Gainward: interview

	Contents:
	Gainward: Gainward's expo stand at CeBit strongly stands out among other companies. At the stand, there is neither hype nor loudly cheering showmen giving presents to those who give right answers to questions or throw namecards into the promptly placed box just at the right time - all is going on quietly and calmly, not a single showcase, no board, even no advertising leaflets. The inexperienced visitor might get the impression that the company is specializing at producing cardboard boxes. But the first impression is misleading. Gainward prepared for CeBit a whole collection of novelties, but demonstrates them exclusively behind the closed doors and only to a limited circle of people. We were lucky to get inside of the cardboard bulwark and see what had been hidden from the sight of the commoner. There were no surprises, or, more precisely almost no surprises were there. We'll tell you about the only product that really amazed us in the very end of this section. Now let's look into the main product items with which the company has become known on the Russian market - 3D accelerators built on nVidia chips. Next month onwards there will be six cards built on three nVidia chips gradually coming over to the retail: Two makes of the Gainward FX PowerPack! and Ultra/760 (XP è TV-DVI) boards are built on the nVidia GeForce FX 5600 GPU running at 275 MHz. Both the boards will be furnished with 128 MB DDR memory and support AGP8x. The key difference of XP from TV-DVI is that the latter features two DVI connectors, one TV-in and a pack for DVD play. The two makes of the Gainward FX PowerPack! Ultra/780 - XP and XP "Golden Sample" are based on the same GeForce FX 5600 GPU, but with the clock speed increased to 350 MHz, feature guaranteed overclock, 128 MB of memory in the XP model and 256(!) MB in the XP "Golden Sample" model. Gainward asserts that these boards will be 15% faster than Ultra/760. The declared memory bandwidth is 12 GB/s versus 8 GB/s in Ultra/760, is shipped with a FireWire IEEE-1394 controller and a video processing software suite. The most productive solution is based on the quite rare nVidia GeForce FX 5800 chip. There are two boards - Gainward FX PowerPack! Ultra/800Plus and Gainward FX PowerPack! Ultra/1000Plus in the line. They differ in the GPU operation speed: the former offers 400 MHz and the latter - 500 MHz, plus guaranteed overclocking specific of all the Gainward solutions. Both makes of the board are furnished with 128 MB of DDR-II memory, and the declared memory bandwidth of the Ultra/1000Plus is 16 GB/s versus 14 GB/s for Ultra/800Plus. The higher-end board comes bundled with a FireWire controller and video processing software suite. Due to the great number of transistors and high frequency, all the latest nVidia solutions feature quite impressive heat emission. Similar problem is typical of Intel's and AMD's processors as well. In the regular PC, the cooling job is done by the fans which run the air through the ribbed fins made of aluminum and copper thus pushing the temperature down. Since recent time, some companies have used thermal tube solutions. Abit is certainly among the pioneers, and we have already published our coverage of the expo stand. 3DNews: At first glance, the cooler used in your top-end card looks very much alike to that used by Abit, but upon a closer look we can see that you are using thermal tubes. Why so? Gainward: The thermal tube is good for chips offering lower heat emission. It's not as effective with hot solutions. This is a good means for cooling the notebook, but not a video card at all. 3DNews: That is, are you conservative in this sphere? Gainward: Not in the least, - especially for the enthusiast we are soon presenting a water-cooling system 3DNews: Under your own trademark? How much is it going to cost? Gainward: Yes, under our own trademark. For now, it's hard to tell anything regarding the price, but the approximate retail price is going to be around $150. 3DNews: That's good, but how soon is the product expected to arrive in Russia? Gainward: Just after the start of the commercial production we promised to send product samples to our distributor in Russia. To be more specific, it is Atlantic Computers. It's better to find out with them how soon the sales will start. 3DNews: What are the remarkable features of your water-cooling system? Gainward: It is designed for simultaneous cooling of all the three components - the graphic chip, the CPU and the chipset. Therefore, you can get rid of three main noisy coolers off the system and replace them with unified more effective water cooling. 3DNews: Will it run on all graphic boards or on your own only? Gainward: We wouldn't like to promote competitors' produce. Basically, it's a matter of skilled hands. By the way, here is a prototype of the system. The commercial specimen will be more compacted and will fit easily inside a 5-inch compartment near the optical drive. 3DNews: Thank you for the interesting information. Looking forward to your system.

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