ABIT: Closing The Gap To Its Competitors
ABIT is aiming to gain new shares in the market with its new Siluro GF4 Ti and MX series. In the next few weeks, the Siluro GF4 Ti4600 and Ti4400 should be available on the market at about $370 and $330 respectively. In the lower price segment, the 64 MB GF4 MX440 card will be available for about $125.
With the new 5.1 speaker system SP70, ABIT presents an audio system that is ideal for Microsoft’s Xbox. The SP70 is connected to the Microsoft AV rack via optical S/PDIF.
Imagination Technolgies / Videologic: 3D for PDA
Behind closed doors, Videologic shows off a working prototype of a 3D PDA graphics chip called PowerVR MBX, which is based on the well-known Kyro technology. Although it is still in the early stages of development and only running on a 14 MHz clock, various 3D demos and even 3D sequences from Tomb Raider can run on this system. The first chips are expected to arrive on the market in mid-2003, at which time the clock speed should be up to 120 MHz and higher.
With its expensive graphics card «Vivid! XS ELITE» (priced at around $170), Videologic introduces the KYRO II SE chip, which differs from its predecessor in its clock speed, which has been raised to 200 MHz. Despite the lack of appropriate hardware, the new EnT&L (Enhanced T&L) driver technology is supposed to be able to handle future games that have especially high polygon counts, such as Unreal 2.
Gainward Pushes Forward
Gainward is on its way to success in the European market. In the past year, the Taiwanese manufacturer was able to increase sales in Europe by 270%. The new «GeForce4 Power Pack» products, Model Ultra 750 XP Golden Sample (GF4 Ti 4600, starting from $425) and Model 700 Golden Sample (GF4 Ti 400, starting from $340) should ensure further success. In the lower price bracket, Gainward offers the Model Pro 650 XP GS (GF4 MX 420, starting at $210), Model Pro 600 TV GS (GF4 MX 440, starting at $125) and Model MX 450 TV (GF4 MX 420, starting at $85), all of which are equipped with 64-bit DDR memory. The multimedia card GeForce 4 Hollywood Model Ultra 700 XP GS (GF4 Ti 4400) is equipped with a TV tuner, and should arrive on the market in two to three months. This will directly compete with ATI’s All In Wonder series.
Gigabyte: AGP 8X with SiS336
In addition to graphics cards with ATI’s Radeon 7500, 8500LE and 8500 chips, Gigabyte presented a prototype of an AGP 8x card with the SiS336 GPU. The 300 MHz chip should be available on the market in two months, offering DirectX 8.1 support. According to Gigabyte, the GPU has a pixel shader unit.
Other New Graphics Cards at CeBIT
The first GeForce4 Ti cards from MSI.
AOpen GeForce4 MX 440 with 4ns memory, which lacks the well-known OpenBios.
