S/U/M/A/ unveils PLATINUM RADEON 9600XT 128MB and 256MB graphics cards

Chaintech´s IMO-Desk officially announced

Our Hardware Museum: Mystery #12

Olympus handset lenses: any shape will do

How much is the Pentium 4 / Mobile Pentium 4 (another price cut)

S/U/M/A/ unveils PLATINUM RADEON 9600XT 128MB and 256MB graphics cards

S/U/M/A/ unveiled two new graphics cards on RADEON 9600XT (RV360) — SUMA PLATINUM — with 128MB and 256MB. Both models have 3.3ns 600MHz memory in TSOP chips, 500MHz GPUs, (128-bit bus), D-Sub, DVI, TV-Out.

As for other specs, they are standard: AGP 8X, DirectX 9, 400MHz RAMDAC, max. 2048x1536 x 16.7 million colors @ 60Hz; SMARTSHADER 2.0, SMOOTHVISION 2.1. The bundle includes S-Video to composite cable, driver CD, DVI adapter.

Chaintech´s IMO-Desk officially announced

In July 2003 Chaintech informed about plans to extend its product list: besides traditional motherboards and desktop 3D graphics Taiwanese maker intended to expand its presence in segments such as DVB receivers, media centers, DTR notebooks (IMO-Desk PC). The latter exactly is worth a separate mention.

In September at Computex 2003 visitors could already see the showcased IMO-Desk, and today Chaintech officially released these solutions marked I651U. Before May 2004 the company plans to release another seven IMO-Desk models to achieve yearly production to 50,000 units. By the way, in March the company is to introduce its SFF (small form factor) models also called barebones.

I651U specs:

• Supports Intel Socket 478 Celeron/Pentium 4 (400/533 FSB MHz)
• SiS 651 + SiS 962 chipset
• 1 x 184-pin socket for PC1600/2100/2700 (up to 1GB)
• Display:
  • 15" active XGA matrix
  • 250nit brightness
  • 16.2 million colors
  • 300:1 contrast
  • 60°/60° horizontal and 50°/70° vertical viewing angles
• 1 x 3.5" ATA133 IDE, 120GB max., PIO Mode 4 (16.6MB/s), Multi Mode 4 (up to 66MB/s), Multi Word Mode 5 (up to 100MB/s), Multi Word Mode 6 (up to 133MB/s)
• 5.25" ATAPI CD-ROM / DVD-ROM / DVD-ROM + CD-RW / DVD-R/+RW / combo
• AC adapter, 100-240V AC, 50/60Hz input; 20V DC, 16.67A, 120W output
• 350x286x48~53mm size

I/O interfaces:

• Front panel:
  • 6-in-1 reader (SM / MMC / MS / SD / CF / MD)
  • Mic-In
  • Headphones-Out
  • CIR
  • Speakers-Out
• Back panel:
  • PS/2
  • Line-Out
  • S-Video
  • RJ45
  • RJ11
  • VGA
  • LPT
  • COM
  • AC adapter input
• Left panel:
  • 2 x USB2.0
  • Optical S/PDIF-Out
  • IrDA
  • Bass/Center audio connectors
• Rigth panel:
  • 2 x USB2.0
  • 2 x IEEE1394 (4-pin and 6-pin)

To foreign markets IMO-Desk is shipped without the processor and memory.

Our Hardware Museum: Mystery #12

Another very simple riddle from our Hardware Museum: this time you must recognize from this PCB fragment the board model name and chipset.

To "equialize" chances for readers visiting our website at the different time, we decided to set a fixed end date and time: your answers are accepted until February 3, 11:10:42.

P.S. Please mail your answers to Andrew Vorobyev.

Olympus handset lenses: any shape will do

Olympus introduced a digital camera module for mobile handsets that significantly differs from similar solutions primarily by lenses of non-standard shape.

By the moment the company has already launched sales of the wearable portable display, Eye-Trek, that features aforementioned innovation. Actually Eye-Trek has only one lens, while the new handset module has two of them. Comparing to usual modules, where lenses are situated one after another, the novelty is thinner. The 1.3Mp prototype is 8.5mm thick. The module provides 250lines/mm (center) and 200lines/mm (borders) optical resolution).

Standard lenses	Non-standard lenses

Company informed that the new prototype passed tests and will be sampling in Spring, while the volume production is scheduled to the Fall 2004 at 500 thousand units monthly. According to company´s official representatives, pricing won´t exceed that of competitive products despite the original design.

How much is the Pentium 4 / Mobile Pentium 4 (another price cut)

While our respectable readers unhurriedly discusses advantages and drawbacks of Pentium 4 Prescott´s 31-stage pipeline in various forums, some more practical individuals search for price lists naturally expecting a price cut.

Well, Intel officially reduced prices not only for desktop Pentium 4, but also for Mobile Pentium 4 series. prices for the new Prescott are worth a separate mention: even the most powerful 3.4E GHz Pentium 4 should cost just $417 in over 1,000-unit quantities (though we´ll have to wait for it some time). Remembering prices for early 800MHz FSB chips, I can hardly believe that Pentium 4 Prescott 2.8E costs just $178 (same quantities).

Prices for Northwood models were cut as well. I think that setting prices for Prescott and Northwood solutions alike, Intel tried to stress the fastest transition to making 90nm shipments primary. Values below stand for over 1,000-unit quantities as well.

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