Introduction

There’s no need to hit that ‘Back’ button. After two consecutive all-night writing marathons, we decided to recharge and get some rest for the fourth day of Computex. Thus, the coverage herein includes our meetings from the second half of the show, in chronological order.

Taipei

A cloudy day in Taiwan

First, we have an exclusive bit of information to share with you. On the second day of Computex, we reported that Sapphire is working on a control panel that, when released, will reside in a spare drive bay. The following is a picture of the second version of that panel.

Sapphire's upcoming front panel interface

This unit is a bit different from what Sapphire originally described – it lacks a DVI connector and TV output. However, USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 are more useful front panel capabilities anyway. The small LCD display, as reported, displays GPU temperature as measured by a thermocouple under the VPU and fan speed. Further, the FX Emulation mode we heard Sapphire joking about is, according to Sapphire’s director of marketing, real, though he claims it is more of a facetious gimmick.

Arima

With the Athlon 64 launch now past, processors are appearing readily, despite reports that AMD is already experiencing shortages. And while we didn’t schedule an appointment, we did notice that Arima unveiled its desktop replacement notebook, centering on the Athlon 64 3000+ processor and an M9 graphics processor. Another system featured a Pentium M running at 1.5GHz, complimented by ATI’s RADEON 9600.

Arima's desktop replacement notebook

Up and running with a an Athlon 64 3000+

That is a 3D Mark 2001 score, not 3D Mark03

After thumbing through Arima’s literature, we also discovered a desktop replacement system, the W730-DTR, that combined the Athlon 64 and RADEON 9600 families, forming what we believe to be a compelling gaming machine. Among its list of features is a 15.4” WUXGA widescreen display, up to 2GB of DDR333, up to 128MB of graphics DDR memory, integrated 802.11a/b/g, and up to 80GB of storage space. Unfortunately, all of those high-end components consume lots of power and Arima is targeting two hours for the system’s battery.

Arima's Centrino armed with RADEON 9600 graphics