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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from CNET Asia. --------------------------------------------------------------
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What's new for PCs in 2004
By Calvin Siew
02/01/2004 URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/pcperipherals/0,39051168,39163341,00.htm It's a new year again. Therefore we at CNETAsia have brought out our crystal ball again to see if we can let you in on what to look out for in the coming 366 days. Besides the traditional David and Goliath battles in the CPU and GPU worlds, this year looks particularly interesting because both the underdogs, AMD and ATI, have started out looking finer. With stronger competition, we can expect more and better choices to come. CPUs Graphics Peripherals Notebooks What to look for in processors for 2004
After a year that saw only a few desktop processor cores inaugurated by the Intel (Northwood and repackaged Gallatin) and AMD (Thoroughbred B, Barton, Sledgehammer and Clawhammer), 2004 looks set to sizzle. For the moment, AMD has shrugged off its title of underdog with its sensational hammer cores (Athlon64 and FX-51). To continue with the momentum, the manufacturer will be launching four new cores through the year. These differ in terms of L2 (Level 2) cache sizes, different memory controllers (single and dual channel) and, of course, clock speeds. However, don't count Intel out yet. The chip giant's overdue Prescott will
make an appearance early this quarter. The Prescott will see its life covered
by two generations of Intel chipsets and motherboards. It will originally begin
life as a Socket 478 CPU supported by the current Springdale (i865) and Canterwood
(i875) chipsets and gradually graduate to Socket 775 (some call Socket T) with
the Grantsdale (successor to the i865) and Alderwood (successor to the i875)
chipsets. Near the end of the year, Intel will also introduce its future core,
Tejas. Grapevine has it that Tejas will have a larger L1 (Level 1) cache size,
more integral Hyper-Threading support, multiple cores and, surprise, surprise,
64-bit x86 instructions. In addition, Intel has pledged to continue its Extreme
Edition line so we can probably expect modified Prescott and Tejas cores as
well.
What to look for in graphics for 2004
ATI isn't the only manufacturer seeking alliances with game publishers, though. Nvidia has id Software's Doom 3 to pimp its products. Doom 3 is grounded on the OpenGL API and Nvidia's cards have traditionally performed well in that regard. However, unfortunately for Nvidia, id Software guru John Carmack had this to say about the GeForce FX and the published Valve benchmarks. "Unfortunately, it will probably be representative of most DX9 games. Doom has a custom backend that uses the lower precisions on the GF-FX, but when you run it with standard fragment programs just like ATI, it is a lot slower. The precision doesn't really matter to Doom, but that won't be a reasonable option in future games designed around DX9 level hardware as a minimum spec."
So does that mean that we can write off Nvidia? Probably not, there are still the manufacturer's NV4x cores to come this year. The NV40 is also expected to be launched early this quarter. ATI, too, is not resting on its laurels. ATI's R4xx and RV3xx cores can similarly be anticipated to keep the former powerhouse on its toes. Besides the battle at the top of the heap, former market leader S3 will make a comeback from a long hiatus. It will produce mainstream solutions established on its Delta Chrome chipsets. Joining in the fray also is new kid on the block XGI. The newcomer has three cards that we'll be seeing this year. They are the Volari V5, V8 and V8 Duo. The latter is an interesting card founded on an old idea. It's built with two Volari V8 cores much like how the now-defunct 3DFx ran the Voodoo2 SLI and ATI with its Radeon 256 Maxx graphics card. This means the V8 Duo could have the means to compete near the high end of the market. However, it remains to be seen if XGI's driver development team is able to make full use of the hardware's capability.
What to look for in peripherals for 2004
In the storage market, we see SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) interface emerging as the de facto standard for desktop hard drives. We can expect drive capacities and speeds to increase continually with larger platter sizes as well as faster rotational speeds. For the DVD market, our crystal ball says the format wars will continue and multiformat DVD drives will remain the order of the day. Still, there will be coexistence among the pluses and minuses, judging from the market shares of both formats. Other things to anticipate are dual-layered DVD discs from both the plus and minus camps. The dual-layered recording involves writing data on two separate surfaces, layered like coats of paint, on a DVD. You should also be able to see 16x write drives reaching the market this year, at least for the +R side of the fence. Coming to a screen near you this year may be more affordable and faster 17-inch LCD monitors. Already we've seen Korean manufacturer Samsung go to market with a 12ms response time LCD. Although the faster response times will result in the sacrifice of color depth, these products will still appeal to gamers who need fast responses to prevent ghosting.
In the Wi-Fi world, you'll be seeing tweaked 802.11g devices promising twice the performance in the early part of the year. This year, we might also be able to catch a glimpse of the eagerly awaited 802.11e standard. The new standard promises to bring QoS (Quality of Service) and multimedia support to the wireless world, while maintaining full backward compatibility with the 802.11a and 802.11b standards. This can just be what the home needs to get wireless streaming of videos started. For printers, HP has said it also follows Moore's Law in that it expects performance to double every 18 months. It has also shown us some prototypes of its new printhead (pen) which is slated to have 4,000 nozzles. In some of the graphs we've seen, it appears the printer leader is expecting to have a system capable of firing a billion drops per second sometime in 2007. Until then, we'll just have to "bear" with the next-generation 4,000-nozzle pens due to arrive this year. Likewise, you can expect similar performances from Epson and Canon. The latter is already at 3,072 nozzles. Apart from print performance, you'll continue to come across other value-added features such as PictBridge and Wi-Fi connectivity.
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