CES 2006 - Day 1: Dell's 30" Display, Quad SLI, WUSB and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 6, 2006 4:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
The World's First Upgradeable Graphics Card
MSI had an interesting proof of concept design at their booth: a PCIe x16 graphics card that featured two NVIDIA MXM interfaces. With two separate MXM interfaces, you can theoretically put any MXM GPUs on the card - making it an expensive, but upgradeable graphics card.
The problem is that since each MXM module has its own memory, there's no real benefit to this sort of approach today. And you wouldn't want to keep the memory on the PCIe card itself and just upgrade the GPU since you'd inevitably end up being way too memory bandwidth limited after one or two GPU upgrades.
Instead, this sort of an upgradeable GPU design may make sense if technologies like NVIDIA's Turbo Cache gain acceptance in the mid-range and high-end graphics markets. Reducing the dependency on high speed local memory for anything more than a cache would eventually allow these sorts of upgradeable designs to be used on desktops (or maybe even pave the way for the socketed GPU).
MSI also had a solar powered laptop on display:
The construction was crude, but a single lamp had no problems powering the notebook just fine.
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VooDooAddict - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
I forgot to add that I would sertiously consider something like that for purchase ... right now I build all my own PCs. Something like that is NOT something I could build on my own.The only thing that might keep me away is Dell's comsumer software load. The buisness PCs (Optiplex) have a much cleaner load.
Xenoterranos - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Has no one here ever tried to build a briefcase PC? The only thing I couldn't get working in mine was a battery. The second one I built worked fine off a battery, but being powered by a VIA Eden CPU didn't make for the best Counterstrike:Source play in the world.s2kpacifist - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
The Dell Transportable is a very nice idea, probably influenced by modders (suitcase mod anyone?) While appealing, I think they can take one step further and make a barebones system in addition to the version they showed at CES. Having the option of installing and upgraded your own vid cards/RAM/cpu would be a huge draw...and provide fierce competition for shuttle/SFF/Viiv/HTPCs. This would also be a godsend for LAN gamers everywhere, as someone mentioned above.I'm not sure if that wireless rechargeable keyboard is necessary. Most gamers would be using a nicer one, regular users would be lazy enough to not charge their keyboard, and media users would probably be using the remote when afar, rather than the keyboard. As for the battery, it can be good and bad, I can't really decide.
LoneWolf15 - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
It doesn't say, but if the Dell Transportable has a TV tuner in it, then it'd rock. As a college student, you could buy it as a all-in-one dorm solution. As an adult, it'd be a fully portable DVR/HTPC.UzairH - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
ONE GTX 512 is a beast, imagine 4 of them. And the 4.26 GHz 955 Presler isn't so bad - I'd say it should match the 4800+ in most apps - remember the recent AT review of the 955 - at default clock speeds it was slightly slower or sometimes faster than the 4800+. Of course the question is how much does this monster rig cost?Xenoterranos - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Well, overcloked like that, it would easily match and exceede a 4800+'s performance, but in a simillarly configured AMD system, there'd be no comparison.OCedHrt - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
What are the other specifications for this? How come this information is never available from Dell when they release a new laptop. Screen size? Weight? Etc.keitaro - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
The Quad-SLI thing is rather interesting but would this actually be beneficial in any way? The games probably won't show much of a big difference in framerate given the CPU but one has to wonder what games can truly push the GPU enough to really need 4 to see any benefits from it. I'm all for overboard and extreme stuff but I question the practicality of it. Expensive, high heat output, and high power consumption, three things that don't go together very well...Unfortunately, I would sell off the CPU, motherboard, and RAM... only to have it replaced with X2 4800+, 2x1GB RAM, and the best SLI motherboard one can get. At least with that setup, the system would perform better and won't eat up as much power.... tho I ponder if that'll make a difference in the end considering quad-SLI. Ugh...
grank0 - Sunday, January 8, 2006 - link
I know why you need 4 CPU cores--it's to handle all the crapware in the background they preinstall. Did you see the HardOCP review, which was linked by slashdot? They reviewed an XPS400: http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTI0LDg=">http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTI0LDg="The Bottom Line – 4/10"
"The system itself is a decent gaming platform and the hardware was well built."
"But we couldn’t even install one of the most popular games on the market, Sims 2, and trying to play other popular games would lock up the system and gaming sessions, when they would run, would get interrupted."
"The pre-installed programs that Dell chose to include on its computer were almost certainly the cause of all these problems"
poohbear - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
dude, if u're gonna drop cash on a sys like that, u could care less about heat output, price, and electricity bills. It's like ppl who buy hummers are'nt concerned about gas prices, it's pennies to them.