They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and if that's true then the below picture from the show floor at this year's Fall Comdex in Las Vegas should speak volumes:

For anyone that has been to any of the previous years' Comdex conventions this sight of an open space not crowded with hordes of people is incredible. This year's convention is only being held in the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Hilton. The Sands Expo center is not being used at all mainly because the majority of the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers have pulled off of the show floor and moved to hotel suites.

Needless to say the convention isn't what it was in past years but regardless we're here to report on any and everything there is to report. So without further ado, we present you with Day 1 of this fall's Comdex.

NVIDIA's NV17M: The warrior without a name

Early in the morning of this first day of Comdex we were treated to a breakfast and a new product launch by NVIDIA. As you've undoubtedly heard by now the new product being introduced is the NV17M core intended to replace the GeForce2 Go as NVIDIA's solution for the mobile gamer.

The first thing you can tell by the name alone is that the NV17M is a mobile derivative of a desktop NV17 part. You may have also heard the NV17 referred to in the past as the GeForce3 MX meaning that the NV17M is the mobile GeForce3 MX. NVIDIA has yet to announce an official name for this part which is ok since the chip is actually due out in February.

NVIDIA's first MX product was the GeForce2 MX, released almost a year after the original GeForce 256, and offered performance on par with the original GeForce 256. This NV17 core is no different as it is supposed to offer performance greater than the GeForce3 GPU that was released about a year ago. What's even more impressive is that this power is being brought down to the mobile level, very impressive indeed.

Like the original GeForce2 MX, the NV17/NV17M core only features two rendering pipelines compared to the four pipelines on the GeForce3 GPU. The 0.15-micron chip runs at up to 250MHz when in a laptop configuration but depending on the battery saving mode it is placed in, the clock speed can be throttled down considerably.

Since NVIDIA had a demo of the NV17M core running Chameleon and many of the other pixel/vertex shader demos from the GeForce3 launch we can only assume (until our meeting on Wednesday that is) that the NV17M does not lose any of its older brother's pixel/vertex shader functionality. As soon as we get confirmation or hear otherwise we will report it.

As you know, memory bandwidth is key to killer 3D performance. Like its predecessor, the NV17M has a very flexible memory subsystem; the design supports a 32-bit, 64-bit, or 128-bit DDR memory bus with memory running at up to 250MHz. Remember that this 250MHz figure is just a recommendation by NVIDIA and not all OEMs will adhere to that frequency for shipping notebooks.

The NV17M GPU isn't the entire story however; along with the GPU announcement, NVIDIA is also announcing a new packaging technology that they will use not only with the NV17M but all future mobile GPUs. NVIDIA calls this their Mobile AGP Package (MAP) as it contains all of the functional parts of an AGP graphics card with the exception that it is contained within a single BGA chip. While NVIDIA hasn't obviously announced any more specifics on the various model numbers of NV17M based products, they have introduced two basic models: the 2xx and 4xx series.

NV17M 2xx

The 2xx series features 32MB of DDR SDRAM on the package while the 4xx will feature 64MB of DDR SDRAM and a 128-bit memory interface.

NV17M 4xx

The package is impressive and deals with one of the major issues with mobile computing: size. ATI has a similar approach to a highly integrated mobile video module and it has become a favorite among OEMs because of the incredible space savings.

NVIDIA's PowerMizer technology is their answer to ATI's PowerPlay, both of which address the issue of power saving in relationship to the graphics core. Like PowerPlay, the NV17M's PowerMizer technology allows the dynamic adjustment of refresh rates, voltage, and GPU clock. The technology also allows various parts of the GPU to be powered down if not in use, again, a feature supported by ATI's PowerPlay as well.

A very important feature of the new NV17M core is an improved video processing engine (VPE). You may remember that a major advantage ATI has been able to offer over NVIDIA was the support for inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT) in the hardware of every one of their graphics processors since the Rage 128. If you're not familiar with the role IDCT plays in the MPEG-2 decoding process then you should definitely read our DVD Video Card Roundup. The end result of being able to offload the task of IDCT from your CPU onto the GPU is reduced CPU utilization and an overall reduction in power consumption since CPU time requires much more battery power than GPU time.

With the NV17M (and we're assuming the desktop NV17 as well), IDCT is finally performed in hardware. There are some other enhancements that made their way into the VPE however we've got some questions about them before we can report on them fully. This also brings up the question of whether NVIDIA's new video processing engine made its way into the Xbox GPU, but again we'll leave that question for our meeting with NVIDIA later this week.

Another enhancement that should improve battery life is the autoprecharge feature of the NV17M's memory subsystem. There wasn't much information about this feature in NVIDIA's press presentation so it's another topic of interest we'll bring up with them.

A Toshiba representative was also present to give a few kind words about the NV17M, also pledging their support for the part in notebooks to be released in the February timeframe.

Another interesting point was that all of NVIDIA's NV17M demonstrations were done on a Pentium 4 1.4GHz system and as you'll see from our coverage later on, this wasn't the first mobile Pentium 4 sighting we had.

AMD: Continuing to move forward

Although AMD had nothing to publicly show off at Comdex (privately they had some very interesting things). Needless to say that these next few months should hold some long awaited introductions from AMD.

Intel: Driving the Industry

It's not much of a surprise that Intel's 845 chipset does indeed support DDR SDRAM, and it won't be much longer before we see the solution used in motherboards. Although we won't be able to provide you with benchmarks for another few weeks, we have been talking to motherboard manufacturers about their thoughts on the chipset. Most of them agree that it not only outperforms VIA's P4X266 but also SiS' 645 chipset, even when paired with DDR333 SDRAM. As you'll remember from our i845 Motherboard Roundup, the chipset does support both DDR200 and DDR266 SDRAM. Although motherboards based on the solution will undoubtedly be more expensive than their P4X266 or SiS 645 based counterparts, most motherboard manufacturers agree that the stability and quality of the platforms is vastly superior to what they've seen with the 3rd party chipsets.

ASUS' P4B266 is one of many DDR equipped i845 boards that will be on sale soon.

In our review of AMD's Athlon XP 1900+ we made it clear that the performance victory went to AMD at the end of this year. We also mentioned in that article that the 2.2GHz 0.13-micron version of the Pentium 4 would debut in early 2002, thus giving AMD the security of that performance crown throughout the end of this holiday season.

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Like AMD, there isn't much we can publicly write about Intel just yet but we did manage to catch a glimpse of something very interesting in Intel's suite. Intel put together a legacy-free motherboard that's an example of the technologies that Intel is actively supporting in the industry.

For starters, this motherboard has a total of 11 USB 2.0 ports (both internal and external). An external DVD-ROM drive was removed from its external housing and installed in a 5.25" bay of a case and connected to one of the internal USB 2.0 ports.

USB 2.0 support is provided by this NEC controller and hub

The board had no IDE connectors, everything was wired for Serial ATA (right: the white arrow is pointing at a final spec serial ATA board connector. Note how small it is compared to the capacitors). The hard drive used was a parallel ATA hard drive with an integrated parallel to serial ATA converter, but eventually native serial ATA drives will be available.

Although Intel isn't pushing the standard, the board also featured IEEE-1394 (Firewire) ports for connection to DV cameras. The final component on the board itself was support for 6 channel analog outputs and a wireless Bluetooth transmitter.

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The design of the board as an example didn't end there however, a riser card provided support for some of the USB 2.0 ports through a hub on the card as well as 802.11b transmitters. This card also acted as a gateway card, providing an outgoing 10/100 Ethernet port for connection to a hub or switch in order to share an outbound connection with others on the network.

An 802.11b transmitter

Although we won't see a board like this hit the streets anytime soon, it's definitely interesting to think of the possibilities with this type of technology.

ASUS: More than just motherboards

We'll include ASUS motherboards in our second day of coverage but what's important to note here is that one of the largest and most well respected motherboard manufacturers in Taiwan is also known for their notebooks.

The first thing that caught our eye was a mobile Pentium 4 notebook, the first we had seen on display outside of Intel. The notebook was more of a full sized solution that weighed in at over 6 lbs.

Cooling the mobile Pentium 4 is accomplished through this duct

The new ASUS T9 notebook is also very interesting mainly because of its removable MP3 player. The notebooks looks like a regular unit until you take note of the removable MP3 drive bay at the front of the system.

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Below you can see the MP3 player itself:

VIA

Along with most of the manufacturers, VIA didn't have a major booth presence at this year's Comdex; it simply didn't make any sense for them to. We have done an interview with VIA and hope to have some answers to our questions regarding their thoughts on Hammer, the P4X266 and other hot topics shortly.

The only new news from VIA is the updated P4X266A chipset which is said to improve memory performance by between 10 - 15%. Remember that's raw memory performance we're talking about, not real world performance. We should be able to provide you all with a look at the chipset shortly after we return to the lab.

SMC

Our final meeting of the day was with SMC who gave us a look at some of their 802.11a solutions. The successor to the 11Mbit wireless 802.11b standard now offers a native transfer rate of 54Mbps as well as a proprietary extension to support up to 72Mbps transfer rates.

SMC's 802.11a access point and PC card

We have yet to see how close to the peak theoretical transfer rates 802.11a devices will reach but the technology will definitely please those that want the freedom of wireless but the performance of a 100Mbps network.

Final Words

With that said and done, the first day of Comdex 2001 comes to a close and we eagerly await day two. Stay tuned for more reports from the show.

VIA

Along with most of the manufacturers, VIA didn't have a major booth presence at this year's Comdex; it simply didn't make any sense for them to. We have done an interview with VIA and hope to have some answers to our questions regarding their thoughts on Hammer, the P4X266 and other hot topics shortly.

The only new news from VIA is the updated P4X266A chipset which is said to improve memory performance by between 10 - 15%. Remember that's raw memory performance we're talking about, not real world performance. We should be able to provide you all with a look at the chipset shortly after we return to the lab.

SMC

Our final meeting of the day was with SMC who gave us a look at some of their 802.11a solutions. The successor to the 11Mbit wireless 802.11b standard now offers a native transfer rate of 54Mbps as well as a proprietary extension to support up to 72Mbps transfer rates.

SMC's 802.11a access point and PC card

We have yet to see how close to the peak theoretical transfer rates 802.11a devices will reach but the technology will definitely please those that want the freedom of wireless but the performance of a 100Mbps network.

Final Words

With that said and done, the first day of Comdex 2001 comes to a close and we eagerly await day two. Stay tuned for more reports from the show.

VIA

Along with most of the manufacturers, VIA didn't have a major booth presence at this year's Comdex; it simply didn't make any sense for them to. We have done an interview with VIA and hope to have some answers to our questions regarding their thoughts on Hammer, the P4X266 and other hot topics shortly.

The only new news from VIA is the updated P4X266A chipset which is said to improve memory performance by between 10 - 15%. Remember that's raw memory performance we're talking about, not real world performance. We should be able to provide you all with a look at the chipset shortly after we return to the lab.

SMC

Our final meeting of the day was with SMC who gave us a look at some of their 802.11a solutions. The successor to the 11Mbit wireless 802.11b standard now offers a native transfer rate of 54Mbps as well as a proprietary extension to support up to 72Mbps transfer rates.

SMC's 802.11a access point and PC card

We have yet to see how close to the peak theoretical transfer rates 802.11a devices will reach but the technology will definitely please those that want the freedom of wireless but the performance of a 100Mbps network.

Final Words

With that said and done, the first day of Comdex 2001 comes to a close and we eagerly await day two. Stay tuned for more reports from the show.