Computex 2004: Graphics Cards Galore

XFX, MSI, ABIT, Innovision, Soltek, and Others

It is so unfortunate that we weren't able to get pictures of the cards at every booth we visited; XFX and Innovision happen to be among these booths. The thing to note about these two vendors is that they were the only ones who we saw showing off NVIDIA 5900 FX Personal Cinema cards. The cards have a two slot design with two PCBs. Of course, NVIDIA's Personal Cinema line hasn't received quite the acclaim of ATI's All-In-Wonder line, but it is still good to see vendors offering choices in the market place. Soltek was also showing off its NVIDIA line, and MSI has both ATI and NVIDIA cards to offer the masses, but our pictures didn't turn out.

Slightly straying once again from our Graphics Card topic, we find InnoVISION - a maker of graphics cards but here we're not talking about their reference GeForce 6800 Ultra, rather their InnoDV line of products. InnoDV showcased two interesting products, the first was a USB 2.0 TV/Video capture box called the innoDV TV-USB2. The box features a built in TV tuner, one coax input, one S-Video input, one audio input and one audio-out jack. The box offers assisted MPEG1/2 encoding, and runs off of powered USB ports thus requiring no external AC adapter.

Next, InnoVISION showed off their NVIDIA Personal Cinema solution - the DV-3300. Unlike most Personal Cinema solutions, the InnoVISION offering works alongside your graphics card - offering only a PCI TV Tuner in the bundle.

There were also a couple of graphics vendors whom are unknown to us (such as A-Win and Ennyah). Their pictures also didn't quite make it out of the camera alive. This is the most salvageable of the shots we took featuring some of the A-Win product boxes:

ABIT had the usual array of ATI graphics solutions at the show, including a reference design X800 Pro as well as a VIVO Radeon 9550. One of the more interesting solutions from ABIT actually wasn't even a graphics card, it was their "Wireless Media Bank" under ABIT's Thecus brand. The unit (pictured below), has a built in DVD drive and room for up to two internal hard drives. The idea is that you can store all of your photos, music and videos on the Wireless Media Bank and share them either wirelessly over your home network, or play them through a connected TV or stereo.

It's nice to see more diversification like this from the motherboard manufacturers. We'll try and get a closer look at the Wireless Media Bank as soon as possible.

We do enjoy learning about vendors that haven't made it onto our radar through previous reviews, roundups and trade shows. It was quite refreshing to see HIS make its way into the US market over the last year with their ATI based line of products targeted at the enthusiast and overclockers market, and we don't want to miss the next up-and-coming graphics vendor in the industry. And there isn't a better place to meet new vendors than at Computex.

But all is not lost with the missing pictures. We hope to bring out coverage of new products as fast as vendors can get cards to us, so stay tuned!