CES 2009 - Day 1: Netbooks, "Talking" Cars and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 9, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
BFG Gets Into the Gaming PC Market with Phobos
BFG showed off its Phobos gaming PCs at NVIDIA’s booth:
The chassis looked cool, two slot loading drive bays at the front, iPod dock at the top and a big touch screen LCD screen:
The LCD screen is powered by an ARM processor and has information about current temperatures, CPU/disk/memory utilization and you can even play music from it.
The graphics options are obviously BFG/NVIDIA-only, SLI will be available. The system I saw ran on MSI’s X58 motherboard with a water cooled Core i7 CPU.
These systems will be pretty pricey; starting at $3000 and going up to $8000 the Phobos machines will come with a “free” concierge service. You’ll get in-home installation and setup of your machine as well as the option of in-home upgrades. A tech will come out to your house to swap out any components you want to upgrade.
You’re obviously paying for the concierge service in the initial cost of the machine, and the number of in-house visits are limited (two visits with the initial purchase), but it’s an interesting angle used to get into a competitive market.
The Phobos web configurator will launch in the next month with systems shipping some time later.
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vjoose - Friday, March 13, 2009 - link
Somebody please send a copy of this vista driver to my mail box...vjoose@asiamail.com
Enough suffers with the fxxking Intel driver. I just can't hold myself dreaming of turning my mini 12 to the one shown in CES ...
icrf - Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - link
"The Imagination Technologies staff also ran a dual stream video decode demo where they had a Atom/Poulsbo netbook playing one 8Mbps H.264 video and a 1080p H.264 video on an external display, simultaneously."I thought Poulsbo could only output 1366x768, so it's not outputting 1080p anywhere.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...
syrup1971 - Monday, March 23, 2009 - link
The Video decoder, can decode 1080P video, so it is showing a 1080P video, which is scaled using the graphics core, to format for the display. The display pipeline is capable of higher resolutions than 1366x768, as witnessed for example in Sonys vaio P, with its 1600x768 display.sprockkets - Sunday, January 11, 2009 - link
The HP pictures are wrong. The first two are the new HP Linux GUI interface netbook, http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/compute...">http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopp...imi_seri...The other one must be the business one. I recently used a Dell Mini 9. Keyboard is a bit too small. But those HP ones are nice.
JonnyDough - Saturday, January 10, 2009 - link
"Intel gave a few examples of how this system could be used. Say the car in front of yours with this system in place applied its breaks (hence illuminating the LED brake lights), data embedded in those lights can be sent to your car and processed by an onboard computer (powered by an Intel Atom, of course). The computer could then either warn you that the car in front of you is slowing down or even apply the brakes for you."I just wanted to say that this is going to present major problems. People will get used to auto-braking and the sound that tones when someone in front of you brakes. Ice over the sensor or headlights, a dead sensor, or a dead pulse switch is going to leave you in the rear-end of the car in front of you.
Oh, and Anandtech: Quote button doesn't work right.
sprockkets - Saturday, January 10, 2009 - link
Cars apply their "breaks" all the time, huh?vailr - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
Re: "The SGX543 will probably show up in designs in about 2 years."I'd tend to doubt that statement. I'm guessing: more like one year or less. Also: there was a mention somewhere online about a dual-core Atom CPU being in development. Any news about that?
Penti - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
Dual core atoms is available today it's called Atom 330 which is a 8W TDP dual-core desktop Atom.ebayne - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
The same folks who bought the jellybean colored macbooks will buy the Sony in droves. For the same reason. They're cute. Women, students and metrosexual execs will line up to purchase it because it looks "nice" and because all their friends want them. Feature conscious road-warriors aren't Sony's target demographic.JimmiG - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
That Sony netbook doesn't even look very good IMO. I like the look of that new HP Mini a lot more.I also agree that Atom-powered netbooks only make sense in the <$400 segment. Even with a GeForce GPU, there just isn't enough raw CPU power to justify spending $600 or more on an Atom netbook. If you want to spend more, just buy a 13" Core2 machine with better graphics. I do like my $290 Aspire One, though.