NEC/NVIDIA

NEC-Mitsubishi

NEC-Mitsubishi was one of the few companies I met with that actually had a booth on the convention center’s show floor, most companies preferred hotel suites. This harkens back to the days when people actually came to Comdex to see what’s hot at the booths, nowadays, most of the show’s best products are somewhere offsite.

NEC's 2080UX

Thin is in

The big announcement at the show was the MultiSync 2080UX+. (Unfortunately, the unit pictured is its predecessor, the 2080UX, Plus models weren’t available for display at the show.) This 20” LCD boasts a 16ms response time at full color, a 400:1 contrast ratio, a brightness rate of 250 cd/m2, and an ultra fine pixel pitch of 255mm. But these impressive stats come at a high cost: $1499, with a $200 mail-in rebate dropping the price to $1299.

For those of you who don’t have $1300 to fork over, but want a jaw-dropping display for gaming, NEC-Mitsubishi’s 2070SB may fit the bill. This 22” CRT aperture grille monitor sports a 0.24mm dot pitch, and supports resolutions up to 2048x1536 at 86 hertz. The “SB” stands for Super Bright, which can increase the intensity of the display to brightness levels as high as an LCD without damaging the monitor’s guns or significantly drawing more power. Two SB modes are available: Picture, and Movie. The various modes can be toggled quickly and easily thanks to the “SB Mode” button on the front of the monitor.

Best bang for the buck right here

And now for the really good news. The MSRP on this display? $599! The lowest online price I could find for this monitor was $620, so perhaps the new prices won’t go into effect until the end of this year.

NVIDIA

With the launch of the GeForce FX Go5700, NVIDIA’s booth was filled with laptop setups that utilize GeForce Go technology. Like its desktop counterpart, GeForce FX 5700, the Go 5700 offers a substantial performance improvement over the 5600. You can see some of our results with ShaderMark and Tomb Raider in our eVGA e-GeForce FX 5700 Ultra review.

A wall of GeForce Go systems

More products powered by NVIDIA

nForce motherboards

GeForce FX Go5700 is pin-compatible with GeForce FX Go5600, so it’s a drop-in replacement for manufacturers. As a result, NVIDIA expects the first laptops to ship early next year. Alienware in particular is expected to have a system ready by the end of January. We played a little UT 2004 on a GeForce FX Go5700 system and noted that performance was very responsive, even at 1280x1024 resolution. Clock speeds top out at 450MHz core/300MHz memory, although it will vary its clock speed depending on usage. NVIDIA has also improved its Smart Dimmer technology, which can be customized on a per application basis; this makes it great for DVD playback.

And Media Center

GeForce Go 5700 from Dell, note power usage

While UT2004 is running on this machine