Invitational Entrants

ASUS

Already well known for their motherboards, ASUS has branched out into many other markets. One of them is notebooks, which ASUS has been producing for several years now.

Their L5000GA wowed us with its excellent performance. When we pitched it head-to-head against a similarly equipped desktop system powered by ASUS’ P4P800 Deluxe, the L5000GA didn’t give up an ounce of performance. This was impressive, as the P4P800 Deluxe is known for its 875P-like performance thanks to the additions of ASUS’ MAM technology, which simulates Intel’s Performance Acceleration Technology found in 875P.

ASUS L5000GA P4 3.2GHz 15-inch notebook

In addition, the L5000GA’s ACE View display was a real eye catcher. Thanks to IPS and HRP technologies, the L5000GA’s 15” display looks beautiful at all angles, making it perfect for gaming or watching DVD movies. We included pictures of the L5000GA’s display compared against Dell’s high-end Inspiron XPS notebook in our L5000GA review.

For the FiringSquad Invitational, ASUS came back with an even beefier L5000GA system. A desktop Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor powered ASUS’ system, just like the system we reviewed back in May, but ASUS added ATI’s more powerful MOBILITY 9700 to the package. This addition should make the L5000GA even more tempting to gamers.

Biostar

Biostar used the FiringSquad Invitational to feature their next generation small form factor system, the iDEQ 300 series. Biostar’s iDEQ 300 goes one step beyond their highly successful 200 series, which were able to secure our Bull’s Eye Award back in August of last year.

Biostar IDEQ 300G Prototype

The next generation iDEQ features an integrated LED front panel display and a built-in FM radio tuner, just like MSI’s MEGA series of small form factor PCs. Biostar also provides a 7-in-1 media card reader, supporting Smart Disk, Compact Flash, and Sony Memory Stick among its list of formats supported.

One feature the Biostar iDEQ 300 supports that no other small form factor system provides is its Instant On Jukebox functionality for not just MP3s and CDs, but also DVDs. This means that you can watch a full length DVD movie without having to boot up the system into Windows. Biostar rounds out the package with integrated Gigabit LAN and 802.11g Wi-Fi.

The most striking aspect of Biostar’s new design is its hinged chassis. With it, the entire front of the system can be lifted up, just like the hood on your car. This gives you easy access to install system components such as memory and the CPU, dropping these parts in is literally a breeze.

Biostar will be offering two 300 series iDEQs initially, the Intel 915G-based 300G, and the iDEQ 300M, which is based on VIA’s PM880 Pentium 4 chipset. The 300G is a Socket 775 solution while the 300M utilizes Intel’s 478-pin socket.

For the FiringSquad Invitiational, Biostar submitted a prototype iDEQ 300G. The system was equipped with a Pentium 4 2.8E processor, 256MB of DDR400 memory, and one of Biostar’s PCI Express-based GeForce PCX 5900 cards.

With so much beta hardware inside, we were a bit worried if Biostar may have gone too far with their official Invitational submission, but we found stability to be pretty good. Biostar employees were also able to game away all day on the iDEQ 300G during the Battlefield Vietnam competition with no problems.