Computex 2003 - Day 1: DX9 Mayhem and Mobile Graphics

Due to our mobile coverage of ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 (M10) and NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5650 (NV31M), we got a lot of inquiries for Mobility Radeon 9600. In our corresponding emails to readers, I have been citing ATI’s already announced design wins as a reference point, since all of these products have passed NDA, we are free to talk about them. But we are at Computex now, so we decided to hit the show floors to find this seemingly elusive notebook, and instead of finding one, we found four made by either Clevo or Arima. These two companies ODM their products, so we will very likely see them pop up in North America soon. The strange thing is that GeForce FX Go5650 (NV31M) is no where to be seen here, at least from what we have seen so far. It is possible that the ODMs here know something system designers back in the US do not. In our talks with Clevo and Arima, they told us that they are actively considering NVIDIA mobile products, but outside of that there is no gurantee that they will actually produce them.

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These are the offering from Clevo, who produces products for companies like Sager, Eurocom, and Hypersonic. In fact, the two Sager notebooks (NP5680 and NP8890) and two Eurocom notebooks (D800P and D500P) that presently feature the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro both are dubbings of the D800P and the D500P from Clevo.

Meanwhile, Clevo's D470V also uses the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro, and is the ODM version of the Hypersonic ZX7 and Sager's NP4760. However, both shipping versions of this ODM desktop replacement notebook in the states use Mobility Radeon 9000. The sample present at the booth had a Mobility Radeon 9000, which the presentation board mentioned Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro. It turns out that there is an precusor version to the D470V that uses the Mobility Radeon 9000, and that the D470V is the newer version that uses the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro.

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Arima is another ODM but heard less of compared to Clevo. This is the only Mobility Radeon 9600 based notebook we have seen at Computex and will quality for the thin and light status. It is likely that ATI and one of their mobile system partners will announce a mobile system based on the Arima M620 soon, but since we are at the manufacturing hub, we get a heads up.