The night before the first day of CES is typically filled with numerous parties and pre-show expos loaded with hot new products and technologies. We attended one such event last night, Digital Experience, where a number of major players were peddling their wares. While at the event, we got to see a real-live NVIDIA Fermi-based graphics card installed in a Maingear demo system, a handful of slick new notebooks, netbooks, and smartbooks from Lenovo, and even played with a Nexus One--among other things. Take a look...
NVIDIA GF100, aka Fermi Up and Running In A Maingear SHIFT PC
Nvidia's highly anticipated graphics card was proudly on display at their booth located on the center of the show floor. Installed on an X58 based system by Maingear, the next generation GF100 (aka Fermi) was flexing its graphics processing power by running Unigine's DX11 Heaven benchmark. Here's what we know. It will support multi-panel gaming, much like the competition, but integrates 3D Vision technology as well. Performance wise, expect the GF100 to be faster than the rival's fastest single GPU product. Unfortunately, we weren't given more specifics on the card besides what we could physically see with our eyes. It featured a single fan heatsink assembly and black PCB, similar to Nvidia's recent high end videocards. Two PCIe power connectors were plugged in, one 8-pin and one 6-pin. Also, the GF100's length seemed to match up with the Asus Rampage II Extreme motherboard which measures 10.6 inches. For those anxious enthusiasts looking to upgrade, expect the GF100 to launch sometime soon.
NVIDIA Ion Netbooks, Nettops and Tegra Tablets Running 1080p HD Video
Pictured above are other products that NVIDIA made available to us. Among them was an ION based notebook playing an HD video scene from the blockbuster movie, Avatar. In addition, we got a look at an ION based tablet also playing HD video that looked crisp and ran smooth. The Asus Eee box showed off its capabilities by utilizing a single-core Atom CPU and an ION graphics processor.
Lenovo's HOT Looking ThinkPad Edge... One word, "want"
Here is Lenovo's new business class notebook named the ThinkPad Edge. It sports a simple and clean design, appropriate for any business environment. Thin and light with a 13.3" screen, the Edge features a 7.8 hour battery life and comes in black or red.
Lenovo U1 Hybrid Tablet/Notebook, Skylight Netbook with SnapDragon and IdeaCentre PC
Lenovo had other products on display at the show as well. Among them was the Snapdragon based smartbook called the Skylight. It provides a built in USB key located above the keyboard and flips up for access. You get 20GB storage with another 20GB cloud storage. Next up is the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid laptop. It features a clam shell display that detaches to become a fully functional tablet PC that operates on the Snapdragon ARM CPU and Linux. The U1 Hybrid weighs a combined 3.8 lbs while the tablet comes in at 1.6 lbs on its own. The IdeaCentre C315 is an Atom 330 based nettop that comes with ATI's 4530 graphics and a 640GB of storage.
Google's Nexus One smartphone made its debut this week and we got to check it out. It features a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 5MP camera, LED flash, Android 2.1 software, and a sexy display. Our take? Its remarkably fast and provides the iPhone and Droid with serious competition.
Toshiba was at the show and gave us a look at some of their latest SSD products. Designed for notebooks, there were 32nm SG2 SSDs on hand with 180 MB/s read and 70 MB/s write speeds.
What Happens In Vegas, Stays In Vegas - Mat Miranda, HotHardware.Com
The companies came out in full force for Pepcom's Digital Experience 2010 as the ballroom was filled to maximum capacity. Although we weren't able to see them all, the event provided a valuable sneak peak of what's to come during CES, as well as the upcoming year. Maybe next year, we won't spend so much time hanging out with the native wildlife roaming the grounds.
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