CES 2006 Photo-Report

Name: CES 2006 Photo-Report - Page 6
Brand: CES

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, January 10, 2006, 04:00 PM EDT

Just like last year, MSI had a large, impressive booth in the South Hall of CES. Although we typically evaluate the company's motherboards, video cards, and small form factor PCs here at HotHardware, MSI's full product line is much more diverse. Take a look...

MSI's booth was broken up into multiple sections, with each highlighting a different type of product. They were showing off a group of new motherboards based on various chipsets, in this case NVIDIA's nForce 4 SLIX16, ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition, and Intel's 975X Express. MSI even had their 975 board up and running with a pair of Radeon X850 XTs in a dual-GPU CrossFire configuration. A number of small form factor PCs were up and running as well, along with a new Core Duo based Home Theater PC complete with a remote and 5.1 channel speaker system. To compliment their diverse line of PC related products, MSI also had about a dozen portable media players on display too. Some of the portable players were Flash based, while others were hard drive based.

A quick trip to the other side of MSI's booth revealed a swank new "all-in-one" LGA775 based LCD PC design, that incorporated everything form a card reader to speakers in a standalone unit, reminiscent of Apple's LCD iMacs. Of course, MSI was showcasing a number of Centrino Duo / Core Duo based notebooks too, including a 17" wide-screen model with an integrated camera / webcam. They even had a solar powered notebook on display, that had an entire side covered in solar cells.

Perhaps the most intriguing product we saw in MSI's booth though was their Geminium-Go upgradeable graphics card. The innovative Geminium-Go features two MXM slots, that can be populated by different MXM modules. The particular model pictured here was populated with a pair 256MB GeForce 6600 Go MXM modules, capable of running in SLI mode. What's exciting about this product isn't necessarily that users will be able to upgrade their graphics card with new MXM modules, but that MSI can introduce single-card, dual-GPU SLI capable products without having to redesign a PCB, like Asus would have to with their 7800GT Dual card, for example. With a single PCB design and an adequate cooler, the Geminium-Go should be compatible with all of today's MXM modules, and potentially many of tomorrow's. Interesting stuff to say the least.

Tags: CES, Report, photo, port, hot, RT

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com