Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Special > Miscellaneous > CeBIT 2005: CPUs, Coolers and Power Supplies Worth More Than a Second Look

CeBIT 2005: CPUs, Coolers and Power Supplies Worth More Than a Second Look

06:00 - Wednesday 16 March 2005 by THG Reporting Team

1. Introduction
2. Memory
3. SanDisk, Continued
4. Transcend
5. Crucial
6. Kingmax: Who Needs Colored Chips?
7. GEIL: Bigger Margins With Video And MP3 Players?
8. TwinmOS: Wireless Sound Transmission Via Bluetooth
9. TwinmOS: Wireless Sound Transmission Via Bluetooth, Continued
10. Cool Gear
11. Zalman
12. EKL
13. Coolermaster
14. Speeze
15. Aerocool
16. Glacialtech
17. Thermaltake
18. TOP-IT

19. Adapters
20. Zippy
21. Q-Technologies
22. Yesico
23. Ultra
24. Coolermaster
25. Enermax
26. Tagan
27. Home Entertainment PCs For The Living Room
28. Chenbro Media Center E-PC
29. FIC Media-Center Serie
30. JNC Computer Corp
31. Consumer Electronics
32. KiSS
33. Something Interesting To Close
34. Sight For Sore Eyes, Continued
35. ATI Bags For Everyone
36. Sanyo

On the second day of the trade show, outside weather conditions worsened. Strong winds accompanied the non-stop rain, which made for an even more bone-chilling effect. As we braved the elements that day outside, inside the conference halls we found plenty of great gear, including media center PCs, power supplies and memory modules. A relaxing tour of the design center at CeBIT that day also showed how form and color can complement technology, a concept that is all-too-often neglected. Meanwhile, no estimate of attendance figures by trade show host Messe AG, which will announce its preliminary count this weekend.

CPUs

Waiting For AMD's Dual Core

AMD has once again decided to save all the money needed for another full-blown trade show stand.

In the desktop segment there is nothing really new with Texas chipmaker AMD for this year's CeBIT, unfortunately. Hardly any reason for there to be either since the Athlon 64 processors are mostly still ahead of Intel's chips and the dual core generation is not set to roll out until the second half of the year.

AMD has thus officially confirmed that the competition is certain to commercialize a finished dual-core device first. AMD of course intends to offer the better chip with its dual-core Toledo starting in late summer, so we'll see. As of yet the only sure thing is that almost all socket 939 systems can be made Toledo-compatible with the help of a fresh BIOS update, while Intel's dual-core chip Pentium D is guaranteed to require new boards due to alterations of certain details - even though socket 775 hasn't changed.

AMD Turion 64's "open Architecture" Instead Of A Platform Brand

In our last CeBIT report, we covered the Turion 64 mobile processor introduced by AMD based on Athlon 64 technology, which gets more and more frugal with energy with each model. It's only natural that some compromises had to be made when it comes to clock speed.

AMD plans to commercialize the new processor without a marketing concept like the one initiated for the Centrino - after all, technical details and a strong manufacturer brand name are what it's really all about, Kevin Owen, an AMD business development manager for the mobile business segment in the computation products group, said.

Turion 64 will be a bit more expensive than the comparable Mobile Athlon 64, though still less than the Pentium M.