Add Biostar Microtech International to the list of companies preparing to release Nvidia nForce4-based small-form-factor (SFF) PCs this quarter as the company plans to begin shipping its iDEQ 330P SFF PC, in volume, in mid-March, according to sources at the company.
The iDEQ 330P is expected to compete with Shuttle's SN25P XPC, which should be the first nForce4-based SFF solution on the market, with its official launch date set for February 22.
The AMD CPU-based iDEQ 330P will feature a Socket 939 motherboard with slots for one PCIe x16 graphics card and one PCI card. A mini-PCI-card slot has also been included, to accommodate wireless cards. The system will also support standard nForce4 features such as a hardware firewall, support for 3Gb/s SATA hard drives, native Gigabit Ethernet networking and overclocking options.
Because the iDEQ 330P will target gamers, it will also include a 300-watt PFC power supply, compared to the 250-watt power supply Biostar uses in its other 300 series PCI Express (PCIe) SFF offering, the Intel 915G-based 300G MCE-1. However, the nForce4-based iDEQ 330P will not include an FM Tuner or run Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition (MCE), unlike the 915G-based solution. The sources explained that Biostar currently plans to target mainstream users with its Pentium 4 PCIe solutions and gamers with its AMD 64-bit PCIe solutions.
Nvidia recently announced that it has shipped more than one million nForce4 media and communication processors (MCPs) since the availability of this part in December 2004. This strong demand has resulted in the fastest sales ramp the platform group at NVIDIA has ever experienced. This high level of demand has also helped Nvidia grow its share of the AMD64 market to 48% in the fourth quarter of 2004, as reported by Mercury Research.
