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Nvidia nForce4 SFF PCs to start hitting the market, with Biostar planning a March release
Michael McManus, DigiTimes.com, Taipei [Wednesday 16 February 2005]

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.

Related stories:

New Biostar iDEQ 330N mini-PC based on Nvidia GeForce 6100 (Sep 21)

Biostar aims to ship 90,000 SFF PCs this year (Jun 21)

Empia exhibits two USB2.0 video controllers supporting Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 at Computex (Jun 1)

AOpen takes the lead in the desktop Pentium M market (Mar 30)

Biostar: No dividend deal-out for 2004 (Mar 29)

Jetway to focus on OEM motherboard production in SFF segment (Mar 16)

MSI introduces new SFF PC; expands its Mega brand with new multimedia products (Mar 11)

Shuttle launches ATI Radeon 200 SFF PC, strengthens its AMD K8 PCIe XPC lineup (Mar 10)

Shuttle launches first Nvidia nForce4 SFF PC (Feb 22)

AOpen prepares “Cube Mini” Pentium M based SFF PC (Feb 21)

ECS shipping EZ-Buddie 2 SFF PC in volume (Feb 14)

Asustek’s alternative version of the SFF universe (Feb 3)

The XPC factor: An interview with Ken Huang, the man behind the Shuttle XPC (Feb 1)

The Small-Form-Factor trend: From concept to convergence (Jan 31)

Shuttle shipped over 600,000 XPCs in 2004, to volume ship nForce4 XPCs in mid-February (Jan 26)

Intel releases BTX-compatible products for channel sales (Nov 16)


 
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