FIC
Just like most of the major players in the mainboard market, FIC didn’t have
a booth on the show floor, like last year they opted for a private hotel suite
where they we’re demonstrating some of their latest products.
They had an ATI 9700 PRO card that once available will be stock overclocked,
while we didn’t get too much details by how much it will be running higher,
they confirmed that they are targeting a 8%+ increase in average.
In
this picture you see the brand new FIC boxes, with a slimmer and more professional
look these boxes will be a big improvement over FIC’s previous design.
FIC
had an interesting PC/DVD unit in their room. Basically it’s a complete computer
system running on the VIA C3 Processor but what’s different is that this unit
won’t be coming with a Hard Drive and will still be able to play DVD movies.
FIC has integrated a DVD player in its bios making it possible to playback
DVD movies without even having any operating system. Featuring composite video
output this little box is basically a stand alone DVD player.
Its working just like
the BIOS setup of the computer system, to start the DVD player, you have to
press a key while the PC boots and it will automatically prompt you to the
player. Other good news is that you can install an IDE hard drive to the system
and use it as a complete computer system. This product will be retailing for
around 120$ USD, quite an attractive price I would say.
FIC Hammer system
In
the motherboard section, FIC had a board featuring the VIAKT400A, which is
a dual channel DDR solution for the Athlon XP. FIC had also a total of four
working hammer boards which one of them was based on the NVIDIA Crush K8 chip.
In addition we spotted an early sample of the FIC VL31 board which is based
on the Intel Springdale chipset and is designed for the upcoming Pentium 4
Prescott Processors. The Springdale
will be released in the first quarter of 2003 and will have support for Dual
Channel DDR 333, AGP8X and the new ICH5.
SlateVision Tablet PC
Working on the SlateVision
In addition, FIC was showing
off their Tablet PC’s. Their FIC SlateVision Tablet PC features the Windows
XP Tablet PC Operating System. The SlateVision Tablet PC offers a type II
PCMCIA Card Slot with Card bus support for further expansion. The unit comes
standard with onboard 56K Modem, 10/10 Ethernet LAN and 802.11b Wireless LAN.
Other features include USB 1.1, IEEE 1394 and IrDA 1.1. The SlateVision has
a 4.5hrs battery life and will soon be featuring the Crusoe TM5800 CPU at
1GHz FIC has strong plans for the SlateVision as the company plans to have
offers at big retail chains such as Best Buy, Fry’s and CompUSA with prices
around 1300$ USD.
