The Zone

 

 

The following morning saw all the participants boarding a coach and embarking on a 5-hour road trip to the picturesque Pandanus Resort in Phan Thiet, for the actual briefing.


APAC media gathering at the entrance to the Pandanus Resort in Phan Thiet after a 5-hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City

 

 

 

 

 

The picturesque Pandanus Resort is located on a strip of popular beach resorts in the Phan Thiet district on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City   

At 5PM in the evening, members of the media from places like Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and of course, Malaysia, were treated to product presentations by NVIDIA partners – Sparkle, Foxconn and MSI.

 

This was followed by a special presentation by Kingston and the much-anticipated briefing from NVIDIA. The following is a quick rundown on all the presentations given that evening.

Sparkle          
First up was Daniel Yu, Sales Specialist from Sparkle who briefed the media on the company’s new GeForce GTX 275 graphic card. Available from 2nd April onwards, Daniel said that this new card, apart from having all the graphics firepower of the reference, is also power-efficient to boot. Apart from the GTX 275, Daniel was also keen to introduce the Sparkle GTS 250 from the company’s high-end Calibre range to the media with its unique adjustable cooling fan system, dubbed the Calibre Dual-Fly Fan. The software bundle for this card also includes the proprietary SPA Tune OC software to extend the performance and to enhance the DirectX 10 gaming experience.

Daniel also briefed the media on Sparkle’s NVIDIA GPU product roadmap that clearly divides the company’s products into 4 segments - Value, Mainstream, Performance and Enthusiast.


The Sparkle display at the briefing showcased the company’s new GTX 275 graphic card as well as their versions of the GTS 250, GTX 285 and 9400 GT cards


Daniel Yu of Sparkle was the first speaker to present at the media gathering


Daniel was happy to explain to us about Sparkle’s Calibre Dual-Fly Fan system

Foxconn
Sidney Tsai from Foxconn’s Marketing Communication department was up next and instead of touting new Foxconn graphic cards, she briefed the media on the company’s latest range of boards. Sidney talked about Foxconn’s board products, especially from their Quantum Force (for OC and gamers) and Digital Life (for multimedia, HTPC and DIY) segments. She also touched on Foxconn’s mainstream and value boards as well. Outside the meeting room, members of the media had the opportunity to check out first hand for themselves Foxconn’s Flaming Blade and Blood Rage boards.


The Foxconn display was all about the company’s Quantum Force and Digital Life board models. We especially liked the Flaming Blade and Blood Rage boards.


The friendly Miss Sidney from Foxconn briefed us on the company’s distinct board ranges and how it helped consumers choose the perfect board for their specific needs 

NVIDIA ION Platform
In-between the partner presentations as an intermission of sorts, Miss Melody Tu, Senior Manager, APAC Campaign and Partner Marketing from NVIDIA presented us with an exclusive peak at the new ION platform. Touted as the next big thing in low-power PCs, the NVIDIA ION graphics processor is designed to work with low-power processors like the Intel Atom to deliver faster performance than similar systems. Among the key benefits of NVIDIA ION are DirectX 10 graphics, Full HD 1080p video with 7.1 (8-channel) audio, NVIDIA CUDA technology to accelerate demanding applications like video encoding and  Windows Vista as well as Windows 7 experience.

 

 

Members of the media were given a closer look at the highly-anticipated NVIDIA ION graphics platform


Melody Tu,  Senior Manager, APAC Campaign and Partner Marketing, NVIDIA, was equally excited about the new platform as we were  

MSI
It was then the turn of Emily Lai from MSI’s Channel Marketing Department to take centerstage. The affable Emily briefed the media on MSI’s All-in-One desktop and Wind PC netbook products. She also introduced the company’s X-Slim Series ultra portable notebook. Emily also explained the new board box design classification which clearly and effectively categorizes MSI boards into Extreme, Gaming, Entertainment, Professional and Classic segments for easier identification and understanding among consumers and dealers alike.

Last but not least, Emily then introduced the MSI N2600GTX Lightning graphic card, a high-end model with ‘military class’ 10-Phase PWM black PCB, pre-overclocked memory, Twin Frozr cooling and a host of OC features.


The MSI display at the briefing was focused on the company’s new N260GTX Lightning graphic card

 

Emily Lai briefed us on all the significant new products that MSI has to offer – from the company’s new All-in-One desktop to the latest Wind PC netbook and X-Slim Series ultra portable notebook
 
Kingston makes an Appearance
So, what was Kingston doing at an NVIDIA briefing you ask? Well, the company took this opportunity to get to know the APAC media better and to brief us on Kingston’s products, technologies and business performance. It was an informative session with Miss Tawny who briefed us on the leading memory maker’s performance over the past year.  She also told us to look out for Kingston’s USB3.0 high-speed flash drives in 2010, SSDs with Intel controllers and even a Data Traveler with built-in anti-virus solution soon

 

A selection of Kingston flash and memory products were also on display at the event 


Miss Tawny, Kingston’s Country Manager for Vietnam briefed the media on the company’s many product lines and upcoming products   


Although no presentation was made by a Leadtek representative, there was a Leadtek display corner with some of the company’s latest graphics solutions on display     

NVIDIA Delivers
Last but certainly not least was the highly-anticipated GeForce update briefing by NVIDIA. This presentation was done by Jeffrey Yen, Senior Technical Marketing Manager of NVIDIA. Jeff’s briefing centered on a few proprietary technologies from NVIDIA. He walked us through an explanation of Graphics Plus which centers on GeForce with CUDA and is divided into the areas of Image processing, GeForce 3D Vision, PhysX and Video Processing.

Jeff explained about how CUDA uses the “One GPU Two Mode” architecture (serial and parallel) to deliver a better graphics experience that supports all compute languages. He then moved on to tell us more about next-gen PhysX effects and how they will be applied in upcoming games from many of the major game studios. He also touched on NVIDIA APEX with PhysX effects in specific graphics applications in games like Destruction, Vegetation, Clothing and Turbulence.

Next, Jeff explained a little about MotionDSP vReveal that has the ability to clean up bad videos ala “CSI-style” by analyzing surrounding 10-30 frames to improve individual video frames. He also spoke about 3D Vision and its applications in stereo 3D gaming. We had a chance to see this for ourselves thanks to a special demo arranged by the NVIDIA team. In order to experience 3D Vision, you will require GeForce 9800 GT graphics or higher, a 3D-ready display (monitor) and of course, the NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses.

Finally, Jeff walked us through the upcoming Windows 7 operating system, the world’s first heterogeneous OS where CPU and GPU work together, combining serial processing (CPU) and parallel processing (GPU) with the new WDDM 1.1 driver model that adds GPU (GDI) acceleration, Win7 Aero desktop acceleration by DirectX 10 GPUs, Direct2D and DirectWrite with GPU acceleration and DirectX 11's Compute Shader for GPU computing (transcoding). He also added that the arrival of the new R185 drivers will improve gaming performance from 5 to 30 percent, depending on the game in question.


Jeffrey Yen, Senior Technical Marketing Manager of NVIDIA delivered an interesting presentation which captivated the media

 

Some media just refused to leave the 3D Vision demo area and were even hogging the 3D glasses!

Xin Cháo, Vietnam!
After a memorable visit and informative media briefing, APAC media said farewell to the friendly people of Vietnam and headed home to their respective countries.

 

Thank you, NVIDIA for an unforgettable experience!


We enjoyed ourselves in Vietnam.  See you soon!