Siggraph 2003: San Diego

Article by Michael Tran and Harry Lam
July 27-31, 2003

AMD:

AMD has been putting an increased focus on spreading their products to mass media, primarily through movie production and filmmaking.  AMD's goal is to astonish movie-goers with spectacular graphics that the watchers will want that same experience in their households.  Down the line, AMD commented on an upcoming partnership with Landmark theaters to create a transition from analog projectors to fully digital, computer based projection systems.  AMD hopes that this will allow for the creation of fully interactive theaters and drive the public to want a piece of the same experience at home.  AMD's Siggraph booth was showcasing workstations based on AMD's Opteron, from reputable resellers like Alienware and BOXX.  In addition, over at the nVidia booth, the  representative we talked to proudly announced that all of the demonstrations workstations were powered by the AMD Opteron and nVidia's nForce3 chipset.  This comes to show the power and influence of AMD's Opteron since its release in April 2003.  Hopefully this will eventually translate to wide-spread appeal for the AMD64, but from what we were told, Windows XP 64-bit is slated for sometime in 2004.

A few Opteron based systems exhibited at AMD's booth

ViewSonic:

ViewSonic was showcasing some of their more recent products at their Siggraph booth.  One cutting-edge product that Viewsonic had on display was their VP2290b, which is a widescreen 22.2" digital LCD.  The LCD makes a breakthrough in regards to image quality by having 27.6 million-dot RGB sub-pixels.  This LCD has an amazing optimal resolution of 3840x2400.  The 16x10 widescreen allows publishers to display two full-size pages simultaneously or watch a widescreen DVD.  The LCD also features a 400:1 high contrast ratio and a 170 degree viewing angle.

Viewsonic's massive LCD

Viewsonic has also developed a somewhat unique feature on their CRT monitors: UltraBrite Technology.  Basically this is a one button toggle switch that allows the monitor to be driven in a high brightness mode, which is ideal for movie, TV, and picture viewing by enriching the color and contrast of the display.

UltraBite Technology

Lastly, ViewSonic also released a new line of ultra slim LCDs, the ViewSonic Pro series.  The Pro series is aimed for professional users with extremely crisp displays ideal for CAD and presentations and maximum viewing area with minimum bezel gaps to optimize multiple panel setups.  The Pro series also supports wall mount capabilities as well as the flexibility of pivot and height adjustments.  The Pro series also supports multiple inputs (one DVI and two analog inputs) to optimize the wide range of video sources.

Gaming with three monitors