Samsung unveiled the first prototype of this monitor at CeBIT 2006. This year the technology and the monitor have progressed. CCFL tubes are now replaced by LED matrixes. The manufacturer, however, told us that the principle was identical: Samsung recreates the artificial screening of CRT to reduced visual afterglow and afterglow in games. The principle will probably ring a bell to those who read our article about the BenQ 24" monitor: CeBIT: MPA infiltrates the Samsung 245t

	This is only a prototype. Samsung shows this monitor to have the opinion of consumers and professionals too. The product is a LCD monitor with two panels to have a 3D effect. CeBIT 2007 : Samsung 3D prototype

	The monitor news at CeBIT this year only focuses on Samsung. Two reasons for that: other monitors manufacturers do not have exhibition stands this year and the Korean manufacturer shows very interesting products. After the LED, wide gamut, they start a new price war! Apparently, being the market leader isn't enough for Samsung and the manufacturer also wants to annihilate the competition. This monitor is the SyncMaster 245B, a 24" announced at 600€. CeBIT : Samsung SyncMaster 245B

	Always bigger for the same amount of money. This is the motto of Acer and Dell with the 26 and 27’’ monitors. On top of this, wide gamut CCFL seriously competes with LED monitors. > LCD Tests: The Acer and Dell 26’’ and 27’’

	ASUSTeK confirmed today that there will be two versions of the XG Station, one with a 7900 GS and the other without graphic card. Unfortunately, the product price, scheduled to be released in Q2, is not communicated yet even if we believe that it could be around 200€ and 300€. The XG Station is a graphic card station that connects to a laptop computer via the ExpressCard slot (which natively uses the PCI Express protocol). Limited to x1, it restricts performances of modern GPU and ASUS confirmed our initial estimations saying that performances will be cut by half compared to x16. Nevertheless, this is much better than graphic solution integrated to laptops!

	Art. Lebedev Studio, the designers of the first OLED keyboard has a (mini) stand at CeBIT this year to prove that they aren't that far from the commercialization of the product. If we haven't seen the Optimus Maximus (there was no sample on the exhibition stand) we now know its price: it will be… $1,490. The keyboard will be available in November and will have 114 OLED keys. The Lebedev Studio promised that it will release cheaper versions but the counterpart is that not all keys will be OLED.

	Despite the lack of recent innovations for motherboards, Intel has authorized the release of new G33 and P35 chipsets supporting DDR3 memory. If these chipsets will officially be released in June at Computex, we expect the first samples end of May. These chipsets were present on the ASUSTeK, Gigabyte and MSI exhibition stands. If MSI and ASUSTeK only showed a couple of motherboards, Gigabyte had four models based on the P35: GA-P35-DS4, GA-P35-DQ6, GA-P35-DS3 et GA-P35T-DS3. Only the last one supported DDR3. The higher end versions such as the DS4 with the heatpipe cooling system or the DQ6 with the bigger CPU block are restricted to DDR2. If we haven't seen motherboards supporting both DDR2/DDR3, manufacturers told us that they were working on such solutions (like they did with DDR2). Two slots will be available, each for one norm to facilitate the evolution. The sticker provided by Intel showed the compatibility of these chipsets with the future Intel processors using 45nm fabrication process. Does this mean that current chipsets will be incompatible with these processors? For now, motherboard manufacturers can't say if it will be the case or not because of the lack of sample. We aren't really optimistic because of past experiences, but we hope that we will have a good surprise when these processors will be released at the end of the year!

	DDR3 memory modules are present here and there at CeBIT on MOBO manufacturers' exhibition stand with Elpida's chips for ADAta but also Qimonda (ex Infineon) and Samsung. Some of them were, however, poorly supplied like Gigabyte who only had one memory module. Memory modules aren't extremely performing yet. For example, the products shown on the A-Data stand were PC3-8500 (DDR3-1066) modules. This bandwidth is already reached by DDR2 modules with much more aggressive timings. The latter are 7-7-7-20. Of course, DDR3 modules to be released this summer will democratize this type of memory which internal frequency runs two times slower than DDR2 modules. As you can see, the pictures of the Gigabyte motherboard show that memory slot have been modified to avoid damages.

	At CeBit, Fortron has launched the Booster X5. This 12V power supply fit in a 5"1/4 bay and particularly targets systems using high end graphic cards (it will certainly be powerful enough for a Crossfire Radeon R600). The cooling system is ensured by two small fans located in the front. We hope that they won't be too noisy (the general noise level of the CeBIT isn't ideal to verify this point). The X5 will be available in a couple of weeks at an unknown price. This is of course the last criterion that will make the success or failure of such product compared to the replacement of the power for a high end product. Interesting point, Fortron will also release tomorrow a new line of modular power supplies and also has a model, Epsilon, capable of providing up to 1010 Watts (this sort of power is apparently very trendy for power supply manufacturers…)

	Sapphire introduced at CeBit a solution based on 2 bi X1950 Pro and equivalent to a Quad-CrossFire solution. If this type of solution is a bit pointless because of the imminent and massive release of DirectX 10, this will give an idea of the level of performance of CrossFire with more than 2 GPUs. We remind you that Nvidia's solution, the Quad SLI, was never really functional except for a couple of benchmarks.