FIC

If you haven't guessed it already, FIC, like most manufacturers at the show, also had an SFF PC on display. It's based on the 945G chipset and utilises the PicoBTX form factor. We particularly liked this one since it's in the shape of a beer keg (ed. note - huh? we like beer?). The judges of the 'Best of Computex' awards obviously agree with us, as FIC won an award for this particular model. We suspect that the judges were Australian.

In addition, FIC had another new SFF PC on display that was equally impressive, since it includes support for AMD's new dual-core processors.

FIC also had a portable media player that looks significantly more appealing than Foxconn's offering. It's based on the AMD Alchemy Au 1200 processor and boasts a 3.5" LCD screen, 64MB DDR memory and a 20GB HDD. The unit weighs 180g, which won't leave you with bulging biceps after holding it for the duration of a movie.

SiS

While SiS has dropped off enthusiasts' radar in recent years, it seems to be staging a comeback this year with four new motherboard chipsets.

The SiS649 supports AMD Athlon 64 X2 (dual-core) processors, DDR2 and PCI-Express. SiS says that this chipset has been adopted by ASUS and NEC already.

The SiS761GX is virtually identical to the SiS649 as far as features are concerned, with the only exception being that it includes an integrated graphics chip.

The SiS741CX is primarily an SFF PC chipset, supporting AMD's Geodo processors, AGP 8x graphics and an integrated SiS Mirage 1 graphics chip.

Yet Intel certainly hasn't been left out, as the SiS656FX supports the new Pentium 4 dual-core CPUs, as well as DDR2-667 memory and PCI-Express.