By Alfred Siew

TOUGHER competition looks to be the order of the day in 2009, as technology firms and PC vendors slug it out to woo consumers looking to buy or build a desktop.

Eye-catching design must be the first item on PC makers' agenda - consumers, tired of beige boxes, want pizazz in their PC boxes.

If netbooks have opened up a new market for portable PCs, desktop PCs are also going small with 'mini PCs' like Dell's Studio Hybrid Desktop range, whose machines are not much bigger than a CD-ROM drive.

Popular this year, such machines will likely come with more variety in 2009, as manufacturers rush out versions boasting dozens of colours.

Next year will also see faster DDR3 memory being used in mainstream computers, as prices plummet with mass adoption.

Top-end 6GB DDR3 kits were retailing for $599 just last month. Within weeks, however, as more manufacturers shipped their memory products, prices for these 6GB modules (running at 1,600MHz, CL8) quickly fell to as low as $399.

The demand, say retailers and distributors, is mostly down to people buying Intel's increasingly popular Core i7 chips, which were launched late this year and requires DDR3 memory.

The knock-on effect of lower prices? More mainstream acceptance of DDR3, which was until recently used only in expensive laptops and desktops.

With the Core i7, Intel will likely retain its CPU performance crown in 2009, though it will face more competition from rival AMD in 2009 than in the past couple of years, according to an industry source.

The challenger's Phenom II chip, to hit stores next month, will be made by a 45-nanometre manufacturing process, which gives it more 'headroom' to ramp up performance in the future, as compared to the older 65nm process used in its older chips.

Early reports on enthusiast websites claim that the Phenom II can be overclocked to a ridiculous 6GHz though, realistically, it is likely to be overclocked to over 4GHz on regular systems using conventional air cooling.

Which is all good news for PC buffs because the toughest competition in years could trigger aggressive price wars, bringing high-performance chips within the reach of more users.

In a report earlier this month, IDC's personal computing research manager Richard Shim said 'consolidation is expected as PC makers tough out the competitive climate amid lower than expected volumes and thinner margins'.

The research house predicts that shipments will go up by a mere 3.8 per cent in 2009, a result of the uncertainty brought about by the global financial crisis.

Competition is also likely to be keen in the graphics card arena, as Nvidia and AMD continue to duke it out in 2009.

Early next year, Nvidia is said to be readying a GTX300 graphics chip that is made with a 55nm process, putting it ahead of cards running AMD's 4,870x2 chips, the fastest right now.

If current chips already let users run demanding games at high resolution, these graphics cards of tomorrow could let gamers comfortably play games with graphics that promise cinematic realism.

Alfred Siew is a freelance writer.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 31 December 2008.

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