Samsung Electronics starts mass production of 128MB SDRAMS. hier te vinden

Initial monthly product set at 100,000 units; output to be increased to one million units/month by the end of the year. Product to be used in PC servers, workstations and new PC Products.

By initiating mass production before the competitors, Samsung will secure a strong market position and enjoy higher profitability than what can be received from 64MB SDRAM sales.

The value-added 128M SDRAM takes the design and process technologies for the 64M a step further. The physical size of the two chips is the same, but the 129M requires a design rule of 0.23 micron. The Data processing speed of this next-generation device is 133MHz ,making it well suited for next-generation, high-performance computers such as the PC-100.

At the same time, the 128M SDRAM version consumes no more power than the 64M SDRAM chip.

The Techs heeft een review van de Tennmax Stealth2 Voodoo2 cooler:

The Stealth2's concept is to take the heat from all three of the chips located onboard the Voodoo2 and transfer it away from the board, by way of the fan. The thermal transit plate gathers the energy from the 3 chips, located at the edge of the Stealth2 combo, and pushes it all to the middle. When it arrives at the middle, the ball-bearing fan takes all of the heat and pushes it outward, away from the board. The bright idea that TennMax had was to push air away from the board, not try to use the air to cool down the chip. Unlike some others, the fan acts more like a suction fan, pushing the unwanted heat out of the area. The cooler only stands 1 inch, 1 millimeter tall... being one of the smallest in its class. This allowed me to have the two SLI boards on top of one another, so little space... but very convenient.

Highgear heeft een review gepost van Monaco Grandprix Racing Simulation 2 (phew...). Er zitten wat nieuwe dingen in (vergeleken met F1RS) zoals de Career mode:

Something that I was thrilled about was the career mode. This will add some spice to the game, and will make it last much longer. Race over several seasons with one goal; to win the championship. The feeling of success is so much sweeter when you make it with a smaller team. Lose your ride or get a break with one of the top teams its up to you!

But, on the negative side, I wonder what Ubisoft were thinking when they included the "retro mode". Driving a 1950’s car when its always sunny on one circuit with virtually the same physics as a 1997 Formula one car. That’s bad Ubisoft very bad. I think that time could have been better spent to improve the actual game itself.

Na al die MX300 reviews hier nog een late review van de Soundblaster Live bij 3D Spotlight. Hier maar weer wat EAX stuff:

he SB Live! features EAX (Enviromental Audio Extensions) which are extensions to the DirectSound 3D API that add some extra functions to it and are fully accelerated by the Live! in hardware, anyway Sound Blaster cards arenŽt going to be the only cards able to use EAX since it isnŽt a propietary API, even the upcoming Diamond Monster Sound MX300 which uses the Vortex2 audio processor is going to be able to use these extensions without problems, which is an advantage since developers are supporting EAX a lot and also because Vortex2 cards also support their own, very supported A3D API.

I played Unreal SE which comes with the card and uses EAX technology, first I used a 2 speakers setup, I liked the sound a lot, and without a doubt there was a huge difference than playing with an AWE64 card but when I switched to 4 speakers I was just speechless, very impressed, when using 4 speakers, sounds in a game go to a whole new level, the enviroment in Unreal was... Unreal ! - how you could hear screams on your back and what else can I say, if you have the money and are a hardcore gamer go and buy a SB Live! and a 4-point surround sound system.

3D Spotlight heeft een review van Tombraider III:

ut what are the most important changes involved in the third version of Tomb Raider?

First of all, Tomb Raider III is now using a completely new and improved engine which allowed developers to do much better things with the game, things havenŽt changed drastically, though.

Another of the changes IŽm sure gamers will love is the non-linear gameplay, levels arenŽt required to be followed in a default order, I mean, youŽll start in a specific region, the India Jungles, and then youŽll be able to jump to the locale you prefer and after completing all of them youŽll be ready to rock in the last locale, in the glacial reaches of Antarctica where game finishes. The game contains five different locales with three levels for each one of them.

Nog wat stuff van Fast Graphics: een vergelijking tussen de Diamond Rio, MPMan en Minidisk.

All very cool you might think, but what does it have to do with portable MP3 players? Well, the techniques applied to MiniDisk systems is somewhat similar to MP3. When you look at a MiniDisk and compare it to a CD, you'll notice that the MiniDisk is a lot smaller, yet still is can carry the same 74 minutes of audio. This can mean two things: either the tracks on a MiniDisk are smaller, thus having a higher density, or MiniDisk uses compression to fit 74 minutes on such a small disk. And the last option is the case: Like MP3 audio encoding, MiniDisk only records "what we hear" meaning that all unneeded sound info is filtered out and not recorded. This causes a very slight degradation in soundquality but allows for a lot of music to be stored on a disk measuring about 6x6 cm. With the MP3 format of digital music encoding becoming really popular, several companies developed small MP3 decoders (which convert the digital MP3 files to analog audio signals) meant for personal on-the-road use. They figured that people would like to play their downloaded music on other places/systems than their own computer. Till now you had to connect a tape, DAT or MiniDisk recorder to the soundcard to do this.

Fastgraphics heeft een lijst met CD-Writers in elkaar gepleurt waarmee je kunt zien van welke fabrikant je drive afkomstig is (die is namelijk nog wel eens anders dan wat het stickertje op de doos suggereert...bijv. Hewlett Packard maakt gebruik van Philips drives).

Ik zag op Overclockers.com wat stuff over de Celery Report op AnandTech (dat de klavertje-viers beter de overklokken zijn dan de Celerons met Compeq PCB).

Die gozer van Overclockers.com heeft navraag gedaan bij PC Nut, waar ze C300A's verkopen met een 450Mhz garantie. Zijn reactie:

I have just read the article at Anand's site: Although it is an interesting piece, especially with the actual production numbers, by looking at a box full of C300As that have failed to overclock to 450MHz, I can not support this finding. We have about an equal amount of C300As with both type of PCBs (or Symbols) which failed during our testing. Also, as to the COMPEQ PCB he told everyone to stay away from, we have had quite a few which overclocked and were stable at the default 2.0v core voltage."

Readers who have responded with data are not yet supporting this finding - This suggestion from John is a good one:

"What would really tell the tale would be specific reports from people who failed to overclock, and see what proportion is from each brand of PCB, then normalize the results by production plant and week."

Unless someone can support the Anand Tech findings with hard data, this looks like a fluke. Thanks to all who are responding with data and to Humphrey at PC Nut for his usual prompt response.

Ome Steve heeft een paar nieuwe Aaimeks aangekondigd, nu zelfs met verschillende kleurtjes...

Taking center stage at Macworld Expo here, interim CEO Steve Jobs announced five new colors for the popular, modular iMac based on the five popular fruits. Available today, the machines come with a 266-MHz PowerPC processor and contain a 6GB hard drive. Suggested retail price is $1,199. Older iMacs will likely be discounted to $999.

The colors of the new iMacs, which go on sale today, was not the only news in Jobs' keynote. Apple will release new versions of its G3-based Power Macintosh desktop computers, containing copper-based processors running at 300 MHz, 350 MHz, or 400 MHz. Retail prices, depending on the configuration, will range from $1,599 to $4,999.

Similar to the older iMacs, the new Power Macintosh comes in a translucent ice blue case.

(geript van News.com).

Het deponeren van een taart op Billies hoofd kost 90 dollar (~76 Euro :) in België:

The long arm of the Belgian law has finally caught up with the two miscreants who cream-pied Bill Gates last February. The price of turning His Billness into a temporary confectionery Freddie Kruger is apparently around $90 a head, which does seem like something of a bargain.

The practice of entartement, as it is known in French, had not however hitherto been punished in Belgium, so presumably Bill Gates is a more dangerous character to cake on than the numerous other important people Belgian entarteur Noel Godin has decorated.

Gates apparently didn't press charges, so the Belgian flicks have clearly done it all of their own accord. Or maybe some minions made a few heavy-handed suggestions concerning the Belgian version of IE 4.0, if you know what we mean. Nice little country you've got here, mate - pity if it sort of suddenly became incompatible...

Andy van BXBoards is terug met een review van de Gigabyte GA6BXE. Een leuke plank aldus Andy, zelfs voor overklokken. Helaas geen softmenu (Abit heerst):

Unlike many modern motherboards CPU setup is handled by an array of DIP swithes. Multipliers from 2 to 5.5 are provided, allowing the still unreleased Pentium 2 550 to be supported. All current bus speeds are supported from 66 right up to 133Mhz. Perhaps the most impressive feature is that a DIP switch allows the selection of either a PCI divider of either 2 or 3 at 133Mhz. This is an excellent feature and deserves more explanation. On most motherboards, at 133Mhz the PCI speed is derived using a divider of /3, thus yielding a PCI speed of 44Mhz (133/3). Unfortunately many PCI peripherals will not work at that speed, especially many SCSI and NIC's, and many hard disks will also fail to function unless DMA is disabled, or the PIO mode reduced to 4 or lower. The DIP switch on this board allows the selection of a /4 divider, which yields a more peripheral friendly 33Mhz - exactly as PCI 2.1 specifications dictate! This allows a degree of future proofing - although the 133Mhz speed does not get any use on multiplier-locked CPU's, this feature will undoubtably come into its own as later iterations of the Katmai officially support 133Mhz FSB.

Nog wat spul van 3D SoundSurge: een review van de Skywell Magic 3D geluidskaart met Vortex 1 chipset (da's een ouwe):

The Skywell Magic 3D Sound, like all Vortex based cards accelerates DirectSound, DirectSound3D and A3D APIs, relieving the CPU of some of those duties (A3D done mostly in software).

The Skywell Magic 3D Sound sports a respectable signal to noise ratio of better than 87 dB (compared to better than 92 dB for the more expensive Turtle Beach Montego A3D Xstream and samples audio at up to 48 kHz. This difference in s/n ration is noticable at high volumes, but not a normal playing levels.

In the way of MIDI the card offers the typic vortex fare of up to 64 voice advanced wavetable synthesis (32 hardware + 32 hardware-accelerated software) with 4MB instrument samples stored in PC system RAM using dynamic caching to minimize RAM requirements for only the instruments being used. It also offers reverberation and chorus on the MIDI wavetable instruments.

Ze hebben bij 3DSoundsurge btw ook nog een review van de I/OMagic Magicwave PCI, tevens een soundcard met Vortex1.

Nog meer MX300 reviews, ditmaal eentje van Arts Technica. De MX300 schijnt nogal CPU tijd op te eten, Ars Technica heeft een paar benchmarks:

The benchmarks at 375MHz were as expected. The Voodoo2 had about a 22% performance drop with A3D enabled while the TNT had only an 18% percent drop.  In single play these slow framerates are acceptable, but neither the Voodoo2 nor the TNT had acceptable performance for multiplay with A3D enabled. My guess is that a Voodoo2 SLI rig would provide acceptable performance on a slower machine with A3D enabled, but I don't have an SLI rig to test with, and most of you don't have SLI rigs, either.

There was some weirdness with the P2-450 benchmarks.  The TNT showed the expected 20% performance drop when A3D was enabled; however, the Voodoo2 showed less than a 1% drop in performance.  I was shocked at this result.  I ran the benchmark multiple times, checking the A3D setting each time, and the results stood.  After consulting Dr. Damage, I believe that the Voodoo2 benchmarks were the same at 450MHz because my single 12MB Voodoo2 reaches its limits somewhere between 375MHz and 450MHz. This would leave extra CPU at 450MHz for the MX300 to work its mojo.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to benchmark Half-Life on my system before I added the MX300.  My Quake benchmarks were within 5 fps of their pre-MX300 marks.  This change can easily be attributed to the current, full-as-a-mofo state of my hard drive.

Again, let me stress that this review was done with the latest drivers.  Other reviews out there were done with older drivers; notably, Sharky's was done with pre-release drivers, and VoodooExtreme used the drivers that ship with the CD.  You can see that a little bit of time and maturity can make a significant difference.  It's all just a matter of timing, and now that products seem to almost always ship with beta drivers, it's good to revisit certain products.

3DSoundsurge heeft een review gepost van het FourPointSurround speakersetje van Creative Labs:

At low volumes this is an excellent system but don't expect to wake up the neighbours. I'm not saying they are quiet, as in a small room typical of most users the system will more than fill the room with great sound. The satellites pump out nice clean highs and reasonable midrange frequency sounds. The subwoofer has surprisingly good oomph for its diminuative size but does not really get down into the low low end. I am just going by ear as I could not find any specs on the frequency response. However, using a HIFI Surround test CD I was able to do a subjective analyisis of the low frequency response. Volume reallly starts to drop off at 100 HZ, more so at 95 HZ. 80 Hz is very quiet and from 70 to 55 Hz the sound was barely audibly. At 50 Hz on down there was no audible sound.

C|Net Gamecenter heeft een review gepost van de CH Products Gamestick 3D USB, een pretpook met USB:

nstallation as a USB device was a piece of cake; we can't stress enough how convenient USB peripherals are. Calibration was also free of any hassles. Flying the unfriendly skies of Falcon 4.0 with the Gamestick was enjoyable, but those used to meatier sticks such as the CH Combatstick or even a ThrustMaster Top Gun will find that the Gamestick's thin shaft takes a little getting used to.

The twist-action rudder support worked flawlessly during a few hours of strafing ground targets in Israeli Air Force, F-15, and Falcon 4.0. The throttle lever, though small, worked nicely, too. Oddly enough we weren't able to take advantage of the rudder support at all in European Air War, though it worked without incident in everything else we threw at the stick.

We also gave the Gamestick a whirl with a bunch of other action games, including Rogue Squadron, Need for Speed III, and Motocross Madness. Although it looks like a flightstick, the Gamestick 3D USB proved itself a decent controller for arcade and racing games as well.

Nog maar weer eens een review van de Monster Sound MX300. Hier wat A3D 2.0 vs EAX info:

EAX in its current form is just a reverb engine, thus it would be unfair to compare EAX to A3D 2.0. Even the way it does reverb is totally different from A3D 2.0's approach. EAX uses environmental presets to approximate the acoustic qualities of a room which are static; whereas A3D 2.0 uses wavetracing to compute the acoustics of a room on the fly using the actual shape and size of the room. Wavetracing offers more accuracy, realism, and interactivity.

Playing a game of Half-Life on my Sound Blaster Live! and then playing it on the MX300; there's quite a bit of difference in quality. Under A3D 2.0, HL became a surreal experience, where the game took on a life of its own as the sound effects immersed me in the game, monsters growled below me, while marines in helicopters flew by overhead. With the SB Live!, I felt that the effects were "neat", but nothing special.

Ik zie op AGN Hardware wat info over nieuwe Jaz drives van Iomega met USB support dmv eenSCSI-to-USB dongle:

omega announced today that they are developing a new adapter that will add USB support to existing Jaz drives. Here is the info:

The Jaz USB dongle is designed to be compatible with USB-enabled PCs running Windows 98, Windows NT 5.0 as well as iMac computers. The Jaz USB dongle along with Iomega's award winning Jaz, Buz™, and USB Zip® will be on display in several areas at the San Francisco Macworld Expo Jan 5-8 including the Apple Consumer Showcase Pavilion.

The Jaz® USB dongle will be designed to allow users of Jaz drives to connect the drive to any laptop or computer equipped with a USB port. One end of the dongle plugs into the Jaz drive and the other end into a USB port. First time users will need to install the software provided with the Jaz USB dongle. The system will recognize the Jaz drive when it is plugged into the USB dongle, so users do not have to reboot before using their Jaz drive.

The USB dongle will be similar to the existing SCSI cable currently shipped with the Jaz® drive. A power source will not be required for the dongle; it will work as long as the Jaz drive and the computer are powered. The Jaz USB dongle is expected to be available 2Q99.

The Jaz® USB dongle will join the current offerings of iMac products including the industry-leading Zip® USB drive. Iomega's Zip USB drive offers consumers the ease-of-use of a USB connection and compatibility with over 125 million Zip disks in the market today. The new Zip USB drive offers a cross-platform and easy-to-use hot plug-and-play solution for both Windows 98 PCs and iMac users. Hot plug-and-play allows users to connect to a Zip USB drive without turning off and rebooting the computer.

Goh, je kunt er zelfs een iMac mee uit z'n isolement halen (het arme ding heeft geen diskdrive).

Sports Gaming Network heeft een review van Michael Owen's World League Soccer '99. Hier wat stuff over de graphics:

The graphics were surprisingly impressive. Crisp and smooth, the field definitely looked like a real field, including being the correct size. WLS has a lot of nice features that are included in the game. Scrolling ad boards, crowds that actually wave and cheer during a game, beautifully done stadiums, exact player heights, sideline referees, and even a huge television set in the corner that plays during a match! Weather conditions are pretty true to form also. WLS has a realistic net: after a goal is scored, the net continues to wave for a second. These points sound minute, but after reviewing other soccer games, it was hard to not notice these intrinsic features.

The player modeling is good but could use some tweaks on the smoothness, and I like the correct player heights that are easy to see on the field. Players have their names on the back of them, which makes it easier to keep track of them. The game even has different faces, hair color, etc which is a nice variance to add to the game. The player movements are very accurate and breathtaking to see and are pretty easy to perform.

Volgens Apple Insider komt er een emulator waarmee Playstation games op de Mac gedraaid kunnen worden. Krijgen die appels uiteindelijk toch nog een zunnige functie! Hier wat info:

As far as AppleInsider is concerned, the Connectix PlayStation emulator for Macintosh G3 systems is no longer just a rumor. According to extremely reliable sources, the emulator will formally be announced tomorrow morning at Steve Jobs' keynote address and will go by the name Connectix Virtual Game Station. "For $49.95 Macintosh G3 owners can run any Sony PlayStation game right out of the box, with no additional hardware, just the emulator!"

This is BIG news for the Macintosh community, in fact, it is "Huge."

"I assume Steve Jobs had a little something to do with this. He promised a to improve gaming on the Macintosh, and with this new product from Connectix, he definitely has," one source commented. However, other sources claim Jobs played no roll in the development cycle and applied no pressure to Connectix Corp over the product. "Connectix has really outdone themselves this time, and they will be generously rewarded."

Well, we've done the dirty work. Our information has been confirmed, and we are rather excited to see the new technology in action tomorrow morning. And don't forget, you heard it first because you heard it here; www.appleinsider.com!

ANG Hardware heeft een review van de Creative Labs 3D Blaster Banshee gepost. Nou zijn al die Banshee kaarten zo'n beetje hetzelfde (net zoals de V2's en TNT's), so wtf is er speciaal aan de CL Banshee:

There a few other nice features about the card that are *Creative Exclusives*.  For starters, the 3D Blaster Banshee comes with support for resolutions of 1152x864, 1792x1344, and 1856x1392.  These resolutions may seem odd to some of you, but others will recognize these resolutions as industry standards.  For example: 1152x864 is designed to be able to view exactly 2 full page documents on the same screen.  This is a nice touch considering that most other Banshee boards skip this resolution and go from 1024x768 to 1280x1024.

Another Creative exclusive is the Glide Switcher, which is available from the SoundBlaster web site here.   "Glide switcher?" you may ask. Well, this fixes a problem that roots back to 3Dfx.  It seems that Voodoo 2 owners cannot install a Banshee based board without overwriting the existing Glide and OpenGL drivers for the Voodoo2.  The Glide Switcher allows the user to switch between the two devices without re-installing the drivers for either.  Naming the device driver files with the same name was either an oversight on the part of 3Dfx, or an attempt to get users to buy both a Banshee for 2D and a Voodoo 2 (or SLI) for 3D. Either way, Creative has found a way to easily switch between the two...leaving the choice up to you as the consumer.

3DRacing Mania heeft een nieuwe Track editor voor NFSIII gepost. Ik heb er wat mee zitten klooien en het is best wel grappig. Je kunt er bestaande tracks mee aanpassen. Vooral het klooien op de Z-as is leuk (onneembare hellingen maken waar alle traffic en de cops met hun corvettes vanaf donderen)...

OCP heeft een vergelijking tussen een Skywell TNT, Matrox G200 en Creative Labs TNT in elkaar gegooid. Wat die G200 hier tussen doet weet ik niet, want zoals we nu al een half jaar weten is dat ding qua performance nogal zielig in vergelijking met de TNT. Anyway, OCP zou OCP (Overclockers Comparison Pae) niet zijn als ze niet wat info voor overklokkers zouden hebben:

Matrox Millenium G200:  A GREAT OverClocker!  Not my choice for a 3D accelerator, but if you need the card that will give you the ultimate 2D thrills and get some 3D action at the same time, this is NOT a bad buy at all.  But be prepared to OC the hell out of it.  I bet if I would have had more time to actually play with the card, we could have bogged it down somewhere.   But still, the benchmark numbers while being correct, do not seem to be a fair representation in vid card comparison.

Skywell Magic TNT:  A GOOD OverClocker.  I would have no problems whatsoever keeping this card in my personal box here at the OCP.  Except I gave it away as a prize in Rodeo!  So off it goes to a new owner!  I am told that this card is VERY economical compared to the other TNT's out there in the market, while at the same time staying right in line if not ahead of the pack performance wise.  I am very impressed with this card.  It did not however live up to its 125MHz memory claim that was stated in the release I got.   Skywell simply needs to get a little better distribution lined out and they will be in a position to kick some major ass if this product is representative of their entire line  (which I am testing now!)  I am told that if you call or email Aries Marketing, that they can hook you up with a distributor and pricing.

Creative Labs TNT OEM:  A great OverClocker.  The ram on this card is marked "-G7" for the record.   It is a screamer of a card.  We did have to keep on some extra cooling to keep it in service.  Without a doubt the best visual quality I have ever seen in a gaming card.  Voodoo 2 cannot hold a candle to it, but then again, V2 still is KING of the performance department.  The CL is worth a definite look if you are purchasing a 3D card.  I can safely say that if I was building a new machine from scratch, I would put a TNT in the system. 

Asus heeft een paar nieuw drivers voor hun TNT kaart gereleased:

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/Drivers/v3t102s.zip
Driver for Windows 95/98, Ver. 1.02, without multi-language installation

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/Drivers/v3t102e.zip
Driver for Windows 95/98, Ver. 1.02, with east languages installation (Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Russian, Turkish, Korean).

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/Drivers/v3t102w.zip
Driver for Windows 95/98, Ver. 1.02, with west languages installation (English, German, French, Italian, Greek, Dutch, Czech, Spanish, Hungarian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Catalan, Danish, Slovak, Slovenian, Basque).

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/Drivers/v3t102n4.zip
Driver for NT 4.0 Ver. 1.02
Note : AGP display adapter needs NT4.0 Service Pack 3 or later to work. TV function is not supported in this release.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/Drivers/lv34v221.zip
AGP-V3400TNT Live3400 V2.21

Ars Technica heeft een preview van de SGI Visual Workstation, een Silicon onder WinNT met een Intel CPU:

In recent weeks much fanfare has erupted in the tech community concerning Silicon Graphic's first step into the PC/NT realm, a move that arguably may mark the dawn of a new era in which SGI becomes a PC powerhouse.  While most this news has been highly speculative, it seems that the pending release of their two new workstation models (the 320 & 540) on January 11th has been met mostly with positive enthusiasm.  Information was scarce until some internal SGI documents just "happened" to make their way out onto the 'net for about 48.  But SGI's (understandable) media stranglehold has cast a dark cloud of speculation and over this project.  That is, until we traveled on up to the city that houses the largest single-day sporting event in the world, and sat down and had a look.  We had the good fortune to spend some quality time on a couple of SGI 320 Visual Workstations, and let me me tell you the pleasure was definitely all ours . . . on several levels.  While it should be known that this product is still in beta release, SGI has nonetheless proven that they are quite serious about crashing the workstation-class PC party, with no intentions of taking prisoners!  I know, this is all subjective jabber thus far and pretty much where all of the other editorials have seemed to leave off and finish their "previews," but as you will see, we intend to go all the way.

Voodoo Extreme heeft een screenshotje gescoord van Unreal Tournament. Je kunt het plaatje hiero bekijken.

JC heeft een best wel dikke preview van de Cyrix Japaleno in elkaar gedraaid. Met alle heisa rond Intel en AMD zou je ze bijna vergeten.

Met de 6x86 liet Cyrix in 1996 al zien dat ze in staat zijn om Intel qua prestaties voorbij te streven. Ze waren zelfs de eersten met een 75MHz bus (op de PR200+ op 2x75Mhz). De FPU performance was klote maar die speelde geen rol in het pre-Quake tijdperk.

Genoeg gelul, hier wat spul uit het artikel:

All the above features lead up to a processor which seems to, in most respects, approach the level of the K7 but never quite achieve it. Even in this case, this makes the Jalapeno an offering to consider -- certainly, the M3 (Jalapeno is actually the name of the processor core -- the actual cpu's name will be this) will know no better competition than the K7, the M3 most likely beating out Coppermine, Intel's desktop offering in late 1999. What we haven't considered yet is National Semiconductor's fascination with the "integrated" processor, the "PC On A Chip". Despite not having the best of success at this in the past, their MediaGX offering in 1998 seems to have drummed up interest in this area, prompting both IDT and Intel to take serious looks into putting various motherboard/component features onto the processor. We will have a better idea of the prospects of this kind of integration when the Cayenne-enhanced MXi (reportedly codenamed "Panterra", according to one news source) comes out. In a similar way to the MediaGX and MXi, the Jalapeno will place a graphics unit onto their M3. Perhaps you recall the days of the 386, around the time when the 80387 was a popular thing? A mathematical chip, which offloaded burden from the cpu and performed more complex operations which required floating point registers. Now, the integer core could emulate this new floating point unit, or "fpu", but not without a massive drop in performance.

Now remember the 486. What was the crucial step here, which applies to our current situation? Correct! (well, correct if you guessed right, that is) The fpu was "integrated" (back then, I recall they used the much less flashy word, "put") onto the cpu, the 80486DX. The DX stood for ... um ... I'm not sure, but SX stood for "SUX", so you could take this to its logical extreme... Anyway, as you should recall (or as you will now learn), the SX version did not have the fpu, and was universally despised for that reason. It also led to the intensely confusing "487SX" notation, which meant a 486SX with a 487 fpu added on, or more succinctly, "486DX". :P

* As a side note, if I'm recalling correctly, Cyrix had at this time a popular and rather powerful version of the 80487. This is the sort of thing that Cyrix wants to do with their processor lines. By adding 2D and 3D graphics features to their processors, you can save a pretty penny by not having to buy standalone 2D/3D cards. Granted, the graphics unit inside the M3 won't be as advanced as the Voodoo4 or TNT3 or G250 or whatever is out at the time, but being so close to the processor gives any graphics unit a stong advantage over its competition.

Dit vond ik op AmdZone, over de achtergronden van spelmakers, en hun perikelen!

hier zag ik het!

3DNow! Games and Developer's

How is 3D Now! Optimized?

There are many different kinds of tools for developer's to support 3DNow!

As you may not know, the following compilers have have varying levels of 3DNow! support:Metroworks Codewarrior, Microsoft Visual C++ and Sybase's Watcom C++. For example, where there is a lot of floating point math.

Taking the source code from Quake2 and running it through the Metroworks compilerwould probably give about a 30% speed increase; just for compiling the code!

In other words, the developer doesn't have to do jack shit, but their game is optimized and accelerated by 3DNow!.

As far as Descent games go, we should see some sort of support from those games... There will be an announcement about this soon.

The Valve Situation

On a positive note, with a bit of renaming of the Quake2 3DNow! mini-gl, you can put it in your Half-Life folder and still see a 20-30% improvement.

Video Card 3D Now! Support

ATI, Nvidia,3Dfx,Matrox,S3, all do or will support 3DNow!. So, to turn the it up every video card manufacturer that gamers would care about does support it. Yet, even if they're all going to support 3D Now!, some companies have better drivers for it in their APIs.

Ik zag op Anand's BBS wat info over de BX6 II, een nieuw bord van Abit en opvolger van de door ons overklokkers heilig verklaarde BH6 moederplank.

Ik weet niet hoe betrouwbaar deze info is. Anand zit er wat vaag bij te grinniken (hij zit onder NDA dus mag niets zeggen) dus er zal wel een kern van waarheid in zitten:

1 . Single Slot-1 CPU

Support At Least

233 ~ 300 MHz Klamath

266 ~ 450 MHz Deschutes

450 ~ 500 MHz Katmai

266 ~ 300 MHz Covington

300 ~ 433 MHz Mendocino

2 . 1 AGP / 5 PCI / 2 ISA

3 . All New I/O Chip Support Mouse/Keyboard

System Wake Up

4 . 4 DIMM Slot With 6 Extra Data Buffer

5 . SoftMenu II With SEL100#66 & Core Voltage

Adjustable

6 . Supprt At Least Sixteen Kinds Of FSB

From 66 MHz Up To 150 MHz

7 . Clock Mutiplier Up To 8X

8 . All New Monitor Chip Support External

Thermistor Cable To Monitor CPU Temperature

9 . 2MB Flash Rom

10. The Most Important ... It's Much Smaller

Than BX6

En hij komt in februari volgens Anand (dat is het enige wat-ie er over zegt).

Zie deze thread op het AnandTech BBS.