Je kunt de nieuwere BIOSsen voor de BX mobo's hier updaten : BIOS

Ik kreeg deze tip van Harrie Aerts(Thanx Pal)

When does 8ns not means 8ns?

In the new sales-speak of PC 100 SDRAM!! While Many Web Vendors are claiming to be selling 8ns or less PC100 SDRAM the reality is that no RAM of that speed yet exists outside of the R&D labs of the major memory manufacturers. Even the latest Samsung -GH memory, wich runs stable at 133MHz busspeed settings, is only rated at 10ns ! Many people are claiming to be running 6ns or 7ns RAM, and I had quite an argument with a supplier in the UK who insisted he had 6ns SDRAM in stock!! 6 or 7ns really doesn't exist yet- trust me!

Voor de mensen die willen weten wat zij kunnen verwachten van de nieuwe soorten RAM of overwegen om SDRAM te kopen of nog even te wachten staat er op FiringSquad een artikel over allerlei soorten geheugen van ECC en PC100 tot Rambus en DDR SDRAM

For example, when buying new RAM, do you want SIMMs or DIMMs? What's all this talk of 8 ns, or 10 ns? EDO or SDRAM? ECC? What is the difference between asynchronous and synchronous, or all the hype of CAS2 and CAS3? All of these questions and more are important considerations when buying RAM, and making incorrect decisions about RAM can sometimes cause mysterious problems with your system. On the flipside, some consumers are probably spending more on hyped-up RAM

technology than they should, when this money can be spent on other upgrades.

This is where the FS RAM Guide comes in. We'll define some basic technologies of RAM, as well as explain the important terms and jargon that you should know, and what you shouldn't waste your time with. We will hopefully demystify the hype surrounding certain

technology, and tell you what's on the horizon for RAM, now that bus speeds are moving up. Also, which RAM types are looking to take over the new, faster bus speed market? We hope you walk away after reading this article with not only a pretty clear idea of what kind of RAM you will need and want to buy, but also with a

good understanding about what some of this stuff does and how some of it works.

We zitten trouwens al weer bijna aan de 500 nieuwsfeiten (dit is nummer 497), dus het gaat de goede kant op!

De speciale patch van Creative Labs om bij Unreal schaduwen te krijgen kun je door middel van een omweggetje nu ook op andere TNT borden gebruiken.

Kijk even op RivaZone voor het hele verhaal of hieronder voor een korte samenvatting:

Creative Labs proprietary TNT shadows patch for Unreal has had little interest to those that do not own a CLTNT board. A vigilant emailer sent in this possible crack to enable the Unreal Shadows on ANY TNT BOARD. Here is the scoop:

1.Open the installer, then minimize it and switch to your Windows\temp directory.

2.There is a directory named _ISRMPO.DIR delete the DLL "CliDtect".

3.Now open the minimized installer and continue with the installation Normally it will abort with "no CL TNT found" or something else, but now it will install on every TNT Card.

3D Spotlight heeft een review van Fifa 99 gepost. Hier wat spul:

ll the players don't look the same anymore, you'll notice a difference in size between big and tiny players and that does affect gameplay.

Also it's important to mention that players now can move their mouths, it's very cool to see this when they argue with the referee or celebrate a goal. Although the crowd is still flat it looks a bit better than before, stadiums look better overall specially because of the improved lightning effects, realistic weather effects have been added too, now you can see rain and snow falling while playing.

Thresh's FiringSquad heeft een preview van Intel's nieuwe Pentium III die we in maart kunnen verwachten en die zich zal moeten gaan meten met de AMD K7.

Benchmarks? Well, not exactly. We couldn't take down any benchmarks yet, but we were able to snag some system info. The strangest thing is the L1 Cache field - we've heard reports that Katmai may include 64KB of L1 - not too unlikely due to the fairly modular design of Intel's processors. However, Winbench 99 reports 32, which is more in line with what to expect. Whether this is only for the initial launch (.25 um, 450/500Mhz) has yet to be seen, but with rising competition from AMD, we would have expected that Intel would push for more L1. The CPU is listed as model 7, stepping 2.

Iedereen met een RC5 client (zie www.distributed.net heeft vast gemerkt dat het ding de laatste paar dagen DES keys aan het cracken was ipv van RC5 keys. Dit ivm de DES Test, die succesvol is afgesloten:

'm extremely pleased to announce that our DES-TEST-1 contest was a success. Not only were we able to evaluate the performance and reliability of our new v300 ("devel") proxies and our v2.7103 clients with quick-start, but we successfully found the key after only 59 hours of searching. The key, 0x5ED9204FECE0B967, was able to recover the plain-text message, "The unknown message is: The DES-test contest's plaintext" We have yet to contact the individual who was running the lucky client, so I won't release his/her email address yet. If (s)he has no objection, I'll announce the winner in another email. The winning block was cracked on a Macintosh PowerPC in the US running v2.7103 of the rc5des client and submitted at 04:17:13 GMT on 01/09/98.

Hier is meer info. Wie mee wil doen kan zich aansluiten bij Team Webmagix, nr. 10313 of Team TUDelft, nr. 158.

Ik zag op CPU Central (waar ze het op hun beurt weer bij Techweb gejat hebben) nog wat info over de PIII:

When Intel releases the 450-MHz version of its next-generation Pentium chip, it is expected to cost less than the current fastest Pentium II processor costs now.

The company is also expected to drop prices on its existing lineup of Pentium II processors, sources said.

The new Pentium chip is expected to debut in early March at speeds of 450 MHz and 500 MHz.

On Monday, the chip giant is expected to officially rename its next-generation Pentium chip the Pentium III, sources said. Previously, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel referred to the processor by the code-name Katmai.

Sources familiar with Intel's plans also said a preliminary price sheet showed the 450-MHz version of the Pentium III would cost $530 in volume quantities. The current 450-MHz Pentium II now costs $562 and is expected to drop with the introduction of Pentium III. The 500-MHz version of the Pentium III is slated to cost $764, according to sources.

Intel declined to comment on the upcoming chip's name or cost.

"We're expecting Intel's going to do what they traditionally do," said Kelly Spang, an analyst at Technology Business Research, in Hampton, N.H. "They introduce a high-end processor, and as a result, the existing processors will drop in price, which actually makes sense to move the older stuff out and make room for the new."

The Pentium III will feature 70 new instructions that provide enhanced 3-D graphics, audio, and video capabilities. Sources said Intel will release a 533-MHz version of Pentium III later this year.

"I think sticking with the Pentium brand certainly makes sense," Spang said. "Intel has invested billions of dollars starting with the initial Pentium, and moving through Pentium with MMX, and now Pentium II, and we're going to Pentium III."

Een paar dagen geleden werd op de MacWorld nog met veel bombarie aangekondigd dat Connectix een Playstation emulator had gebakken voor de Mac en nu is Sony pissig en krijgen ze bij Connectix een rechtszaak aan hun laars gelapt.

With an unsurprising stomp of the boot, Sony is filing an injunction against, and will then sue, Connectix. With much fanfare at the recent 1999 MacWorld Exposition, the codesmiths at the company well known for RAM Doubler and other products, announced their commercial PlayStation emulator, the Virtual Game Station, to the surprise of many. Especially Sony. But within two days of the show, a Sony representative allegedly purchased two of the units, and within a mere two days, the company plans Sony formed the backbone of its suit. Sony will sue for intellectual rights infringement on the illegal use of its patented game system. Will it win? It's got a good shot -- and it has the money –- but will the law back Sony's suit up? We're skeptical.

Gamestream heeft een preview van Quake III Arena:

The first thing I should, or really am obliged to examine, is the graphical aspect of Quake 3 Arena. The list of new features available on the quake 3 engine is staggering, including dynamic shadows, displacement maps, 24 bit textures, curved surfaces, mirrors, volumetric fog, lens flares, skeletal modeling, model tesselation, specular lighting, and texture-mapped triangles. The feature that really jumps out at me as an FPS player is the curved surfaces addition. No longer will I be forced to play in a box, but will be allowed to see flowing structures which resemble more realistic architecture and allow for more creativity in maps. Quake 3, like its predecessor, will not offer DirectX support, yet will stick with OpenGL. Why? "DX5 great improvement, but still not as good as OpenGL Still no hardware acceleration under NT Still not portable Already committed significant investment in OpenGL technology" says Brian Hook of id software. Quake 3 will also require a 3d card, which I thinkis quite admirable. It suits what I perceive to be the motto of id software; go all the way or don't go 

Nog wat spul van The Register: de prijzen van de PIII zullen bij zijn release lager zijn dan die van de PII nu:

Sources close to Intel said today that the Pentium III when released will cost less that the 450MHz PII does now.

The Pentium II 450MHz currently costs $459 when bought in units of 1000, suggesting that Intel will pitch the Katmai-III lower than at first expected.

And this is the update. Intel said today (Friday) that the price of the CPU is currently $562. But, spookily, the price we quoted above will not be far off the price when the Pentium III is launched...spooky.

Although Intel will reveal that the chip is called the Pentium III on the 11th of January, as we exclusively wrote here a year ago, the company is still on target for a release date of the end of February, the same source said. (See also: Katmai is Pentium III)

The Register heeft wat info over plannen die Compaq en AMD hebben wat betreft de K7:

The EV6 system bus in the AMD K7 means both it and Compaq will benefit from the use of its slot architecture.

According to a very reliable source close to Digital in the US, AMD gets an extremely fast bus out of the deal, while in the future, Compaq will be able to use the same motherboards for their products.

The source added that K7 systems will be upgradeable to Alphas just by swapping CPUs while Compaq will benefit from AMD's ability to leverage its motherboard contacts in Taiwan and elsewhere.

LostCircuits heeft een review van de Rage Fury, een nieuwe plank van ATI met Rage128 en 32Megabijten aan ram, wat niet meteen wil zeggen dat-ie hiermee ook de snelste is:

In short, the Fury is not the fastest card out there. In terms of raw speed, it lags behind the Banshee and in terms of the image quality, it really depends on the application. Strangely enough, the performance on the Intel based system was less than satisfactory. However, the one thing standing out is the excellent performance on the Super Socket 7 platform, in combination with apparently no compatibility issues. This alone almost guarantees a role as overnight bestseller since quite a few other AGP cards ardently defend their problematic relationship with the VIA MVP3 chipset. In addition, the image quality of the Fury in applications like Unreal and the fact that the card does not take much punishment for switching to higher resolution / greater color depth will certainly win over more than a handful of followers.

The Register heeft wat info over Diamond's Rio. Het ding ondersteund nu ook Liquid Audio:

The big difference between Liquid Tracks and MP3 is that for former includes mechanisms to support licensing music tracks to individuals. That ensures the artist and label get their cut of the sale and that the licensee can't copy the track for others to use.

It's the lack of these features in MP3 that has had the music industry up in arms against both the format and systems, such as the Rio, that encourage its use. Liquid Tracks is one of the formats the music industry sponsored Standard Digital Music Inititiative (SDMI) is considering as the basis for a new, universal digital music format.

Ik zag op BXBoards wat handige info over TNT overclockers die niet willen overclocken met Powerstrip. Bij de Hercules Dynamite TNT wordt een overclock proggie meegeleverd (Hercumeter) en dat ding schijnt het ook op andere TNT kaarten te doen (in tegenstelling dat het overclock dingetje van Creative's TNT, want die doet het alleen met de Graphicsblaster TNT):

GO NOW!... and check out Planet RIVA if ya got a TNT based 2D/3D video accelerator.

...This just in from RAZOR. He has received and posted news that it appears as though the new Hercules 0.48 Dynamite TNT Drivers will work on other TNT based cards (Elsa Erazor II AGP, STB Velocity 4400 and now Canopus Spectra 2500 so far).

So what you say? Well it happens that Hercules has included a great little utility 'Hercumeter' for ajusting the TNT Core Clock as well as Memory Timeings. J

...So head on over to Planet RIVA for the rest of the story where Stefan Huber claims to be able to clock his Elsa Erazor II even higher than he could with his default driver and PowerStrip.

...I've been working the past couple days to see if I could crack the Creative "TNTClock.exe" utility or registry settings in an effort to try to overclock my Canopus Spectra 2500 TNT Drivers without the use of PowerStrip. Well now I have the Hercumeter to work with also and do intend on pursuing the idea further. However I did try these drivers on the Spectra and they do work as they should but without the TV out features. On my Spectra, BH6, 128, Celeron A@504mhz and the Hercules .048 driver. Useing a TNT clock of 108 x 117 I was able to get a 3D Mark 99 (800x600x16) score of 2389 and a Quake II (1024x768x16) Demo1 of 41.5 fps. Note tho, that I could not clock my Spectra and maintain stability any higher with Hercumeter than I could with PowerStrip : (

...Remember! If you decide to try this? You do it at yer own risk! So please be sure to proceed with caution! I'd recommend at least Safe Mode and a complete uninstall of your current video drivers. Also, when executing the driver install .exe file the auto install did not work for me. But it did unzip the drivers to the Windows & Windows\System folder and I was able to install them manually.

Voor wie niet helemaal meer weet hoe het zit met de geheugen types heeft Tresh's FiringSquad een memory guide in elkaar geknutseld met info over allerlei geheugen varianten. PC100, DDR, Rambus, CAS, ECC enz.

When we think of upgrades for our computers, the most commonly thought of part is probably the CPU. After all, who can resist the latest 500-600+ MHz Intel and AMD offerings? Additionally, there have been great steps made in the 3D video field, with the 3dFX and Nvidia battle, and also in the sound arena, with A3D vs. EAX. But what about RAM? Undoubtedly, RAM is one of the most important functional parts in a computer, especially for those of us who are overclockers. At the same time, though, RAM probably has some of the least exposure.

For example, when buying new RAM, do you want SIMMs or DIMMs? What's all this talk of 8 ns, or 10 ns? EDO or SDRAM? ECC? What is the difference between asynchronous and synchronous, or all the hype of CAS2 and CAS3? All of these questions and more are important considerations when buying RAM, and making incorrect decisions about RAM can sometimes cause mysterious problems with your system. On the flipside, some consumers are probably spending more on hyped-up RAM technology than they should, when this money can be spent on other upgrades.

Bijna vergeten: Anand heeft z'n Celeron 366 review geupt. Hier wat info:

The 366MHz PPGA part AnandTech tested made it up to 458MHz reliably (83.3MHz x 5.5), unfortunately the part did not hit 550MHz reliably enough to be considered an option. One thing must be taken into consideration, this is a single processor, and there are quite a few out there. Once Intel's manufacturing process matures, the Celeron 366 may even grow to be the replacement for our beloved 300A's running at 450MHz.  From the reports of Celeron 366 users all over the world, the chances that the 550MHz Celeron will become the next big thing to hit the tweaking world are good, for you Slot-1 users out there, don't worry, the Celeron 366 and 400 are both supposedly availabe in slot-1 formats as well, so keep your eyes peeled (although preliminary reports suggest that overclocking the 400 is about as useful as overclocking the first Celeron 333's, it could work, but chances are, it won't to the degree you want it to).

Dus geen 550Mhz :(

The final version of Asus' P5A BIOS v.1.005

Because of minor problems we apologize for interrupting this Downloading prosedure!

Edited by Harry S.