De problemen met de RC5 stats server van Distributed.net zijn verholpen, dus je kunt eindelijk je statistieken weer bekijken. Die van Team Webmagix vind je hier (je kunt ons joinen op nr. 10313).

HighGear heeft vier screenshots van Rally Championship '99 weten te bemachtigen. Deze zien er extreem vet uit (dat heb ik al vaker gezegd). Elke aan racespellen verslaafde gamer dient deze plaatjes gezien te hebben.

Hier heb je wat info uit HighGear's preview van RC99:

When I browsed through the 80 (or so) screenshots I was really stunned by the image quality. Every stage (there are 36) has been thoroughly modelled and resembles its real-life counterpart.

MF has designed every stage by sending out a photographer and a film crew to photograph all of

the stages. The film footage was directly used as reference to build the stages.

The team got help from John Horton, manager

of the Mobil 1 British Rally Championship, and Martin Rowe, winner of that same championship.

"The game looks very realistic, the way the surface is, the obstacles we hit on the side of the road, it's just amazing. The depth of everything, the work that goes on to build a stage. When you think of, let's say, Pundershaw stage, it's 25 miles long!" says Martin Rowe.

Als je naar het zien van die screenshots nog niet zodanig in extase bent geraakt dat je nu ergens stony de bony op de grond ligt, dan heb je hier nog meer shots.

Gamecenter heeft een review van de Metabyte Wicked3D Eyescream, de 3D bril van het nu dooie H3D. Hier is wat info over het ding:

Playing Quake II provided one of the most satisfying experiences, as the stereoscopic effect enhanced the true-3D modeling of the Quake environment. Centipede's top-down view, though providing a cool-looking effect in 3D, proved a little less compelling; the 3D stereo made gameplay seem distant and removed from the action. It's worth noting that in most cases, the 3D objects appear to be behind the screen, rather than popping out of it, creating a diorama-like effect. It's Not All 3D Bliss There are some serious downsides, though, to playing games in stereoscopic 3D. For one, text is generally illegible, which can be a serious disadvantage in many games. Also, because none of the games have been designed specifically for stereo, there may be some display glitches, and 3D stereo display errors can quickly lead to eyestrain and headaches. For instance, Unreal's 8-ball Launcher was displayed with too great of a stereoscopic separation, immediately straining our eyes. Also, the bright-white lights in the game caused an annoying ghosting effect, though we were able to minimize this with some of Unreal's display settings. We encountered similar annoyances in most games we tried.

Singapore Hardware zone heeft een review van Diamond's Rio MP3 walkman gepost. Een leuk apparaatje, dat ook z'n slechte kanten heeft:

ne main complain of this Rio player is the insufficient amount of base memory. With 32MB built-in ROM on board, the Rio can only contains up to 8 to 9 songs ripped off a CD. If Diamond could increase the base memory to 64MB, a complete albulm of CD songs will be able to reside comfortably in the Rio's memory for portable listening.

The earphone that comes packaged with the Rio is definitely not suitable for serious listeners. It is not able to reproduce any bass signal at all. In addition, I find that the built-in graphic equaliser on the Rio could have been preset better so as to bring out a greater difference between each settings.

One last point is that somehow or rather, I feel that the black plastic casing that houses the Rio player does not give it a sophisticated or sleek design. Comparing it with most of the walkmans manufactured by Japanese companies, these portable players usually endorse a metallic casing so as to give them a really sleek design.

Kodak Advantix Film Drive FD300
Pop 'n' go film scanner makes editing APS photos a breeze.

For those of us who are already to jump on the digital imaging bandwagon, but not willing to spend big bucks, film scanners are a clever alternative. Kodak's new $349 Advantix Film Drive FD300 scans pictures directly from APS film and produces better output than that of high-quality digital cameras and scanners. The only drawback? You have to own an APS camera.

Ik kwam op de site van Beyond Computing wat info tegen over het tekort aan BH6sen op de Amerikaanse markt (hier in Nederland zijn ze nog wel redelijk leverbaar geloof ik). Wat hieronder staat zijn is pure speculatie:

Looks like a hell of a week for overclockers. First the 300A is gone, and now the BH6 motherboard supply has completely vanished. We got 30 boards in this morning and it was all gone by afternoon. Lots of rumors are brewing as to why the supply is so low. There's the infamous "Intel and Abit agreement on distribution" theory, but the latest 2 I've heard from the distribution circle are the interesting ones. First one from one of my distributors is that Abit are in serious financial problems in the east. I'm not sure of how accurate that one is, but as I said, it's just a rumor. The other rumor from another distributor is that Abit is closing down their plant for 10 days because of the Chinese new years. Again, this rumor doesn't make much sense, as we've been running low on BH6's for a long time, and chinese new years hasn't started yet. More info will be posted as soon as I get it.

De High Performance Optimization Guide heeft een artikel in elkaar geragd met veel handig info over wat er allemaal mis kan gaan bij het kopen van een onschuldig reepje PC100. Hier wat info:

There are all sort of claims in this industry and while some vendors are pretending to offer 8ns, 7ns or even 6ns they are in fact offering only 10ns parts. Most of these confusion is coming from the parts numbering used by the manufacturers and codes like 7j, 7K,G8,GL,7K, printed at the end of the part number on the memory chips is meaning absolutely nothing for most of the end users.

Among the Intel PC100 memory compliance specifications, two of theses specifications are stating that a PC100 memory module must at least have a Tck value equal or inferior to 10ns and a Tac value equal or inferior to 6ns. So, as long as a PC100 memory module meets Tck=10 and Tac=6, it is PC100 compliant. Tck= Clock Period in ns and Tac= Timing Access from Clock in ns.

Zie ook Reinder's Queeste naar het 7ns SDRAM voor info over PC100 SDRAMS.

Tom heeft het voor elkaar gekregen om binnen een week z'n site 3 keer up te daten (wow!), en wel met een CPU Performance Overview voor het eerste kwartaal van '99. Aan bod komen o.a. de nieuwe Celerons, en zoals we van Tom gewend zijn weer een enorme partij benchmarks.

Tom heeft ook wat info over multiprocessing dat met de komst van Quake III Arena ook voor gamers een handige feature zou kunnen woden:

The upcoming Quake arena could change a lot, it will be the first 3D action game with multi-processing support. So far the vast majority of people couldn't be bothered about dual-CPU systems, because only some specialist software as e.g. 3D rendering or CAD applications were able to take advantage of it. Multi-processing is also not supported by Windows 95 or Windows 98, so you would have to get Linux, BeOS or Windows NT to enjoy the blessings of parallel processing. Now, since Id announced that Quake Arena will support multi-CPU-systems, the interest in dual-processor-systems has grown considerably. Celeron is not supposed to support multi-processing, and whilst you can get around that in case of a Slot1-Celeron with some serious soldering and drilling, you can finally forget it with the Celeron for Socket370. We still don't know how much advantage Quake Arena will take of dual-CPU systems, but this game could be one of the very few reasons why spending a lot more money for a Pentium II rather than a Celeron system.

Thresh's Firingsquad heeft de primeur met de eerste review van een Pentium III. Veel is er niet verandert ten opzichte van de PII en we hoeven dan ook geen heftige dingen te verwachten wat betreft de performance van het dingetje:

The "next-generation" in Intel's lineup of performance PC processors, the P3 is actually based on the same Pentium II core, with a few additions that, if nothing but from a marketing point, should make it a "must-have" upgrade. There have been rumors before release that the Katmai will ship with a 64KB L1 cache, but at least for the release of the 450Mhz and 500Mhz versions, that isn't true. The Pentium III will initially ship with 32Kb cache, the same as the Pentium II.

How will this affect its performance? Consider the fact that the PentiumMMX 200 was roughly 10% faster than the Pentium Classic 200, due to the doubled cache size (32KB on the MMX unit vs. 16KB on the Classic). Though a 10% performance gain per doubling in cache isn't necessarily the case, the Pentium III could very well have taken advantage of the additional 32K, if nothing for prefetch memory streaming in KNI. More on that later.

The purchase of Texas Instruments' share in the TI-Acer joint dynamic RAM fab in Taiwan by Acer was completed Thursday with a $120 million stock transfer. TI had owned a 33 percent stake in the fab, but agreed in March to sell its holding to Acer, wich has announced plans to use the facility for foundry production. The company is now officially called Acer Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Taiwan venture capital giant China Development, already a minority partner in TI-Acer, has indicated it is interested in aquiring the shares in the company released by TI to Acer.

After restructuring, Acer Semiconductor will focus on logic integratedcircuits and made to order "foundry" chip making. Acer said it had contacted "major players" in the United States, Japan and Taiwan to discuss potential stategic alliances.

"The company is aggressively adjusting its organization to strengthen marketing ability and R&D capicity", an Acer spokesman said. Acer chairman Stan Shih and Acer Semiconductor president Alex Cheng plan to visit the United States in late June to recruit talent, the company said.

Na Diamond en een paar onbekende koreanen wil nu ook Samsung een MP3 walkman gaan fabriceren. Enkele zeer creatieve geesten daar bij Samsung zijn op het idee gekomen om het ding de extreem wazige naam 'yepp' mee te geven...

Hier wat info van Coolinfo:

Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show, the yepp features a Smart Media slot compatible with PC file formats. In English that means it can store text and graphics files in addition to MP3 files. The credit card sized device uses an LCD display to show the artist, track and playing time. The yepp comes in three models with different capabilities. Series E has 16MB of embedded flash memory and voice recording ability and Series B has 24MB embedded memory and a PC docking station. Coolest however is definitely the Series D - 40MB of flash memory, a digital FM radio tuner, voice recording and also the ability to record up to 10 hours of external sound.

Once you’ve got a taste for digital music you can encode tracks into MP3 from CDs and cassettes using the accompanying recording station. The yepp should be available in the UK this Spring. Can’t wait.

 

Ik zag via Slashdot een link naar een site waar je een proggie kunt downloaden waarmee je onder Linux MP3tjes naar de Rio kunt uppen:

rio' is a utility for MP3 file upload to Diamond's Rio, a production portable MP3 player. Developed for linux, the program was created as a result of our earlier work on providing support (Open Source) for the Saehan MpMan, which was the first production MP3 player. The code has been compiled and tested under Linux and W98. DOS should be easy, and it can be made to work under NT, but ideally it requires a device driver for the LPT in this case, and anyway, NT is turning into junk and heading for the scrapyard...

Acer will support RamBus for consumer PC's

Acer Labs, in Taipei, Taiwan, announced Tuesday that it has licensed 800MHz memory-interface technology from Rambus. Th company said this will make the higher speeds of Rambus -1.6 gigabytes per second of peak bandwith from a single device- available to more affordable PC's.

"With Rambus memory support, the PC owner will enjoy ample performance for CPU-intensive, video, and 3D graphics programs and games," said Chin Wu, President of Acer Labs. "Rambus technology is a key element in our new products and will be a primary interface to DRAM for PC main-memory controllers for 1999 and beyond."

Acer Labs. plans to introduce a new generation of PC chip sets with Rambus memory support this year. "ALI's record of being able to quickly ramp leading-edge PC chip sets in high volume will help accelerate the proliferation of the Rambus memory througout the entire PC market", said Dave Mooring, Vice President and general manager of the PC Product Division of Rambus, in Mountain View, Caif.

Op het Nederlandse deel van het Internet wordt actie gevoerd tegen het zinloos geweld naar aanleiding van de schietpartij in Gorinchem waar twee doden vielen. World Online houdt een virtuele fakkeloptocht. Wim Hersbach zamelt handtekeningen in voor een digitale petitie.

America Online en Netscape zijn volgens onbevestigde berichten het doelwit geworden van een justitieel onderzoek. De aangekondigde fusie zou in strijd zijn met de monopoliewetten van de Verenigde Staten. Daar lopen al antitrust-processen tegen Microsoft en Intel.

Een internationaal concern trekt een miljard dollar uit voor de aanleg van een electronische snelweg onder de Atlantische Oceaan met een capaciteit van 1,28 terabits per seconde. Het netwerk, Flag Atlantic-1 wordt over 21 maanden in bedrijf genomen.

The Register heeft wat info over de winstcijfers van Rambus. Nou zullen die cijfers mij worst wezen, wat ik wil weten is wanneer we van Rambus gebruik kunnen maken:

Posted 15/01/99 1:54pm by Tony Smith

Rambus profits, revenue up

Rambus posted profits of $2 million on revenue of $9.4 million for its first quarter of fiscal 1999, yesterday.

But while those figures represent growth of 25 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively, the company warned that it expects its earnings to remain static over the next two or three quarters.

The company blamed a season fall in demand for Rambus products for the Nintendo N64, the discontinuation of a controller development by Cirrus Logic and Chromatic Research (now part of ATI), and extra costs engendered as Rambus expands its marketing programme designed to promote its Direct Rambus DRAM technology as a standard.

Direct Rambus DRAM is, in any case, unlikely to take off before the middle of 1999, when Intel releases its Camino chip-set, the first mainstream motherboard to take advantage of the technology, which Intel is priming as the successor to SDRAM (Direct DRAM is roughly twice as fast as current SDRAM, with a peak speed of 1/.6GBps).

Cyrix, AMD and Compaq are taking a similar line, and this level of support has persuaded most other major manufacturers to follow the Rambus flag too.

Van een Pentium II overstappen naar een Pentium III wordt een makkie - de eerste maanden tenminste.

Tot die slotsom komt Ming Chok, de Vice-president of technology bij de Taiwanese fabrikant van moederborden Soyo, gezegd in interviews in de Amerikaanse computerpers. Zijn bevindingen worden bevestigd door Intel, die de nieuwe processor in februari of maart wil introduceren.

De processor staat nu nog bekend onder zijn codenaam Katmai, dat tevens de verzamelnaam is voor de uitgebreide instructieset voor multimedia toepassingen die aan de PentiumIII is toegevoegd.

Chok wijst er op dat de PentiumIII van dezelfde architectuur gebruik maakt als zijn voorganger. Verder maken ze gebruik van een Slot1 of Slot2 "verpakking", zodat de PentiumIII in het zelfde voetje op het moederbord past als de PentiumII. In principe kan de beziiter van een PentiumII deze uit het moederbord lichten en vervangendoor de nieuwe processor.

Wel zal het BIOS van een PC moeten worden aangepast. Intel zegt wel dat de nieuwe chip op korte termijn wel zal worden aangepast zodat fabrikanten toch zullen moeten overstappen op nieuwe en snellere componenten. Zo krijgt de PentiumIII later dit jaar een 133MHz systeembus -de pijpleiding waarlangs de chip data naar de rest van de computer voert.

De nieuwe versies van de PentiumII communiceren nu in 100MHz met de PC, terwijl oudere chips een systeembussnelheid van 66MHz hebben. Ook ontwikkelt, is een snellere versie van de Advanced Graphics Port(AGP), waarvoor een nieuw moederbord een vereiste zal zijn.

PC.IGN heeft een review van Test Drive: Off-Road 2. Het idee achter die Test Drive spellen is meestal wel leuk maar de uitvoering is vaak klote (neem bijv. Test Drive III waarvan ik door de extreem irriterende besturing nog nog steeds getraumatiseerd ben). Zo ook met TDOR2:

The worst aspect of this game is the poor, uninspired graphics. The visuals are so incredibly bland, flat, blocky, and lifeless I actually checked to make sure my Voodoo2 card was still seated correctly in its slot. After taking apart my system and determining that indeed my Voodoo2 card was connected correctly, I hit the screen a few times just in case my monitor was on the fritz. No such luck -- the graphics really were that bad … even in 3Dfx. To make matters worse, Test Drive Off Road 2 suffers from serious clipping problems. Sometimes you can drive directly through a tree, other times you'll slam into it and flip your vehicle.

Abit heeft nieuwe BIOSsen gereleased voor de BH6, BM6 en AH6 (aarggg - geen BX6 (ik heb er een >:). Er is ook nog een bios voor de BX6 Revision II maar dat hebben alleen betatesters iets aan, want die plank is nog niet gereleased.

BXBoards heeft ook nog wat info:

Abit have released new BIOS updates for the BH6 which, its rumoured, finally gets the Windows 98 ACPI hibernate function working! Excuse me while I pick myself back off the floor... I've also posted the latest version of AWDFlash which features a new /tiny switch which should help solve some of those "out of memory" errors that seem to occur whilst flashing various motherboards.

c't magazine, the hottest German Hardware magazine, has some interesting tidbids in it's latest issue.

In the German c't Magazine is a one page article about Celeron. It's named "Slot or Socket?". They say, that the Celeron PPGA Socket Processors are one way street, because you could only upgrade to Celeron in the future.

They say that specially the Intel ZX Chipset boards are a no buy, because this one is a FSB 66 MHz chip with no upgrade possibility. They say buy a slot 1 CPU or a Socket 7 board, because K6-3 will work on normal Super-Socket 7 boards.

c't tested a Celeron Pre-sell model without Multiplicator- lock. The Mendocino-Core could go up to Multiplicator 8.0. Their chip worked with a little modification (R6=0 Ohm) stable at 466(with FSB66). This one is slower than a PII 450 because of the FSB. They tell further on, that Celerons would go to FSB100 when PII goes for 133.

In another article they say, that there are many "new" CPU's upcoming. Intel: XEON-Slot2, Pentium Notebook 300MMX, Celeron-Notebook 266 and 300 and the DIXON (366MHz, 256kb cache). All these chips in January. In February Katmai. In the on going year: Coppermine, Tanner, Cascades and faster Celerons, etc.

AMD: They've not yet tested the K6-3/450 but they link to Anand(www.anandtech.com) and retell his results. Another article tells, that there was a "Intel Owner's Club" founded (www.intel.com/home/club).

They say, that we would know Fan-Clubs manly from soccer and they recommend that at the next public Benchmark-Campionship the Intel Owner Bunnies are meeting the AMD-Sharptooth-Hooligans.(I personly would join the Celeries, although I own a Sharptooth. Hehe hehe, let's get them all !)

NetExcite heeft een review gepost van de IBM Deskstar 10GXP en de Maxtor DiamondPlus Op beide schijven kun je tot 10Gig aan spul parkeren en beide doen ze 10.000 revs per minuut. Voor overklokkers is de Maxtor absoluut niet geschikt, want het ding begint al moeilijk te doen als je de PCI bus naar 37,5Mhz gooit:

On the other hand, the DiamondMax Plus would not run properly when the PCI bus was overclocked above the standard 33 MHz limit. With CPU clock speeds of 75 MHz and 112 MHz, which result in a PCI bus speed of 37.5 MHz, and clock speeds of 83 MHz and 124 MHz, which result in a PCI bus speed of 41.5 MHz, Windows consistently froze while loading. Now, by disabling DMA support, Windows would boot, but in my opinion, the CPU overhead is not worth the increased CPU clock speed. The IBM Deskstar had no problems running with a 37.5 MHz PCI clock and UDMA enabled.

Verder heeft NetExcite nog een hele emmer benchmarks van beide schijven. Om alle spanning maar meteen weg te nemen: de IBM is de winnaar!

Hardgame heeft een review gepost van Metabyte's videoplank met Voodoo Banshee, de Wicked3D Vengeance. Van Metabyte mogen we normaal gesproken verwachten dat ze met iets bijzonders op de proppen komen (verbeterde drivers enzo) maar dat blijkt hier niet echt het geval te zijn:

Metabyte has not made any noticeable changes in the Voodoo Banshee hardware design. The card measures approximately 16.5 centimeters (6.5 inches) long and has a standard 0.5cm heatsink. As many Voodoo II overclockers have quickly learned, 3Dfx chips can get very hot, especially at high clock frequencies. It would have been nice if Metabyte included a larger heatsink and/or a heatsink and fan combination, since the Vengeance does get very hot. Unfortunately, the current cooling is not effective enough. The Vengeance actually needs to be clocked down to a 100mhz core frequency (from its default setting of 105mhz) and a memory clock of 110mhz (from its default setting of 115mhz), to run stably. Without these changes, random lockups would occur anywhere from 5-15 minutes after beginning gameplay or benchmarking. Even with the underclocking, the Banshee chip was too hot to touch after normal Windows 2D use and especially after a heavy 3D gaming session. One thing to note is that the stability of the Vengeance could improve slightly for users with a very well cooled case. The test machine’s heat level is average or slightly above average. However, no other cards tested have run into heat problems as the Vengeance did.

Online Gaming Review heeft een review van de Guillemot Race Leader 3D Force Feedback in elkaar gepleurd. Dit stuurtje van gieh''jemo (hoe de hek spreek je dat uit @!##@) ziet er futuristisch uit maar lijkt me niet erg robuust (wat wel handig als je langer dan 3 maand plezier wilt hebben van het ding):

The most noticeable problem is that the entire product feels incredibly flimsy. The design of the wheel is pretty good, with well-placed buttons and a nice shape; however, you can't help but have the feeling that making one sharp turn will make the thing snap off. The buttons and levers share that same flimsy, plastic-y feel. The clamping mechanism is problematic, as it doesn't accommodate thick desks or desks with a "lip" very well. Though force effects vary in quality from game to game, the weak motor and lightweight wheel have a way of making them all seem cheesy and gimmicky. The "robust pedals" do an excellent job of eliminating calf muscle strain, as the feel of cheap plastic and springs isn't really enough to give anyone a serious workout, or do anything to prevent the pedal base unit from sliding away under heavy use.

OCP heeft ook nog een artikel in elkaar gegooid over de OEM vs de Retail Celerons. Bij de Celeron zonder cache was er een groot verschil in overklokbaarheid tussen OEM en Retail, maar tot nu werd aangenomen dat dit met de Celeron A niet het geval was aangezien de core nummers en core stepping hetzelfde zijn bij OEM en Retail.

OCP heeft wat info weten los te trekken bij een 'industry insider':

ow, it would seem that because the OEM and the Retail have the same core numbers and the same core stepping that these are the same. But that is totally untrue for anyone that knows Intel's methods of production. Intel does not have on single line that they run these both down. The core stepping and the core are the same because in principle, they are the same design...confused yet? The differences are which lines the units are made and sometimes what cache is on the CPU. The robots used in production, in simple terms, are constantly adjusting quality control. The higher the precision, the less amount of heat will be dissipated from the lines and the core, thus the less chances that the CPU has to fail. If you had a company, and two lines to run CPU's down, one newer and more precise than the other, which would you run down the newer line? The 3 year warranty product or the one year warranty product?? Also it is a distinct possibility that a higher speed or quality rated cache is being used in the Retail units for the same purposes.

We have noticed the OEM's quality has increased since we first received them. Initially we averaged around 60 to 65 percent success at 450MHz but now we see around 75 to 80 percent, meaning that these lines have made adjustments to the quality and precision of the units.  

BH6 Update OK now listen up!!! Could you the reader possibble be the owner, of a bh6? Well spark up that awdflash disk, cause Abit has released a new BIOS for it this time its the "bh6hn".

Not sure what updates have been made to it since I just heard about it from my clansman NONO not the white sheeted fellas Quake ya sillies any way thx.

But after updating and hearing also their is now a preset for 5.0 x 100MHz setting wich you could only previously do by using the user define option hmmmm sounds like some PIII luvin so...And also I'm almost finish with the SL2YK review in the HTML stage now argh I hate tables :) OK you can pick the update here

OCP heeft Abit FAQ in elkaar geknutseld met de volgende vragen (en antwoorden):

1) What is a Slotket®? How can I use it? How can I get one? How much are they?

2) What is the difference between the BX6 and the BH6?

3) I have a hardware review site. Can I get one of your boards for a review?

4) What about ABIT boards and the Y2K problem?

5) Does the BX6, BH6 support the new 400Mhz Celerons?

6) Will my board be able to support UDMA/66?

Abit has graced the OCP with the Hot FAQ that answers the most commonly asked question about the BH6 and other Abit products:

1) What is a Slotket? How can I use it? How can I get one? How much are they?

2) What is the difference between the BX6 and the BH6?

3) I have a hardware review site. Can I get one of your boards for a review?

4) What about Abit boards and the Y2K problem?

5) Does the BX6, BH6 support the new 400MHz Celerons?

6) Will my board be able to support UDMA/66?

XGeneration heeft een review van de nieuwe Silicon Graphics workstations, de eerste Wintel systemen van SGI. Ze zien er vet uit en zijn retesnel, maar hebben ook wat probleempies:

There are some small problems with the initial machines. Since they are running a totally recompiled version of NT 4.0 all future service releases issued by Microsoft are going to also have to be recompiled by SGI before they can be used on these workstations. So don't be expecting to be able to download that last minute Y2K service release in December that Microsoft drops on the world and just installing it and being good to go - it's simply not that simple, all updates are going to have to come from SGI. The reason being, the Visual Workstations were in fact never intended on running Windows NT 4.0 (Yes this is true - I checked my resources on this). SGI built the machines with the full intention of using NT 5 (Now known as Windows 2000 - because Microsoft lags major ass!). SGI had to compile their own drivers to make the USB ports on the machine work for their keyboards and mice (Yes.. Like the infamous iMac, the new SGI pimp systems use USB Keyboards - they are not lime, grape, blueberry, strawberry & tangerine though thank god!) At the current time, the USB port will ONLY WORK for the keyboard, as their is not any support for USB in Windows NT 4.0, and SGI has not compiled a driver for every USB device on the market.

It Look as if NVIDIA is on the verge of going public soon as you can see on the "going public calender" at IPO Monitor.
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is one of the companies expected to go public sometime after this week, so keep your eyes open and dig on some more info here

Diamond heeft een paar nieuwe drivers (v2.07) gereleased voor de Monster 3D II. Hier het goeds uit de readme:

This is the Diamond Monster 3D II Series Windows 9x DirectX 6 Drivers version 4.10.01.0207 with Glide versions 2.54 and 3.01

Features Added -------------- This driver implements 3DNow! support.

Addressed Issues ---------------- Fixed inconsistant Control Panel problems

Je kunt het spul (2,26Mb) hier vandaan trekken.

Ace's Hardware heeft een artikel geupt met wat info over hoe je je gamedoos kunt benchmarken in Quake, Forsaken, Unreal enz. Hier een stukkie over VSYNC:

VSYNC confuses a lot of people. Some think that it will improve their gaming experience by giving them higher frame rates. If you disable VSYNC you will get higher frame rates, but lousy game play! So use it only for benchmarking.

if VSYNC is enabled, your video card will always synchronize the frames it draws with the refresh rate of your monitor. That way, you get a crispy and sharp image. The video card will produce a frame rate of maximum 75 fps if your monitors refresh rate is 75 hz. 

PC Blits heeft een artikel gepost over 3Dfx, die het met in prijs dalende aandelen, harde concurrentie en kritiek van het publiek op nieuwe produkten niet al te relaxed heeft op dit moment.

Having fought off all competitors throughout the life of the Voodoo 1 and keeping a healthy lead with the Voodoo 2, 3DFX was sitting pretty. Their successful IPO and the subsequent rise of their stock past the $30 dollar mark left the company with abundant amounts of cash. Things were going great with the future very bright for the company. However, far in the distance, a dark storm was brewing.

3DFX had in the past always been able to fight off its competitors with superior technology and the support of its legions of fans. I remember seeing several votes on websites that asked the question of what the best next generation video product would be or what company is the best at making 3d accelerator chips and inevitably it seemed, 3DFX would win. These votes weren't too accurate usually and only serve to show the amount of support this company had with its customers.

Ars Technica heeft een artikel in elkaar gedraaid waar wat uitleg wordt gegeven over Dual Celeron systemen, zoals o.a. Eric van Fastgraphics die in elkaar geknutseld heeft.

To understand what's going on here, you need to know a little bit about dual-processor systems. When you've got two processors, one of the main issues you have to work out is who gets control of the bus and when (this issue is called bus arbitration).  Back in the 386 days, when you only had one processor on the bus calling the shots, bus arbitration wasn't an issue.  The old Intel CPUs had a bus request pin (BREQ#) that would go low when the CPU needed the bus, and that's all you needed to worry about.  In today's world, things are a bit more complicated.

AVault heeft een review van Fifa99 gepost. Zoals gewoonlijk zitten er weer een hele zooi verbeteringen in, waaronder de AI:

The other area of real improvement in FIFA 99 is in the AI, both for the opponents and your teammates. I am glad to see that your opponents are a little smarter and play defense more realistically by playing off their mark when I'm far from the goal, but tighter and tighter as I approach the 18-yard box. However, even better is the fact that my teammates actually play like teammates. A good run down the wing or pass to an overlapping player (using the overlap command) is more useful because I can actually count on someone being in the box for the cross. Plus, for crosses on the ground there's a new slide tackle that lets you stretch for balls you might not usually get to, and when you score this way it looks very, very cool.

Gamespot heeft een preview in elkaar geragd van Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Hier wat info over nieuwe dingetjes in C&C2:

Lead designer Erik Yeo has deliberately moved this game away from scripted events. The model underneath TS is driven by physical properties. Weight, flammability, and downforce play important roles, and the map can change as bodies of water freeze, bridges are destroyed, meteorites crash, or weather modifies the terrain. Add random multiplayer maps to this, and no one has the advantage of memorizing maps. The goal was to create a world with enough interesting terrain effects and possibilities that gamers wouldn't always be able to win with a brute-force, head-to-head attack. As Yeo told us, "In the earlier games, I tended to design missions the way I would solve them. Now, you just do it your way. If you can think of it, it should work." In the early scenario we played, we got the distinct feeling that this world is alive and that terrain matters.

Planet Half Life heeft een lijstje met de bug fixes in Half Life patch 1.0.0.8:

Update 1.0.0.8 addresses:

1. Improved multiplayer performance through bandwidth optimizations and better prediction. Modem users will see less apparent lag as a result.

2. Added support for IPX based LANs.

3. Added teamplay option for multiplayer games.

4. Added option to limit total number of decals you can see in multiplayer. Try setting ‘r_decals 500’ if you’re experiencing slowdowns after long periods of game play.

5. Joysticks can now be used to move at the same time a mouse is used to look.

6. The server ping can now be shown as a numeric value instead of green dots. Use the "-numericping" command line option when launching hl.exe.

7. Improved ladder performance in multiplayer.

8. Added EAX 4 speaker support.

9. Fixed bug that allowed bypassing of ammo reloading.

10. Fixed bug where train sounds and rocket sounds would play repeatedly in multiplayer games.

11. Increased number of regional multiplayer servers.

12. Increased accuracy of ping calculations in the Internet Games menu.

13. More accurate latency score in game for other players.

14. Fixed bug preventing climbing ladders when playing with a joystick.

15. Added 3 new player models (Security guard, military robot, zombie) and 2 multiplay maps (frenzy.bsp, crossfire.bsp).

De upgrade van 1.0.0.5 naar 1.0.0.8 kun je hier downloaden (2,492 Kb) en de patch van 1.0.0.6 naar 1.0.0.8 hier (2,336 Kb).