The Register heeft wat info over de Cyrix Japaleno:

Cyrix said today its plans for its Jalapeno platform remain unchanged but it did confirm that it will produce a standalone version.

However, it is likely to be next year before the wonder-chip appears.

A representative said: "There's no change in our strategy. Cyrix will sample Jalapeno in Q4 of this year."

But reliable reports insisted that the first iteration of the standalone version would arrive in the year 2000.

Dat bevestigd wat JC een paar dagen geleden te vertellen had.

Linux krijgt steeds meer support van grote hardware fabrikanten. Zo ook HP en Silicon Graphics, die Linux nu beschouwen als hun 'core OS':

Silicon Graphics and Hewlett-Packard have both decided to offer Linux as one of their core operating systems, according to the Wall Street Journal.

HP is the most enthusiastic of the two companies in its support for the free operating system. The company will be shipping Red Hat Linux on some of its Intel-based servers -- Red Hat will be handling Linux technical support on HP's behalf.

At the same time, HP will be developing a version of Linux for Intel's forthcoming Merced 64-bit processor, though given the deal with Red Hat, it's possible the latter will actually handle the port. Either way, since Merced is a joint development between HP and Intel, the Merced version of Linux is likely to appear very soon after the release of the chip itself, possibly even ahead of the equivalent Windows release.

Silicon Graphics, meanwhile, will be offering versions of its recently announced Intel-based machines that offer Linux as their main OS. The company is supporting the product itself, according to the WSJ, but it's not clear whether it is simply offering one of the established Linux distributions, such as Red Hat, or has created its own

Zie The Register.

Planet Hardware heeft een review gebakken van de Gainward CARDEXpert TNT, een tamelijk onbekende TNT kaart. Het ding is uitgerest met 16Meg SGRAM, wat 'm erg overklokbaar maakt:

he actual board layout isn't all surprising, it's almost identical to the layout of STB's Velocity 4400 TNT board, but not quite as wide. The board is equipped with 7ns Hyundai memory chips, (2x8) 16 megs total of SGRAM. We won't get into the whole SGRAM vs. SDRAM argument, but I can say this, this SGRAM is top-quality, in fact, I've never seen TNT ram that has the ability to be overclocked so much (can we say 135 MHz memory clock?). Other than the ram modules, Gainward decided to put a nice big fan/heatsink combination on the TNT chipset, which it about twice the size of the similar fan/heatsink combination from Elsa on their Erazor II. The board I received didn't have TV-out implemented, but Gainward has specs on their page for a version of the board with S-Video and Digital TV output plugs.

Gamespot heeft een artikel gepost met een vergelijking tussen PII, K6-2 en Celeron. Alle processors liepen op de blije snelheid van 400MHz. Hier wat info over hoe de K6-2 uit de strijd komt:

Although the K6-2 was hobbled by the slower level 2 cache and much slower floating-point performance, its overall performance was quite credible. It's the lowest cost processor here, and the motherboards are typically less expensive as well. In fact, the CPUMark 32 score easily ranged ahead of the Celeron 400, though trailed the Pentium II. Here's where the faster level 2 cache (200MHz vs. 100MHz) paid off for the Pentium II.

De High Performance PC Guide heeft een review van de Diamond MX300 bij elkaar weten te knutselen. Ze hebben vooral naar de technische kant gekeken (frequency spectrum analysis) en ze komen tot een aantal opmerkelijke conclusies.

Hier een stukkie over de MIDI kwaliteit van de MX300:

The listening test of this soundcard has revealed a very pleasant soundcard but without any great surprises. All the instruments have a very good sound quality but not more. The listening of MiDi files is very pleasant and very interesting, the video games sound reproduction is accurate and reproachless and the WAVE files playback is excellent and of a very good quality. However, with a great astonishment, we noticed the presence of residual noises when listening to MiDi files. Even if these noises are very weak we were very surprised of them and we were seriously wondering where the could come from. These noises, mostly audible on solo instruments playing short notes, sounded like cracking sounds. We couldn't tell for sure if these noises were coming from the files themselves or were computing noises generated by the card itself. There was some music files were there was no noises but we don't remember their presence on any other soundcard we've tested before as we always use the same MiDi music files for each card we test.

Bluesnews heeft wat info gepost over de beschikbaarheid van de Pentium III, afkomstig van Falcon Northwest (een of andere reseller in de US). Sommige vendors in de VS zeggen de PIII al in de verkoop te hebben, terwijl het ding nog niet eens gereleased is:

Note: The following is not an official intel press release and should not be construed as such.

Several people have inquired recently as to why Falcon Northwest is not selling Pentium III CPUs, even though they have appeared for sale on a competitor's website, and at other isolated sites on the web. Falcon spoke with Intel about this situation this morning. Intel stated that their official Pentium III launch date is now Friday, February 26th, 1999. ALL Pentium III processors that have been produced so far are still under Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) until that date. These NDA's prevent anyone in possession of the Pentium III processors from selling or disclosing any performance or technical data about their samples. Intel theorized the following possibilities concerning the advertised Pentium III processors:

1) Although they are advertised as being in stock, they are not. 2) They are illegally remarked Pentium II CPUs. 3) These companies are breaking NDA's by selling engineering samples. 4) Someone else has broken an NDA and sold their engineering samples to the system maker.

Although yesterday Intel officially stated that their production processors will have their CPU ID feature turned off, these processors were obviously produced before this announcement. Intel said their security will be advised of the current situation.

Volgens de Pine Security Digest:

"Door een fout bij de registratie van .com, .net en .org domeinen Internic zijn gisteren 10.000 domeinen blootgesteld aan misbruik. Door een fout werd de 'handle' van een grote registrant van domeinen toegekend aan een Canadees. Hierdoor had deze man de gegevens van de domeinen naar eigen inzicht kunnen wijzigen of verwijderen"

Jippie! De eerste (grote, bekende) commerciële game release voor Linux zit eraan te komen! Namelijk: "Civilisation: Call to Power" (kortweg Civ III)

We houden je op de hoogte als er andere spellen volgen!

Overclockers.com heeft doet de definitieve uitspraak over de toekomst van de Slot1 Celeron. Hij's dood

The future of the 300a Celeron is finally being clarified. The Retail Slot 1 version is dead, the OEM Slot 1 will probably be gone by the end of March. The PPGA version will probably last through the end of the year. There is a bigger issue: PC Week, probably the most read magazine by the corporate set, does an article in the Jan 4 issue comparing 2 soon to be released computers:

[...]The Celerons are going to cannibalize the entire PII line almost immediately now. The ONLY issue preventing this is that, thanks to the original Celeron 266 and 300, some folks still think of the line as crap. ZD is usually conservative in "spilling the beans" about such truths...if they are doing it, it is going to be understood in the corporate market REALLY FAST.

Het vermogen van onze vriend Bill Gates blijft groeien. Inmiddels heeft-ie al $87,6 miljard dollar afhandig gemaakt van ons arme windoos gebruikers.

News.com heeft er een artikel over:

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, already the world's richest man, has been watching the value of his shares in the No. 1 software company approach $100 billion, based on its rising stock price.

The 43-year-old chief executive's holdings are valued at $87.6 billion, slightly more than Singapore's economy, based on Microsoft's closing price of 171.5625. If Microsoft's stock reaches 195.8125, Gates's holdings would exceed $100 billion.

Gates's wealth reflects the meteoric rise of Microsoft, founded with school friend Paul Allen in 1975, on the back of the personal computer revolution. But Gates's gains have come more through through business acumen than technological brilliance, according to some technologists.

"Bill will be remembered more for his wealth than for his genius behind the PC revolution,"said Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California.

En dat laatste is zeker waar. Meer dan andermans werk jatten doen ze daar bij Mikroschoft niet. Het enige wat niet direct gejat lijkt te zijn is het briljante idee van de windoos taakbalk, zonder dat ding is windoos compleet onbedienbaar (ga maar eens achter een Mac zitten, die heeft er geen). Zelfs de Linux window managers hebben nu gekloonde windoos taakbalken...

The Register heeft nog wat info over de Windows Refund Day:

With the rise of the open source movement, an increasing number of users find they don't use the copy of Windows that invariably comes with their new PC, unless they have purchased it from a specialist OEM. It's understandable that they feel peeved at having to pay what is known as the Microsoft tax, so any possibility of getting a refund from the OEM is likely to be of interest.

The upshot is that 15 February has been decreed as Microsoft Windows Refund Day. The current movement started when after heroic efforts, Australian Geoffrey Bennett obtained an Australian $110 refund from OEM Toshiba. (Linux user wins refund)

Microsoft is of course playing it very cooly, with spin doctor Adam Sohn claiming that there is "no provision in any of our contracts telling OEMs they can't ship something else" or, he says, a naked machine without an operating system. It's strange that you can't therefore buy one from a convenient local source.

De rest staat hier.

The Register heeft een niuewsartikel over de ontwikkeling van Intel's Merced. Geruchten gaan dat de Merced dood is, maar Intel ontkend dit:

Intel has confirmed it is still on schedule to ship Merced in the year 2000 with production samples going to its customers in June.

That follows claims from an Alpha developer on the comp.archnews forum that the Merced platform is dead.

According to the engineer, IA-64 has a number of features which will be very hard to implement. Predication, he says, is very complex with multiple outstanding loads which depend on the memory consistency model being used.

Bits to designate independence of operations will bloat the I stream by at least 25 per cent.

"Even the stuff that Intel has talked about aren't really simple to implement with any great performance. It appears Merced is dead. It rests on HP's chip in 2001 or 2002 to see where things really are. Three more years, do you really want to wait?"

However, an Intel spokesperson said the Merced project was still firm. Rumours of its demise are untrue. It is undead.

3DGaming.net heeft een review gepost van Brood War, een expansion disk voor Starcraft:

In the case of many expansion packs, a company usually just contracts a third party to develop it, or they slap a bunch of maps together with no real story and maybe throw in some generic new units that appear to have been made with a unit editor they downloaded off of the 'net. However, I'm glad to say this isn't the case with Starcraft: Brood War. In addition to 29 missions played out through three entirely new campaigns, Blizzard also blessed us with about 100 new multiplayer maps, as well as 7 new units.

Andy van BXBoards (erg koele site) heeft een de data uit z'n Celeron oc survey tot bruikbaar materiaal verwerkt. Erg interessante info over de overklokbaarheid van de C300A (week 52,47 en 40) en de C366. Opvallend is dat geen enkele C366 de 550Mhz haalde .
Andy's conclusie:

These results are pretty interesting IMHO but certainly not totally conclusive. What is does show, is that without doubt the boxed Celeron 300a is the way to go for 450Mhz. These are now scare, and prices are rising from around $69 before Christmas to $89 or higher if you can find them know. If you still hanker for 450Mhz then the 300a is still the way to go right now.

One thing I'd like to nail now - people are still blaming either their SDRAM or cooling for a failure to overclock, especially at 504Mhz. I see a lot of "CPU won't POST - guess I need more cooling". I'll say again, then if it won't POST its not heat. NOT NOT NOT!!. These things take time to warm up. Typical symptoms of overheating include spontaneous reboots, freezes and random explorer.exe errors in Windows. Secondly, I see a lot of "not stable at 504 - guess I need some (very expensive RAM)". Three words - Save your cash!! Any SDRAM should do 112Mhz bus speed (even PC66 is pretty happy at 112Mhz) , just fine. If in doubt set it to CAS3 in the BIOS. If you still get problems then blame your CPU. Please don't spend a fortune on costly RAM..!

Ga voor de resultaten van de survery ff hier kijken...

AMD heeft z'n roadmap geupdate. Leuk grafiekje, maar weinig nieuwe info.

Voodoo Extreme heeft wat info van 3Dfx over de V3 - 4000. Volgens Sharky (in z'n V3 artikel) zou deze een PIII met Camino chipset vereisen, maar daar is volgens 3Dfx geen sprake van:

'Yes, Alex took our strong Intel partnering a bit too far.  Voodoo 3 4000 will certainly be timed and executed with Intel's upcoming AGP4x chipset and next-gen CPUs but it by NO means requires it.  In fact, we've designed the entire Voodoo 3 product family to scale very, very well even on Celeron and the entire range of AMD processors.  AGP is so closely associated with the latest from Intel that the message of support for AMD and lower end Intel CPUs sometimes get lost.   But the hearts and minds of those gamers don't get lost with us.

No fear, all Voodoo 3 products scale very well on all technologies from Intel and AMD.

Brian P. Bruning

3Dfx Interactive Developer Relations Manager

Loki Entertainment, in conjunction with Activision, have announced that they will port Civilization: Call To Power over to Linux. Every aspect of Loki's Linux port will be identical to the Windows version, including the tools, options, graphics and user interface. Activision plans on shipping the Windows version this Spring and the Linux one sometime later.

3Dfx Interactive released their fourth quarter earnings for 1998. Revenues were up to $60,743,000 this quarter, almost a $38 million increase from the same quarter in 1997. 3Dfx recorded a net income of $2,091,000 as compared to a net income of $2,072,000 in Q4 97. The dramatic difference however, was the manner in which 3Dfx closed off 1998: a net gain of $21,703,000 for 1998 as compared to a net loss of $1,714,000 in 1997.

3Dfx may have a tough Q1 99 as Voodoo 2 and Banshee sales start to significantly slow down, however the impending release of the Voodoo 3 line of video cards as well as their new partnership with STB should yield a profitable Q2 99.

Pentium 3 verbannen ....

An interesting development in the Pentium III ID code scheme puts Intel on the defensive and threatens the very shipment of Intel's new flagship CPU. This News.com article reports that an Arizona legislator is introducing a bill to stop the Pentium III from being sold in his state. Check it out:

An Arizona state legislator next week will introduce a bill that seeks to ban the sale or manufacture of Pentium III processors in the state because of concerns that the serial number scheme being introduced with the chip will open up Web users to invasions of privacy.

A seemingly strong reaction to Intel's plan, but I personally think that this should send a strong message to companies that would seek to implement such features in hardware or even software: back off. You can bet Microsoft is watching with great interest with a myriad of "features" ready to add to their suite of products to better keep an eye on us if Intel were able to pull it off...

hier de bron

Ook AGN 3D heeft een review gepost van Abit's nieuwe wonderplank. Een stukkie over de overklokbaarheid van de Bx6-2.0:

he overclockability of Intel’s Celeron 300A is the reason that Abit’s BH6 rose to a level of popularity that has driven existing stock of the board into extinction. Everyone knows that the BH6 is reliable, so the biggest question everyone will be asking is – does the BX6 v2.0 offer us anything new? Of course the answer is yes, after all it would purposeless to release a new motherboard without any new features.

To start with the BX6 2 includes enough multipliers to get you lost when you are flipping through them with your arrow key in the bios. From a lowly level of 2X, the board goes in increments of .5 all of the way up to 8.0. With a little bit of math in your head, you can see that this board will support up to a 800MHz P3 if it is running on a 100MHz FSB. As we already know, multipliers are not going to help us out at all with overclocking. It is that FSB adjustment that squeezes the extra speed out of our Celeron or Pentium 2 processors.

You will obviously not be disappointed with the bus speed settings, giving you enough options to get your overclocking jollies 10 times over. The familiar 66MHz fsb is there, but it also goes much higher, all of the way to 153MHz. Ok so I admit that you will not be using that 153MHz bus any time soon, but it is nice to have it there.