Oké ATI maakt bagger-kaarten maar ze optimaliseren (?) hun Rage-kaarten wel voor MPEG-2 in combinatie met de Pentium III

The RAGE 128 accelerator chip, in conjunction with the RAGE Theater™ video encode/decode I/O chip, will capture and compress videos in high quality MPEG-2 format in real-time, eliminating the need for expensive encoder boards.

National Semiconductor, het moederbedrijf van Cyrix, heeft bekend gemaakt dat het een licentie heeft genomen op de Rambus Direct DRAM memory interface met de bedoeling dit toe te passen in z'n toekomstige chippies:

Cyrix executive VP Jean-Louis Bories said the decision to license Rambus memory technology was prompted by the bandwidth requirements of the company's high-speed x86-compatible CPUs.

"As our integrated processors approach speeds of 1GHz, high memory bandwidth and low latency become ever more critical to achieving the optimum balance of performance and cost," he said.

The technology will be added to Cyrix's forthcoming 600MHz-and-up M3 chip based on the Jalapeno x86 core, the speed of which is known to be highly dependent on memory performance because its design increases processing speed by handling instructions in sequence rather than running them in parallel.

The Register heeft meer info

Connectix is van plan z'n Macintosh Playstation emulator ook geschikt te maken voor de PC:

Connectix president Roy McDonald yesterday confirmed the company is developing a Windows version of its controversial Mac-based PlayStation emulator, Virtual GameStation (VGS).

Ever since VGS was launch back at the beginning of January, there has been much speculation that Connectix would follow up its Mac release with a Windows version.

However, until now the company has refused to say that a Wintel release was in the pipeline, probably as much out of fear of further antagonising Sony, which is currently preparing a lawsuit against it, as for commercial reasons.

That will put VGS up against Bleem, a little-known commercial Windows PlayStation emulator currently in development.

Meer info vind je in dit artikel van The Register.

Azus heeft een nieuwe BIOS in elkaar gedraaid voor z'n P2B moederplankje. Hier de info de Asus BIOS pagina:

P2B without LM75/78 BIOS Ver. 1008. 02/12/1999

- Added Processor Serial Number item.

- Removed CPU L2 cache turbo mode item.

- Added new P6 processors recognition.

- Fix the system can't boot from 3Com 3C900-TPO LAN - card if no floppy drive attached.

- Fixed AGP/MDA support failure for AGP Onboard models.

- Show "Pentium III" for Intel Katmai processors.

- Fix for NT 5.0 installation failure for models with PIIX4 ID=7.

- Removed parallel port 3BCh/EPP combination.

- Removed "disabled" option in ECP DMA item when ECP selected

- Fix for Accel Galaxy52 boot failure.

- Fix boot virus false alarm for PCI-L101 lan card.

De zip file kun je hier pakken.

OptimumPC heeft een review van de Asus V3200 Banshee videokaart op z'n site geparkeerd. Over de Banshee valt weinig nieuws meer te vertellen. Heeft Asus er nog iets speciaals van weten te bakken?

The board itself looks basic though. No extra input or output ports except for the required VGA port. The only thing extra is the heatsink/fan combo on top of the Banshee chip. I noticed that the fan was also thicker than the one used in the V3400 board so I got a little excited thinking to myself.."this card should overclock better than the V3400 since it's got a fatter fan on". Well, we'll get to the second half of that story later. Anyhow the heatsink and fan is mounted the same way as the V3400, spring loaded and easily removable if you prefer your own parts.

Hardware Central heeft een review van de AOpen AX63 moederplank in elkaar gepleurd. Het ding maakt voor de verandering geen gebruik van Intel's BX chipset, maar van de VIA Apollo Pro. Van AOpen mag je verwachten dat het met de kwaliteit goed zit, maar hoe is de performance van de Via chipset tov de Intel 440BX?

Performance was also not up to par. The Apollo Pro Plus chipset has slower AGP rates than BX based boards. Optimized AGP drivers for the VIA chipset could possibly improve this some.

[...blablalbla...] As you can see by the charts, the AX63 is slower than the Intel BX board. The difference shows up mainly in the 300A scores. This is most likely due to the TNT card becoming the bottleneck.

De Super Seven Hardware Guide heeft de Shuttle HOT-597 (socket seven) moederplank onder handen genomen. Hier krijg je wat info over deze plank:

he Hot-597 offers a wide external clock frequency range as 66/68/75/83/95/100/112 and 124MHz settings and clock multipliers from 2.0 to 5.5 are all available, and the core voltage jumper block give excellent control over allocated CPU voltages as it can be set to auto detect the CPU voltage or set manually from 1.8 up to 3.5v in 0.1v increments fully documented save only the setting of 2.4 & 2.7v. Based as it is on VIA's MVP3 core logic, the Hot-597's three DIMM slots can support up to 768MB of EDO or up to 384MB of PC100 or standard SDRAM. The chipset also support the 2 Ultra DMA/33 dual-channel IDE bus master ports and 2 16550 Fast UART compatible serial ports, 1 Parallel port, supports SPP, ECP, and EPP mode, 2 Rev. 1.0 USB ports, PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse connectors and an IrDA connector, as well as the FDD connector. Shuttle's smart and effective use of the Winbond 83781D allows for it's own System Manager applet to monitor a great deal of your hardware, including up the 3 fans, and CPU and system temperature monitoring.

Meer stuff vind je in de review van Super7.net.

Tweak3D heeft z'n TNT Tweak Guide geupdate. Het ding heeft errug handige tips om je TNT tot hogere framerates te forceren. Er zit o.a. wat nieuwe (non-TNT related) info bij over het SoftFSB proggie:

I first got a taste of SoftFSB a very short time ago when I received an e-mail from a totally psyched user. The program is amazing. It allows you to adjust your FSB frequency to any supported speed on-the-fly from Windows. This means you could run a Celeron 300A @ 66 MHz x 4.5 before turning on your computer, but simply open the program while in Windows and change the bus speed to 100 MHz (for example) to run your system at 450 MHz. Sound too good to be true? I thought so too.

Gamecenter heeft wat nieuws over een kort filmpje van Half-Life:

Cruise Control, a British marketing agency, announced today that on Monday, February 22, it would release over the Internet a five-minute action film based on the phenomenal first-person shooter Half-Life. Titled Half-Life: Uplink, the film was commissioned by the U.K. office of Havas Interactive (Sierra's new parent company) as a promotional vehicle for the game, but it apparently has nothing in common with the recently released demo of the same name--and it won't tell the story of the game's hero, Gordon Freeman.

Meer info vind je hier.

Ars Technica heeft een review van de 52(!) speed CDROM speler van Kenwood.

CD-ROM drives are getting ridiculously fast. I'm not just talking about transfer rates, but rotational speeds. The newer drives are tornadoes stuffed in a 5.25" drive bay that spin at 10,000 RPM or more, faster than nearly any hard drive. While the performance is better than ever, there are some problems with this approach.

The first is potential noise and vibration problems caused by all that motion. Some drives are better than others about this, but generally, if you have any rattles hiding in your case, a fast CD-ROM will expose them quickly. Even without a rattling case, spin-up can sound like a muted jet engine, and unbalanced discs can sound like they're going to exit through the side of your PC.

Een nieuwe technologie genaamd TrueX zou deze drive supersnel en superstil moeten maken.

The Techs heeft een artikel geplaats waarin de PIII en de K6-III worden vergeleken.

As usual, Intel and AMD are releasing new processors within a very short period of time of each other. Just as the K6 and the Pentium MMX, and the K6-2 and the Pentium II, it looks as though these two new chips will be nearly equal competitors in most areas.

Anand heeft een review van een nieuw Abit moederplankje, de ZM6, gefabriceerd. Dit is een Socket-370 moederbord gebaseerd op de Intel ZX chipset.

So with the ABIT BM6, you were essentially spending $100 on a motherboard whose features were about as useful to you as a heatsink on your BIOS chip. ABIT's solution? A scaled down, albeit not crippled, version of the BM6 based on Intel's "scaled down" version of the BX chipset, the 440ZX. Rightfully dubbed, the ZM6, ABIT is back with a motherboard that looks virtually identical to the BM6 on the outside, but marches to the beat of a different drummer on the inside with the 440ZX chipset powering the board; and above all, the ZM6 offers you just about everything the BM6 did, with one desired absence, the higher cost of a board whose potential you'll never tap.

Hiero vindt je meer.

Op Maximum PC staat dit interessante verhaaltje over een nieuwe techniek die CPU's weer wat sneller kan maken.

The SOI process involves adding layers of silicon and silicon oxide to the processor to prevent crossed signals and dispel the heat that builds up within the tight confines of today’s microprocessors. Preliminary tests indicate a 20% performance boost is possible with the SOI technology.

Hier lees je meer over deze uitvinding.

Volgens Sharky Extreme komt de PIII er al gelijk op 550MHz.

While at Intel's Pentium III launch party in San Jose, Intel told Sharky Extreme that a 550MHz variant of their Pentium III and Pentium III Xeon would also officially ship on February 26th. Previously, Intel was only planning on shipping the 450MHz and 500MHz variants in February.

Dit is weer een gevolg van de race tussen Intel en AMD. AMD komt voor het einde van de maand met de K6-III.