De deathmatch demo van Daikatana dat zolang op zich heeft laten wachten is nu eindelijk uit!

Nadeel is alleen wel dat je deze demo alleen via MPlayer over internet kan spelen, je videokaart wel OpenGL moet ondersteunen en je over een redelijke internet aansluiting moet beschikken omdat de demo 34,5 MB is.

Verder is deze demo natuurlijk meer dan de moeite waard om uit te proberen.

Klik hier voor meer info over de demo, of op één van de volgende links om het spel meteen te downloaden:

Eidos FTP Site
MPlayer WWW
MPlayer FTP

Bij Sharky Extreme hebben ze een review van de nieuwe en waarschijnlijk zeer toffe TNT2 chipset. Hieronder alvast wat info uit het het artikel:

The TNT2 has been 1998/9's most closely guarded secret in the industry, it's had absolutely zero press coverage, no press hype and not even a whiff of a press release. In fact, you'd have had more chance of finding out about the location of the Queen's (Elizabeth II) crown jewels than scooping any info on nVIDIA's next-generation chipset. Despite this press blackout, there were a few claims and leaks that went out unfounded. As a result the general consensus throughout the industry was that the TNT2 was going to be nothing more than a solid 2D/3D card, which wouldn't touch the frame rates of the 3Dfx's Voodoo3. The hard truth is this: utter codswallop. The TNT2 is an immense improvement over its predecessor the TNT. nVIDIA has quietly and secretly delivered the most complete 2D/3D chipset to date- bar NONE. How do we know?

Tom is er weer eens als de eerste bij met een exclusieve review van de TNT2. NVIDIA rocks the Boat with TNT2!

So what has Nvidia done? TNT2 is indeed the brother of TNT, shrunk down to .25 micron, but several other enhancements put TNT2 significantly apart from TNT. First of all, the rendering pipelines were improved, making the TNT2 some 10 - 17% faster than TNT at the same clock speed as shown in the graph below. The next difference is of course TNT2's ability to run at much higher clock speeds than TNT could, 175 MHz is so far the highest that I have seen, which is almost double the 90 MHz default clock speed of TNT. TNT2 supports AGP 4x, but that's not too important right now since Intel's Camino chipset with AGP 4x-support won't be out until mid 1999. TNT2 comes with a 300 MHz RAMDAC, offering resolutions of up to 2048x1536 at 60 Hz, it can display 1920x1200 at 32 bit color with a 85 Hz refresh rate. The frame buffer size of TNT2 will be 32 MB, double the amount of TNT or Voodoo3 and TNT2 will also have a digital flat panel interface. Those features make TNT2 a much more interesting product than I would have thought a few months ago and a much scarier product for 3Dfx than they would have anticipated.

175MHz, da's lekker :) Het maakt 'm bovendien sneller dan de V3-3500! Ga snel verder kijken bij Tom's Hardware Guide.

AMD gaat de productie van z'n flash chips uitbesteden aan Fujitsu, waardoor er meer capacitiet beschikbaar komt voor de productie van CPU's. Hier wat nieuws van The Register:

Robert Stead, European marketing director of AMD, acknowledged this morning that producing enough chips to meet demand was the company's main problem.

The fab in Dresden will only produce K7s, he said. But now it is to use Fujitsu, its long-time Flash partner in Europe.

Semiconductor Business News zegt dat de eerste PC133 SDRAM reepjes in juni geïntroduceerd zullen worden:

The June launch of single-data-rate PC133 SDRAMs and interfacing chip sets sets up a head-to-head confrontation with high-speed Direct Rambus DRAMs, whose debut has slipped to the end of the third quarter. The PC133 offers a faster interim memory chip, threatening to further push back the market ramp for Direct RDRAM, which is also expected to debut with at a higher price. The single-data-rate PC133 can also be upgraded easily to an even faster double-data-rate version, expected to come on the market about the same time as Direct RDRAM.

Bij The Register hebben ze een arikeltje over een vermoedelijke opsplising van Microsoft in 4 stukken. Het nieuws zal volgens hun waarschijnlijk volgende week bekend worden.

Ze zeggen dat het betrouwbare bronnen zijn van wie ze de info hebben, dus we moeten maar even afwachten, maar hier is alvast de info:

Reports in today's Wall Street Journal Europe (WSJE), claim Microsoft is on the brink of splitting into four separate units. The announcement could come as early as next week, the newspaper claims. Although no sources were quoted in the report, the WSJE cited "people familiar with the situation" and claimed the new divisions would be centred around customer-facing lines rather than product portfolios. This report seems to reinforce calls from the Software and Information Industry Association (the artist formerly known as the Software Publishers Association) which produced a 40-page document calling for Microsoft to be subjected to a three or four-way split. ®

Warzone.com heeft de HP8100i cd-writer gereviewed. De drive kan writen op quad speed, rewriten op double speed en lezen op 24X speed en doet het op een standaard EIDE interface.

Well, this seems like a nice pattern that HP is setting. The HP 72000e was extremely reliable in writing CD’s and the same can be said for their latest drive. With about a month testing on various brands of CD’s and software, the HP passed every test with fast, flying colors. While there are 8X writers out there now, they’re still pretty pricey to consider purchasing. The HP 8100i is a great writer with the speed and reliability that will make authoring CD’s a breeze and headache free. The only thing lacking in this drive is that the rewrite speed isn’t at the same level as the write speed. HP has done it again and in producing a quality writer and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

De review lees je hier.

Hardware Central heeft een review gepost van de Shuttle HOT-649A dual PII moederplank. Best wel een toffe plaat: onboard SCSI, 4xDIMM, een hele zooi busspeeds (o.a. 115 en 120MHz) én de mogelijkheid om het voltage te tweaken, onafhankelijk per CPU slot!

A very nice feature of the HOT-649A is the ability to raise the voltage on each CPU slot separately. The problem is that it is done by jumpers on the board and not in the BIOS. Also, the maximum voltage is 10% above normal. For the current 2.0Volt chips this would be 2.2Volts. While this is enough for most chips, those doing aggressive overclocking may need more.

Als je op zoek bent naar een geschikt dual PII bord om bijv. een dual Celeron combo te bouwen moet je ff langsfietsen bij Hardware Central.

Socket370.com heeft een Celeron 300A PPGA overclocking artikel bij elkaar geklust. Er staat weinig bijzonder info in, maar wel wat over over het koelen van een PPGA Celeron:

For all testing I did run the system with the case removed, but I have tested it with the case on and it ran only three degress (fahrenheit) hotter. Other than that, the cooling was put to a minimal. Since Bart provided me with the 3DFXCool PHO-Fan (get yours for only $26.00 + $2.50 S/H) which is a great fan for cooling the Celeron, I used this for the main cooling. Other than that I have a The Card Cooler provided by Jacque Anderson from The Card Cooler and that is it. I have no internal fans at all, plus this is the smaller AT form factor case (required by the Discovery ZX).

Gamespot heeft een preview van Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance online gepleurd. Hier heb je wat info over het spel:

The game promises to be much more immersive than any previous X-Wing title. You'll really feel like you are in pitched battles with other events going on besides your own dogfights. Totally Games sometimes has nearly 100 craft onscreen at a time, making for some really intense furballs. The areas of space are also heavily populated with space stations, transports, and other craft. As in previous X-Wing games, you will have primary and secondary goals (completion of which could win you souvenirs from battle), but new to the series is the concept of hyperspacing between areas of conflict in a single mission. Now, you'll be able to hyperspace to a battle, complete one objective, be given a new one, then hyperspace back to your Mon Calamari cruiser for refueling and rearming, and finally go out again to another sector of space for one more battle. This isn't a series of missions, but one continuous mission where you must hyperspace between different areas of space.

Gamespot heeft meer spul, waaronder een partij screenshots.

WickedPC heeft een CPU Overclocking FAQ bij elkaar geknutseld. Hij's leuk voor beginnende overclockers. Hier een stuk over moederplanken:

Which Motherboard

For a Celeron I wholeheartedly and entirely recommend Abit’s line of products. If you choose to go the Slot 1 direction, grab their BH6 mainboard. And for the adventurous of the crowd, the ZM6 is the Socket 370 board of choice.

For you K6-2ers, my choice is the EpoX EP-MVP3G, for it’s stability and overclockability. More on these choices later.

Volgens Classy Glasses gaat Elsa binnenkort een paar H3D compatible 3D glasses introduceren:

It's official! The bomb is dropped! And I'm pretty sure yours truly is the first news site reporting about it! To tell you the essential bottom-line in one easy sentence:

As of March 1999, Elsa offers their own 3d glasses which are fully compatible to the H3D-standards!

These glasses are named the "Elsa 3D Revelator". We admit that we may have a little advantage because as this hot of the press, the press release is only available in German language by now. So I give you a few details out of that:

The 3D Revelator will be presented to the public during Cebit'99. The H3D-technology has been improved while keeping full compatibility; among other things, the shutters themselves are larger and the distance between them can be adjusted manually to accomodate every face & nose ; plus, the IR unit has been improved too.

Het ding gaat werken met Direct3D. Meer info vind je bij www.classyglasses.com en in de press release van Elsa.