AMD Zone heeft info over de AMD roadmap en fabricage methodes:

- K7 from tier one OEM, in boxes, in July
- K62 mobile, in IBM thinkpad
- K62 mobile for business market from NEC, Toshiba and Compaq
- K62 for desktop business from Compaq in Germany
- 39% retail mobile market, doubling from 7 months ago
- very strong demand for K6-III, hundreds of thoudands should be shipped this quarter
- no $100 ASP without K7, the goal is $10000/wafer, achievable if mix is right.
- no 0.18 K62 in 1999
- all 0.18 by early 2000
- Dresden will be copper, 0.18 from the start, Q1 2000
- K7 should bring the last big OEM (Dell) to the ranks

Corel zal in augustus de eerste beta versie van z'n gebruiksvriendelijke Linux versie releasen:

Corel will release a beta of its forthcoming Linux software by August 10, a step that will jump start the company's challenge to Microsoft's desktop dominance, CEO Michael Cowpland said at Corel's annual shareholders meeting yesterday.

Linux, running on ultracheap computers and modified by Corel to be more user friendly, will help Corel compete with Microsoft, Cowpland said. Corel is also working on Linux versions of its office suite.

Meer info (o.a. over nieuwe versies van de Redhat, TurboLinux en Caldera distributies) vind je in dit artikel op News.com.

Neoplanet, bekend van z'n Internet Exploiter mod, heeft een op de Netscape Gecko engine gebaseerde browser in ontwikkeling. De info van News.com:

Customizable browser maker NeoPlanet tomorrow will demonstrate consumer-focused software built around Mozilla's "Gecko" rendering engine.

While only a technology preview, it will be downloadable from the NeoPlanet Web site. And the shipping version, due in May, will beat AOL's own version of Communicator, which is due in beta by July and in a final version by year's end.

[...]Not only will NeoPlanet release a product based on Mozilla's code, but it will assign four full-time employees to work on the open source project. Its first contribution will be an ActiveX wrapper for Mozilla, which will enable the browser to run ActiveX controls.

Ace's Hardware heeft een review gepost van de x86 versie van Solaris 7, die voor non-commercieel gebruik net zoals Linux en FreeBSD gratis verkrijgbaar is. Hier wat algemene info over Solaris:

Solaris 7 is actually a package, containing the operating system, graphical windowing environments, and tools. SunOS is the actual core operating system, on which the included windowing environments, CDE/Motif and OpenLook, sit. This is often considered to be a big advantage over other, less complete distributions like some Linux distributions and the various BSD ports. It's nice to have a fully configured system right out of the box, as you have with Solaris. Other UNIX operating systems, like FreeBSD, don't provide this level of out-of-box integration (in fact, none of the other operating systems reviewed do). Of course, if you don't desire this functionality, it's not really an advantage.

JC heeft spectaculaire info over de super geheimzinnig Transmeta chip. De belangrijkste punten:

- Linus Torvalds, famous OS designer and sworn enemy of William Gates III, is on the team (yup, we have that confirmed)

- The design requires 16MB of special memory and a special flash chip

- This is a software upgradable CPU, really the first of its kind (though Intel's current chip can be, I'm told, modified in microcode to some small degree). One of the possible benefits of this are as such: The Transmeta chip does not at start support 3DNow! or SSE instructions, but might be upgraded later to these. - The 500MHz Transmeta chip isn't as fast as comparative Intel and AMD 500MHz chips (which may be in part because it's not a native x86 chip but instead using translation or emulation of a sort), and its 3D performance is apparently subpar.

Zie JC's News'n'Links page voor meer info.

Sharky Extreme heeft een interview gepost met een mannetje van Creative. Er zit behoorlijk goede info tussen, o.a. over de clock speeds van de TNT2:

In the high-end product segment, where performance is a premium, we design our boards for speed first and cost second. We want to provide headroom for end users that like to fiddle with the clock, although we don't encourage overclocking. So our high-end boards are designed with plenty of margin for overclocking. That is an engineering decision. So if the memory clock of the chip were warranted to 183MHz, we would lay the board out for much faster operation. These kinds of layouts tend to cost more (including fans), but some customers will pay for this added benefit.

The second issue is qualification of components. A high-end board may be designed for 230MHz operation, but in selecting memory then you may have to set a standard operating frequency of less than 230 MHz because of variations in the memory supply. Every component, the board, the chip, the memory has process variation. So memory spec'ed for 183MHz may vary in speeds from say 183 to 195, for example. Moreover, the memory may vary from vendor to vendor and from lot to lot. That means memory from company X MAY, on average, run faster than memory from company Y, more importantly, one lot or batch of memory from company X may vary from another batch of memory from company X. The reason why the memory vendor provides a spec is to ASSURE that 100% of the product operates at the stated frequency. Some percentage will ALWAYS run faster, but which parts will run faster and how much faster is a Lottery. When a vendor finds a good portion of the parts running faster, they create a new speed bin.

Erg goede soep en rechtstreek van de fabrikant zelf. Als je geïnteresseerd bent in de TNT2 zou ik het absoluut ff doorlezen. Uit het interview blijkt trouwens ook duidelijk dat Creative absoluut niets meer moet hebben van 3Dfx.

PC Sports Games heeft een review van de Gravis XTerminator geupt. Hier een stuk over de performance van deze gamepad:

I have nothing but praise for the performance of the Xterminator. The gamepad performed extremely well in every game on which it was tested. It is at its best in sports games, such as FIFA 99 and NHL 99, which require a variety of button combinations. The comfortable design and efficient layout allow the most complicated maneuvers to be performed with relative ease. Of all the hours I spent on the Xterminator, I experienced very little hand strain from even the most intense gaming sessions. This, in my opinion, speaks volumes about the brilliance in the overall design and performance of the product. The only area in which I found the Xterminator’s performance to be less than ideal was in racing games.

Intel zal op 26 april een 466MHz versie van de Celeron op de markt brengen. Tegelijkertijd wordt de Intel 810 chipset gereleased. Hier een stuk van The Register:

The 810 rather mysteriously supports both 66MHz and 100MHz front side bus speeds – Celeron isn’t due to move on up to 100MHz FSB until early 2000 and there’s still a 100MHz/66MHz FSB Celeron due out later in the year.

[..]The 466MHz part will be priced around $170 in 1,000 unit quantities, the lesser Celerons having their price tags chopped in readiness earlier this week.

Volgens Intel ondersteund de 810 chipset geen PII processors. Toch Wazig waar die 100MHz setting dan voor is...

AMD heeft vandaag bekend gemaakt dat het een zwaar verlies van 128 miljoen dollar heeft geleden in het eerste kwartaal van dit jaar. De reactie van Jerry Sanders, CEO van AMD:

"The best thing that can be said about the first quarter is that it's over."

Zie dit artikel van The Register voor meer info.

Volgens info op The Register kunnen we in juli de eerste systemen met K7 processor verwachten. Uiteraard gaan de eerste processors naar de grote OEMs (Compaq enzo), wij arme Tweakers komen pas (veel) later aan de beurt ...

Van The Register:

According to the post, Sanders said a tier one OEM will ship a K7 box in July. At the same time, AMD's K62 mobile chip will appear in an IBM StinkPad and in machines from Compaq, Toshiba and NEC.

According to the report, the K7 will drag in Dell to support AMD processors, while Dresden will ship .18 micron technology in Q1 of next year using copper technology.

Firingsquad heeft een review gepost van de nieuwe 500MHz Pentium III Xeon processor. Zoals de bekend draait de L2 cache van Xeon op volle CPU snelheid, dit in tegenstelling tot de normale PII/PIII (halve snelheid). Da's leuk voor servers enzo. Nieuw zijn de SIMD instructies, die niet alleen handig kunnen zijn bij 3D gaming maar ook CAD, 3D modelling etc.

Hier een plak over de benchmarks, waarbij de PIII Xeon 500 vergeleken werd met de PIII-500 en PII-450:

First of all, it's very apparent that the lack of architectural difference between any of the three processors makes for similar scores across the board. The P2-450 picks up the rear due to its lower clock speed, and the P3-500 can keep pace, but may be hindered by its half-speed cache.

The ZD Benchmarks are mostly tuned towards business applications, and may not take full advantage of the "enterprise" feature set of the Xeon CPUs. The High-End Winstone tests feature more rigorous scientific applications, as do the Dual-Processor Inspection tests. Here, you can see that the dual Xeon configurations showed a marked improvement over single-processor systems.

Avault heeft een artikel gepost over de Unreal 224 upgrade patch, die binnen enkele dagen gereleased zal worden en een aantal vette enhancements heeft:

According to Epic vice president Mark Rein, the upcoming version 224 patch will include significant enhancements that anticipate technologies being implemented in the next title in the series, Unreal Tournament. Among these are an in-game server browser that enables users to select game servers via a windows-style graphical user interface without leaving the game environment; the browser pops up over the game in progress. An updated version of GameSpy Lite, the popular game server browser, will also be included with the patch.

Another major enhancement to be included in 224 is continuous level of detail, which varies polygon counts on objects such as player characters and power-ups relative to their distance from the camera, or player's perspective. In Unreal Tournament, this will enable the engine to place more characters and objects on the screen and still maintain a consistent and fluid framerate. Rein said this is an important feature not just for Unreal and Unreal Tournament but also for engine licensees since it also opens the engine to new game types, such as real-time strategy titles, that were not previously obvious choices for the engine.

iXBT Hardware heeft een vette EIDE harddisk comparison gepost met o.a. de Fireball CR, de nieuwe 7200rpm Western Digital (=IBM) schijven, een Fujitsu schijf en de IBM 5400 en 7200rpm DTTA modellen. Er zitten een paar super handige benchmarks bij. Hier wat info:

Well, life is in full swing. New Quantum and WD models have now a much higher data density. Quantum Fireball CR family is a bit better than WD Caviar from all points, and both of them are significantly cooler than IBM Deskstar 16GP. Besides, WD Caviar proved to be less reliable compared to all the rest. All the listed above new models characteristics show that 5400rpm rotation speed is still worth our attention. On the other hand, those who have IBM Deskstar 14GP (Titan) harddisks have no causes for concern: this family is still remaining among the leading ones. But as for Fujitsu MPC30xxAH, now it fits only those who are fond of extravagancy and originality. However, we would like to mention that we haven't yet tested WD Expert, a new Maxtor family, Quantum Fireball CX, and some other HDDs. In other words, there is still no end of work.

Onze vriend Gates vindt dat er geen toekomst zit in Linux en andere gratis Open Source zachtwaar. In werkelijkheid probeert-ie te zeggen dat-ie in z'n broek scheit van angst voor de snelle en oncontroleerbare ontwikkelingen op het Open Source terrein. De reactie van The Register:

Of course it takes Bill to argue that Windows is a single product (we think we counted 14 existing and projected variants recently), and Microsoft's own internal documentation (Halloween) is ample evidence that the company is impressed by the speed of Linux development, testing and debugging. That very documentation admits Microsoft can't keep up with Linux development. What Gates is really saying is that he reckons the historical Microsoft strategy of building ever more complicated and intertwined software will continue to succeed. In the past this has had the effect of pricing rival software developers out of the market, and this process has been aided and abetted by Microsoft's ability to use control of the platform to change the rules -- thus undermining rival development efforts some more. But Microsoft now faces an operation that isn't damaged by Microsoft current control of the platform, whose development economics are not dependent on making as much money as Microsoft, and which is beginning to provide a serious challenge to the keystone of the whole lot -- Microsoft control of the platform.

Riva128.com heeft, in navolging van HardOCP gisteren, info over het overklokken van de Leadtek S320 TNT2 kaart. De standaard core snelheid van 150MHz kregen ze zonder problemen op 175MHz. Klinkt goed:

Testing has been fast and furious so far with the pre-production TNT2 from LeadTek. The default settings for the S320 II-32 with SGRAM were 150MHz for the core and 160MHz for the memory. The memory is 6ns SEC (Samsung) SGRAM which seems to be maxed at the 160MHz. I can't wait for some of the 5ns memory to show up!!!

As far as the core goes...I happened upon an alpha version of Entech's Power Strip which allowed for the adjustment of both the core and the memory on the TNT2's. As I mentioned above, the memory was pretty much capped at 160MHz....but the core was a different story. I was able to take the core up to 175MHz easily without any failures. At 175MHz, you have the so called 'Ultra' TNT2 power with the exception of the slower memory. With the core higher I was able to pull a few extra frames per seconds on CPU restrictive maps like 3Fingers Massive1 demo in Quake 2. A few frames per seconds in this demo means a lot to hard core Quakers.

IGN.PC heeft 6 filmpjes van Mortyr, de Wolfenstein 'kloon' waar je weer ouderwets gezellig nazi's mag omleggen. Check deze page voor info & movies:

The levels that we were able to take a look at in the alpha build all take place within the 1944 time frame, but covered a lot of different types of buildings and landscapes. So far the team has built the outer Citadel, the Middle Castle and the High Castle as well as the V2 factory, the Train Station, the U-boat bunker, the Cathedral, and the Cemetery. We were also able to walk through a future level called "The Lost Channels," but the correct enemies were not yet in place. The 1944 levels seem fairly well designed (it'll be hard to get any sort of gauge before the designers begin their level balancing) and we had a pretty good time laying waste to everything we could see with the game's old-fashioned equipment.

3Com heeft aangekondigd --onder druk van klanten-- support voor Linux te gaan geven, dus Linuxdrivers voor hun netwerkkaarten e.d. mee te gaan leveren. Dat is natuurlijk erg belanggrijk als Linux wil doorbreken als serieus serverOS.

3com will bow to user demands, and officially begin supporting linux after surveying delagates at a 3com User Group Conference and learningthat over 50% of them were planning to use Linux.

Bij Tweak3D vond ik een goeie guide om de performance van je modem wat op te krikken. Naast de gebruikelijke tips over het aanpassen van MTUsize e.d. ook tips voor het runnen in "shotgun mode", voor dubbele performance.

Open Dial Up Networking (from My Computer) and make sure your dial in account is set to use Shotgun. Try connecting to your ISP now. After connecting with the first line, double click the Shotgun icon in your System Tray (bottom right corner of screen) and choose Add Line. Connect a second time with your other modem and try it out. If it works and things are faster, jump on the couch fourteen times while screaming 'tweak monkey' backwards (yeknom kaewt).

Plaats er dan wel ff een .wavje van. :)

Bij AGN Hardware kan je een review bekijken over een 21" monitor van Sony.

The GDM 500-PS is Sony's offering to the 21" market.  The monitor has a Trinitron CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) and produces a great image.  With a 19.8" viewable image size this unit was a tad bit smaller than the other models we looked at.  The GDM 500-PS features a .26 dot pitch average (The GDM 500-PS vas a variable dot pitch of .25-.27) and a maximum refresh rate of 160Hz. Size wise, the Sony is a bit smaller than the Optiquest and sits impressively on the desktop.  All 21" monitors seem big at first, and the Sony is no exception at 19.6" x 19.9" x 18.7".  The unit is a little on the heavy side: 68.3Lbs.

Jamie Zawinksi, oprichter van Mozilla.org, heeft ontslag genomen omdat hij er niet meer in gelooft. Dat betekent een serieuze slag voor dit project, dat toch al een beetje moeizaam verliep sinds Netscape werd overgenomen door AOL. Een paar losse quotes uit zijn klaagzang:

I won't re-hash the history of the creation of the mozilla.org project, but suffice it to say that, coming as it did only two weeks after the layoffs, it was a beacon of hope to me. Here was Netscape doing something daring again: here was the company making the kind of change in strategy that I never thought they'd be able to make again. An act of desperation? Perhaps, but still a very interesting and unexpected one. It was so crazy, it just might work. I took my cue and ran with it, registering the domain that night, designing the structure of the organization, writing the first version of the web site, and, along with my co-conspirators, explaining to room after room of Netscape employees and managers how free software worked, and what we had to do to make it work.

But that didn't happen. For whatever reason, the project was not adopted by the outside. It remained a Netscape project. Now, this was still a positive change -- it meant that Netscape was developing this project out in the open, in full view of the world, and the world was giving important and effective feedback. Netscape made better decisions as a result.

Perhaps my goals were unreasonable; perhaps it should have been obvious to me when we set out on this project that it would take much longer than a year to reach these goals, if we ever did. But, it wasn't obvious to me then, or now. These are the goals I was aiming for, and they have not yet been met.

And so I'm giving up.

Dus Microschoft heeft de browserwar definitief gewonnen?