Ars Technica heeft een review gepost van de Apple PowerMac G3-350. Je weet wel, die blauw/witte designbakken die in de feite super lelijk zijn. Ik werk inmiddels ongeveer 1,5 jaar noodgedwongen (soms) op Apples en dat heeft bij mij een enorme teringhekel ontwikkeld jegens de Mac, in het bijzonder MacOS (het extreem labiele, trage besturingssysteem en onhandige van de Mac). De hardware mag dan nog zo snel zijn, met zo'n waardeloos OS kun je er nog niets mee. Ars Technica heeft benchmarks die dat mooi aantonen.

De RC5 keyrate (client in de achtergrond, voorgrond idle):

G3 350: 1055 KKeys/sec
PII 450: 1171 KKeys/sec [break]Zo, de G3 laat zien dat het zeker geen slechte processor is. De PowerPC 750 is 15% sneller als de PII (nog altijd minder dan de 100% die Steve beloofd). Nu gaan we multitasken (client in de achtergrond, 1Gb file copy op de voorgrond):[/break] G3 350: 43 KKeys/sec
PII 450: 1122 KKeys/sec

Haha, dat bedoel ik. MacOS kan _niet_ multitasken. Ars Technica heeft ook nog wat Photoshop benchmarks waarbij de PII in de meeste tests de G3 ver voorbij gaat. Check 't zelf.

Volgens BitchX is Prey, de prestigeuze 3D Shoot'em up van 3DRealms (super vette graphics, portal technologie enz.) gecancelled!

No, I'm not dead... yet.... but Prey is... at least as far as GT is concerned. Sources say GT has pulled support from the product and 3DR has no one working on the project at this time.

Another (mild) surprise: despite recent pr spew that said otherwise, The GT booth will feature Duke4 front and center.

It should come as little surprise that GT is cutting the ropes on projects left and right.... and will no doubt crank the marketing into high gear for marque projects like Duke. No doubt the shotguns are fully cocked in Texas!

3DSoundsurge heeft (samen met een paar ventjes van 3D Audio Immersion, Thresh's Firingsquad en C|Net Gamecenter) een bezoek gebracht aan het Creative EMU Technology Center, waar waar de technologie achter de SBLive ontwikkeld werd. Hier een plak uit het artikel dat 3DSoundsurge over dit bezoek geschreven heeft:

So what about EAX?  Liveware brings the the version up to 2.0.  For starters, they have added a whole bunch of new EAX presets and made it much more tweakable for developers.  I am not going to get into the details of EAX settings in this trip summary as we are working on a Gamer's Guide to EAX 2.0 and 3.0 which will go through it feature by feature.   One of the new 'gimmicky' real time effects that was demonstrated using a microphone was changing a male voice to female and the opposite can also be done.  Pretty neat!. The Sound Blaster Live experience has been revised to show off all the new features of the Live including a greatly improved (but still not flashy) EAX demo which does and excellent job of showing off two of  the most important new features for EAX  from my gamer's perspective.

AGN 3D heeft info over Delta Force II. Hier heb je de press release:

Slated for a late fall 1999 release, ``Delta Force 2'' will introduce challenging new missions, exciting new gameplay features and NovaLogic's fully integrated Voice-Over-Net(TM) technology, which allows players to instantly talk to each other during intense combat. ``Delta Force 2'' will also debut the next generation of NovaLogic's proprietary Voxel Space® 3-D graphics engine which gives players smooth, crisp and amazingly detailed environments.

In ``Delta Force 2,'' players will serve again as members of Delta Force, the U.S. Army's elite Special Forces unit assigned to dangerous covert missions in hotspots around the world. ``Delta Force 2'' players will take on hostile enemies with lethal and devastating new weapons and equipment as they work their way through all-new missions and campaigns.

The company's proprietary Voice-Over-Net technology immerses gamers into ``Delta Force 2's'' virtual battlefield by allowing them to quickly and easily talk to their teammates to issue warnings or coordinate sneak attacks. Compatible with most sound cards and microphones, Voice-Over-Net requires little-to-no set-up time.

``Our goal is to take the fun, addictive elements from the first game to a whole new level in `Delta Force 2,''' said Lead Programmer Daniele Gaetano. ``With the addition of Voice-Over-Net technology in multiplayer games, players can actually talk to each other in real-time instead of waiting for typed messages. Those few seconds saved can mean the difference between life and death.''

The extraordinarily detailed 3-D environments and 32-bit color produced by the next generation of NovaLogic's Voxel Space engine results in smoother, seamless graphics allowing for wide-open vistas and terrain that can be used effectively for camouflaging maneuvers.

For example, ``Delta Force 2'' players can sneak past the enemy by crawling through the tall grass, or take cover behind a rugged, rocky hill as they prepare to shoot down their opponents.

FPS3D heeft een review gepost van de 3DfxCool CelRex koeler. De heatsink met twee ventilators ziet er vrij beschaaft uit. Hoe zijn de prestaties?

Previously, my computer would crash at an attempt to run at 500mhz. I tried case cooling, a dual fan, and more… The CelRex was the only one that would not only let me run at 500mhz, but also run it at a safe temperature. While the CelRex might seem like overkill, I know it as one of the best processor cooling solutions around. However, those who have already built in liquid/peltier cooling into their case, or have a few house fans latched on to their CPU, you can safely overlook this one, but for anyone who is just stepping into the overclocking scene, this big baby should be your guide.

Koud nieuws op AGN Hardware: AMD en Kryotech hebben een super gekoelde K7 gedemonstreerd op een kloksnelheid van 1GHz!:

At the AMD 1999 annual shareholders' meeting here today, KryoTech and AMD (NYSE: AMD - news) demonstrated the KryoTech Super-G(TM) computer running at 1 GHz (1,000 MHz or one billion cycles per second). The Super-G is based on a thermally-accelerated AMD-K7(TM) processor and KryoTech's newest cooling system. KryoTech expects to deliver the Super-G to customers at speeds up to and including 1 GHz.

``The Super-G is derived from two years of technical cooperation between KryoTech and AMD,'' said Al Quick, Chairman and CEO of KryoTech. ``Working together, we have produced the Super-G, a true next-generation computer system. With performance measured in gigahertz instead of megahertz, and state-of-the-art cooling integrated as a feature rather than an afterthought, the Super-G establishes a new standard for the rest of the industry to follow.''

``The AMD-K7 platform embodies the next-generation advancements and innovations in PC architecture and design,'' said Dana Krelle, vice president of AMD's computational products group. ``KryoTech's Super-G system based on the AMD-K7 processor demonstrates a new level of performance and speed for today's and tomorrow's applications.''

KryoTech, Inc., the leader of Cool Computing®, provides value-added thermal management solutions for the computer and semiconductor industries. KryoTech's award-winning products can be purchased on the Internet at http://www.kryotech.com or through the growing network of KryoTech Authorized Resellers. KryoTech was founded in 1996 by executives and engineers from NCR Corporation.

iXBT heeft de primeur met een review van de S3 Savage4 powered Diamond Stealth III S540. De Savage4 heeft maar 1 rendering pipeline en ondersteund dus geen multi-texturing, wat duidelijk naar voren komt in de Quake II benchmarks: de framerate van de Savage4 is bijna 2 maal zo laag als die van de TNT2 en Voodoo3. 2D performance blijft ook achter bij de TNT2, V3 en Rage128. 2D image quality blijkt ook matig te zijn:

Now let's consider the performance of this card in 2D-graphics. As far as the image quality is concerned, Diamond Stealth III S450 is lagging far behind compared to all the graphics cards we have tested recently. We would position it a bit behind Riva TNT because at 1280x1024 the picture appears oppressively washed out though RAMDAC frequency is 300MHz. However, it is quite possible that those of you who have a 15" or 17" monitor won't regard it as a serious drawback because the resolution equal to 1024x768 and up is simply not needed in this case. [break]3D beeldkwaliteit blijkt, dankzij S3 Texture Compression (een unieke feature van de Savage4), wel erg goed te zijn:[/break] Frankly speaking, we were expecting the graphics cards on Savage4 to appear pretty soon since their terrific image quality had been the talk of the town. Besides, not so long ago S3 made several announcements about extremely high performance of this chipset. As is known, Savage3D and Savage4 can operate with compressed textures, in other words they are compressing and decompressing them "on fly". This allows to get a very high quality image - even a photographic one, containing larger textures - without any tangible speed reduction. As a result the 3D-scene quality increases greatly from the point of its visual perception.

De review van iXBT is behoorlijk uitgebreid, met veel info, benchmarks en screenshots. Check it out.

The Sanctum heeft een review van de Leadtek Winfast S320 II TNT2 kaart op z'n site geparkeerd. Hier een stuk:

Leadtek's S320 II packs with plenty of features. One thing we appreciated from it was in the form of image quality. We tested games that included support for 3D 32bit coloring all the way to 8bit games and the quality was top notch. Most notable games with good performance in 32bit coloring were Kingpin, Half-Life and Quake2. These games looked highly tasty under 32bit coloring and although we took a performance hit, it wasn't huge. Overall the TNT2 powered S320 II brings 3D accelerated orgasms to your favorite games and does it with good speed and excellent image quality.

Firingsquad heeft een review gepost van de Supermicro TMR-006 socket370 riser card met dual celeron jumper:

That was then, and this is now. With the decreasing price of Celerons, and the public awareness how well these CPUs run, it seemed like a good idea to have the option to go dual-Celeron. However, the process of soldering stuff, even though it's on the slocket and not on the CPU itself, was still rather daunting. What was the solution?

Supermicro was kind enough to deliver 2 TMR-006s to us, and of course 2 slockets immediately gave rise to the thought "dual-Celeron!" These unique slockets are already modified for dual-Celeron operation. The modifications are incorporated into the original design the slocket, so you don't see any weird wires and resistors glued on the converter. Even with a trained eye these slockets look like any other slocket. We didn't bother squinting at the trace elements to see that they were connected to the proper pins. Thus, you get the dual-processing capability without the headache of having to solder stuff yourself!

De review heeft verder een aantal Winstone99, Quake II en Photoshop benchmarks waarin de performance van een dual Celeron en dual PII wordt vergeleken met single Celeron/PII configuraties.

NEC claimt dat het een fundamentele doorbraak heeft gedaan in het onderzoek naar quantum computers. Check deze info bij The Register:

According to NEC, the consortium has developed the fundamental building block for a future quantum computer by controlling the superposition of quantum states in a solid state electron device.

The quantum states are used to represent data as a quantum bit or qubit, with similar characteristics to the binaries used by current machines.

And NEC claims that when a machine is built using the breakthrough, it will allow computation to be thousands or millions of times more powerful than current supercomputers.

Volgens een studie die gepresenteerd zal worden op het 26ste International Symposium on Computer Architecture heeft Direct Rambus geen snelheidsvoordeel ten opzichte van de huidige 100Mhz SDRAMs. Dit stort nog maar weer eens tien kuub zout in de toch al hevig etterende wond van Intel, die de zoveelste tegenslag krijgt te verwerken bij de toch al moeizame ontwikkeling van Direct Rambus DRAMs (en bijbehorende chipsets):

The paper, titled A Performance Comparison of Contemporary DRAM Architectures and written by university professors, can be found in PDF format here.

Professors Cuppu, Jacob and Mudge examine the performance of standard fast page, EDO, SDRAM, ESDRAM, SLDRAM, RDRAM and direct RDRAM for high end desktops.

They conclude that 800Mbps Direct Rambus devices, which are already suffering yield problems as reported here earlier, cannot beat 100MHz cas latency three SDRAMs.

The paper is bound to increase pressure on Intel to support the PC-133 and PC-266 SDRAM standards espoused by bitter chipset rival VIA, especially given the fact that the Camino chipset is late.

The Register heeft een nieuwsbericht over een nieuwe moederbord van Rioworks met i810 chipset. Op zich helemaal niet opwindend. Wel interessant is dat dit moederbord geen ISA slots meer heeft:

There is no ISA slot on the board, confirming that mobo manufacturers are beginning to follow the Wintel plan to eliminate so-called legacy systems.

Wen maar vast aan het idee dat je volgende plank waarschijnlijk geen ISA slot zal hebben...

The Register heeft een nieuws posting over de zaken bij Corel, die inmiddels weer voorspoedig lijken te gaan. Nog leuker: de info is afkomstig van onze eigen InterNetworking show in Amsterdam:

Corel CEO Michael Cowpland sounded-off to The Register in Amsterdam during the Dutch InterNetworking trade show. In the league table of optimists, Corel CEO Michael Cowpland must be near the top. Corel has had a series of bad quarters until the last quarter of fiscal 1998, as it adjusted its business model. It does now look as though Cowpland may pull it all off and break through to profits at a useful level.

[...]The Dutch market has traditionally favoured WordPerfect, Cowpland noted, with 47 per cent of word processing being done with WP. Unfortunately, many are still using version 5.1, and there has been a tendency for users eventually to migrate to Word because, as Cowpland put it, Corel was losing money as it was going through a consolidation and turn around, so was not well-perceived. Reviews of the final version of Corel's WordPerfect Office 2000 suite have been recommending it for its file compatibility.

Bleem (Playstation emulator voor de PC) heeft z'n tweede succes geboekt in de rechtszaak die Sony tegen had aangespannen. Sony is niet echt blij met de PSX emulators, eerder werd (met succes) Connectix aangepakt:

Bleem, the company that makes the Windows-based PlayStation emulator of the same name, appears to have beaten back Sony's latest attempt to force it to stop shipping product. According to the emulator developer, Sony launched last Friday a second request for a temporary restraining order against it. The first attempt, made last month, was denied, and yesterday US District Court Judge Charles Legge through out the second try. Bleem said the decision clears the way for it to begin shipping its eponymous emulator in earnest.

Het is nog de vraag wat er nu gaat gebeuren. Een vergelijkbare rechtszaak die Sony tegen Connectix heeft aangespannen werd gewonnen door Sony. Meer info bij The Register.

Oké, ik ben er een beetje laat mee (dat artikel staat er al twee dagen), maar ome Tom heeft dus weer eens een nieuw artikel klaar weten te krijgen. Tom legt uit aan welke eisen een hedendaagse videoplank moet voldoen. Niet echt schokkende info, maar wel leuk om een keer door te lezen. Hier een plak over hardware bump mapping:

Bump mapping is one of those 'hip' 3D-features to talk about. A lot of blah-blah was going on about it in the last twelve months and many people were trying to make a big deal about it on the Web although no game did really support it. Today bump mapping is implemented into DirectX and game developers are starting to play with this feature. It enables you to see a realistically shaped surface with a relief on it, rather than the boring good old flat 3D-surfaces we know so well from Quake2 or many other games. A good example is waves on a water surface. Environment mapping can increase the realism even further by adding realistic reflections to those surfaces. Most 3D-chips are currently realizing bump mapping by adding another alpha-blending rendering pass to the rendering process, which gives an 'OK' kind of impression in many cases, but it's still not really realistic. Matrox' G400 and supposedly 3Dlabs' Permedia3 are the only two chips that do real hardware bump mapping with environment maps right now, which is looking way better than the pseudo-bump mapping of its competitors. As soon as game developers make heavy usage of this nice feature, the other 3D-chip makers will have to come up with their hardware bump mapping solution as well.

Nog wat stuff van Voodoo Extreme: "Anarchist Bob" (whoever dat mag zijn) heeft een Half-Life multiplayer guide in elkaar geknutseld. Is wel handige info denk ik, aangezien Half-Life multiplayer zwaar rouleert. Fiets even langs zou ik zeggen.

Ik zag op Voodoo Extreme dat AMD z'n lijst met 3DNow! geoptimaliseerde software heeft geupdate. Check 't zelf.

Ace's Hardware heeft deel 4 van z'n Secrets of High Performance CPU's artikel gepost. Best wel heftige info, dieper dan een bouwput van 100 jaargangen Computer Idee. In deel 4 wordt uitgelegd welke technieken worden gebruikt om een processor zoveel mogelijk instructies per klokcyclus uit te laten voeren:

It is clear that designing a CPU which can deal with a lot of instructions in one clock cycle is the best way to get an ultra-fast CPU. In Part 2 we saw that superscalar CPUs have a buffer for the instruction decoders. The Superscalar CPU will issue instructions from the decoder to the execution units when they are available. In Part 3 we saw that branches make it difficult to issue many instructions together each clockcycle. We solved that by predicting the branches. So, what's keeping Intel and AMD from building the 8-way CPU?

Once a instruction is decoded, the scheduler has to decide whether or not it will issue this instruction to the execution unit immediately. There are 3 core reasons, besides branches, why a x86 CPU can not issue a lot of instructions each clockcycle (immediately):

1.Dependences
2.The Intel x86 architecture does not have more than 8 general purpose registers
3.Execution units are busy, the right execution unit is not ready.

Let's examine each one by one.

Entech heeft een nieuwe beta gereleased van Powerstrip. Versie 2.41.08 heeft support voor de Voodoo3, TNT2, Savage4 en Rage128. Je kunt 'm hier neerhalen.

Na zijn test van het TNT2 bord heeft Anand zijn 'oude' TNT in dezelfde computer gezet, zonder de drivers te wijzigen. En wat blijkt: vooral onder D3D zijn ze flink wat sneller. Alleen zijn ze nog niet helemaal stabiel, maar dat waren ze op de TNT2 ook niet:

AnandTech experienced the same stability with the TNT running the TNT2 drivers as was experienced with the TNT2 running its own drivers, an indication that NVIDIA's revision 0172 drivers are not yet ready for mass deployment. The majority of crashes occurred under Direct3D applications, while the OpenGL stability was rock solid, an indication of a very mature OpenGL ICD on NVIDIA's part, something no other manufacture in their class has a claim to fame for.

Jammer alleen dat ze onder OpenGL nou net iets trager zijn dan de Detonator drivers. O, hier kan je het lezen.

Ik vond in de niewsgroep comp.sys.psion.apps dat Linux nu ook voor de Psion Series 5 beschikbaar is. Dit is het bericht dat in comp.sys.psion.apps stond:

Wahey, Linux is no coming out for the Psion 5 and the Geofox, check out http://www.Calcaria.net The same goes for those things called WinCE machines at www.linuxce.org

erg koel nieuws dus. Op http://www.psion.com vind je meer over de Psion Series 5, op http://www.Calcaria.net vind je meer over dit project, en hier vind je nog wat koele screenshots.

The Register heeft top secret info van de Intel IA-64 roadmap, waaruit blijkt dat Intel over 4/5 jaar een nieuwe high-end opvolger van de Merced heeft gepland die geintroduceerd moet gaan worden op snelheden van rond de 3GHz. Check dit nieuwsbericht:

Reliable sources said yesterday that a future Intel IA-64 chip called Northwood would hit 3000MHz at its release.

At the same time, it emerged that McKinley is likely to launch using P858 aluminium technology.

The source who requested anonymity, works at Intel's R&D centre in Israel. He said that all generations of microprocessors following Deschutes are developed in pairs: Katmai-Tanner, Coppermine-Cascades and Willamette-Foster.

Northwood, like Madison and Deerfield will be X60 compactions of the IA-64 but for the Willamette architecture.

[break]Beetje wazig info allemaal...[/break]

Meanwhile, the source said there is "practically no way" that Willamette and Foster will use copper technology.

According to another source at Intel Germany, the Merced platform was originally laid out for .35 micron technology...

Samsung heeft een portable MP3 player gereleased. Het ding heeft de naam 'Yepp' mee gekregen:

Yepp will be made availble in two versions: a silver standard edition and a gold deluxe model. Both contain 40MB of memory, expandable through the use of plug-in Flash cards. The deluxe model also contains an FM radio tuner, recording capability and personal phone number list. Samsung claims Yepp will hold up to 500 names and 160 minutes of recorded sound, but we suspect that wouldn't leave much room for MP3 songs.

Naast de Yepp wil Samsung een complete lijn van MP3 devices uitbrengen, waaronder MP3 spelers voor in de auto en standalone MP3 spelers voor hifi sets.

Dimension 128 heeft een review gepost van de MSI-6163 mammaplank. Het ding vergelijkbare features als de BX6.2, zelfs voltage tweaking. Serieuze concurrentie voor Abit?

Watch out Abit! There's a new overclocker's hotrod in town! Seriously, I have very much enjoyed reviewing MSI's board, I had absolutely no problems installing or using it, the CPU PnP II BIOS is perfect for overclocking, and it's rock stable, even when I push my Pentium-II 333 to 515MHz.

Number Nine heeft bekend gemaakt dat z'n nieuwe lijn video accelerators niet gebruik zal maken van een in eigen huis ontwikkelde videochip. In plaats daarvan komt de S3 Savage4. Hier wat geblah uit de press release:

Number Nine Visual Technology Corp. (Nasdaq: NINE - news), a leader in high-performance PC graphics and visual technology, today announced full details of its SR9 Series of graphics accelerator cards for both corporate and high-end gaming PC users.

( Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990428/NEW004 )

The SR9 delivers state-of-the-art 2D, 3D and DVD features at an unbeatable price point. Based on the recently announced S3® Savage4(TM) Pro graphics processor, Number Nine's 128-bit SR9 accelerators are compatible with Intel's announced and upcoming AGP 4X-based motherboards. The SR9 product line will also set a new standard for 3D image quality, will be available with 8, 16- and 32-megabyte of graphics memory -- and support both standard CRT monitors as well as the new generation of digitally fed LCD flat panel displays.

Coolinfo heeft een stuk info over het Opposing Force expansion pack voor Half-Life, dat ontwikkeld wordt door Gearbox Studios:

Why was Gearbox Studios chosen to develop the upcoming Half-Life expansion, Opposing Force? Lead designer on the project, Randy Pitchford, believes there are several reasons, as he explained: "This team is filled with experienced 3D game developers. Some of the core team in addition to working on full titles also have created add-on packs like Duke Nukem 3D Plutonium Pak and Quake: Scourge of Armagon. We know the process behind succeeding with in this type of project. Also, some of the developers at Valve had worked with some of us at various points in our careers and I think there was an amount of mutual respect of talent that came into play. Ultimately, the timing for this project was perfect for everyone and having a chance to work with Valve and Sierra on a Half-Life game expansion is something we couldn't pass up. I understood that they've been looking for the right team for awhile now. I feel proud that Sierra and Valve chose us as 'the one'. I'd like to assure fans of Half-Life that the game expansion is in very good hands." Pitchford went on to explain how development was progressing, as he informed: "Half-Life is Valve's creation. The story and general design is being developed together. Gearbox cares very much about Valve's influence over the OpFor design and Valve has expressed their confidence in us to be creative within the Half-Life universe."