Volgens info van The Register zijn de yields van de Coppermine (opvolger van de Katmai/PIII) dermate goed dat een lancering op 733Mhz mogelijk zou zijn in september. Dat zou betekenen dat AMD voor goed van de markt gedrukt kan worden. Dat K7, die op 500-600Mhz geïntroduceerd zal worden, zal in dat geval sterk achterblijven bij de Coppermine. De verhalen van de afgelopen dagen dat de performance van de K7 teleursteld vermoeden ook weinig goeds.

Check deze info op The Register:

Now, Intel is targeting Coppermine to launch in September at 600MHz, but early reports from inside the chip behemoth indicate that yields of up to 733MHz are easily achievable, right now.

So we have a situation where Intel has a choice: does it launch Coppermine at 600MHz and then phase in the faster 667MHz and 733MHz parts, or should it go for 733MHz from September?

Going for 733MHz from day one would put Intel so far ahead it would leave AMD in a very tricky position in matching Chipzilla for raw speed – so tricky it just might be the final straw that breaks the AMD camel’s back.

Ook Planet Hardware heeft een review van de Voodoo3-3000 op z'n site gedumpt. Naast de gebruikelijke info ook een stukje over het overklokken van de V3:

With the addition of some simple active cooling fan solutions, the board shows off it's true overclockability nature. Even without the addition of extra fans, the Voodoo3 3000 is basically overclockable to 3500 levels with the use of various programs you can find around the net. The 3000 is very overclockable to at least 195 MHz before stability problems come into affect, even so, this fact makes it one of the most overclockable boards on the market.

Ziet er naar uit dat de V3 erg goed overklokbaar is.

Ik zag op HardOCP.com een fotootje van een vergelijkbaar koelsysteem als het ding dat ik al ruim een half jaar gebruik. Het principe van de Cardboard Enhance Airflow Tube (ja, deze debiele benaming heb ikke bedacht ). Check deze pic:

[break]En dit is wat ik gebruik:[/break]

Erg simpel te maken en erg effectief. Check ook deze thread op de Gathering of Tweakers.

HardOCP heeft bij Skywell wat info weten los te peuteren over de nieuwe Skywell Magic TNT2 kaart. Skywell staat bekend om z'n goede price/performance verhouding. Helaas ben ik de kaarten hier in holland nog nooit tegengekomen. Anyway, hier de info van HardOCP:

SW-TGATNT2, TGATNT2TV W/TV OUT

The Magic TNT2 use the nVIDIA RIVA TNT2, the fastest, the only true 128 bit 2D/3D chipset supporting 2nd generation TwiN – Texel in single pass and 32 bit color, 32 bit Z-buffer rendering, can display maximum 3D/2D resolution 2048 x 1536, and support high resolution 1,920 x 1,200@75H.

With 150Mhz, 32MB SGRAM memory, 300Mhz RAMDAC, Magic TNT2 can deliver 300Mpixel/sec fill rate, 9M million triangles/sec peak, massive 2.9GB/sec frame buffer bandwidth, and with excellent 3D Game features like 32 bit rendering, 32 bit Z-buffer, 8 bit stencil buffer, anisotropic filtering, bump mapping, it also include DVD/MPEG-2 software player, and TV out function((optional, PAL/NTSC, S-Video and Composite video output, SW-TGATNT2TV), to be a complete solution in Multimedia system.

With AGP 2x/4x interface, full sideband support, AGP texturing, Magic TNT2 can have a wide range of applications from the hottest 3D games to full screen, 30fps DVD playback.

Ook bij Sysopt.com hebben ze een review van de V3-3000 gepost. Hier een plak info over het verschil in beeldkwaliteit tussen een V2 SLI setup en de nieuwe V3-3000:

The debate of 16-bit vs. 32-bit is quite overrated.  While staring at a screenshot of 32-bit, then looking at the same screenshot in 16-bit you can notice quite a difference in some games.  The way most games today are fast paced it is really hard to notice the small gain in image quality.  Nonetheless, Voodoo3 doesn't support 32-bit rendering.

I decided to see if there was any improvement upon the image quality of the Voodoo3 over the Voodoo2 at the same resolution.  Below is a screenshot taken at 1024x768 using the MiniGL that came with the driver CD for the Voodoo3 and the latest 3dfx reference drivers for the Voodoo2 SLI.  There is very little difference between the two in image quality, but of course the SLI setup is limited to a resolution of 1024x768 whereas Voodoo3 can do up to 1600x1200.

3DGaming.com heeft een review gepost van de Yamaha Waveforce 192XG. De kaart maakt gebruik van Sensaura 3D positional audio:

On the technical side, Sensaura, in this implementation, only supports emulation of A3D 1.0.   This can be forgiven as this card was released before the advent of the Vortex2 and SB Live!.  The Sensaura algorithms themselves are more pleasing to me than some of the other technologies.  At GDC I was fortunate enough to test drive their newer technologies.  In 4 speaker mode, some of the hardest sounds to position are those that are directly to your side.  Some setups have the sound "jumping" from the front speakers to the rear.  Sensaura does a great job of positioning this type of sound.  This was their new Multidrive technology which is not available with this line of Yamaha sound cards.

The Register heeft een nieuwsbericht over toekomstige Xeons. Verwacht wordt dat in de herfst een kloksnelheid van 667Mhz bereikt zal worden. De Xeon zal bovendien de Coppermine in kloksnelheid overtreffen (dat is nieuw, want tot op heden liepen de PII/PIII en Xeon altijd gelijk op qua kloksnelheid). Check deze info op The Register:

But at the moment, the plan is that the first Coppermine Pentium III will appear at 600MHz , while Xeon will hit 667MHz. Both parts will feature 256K on-die L2 cache.

Prices (1K quantities) are expected to be something like this:

The desktop part is expected to hit 667MHz sometime in Q4. Notice that the cache sizes are the dominant factor in the Xeon pricing model, so that if Coppermine launches higher than 667MHz, the price will remain pretty much the same.

On die caches larger than 256K are in the pipeline - watch this space.

Jeremy van AGN Hardware heeft een review gepost van de Leadtek Winfast 3D S320, de eerste TNT2 kaart op de markt. Jeremy kreeg de kaart zonder problemen op 160MHz (standaard 140):

Leadtek’s TNT2 drivers offer everything that you need to get up and running with your new TNT2 card. They have even included an option for raising the memory and cpu core speed of the card, something that I am sure that the overclockers of the world will appreciate. The card is set to a default speed of 140MHz for the core, but I had it running at 160 with no problems. My guess is that the chip that is on this card is the same that you get with the TNT2 Ultra cards, with the exception of the memory.

Storeview Review heeft info over hoe je UltraATA/66 support op de Quantum Fireball CR schijven kunt disablen:

To those of you who've been bombarding us with e-mail asking us for the utility to disable Quantum ATA-66 operation: Tsk! Quantum told us not to give it out, we said we wouldn't give it out, and we meant it. To those of you who took our previous post seriously (that we wouldn't give out the utility but that we'd let you know ASAP when Quantum has it publicly available), good news: We've been informed by a Quantum representative that utilities to disable ATA-66 operation on Fireball CR and Fireball Plus KA drives are finally available. They can be downloaded from Quantum:

Fireball CR ATA-66 Disable Utility

Fireball Plus KA ATA-66 Disable Utility

Note that for best results, the utilities should be run from a bootable floppy disk with the Fireball drive on the motherboard's Primary ATA channel.

Volgens deze info op Thresh's Firingsquad komt er een Mac versie van Falcon 4.0!:

The definitive F-16 simulation - Falcon 4.0, will be making its way to Macintosh next month! Macsoft is the one in charge of the port. Look for it on shelves sometime in May.

Ik las op AGN 3D dat Aureal nieuwe reference drivers gereleased heeft. Hier heb je de info van de Aureal site:

hese drivers will work on any A3D sound card or PC. These are the latest A3D Drivers available anywhere. If you are experiencing problems related to A3D it is recommended that you download these drivers. If you are experiencing general sound card problems, these drivers will not be of use. Contact your sound card manufacturer.

A3D Drivers

A3D Drivers - (Version 2.08 - 300 KB executable - 04/29/99)

Below are Aureal Semiconductor's reference drivers. They will be different than the ones that you received from the manufacturer of your sound card. Each of the sound board manufacturer's drivers are modified to support various features that are unique to the board. As a result, Aureal in no way guarantees the functionality and stability of these drivers and they are made available for reference purposes only. Please contact your sound board manufacturer for support questions.

Some A3D sound cards use the Aureal Vortex AU8820 processor, some A3D sound cards do not. Verify that your sound card uses the Vortex AU8820 before downloading these drivers. Additionally, the following sound cards and PCs are sufficiently different from the Vortex reference design. Turtle Beach Montego A3D Dell Computers with Turtle Beach Montego A3D TerraTec XLerate A3D Aztech PCI 338-A3D

If you have one of these models, we strongly urge that you DO NOT download these drivers, but instead get them from the sound card manufacturer. (See the A3D.com Support page for more info.)

Download Pre-Release Vortex 2 Drivers (without the AU30GM.ARL Wavetable set)

(Version 4.06.2030.22 (OEM) - 3.5 MB - 04/29/99)

PLEASE NOTE: These are pre-release Vortex 2 reference drivers designed for OEM customers; a retail release is forthcoming. They address the bass-loss issue on certain speaker systems, a memory leak that caused noise after prolonged periods of audio usage, some clicking in certain applications, clicking in MIDI playback, and they add support for 76 concurrent 3D hardware sources. Unless you are experiencing one of these issues, we recommend you wait for the retail release.

Download Pre-Release Vortex 2 Drivers (with the AU30GM.ARL Wavetable set)

(Version 4.06.2030 (OEM) - 8 MB - 04/29/99)

PLEASE NOTE: These are pre-release Vortex 2 reference drivers designed for OEM customers; a retail release is forthcoming. They address the bass-loss issue on certain speaker systems, a memory leak that caused noise after prolonged periods of audio usage, some clicking in certain applications, clicking in MIDI playback, and they add support for 76 concurrent 3D hardware sources. Unless you are experiencing one of these issues, we recommend you wait for the retail release.