Volgens een of andere studie van twee pro-Mikrosoft organisaties (Association For Competitive Technology en The ASCII Group Inc.) gaat het opbreken van Mikrosoft de consument 30 miljard dollar kosten, omdat de software ontwikkelingskosten wegens het ontbreken van een monopolistische standaard omhoog zouden gaan. Hier een stuk info uit het artikel op ZDNet:

ACT and ASCII, meanwhile, are focusing on the findings of a study released today by Stan Liebowitz, professor of managerial economics and associate dean of the University of Texas at Dallas. Liebowitz's study, which he says is based on PC software company costs, software sales forecasts and personal interviews with software vendors, claims that consumers will pay $30 billion more in software costs over three years if Microsoft is split into multiple "Baby Bills" or forced to license its code.

Liebowitz's study, called "Breaking Windows: Estimating the Cost of Breaking Up Microsoft Windows," makes that claim that remedial actions against Microsoft could "'balkanize' an operating system standard that has been the overwhelming choice of business and consumers for their desktop computers." Besides costing PC software vendors nearly $30 billion more in development, marketing and support costs required to adapt their software to "new Windows descendants," breaking up Windows would fragment the customer base and result in higher retail software prices, the study says.

Bij Mortyr.net hebben ze een Mortyr FAQ in elkaar geknutseld. Een stukkie:

2.4 What is the story behind Mortyr? The official story line goes thus: "Mortyr follows the exploits of a futuristic mercenary named Sebastian Mortyr. Mortyr exist in an alternate reality - not unlike in own, where the German's have actually won the World War II. As a result the Nazis now control the world, but since the start of their global domination back in the late 1940's, the planet has been caught in a dizzying downward spiral. Since then the planet has suffered violent storms, devastating droughts, and other anomalies that have led most of the world's population to believe they're on the edge of a global apocalypse. Mortyr's father, General Jurgen Mortyr (a high ranking Nazi official in the Advanced Weapons Project) also believes an Armageddon-like scenario may be played out, but even more so, he believes the Germans are at fault for the impending doom. Further investigation by the General uncovers a time machine from 1944, with his suspicions now confirmed, the General enlists the help of son, Sebastian, who will return to WWII and hopefully correct the tides of time. Now it's up to you, to rewrite history - before you become it."

De release date is trouwens ergens deze maand, waarschijnlijk de 18de.

Anand zei het gisteren ook al: de normale TNT wordt sneller met de TNT2 drivers. Leadtek heeft als eerste fabrikant een TNT2 kaart gereleased en op hun site kun je de Leadtek TNT2 drivers downen, die je gewoon met je oude TNT kunt gebruiken. Hier de info van AGN 3D:

I was reading through our bbs and I noticed that people have been using the new Leadtek S320 II drivers for their regular TNT cards. (The S320 II is a TNT2 card) Needless to say the performance of the new drivers is much better then their old, and they seem quite impressed. Better Quake scores and more! You can download the TNT2 drivers yourself (Win95/98 - NT 4.0) and try them on your TNT card.

Creative heeft nieuwe Linux beta drivers voor z'n SBLive en Banshee kaarten gereleased:

Creative Labs has released early beta versions of Linux drivers for The SoundBlaster Live! and the 3D Blaster Banshee. The Banshee Linux drivers are the first from a Banshee vendor. These drivers were developed by Creative's in-house Linux driver team and are the first of series of Linux drivers for Creative products. As early betas, the drivers are not supported officially; however, Creative is seeking user feedback at the Developer Relations site. For driver downloads and additional information, go here:

Meer vind vind je op http://developer.soundblaster.com/linux/.

Review Zone heeft een TNT2 vs Voodoo3 comparison in elkaar geplakt. Dit is een van de betere artikelen. Zoals we van Review Zone gewend zijn is-ie erg uitgebreid met veel info, o.a. een stuk over de overklok resultaten met beide kaarten:

We managed to clock the Voodoo3 2000 to 166MHz with the aid of a good heatsink, and the Voodoo3 3000 all the way up to 180MHz. We could possibly have gone higher, but this was around the limit where it was still stable so we stopped there.

The TNT2s, meanwhile, turned out to be a little more sensitive to overclocking than the Voodoo3s. We used PowerStrip on the Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor, which was the more sensitive of the two and didn’t take kindly to overclocking at all. We didn’t take the core speed beyond 130MHz and left the memory clock well enough alone.

The LeadTek Winfast S320 II was overclocked to a 160MHz core speed and a 170MHz memory clock, up from the default settings of 140MHz and 160MHz respectively. We had already reached the maximum of the core speed with the provided overclocking utility, and we took the memory clock upto the maximum is 175MHz.

Erg goed spul. Lees het hier.

Hothardware heeft óók een review van de Leadtek TNT2 kaart met 32Mb SGRAM en TV/Out:

In closing I want to point out that this card, although not representative of the top end performance of the TNT2 (we can't wait for Leadtek's Ultra version!), it is currently one of the fastest video cards on the market. The 3D image quality is absolutely the best money can buy at this point in time. With 32MB of SGRAM on board, it is hard to beat this combination!

Ik kwam via HardOCP op deze site waar je fotootjes ziet van een tof zelfgebouwd koelsysteempje. Hier heb je de info:

Having trouble keeping that dual processor system cool? Then look no further, all you need to do is take your computer down to the local computer muffler shop and get dual exhaust. This is constructed from two Radio Shack 12 Volt DC Blowers and some flexible hose from Lowe's (can be found in the plumbing section). Just add a little silicon sealant to fill in the air leaks and a few zip ties and some Permabond 910 to hold it all together and you got dual exhaust on your bad boy. The only problem here was that the cheap powersupply in this case was having trouble powering the dual motherboard and the extra fans at the same time so I again went down the local Radio Shack and purchased a 1000 Milliamp 12v power supply and wired it up to power all the extra fans in the case. It is mounted on the back of the case with none other than zip ties. Here's the pics:

En de pics zijn dus hier.

Bij Sharky Extreme hebben ze een 3D Terminlogy Guide klaar gebakken. Dus als je per ongeluk niet weet wat Frame buffers, Z-Buffers, Tripple Buffering enzovoort allemaal doen, dan is dat handige info. Stukje over frame buffers:

Frame buffer (memory) The frame buffer is what a video board uses to store the images it renders, be they 2D desktops or 3D graphics in one of today's many 3D accelerated titles. The amount of frame buffer memory a video board has directly impacts which resolutions it can support, the more memory you've got the higher resolutions your board will support and at higher bit depths.

De rest vind je hier.

Systemlogic heeft info gepost over de nieuwe AOpen PA3010 videokaart met TNT2 chip:

Having spent many months of hardworking on software development and hardware design, AOpen today announced its delivery of PA3010 TNT2 AGP cards. The PA3010-A comes with a 16MB SDRAM. The PA3010-N comes with a 32MB SDRAM, TV-out. Both had a fine-tuned Clock Tuning Utility to boost performance.

AOpen PA3010 – Power Users’ Choice

The AOpen PA3010 TNT2 card has built in utilities to let power users adjust the TNT2 chip clock frequency and memory clock frequency. This is a great feature for power users who want to drive the best performance out of its card when playing games. If the game does not work to higher frequency, simply power on the system again. It will go back to the default chip clock and memory clock.

While focusing on high performing segment, we also want the PA3010 to run very reliably. That is why AOpen implemented an active fan attached to the TNT2 chipset which cools down the TNT2 chipset temperature from 55 degree C with a heatsink to 32 degree C. “Both reliability and compatibility will be improved under a lower temperature environment” said Spencer Kuo, director of R&D department, AOpen Multimedia Business Division.

It also comes with multi-language installation utility including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, and Chinese. This is to serve our local customers with the native language they are familiar with. This user friendly installation wizard will automatically recognize the language version of Microsoft Windows and installed compatible language driver set for it.

TNT2 chipset

Together with the built-in 300MHz RAMDAC and up to 32MB memory support, the PA3010 TNT2 is particularly good for 32 bit glory game up to 1920x1200 resolution. Users will find using PA3010 to play 32 bit games is prettier and faster. “Users feedback they want to play 32-bit color games. We choose the TNT2 for PA3010 AGP card because its superior performance. Among the many chipsets available in the market place, none of them achieves the performance level we would like to see other than TNT2.” said Kuo.

Games.net heeft een korte review van de Leadtek TNT2 kaart gepost. Hier een stuk:

We used the clocking utility to push the S320 II to its limit. At the maximum setting, unfortunately, our system locked up. But we were able to set the Graphics Clock up to 155MHz and the Memory Clock to 170MHz without crashing. However, our expectations exceeded the performance it yielded-frame rates increased only marginally (about 2 fps).

Tom heeft een artikel over de Intel Whitney / i810 chipset gepost. Hier een stukje over de nieuwe "Accelerated Hub Technology" van de i810 chipset:

Over are the good old days of 'North' and 'South' bridge, Intel 'invented' the new "Accelerated Hub Architecture"!! Now I cannot really say that I ever really understood the point of 'North' and 'South' bridges on motherboards, since it would be news to me that you adjust your motherboard according to North and South like Muslims praying towards Mecca. However, the question may be raised why Intel is changing this sweet little naming of the two chips that make a chipset to the 'HUB-architecture'. The main deal about this new architecture is that the two main chips are not connected using the PCI-bus, but a new dedicated bus that offers double the bandwidth of PCI. Thus each device, including the PCI bus can directly communicate with the CPU, the memory controller and, in case of the Intel810, with the graphics controller as well, using an eight bit wide bus clocked at 133 MHz at '2x-mode', which provides a bandwidth of 266 MB/s. The Intel820, well known under the name 'Camino' right now, will also use this hub-architecture.

CPU Site (hebben ook een Nederlands deel, maar is erg lame naar mijn mening) heeft een artikel over een naar 500Mhz overgeklokte K6-2. Het koelsysteempje ziet er vrij heftig uit.

A few days ago it got really hot so I went out and bought a new airconditioner for my house [5500 btu]. I had already had my system overclocked at 4.5x100 at 2.2v, and for a while that was great. The next day I was siiting in front of my airco and thought: "I wish I could get my k6-2 400 cxt core a little bit more overclocked". I knew I couldn't just open my case up and pull my airco out of the wall and set it blowing in my case, so I intergrated them into one, Well sorta. I went to the hardware store and found dryer ducting hose, the vinal kind at 3" . I taped one end to part of my airco and the other I pushed through a hole I'd cut, into my case[atx] blowing on the cpu.

Shaazam !!!!!!! A 55f case temp in 80f degree weather plus my case is completely closed up to keep the cold air in. I spent the next 15 mins trying to o/c the chip more, and I ended up with a stable system at 5.0x100 2.5v. But I really needed the cold air to keep it stable or it gets little Qurky. I keep my case temperatures no higher than 70 f. using a 10 $ T FROM RADIO SHACK. Well thats it... Oh and I have free electricity at my complex so that's good luck. I do have a few picts but waiting for them to develop.

Check de info op CPU Site.

Volgens EETimes Semiconductor News is er groeiend support voor Double Data Rate DRAMS, de concurrent van Rambus DRAM:

More than 20 memory-industry players have joined an effort to promote double-data-rate (DDR) DRAMs. The new body, Advanced Memory International Inc., grew out of the remains of SLDRAM Inc., which quietly slipped from the limelight this year after trying to promote the SLDRAM format.

[...]DDR-2 uses the memory-cell designs seen in both standard SDRAM and DDR DRAM chips, but it will feature some I/O designs to facilitate faster data rates. As with the SLDRAM chips and unlike Rambus memory, Rhoden said, the architecture will be offered as an open standard to the DRAM industry.

Though prototypes of SLDRAM were delivered last year to several of SLDRAM Inc.'s member-companies, the technology failed to catch on in the mainstream memory market. The formation of AMI2 and the move to cannibalize the technology into next-generation DDR designs could be the final nail in the SLDRAM coffin.

Meer info over DDR DRAM vind je bij Tom.

Ik lees op AMD Zone dat Asus een final BIOS voor z'n revision 1007 van de P5A socket7 plank gepost heeft. Je kunt het ding hier neerhalen.

Gisteren hoorden we van BitchX dat de ontwikkeling van Prey gestopt zou zijn. Hier blijkt dus helemaal niets van waar te zijn, getuige deze .plan file update van George Broussard (3DRealms):

I'll make this brief because we're busy working and

don't have time for silly rumor distractions.

FACT: Duke Nukem Forever will NOT be shown at E3 in

any capacity, by OUR choice. We have decided to stay

focused and work through E3, and not let the distractions

of a trade show dictate "when it's done". GT fully

supports our decision and should be applauded for it.

Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (N64) will be the Duke Nukem focus

and man, let me tell you what, it rocks! We've been

testing and tweaking it for 2 months and I see a million

seller there.

FACT: GT has not "dropped, cancelled, pulled support,

or poo-poo'ed" any part of Prey. They have always been

supportive of our products.

FACT: Prey has had it's problems, but this is not news to

anyone. We're designing a new engine (announced late last

year when we hired Corrinne Yu). We parted ways with two

key Prey developers last November (lead coder and project

leader). These moves were made because we weren't happy

with the tech in Prey. This is all old news. While new

tech is being developed all content developers in the

company are busy on Duke Nukem Forever. We didn't think

this was such big news, but apparently we should have

called 60 Minutes? ; )

NOTE TO OUR FANS: We'll update everyone on Prey when the

time is right. But, if anyone is anticipating Prey anytime

soon, you shouldn't be. We thought it was obvious that this

game was a long way off, since we're creating a new engine.

We probably should have been a little more clear about that

and we apologize. Meanwhile, our sleeves are rolled up and

we're all busy making one of the coolest games you've

ever seen (DNF).

Firingsquad heeft info uit een posting van Tim Sweeney op de Unreal Tech page. Patch 224 is bijna gereed (zeggen ze al een paar week):

We're testing out another release candidate of 224 internally today. We're up to 224t. We haven't found any showstopper problems yet. Fingers crossed...

I just wanted to post some info about the upcoming Unreal 224 installer for mod authors. One of the major Unreal community-oriented features in this version is the mod installer, which enables mod authors to distribute their work in a single, self-contained ".umod" (Unreal MOD) file. Users can then download and launch a .umod file directly, in the same way that launching a .zip file brings up WinZip. The umod's files are then installed into the appropriate directories.

Firingsquad heeft een review van Rollercoaster Tycoon gepost. Het spel draait op een verbeterde engine die in 1995 werd ontwikkeld voor Transport Tycoon. Een beetje verouderd dus, grappig om daarom te lezen wat Firingsquad over de graphics zegt:

The graphics in Roller Coaster Tycoon are nothing short of amazing. Chris Sawyer, developer of this game, pulled out all the stops with this. The game is colorful from top to bottom, and it utilizes just about every color in the visible spectrum. You'll be amazed at all the tiny little details. Hundreds of people will be jam packed into your parks, but the game can keep track of every one of them, as they enter the park, walk around, stand in line, get on a ride, dump trash on the ground, whatever. One of the cooler aspects of gameplay comes when it rains - put up an information booth and all the park patrons will purchase umbrellas there and walk around with umbrellas. Ditto for a balloon shop - lots of children and other patrons won't be able to resist, and the tiny balloons will add even more color to the screen. Your parks are alive with all the hustle and bustle you'd expect from an amusement park.

...en toch zijn de graphics nauwelijks verbeterd ten opzicht van het 4 jaar oude Transport Tycoon.

Jeremy van AGN Hardware heeft de IBM 22GXP harddisk gereviewed en hij zegt dat 't de snelste IDE drive is die hij ooit getest heeft. De 22GXP heeft een capaciteit van 18Gig, draait 7200 rondjes per minuut, heeft een access time van 8,5ns, ondersteund UltraATA/66 en gaat vergezeld van 2Mb cache. De prestaties zijn zoals gezegd erg goed:

As you can see from the benchmarks the IBM and Western Digital drivers are running neck and neck, showing they may be very similar drives. The Western Digital drive does seem to win at some benchmarks while the IBM does better at others. One this for sure is that both of the drive are much faster than my older Maxtor drive and even the IBM 14Gig drive as well. The drives are very similar in performance to the 9GB LVD SCSI drives that Joshua posted reviews about the other week. This is a great deal considering they cost half the money and give you double the storage space.

Zie de review voor meer info.

Gamespot heeft een preview van Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun in elkaar gepleurd. Hier een stukkie over het verhaaltje:

Tiberian Sun starts roughly 15 years after the end of the first Command & Conquer game, in a world where Tiberium has managed to spread its tendrils across most of the Earth's temperate zones, leaving only the deserts and tundra untouched. But Tiberium's unchecked infestation is more than just an annoyance. At the start of Command & Conquer, the GDI had no idea that the mysterious spaceborne crystal-like mineral had a lethal side effect: All living creatures undergo drastic mutations when exposed to Tiberium for prolonged periods of time. Most creatures don't survive the brutal transformations.

The GDI now must evacuate people from Tiberium infested areas.

Once the GDI realizes the true nature of Tiberium, they are forced to evacuate entire populations from infested areas. Meanwhile, Kane, thought to have been killed some 15 years earlier, is busy reuniting the factionalized Brotherhood, whose members have fled to subterranean bases and are carrying out Tiberium mutation experiments on humans.

It's from these mutations that Tiberian Sun introduces the Forgotten, a group of mercenaries whose combat skills have been enhanced through Tiberium exposure. Unlike the majority of people who've come into contact with the mineral, the Forgotten have mysteriously managed to survive. Aware of the NOD's malignant intentions and wary of the GDI's questionable methods of selecting who gets evacuated and who gets left behind, the Forgotten are a neutral entity as the game begins.

In de preview staat trouwens dat de target release deze zomer is. Zal me niet verbazen als ook die datum weer uitgesteld gaat worden [zucht]...

WickedPC heeft een review van de 3DCool.com Super slot fan. Het is zo'n ding dat je in de gaten bij je isa/pci slots stopt. Ze zijn handig om de airflow in je kast te verbeteren:

The Super Slot Fan fixes all these problems. It sits in any expansion slot, whether its AGP, PCI, or ISA. It does not plug into the slots, it just screws into the slot (see the pictures for more detail). You can place the Super Slot Fan anywhere you like, above the expansion slots, below the cards, or even in between a choice of cards. Expansion slots generate the most heat out of anything because they aren't cooled from the start. Even new video cards like the Voodoo3 and Rage 128 create enough heat that their heatsinks aren't truly effective enough. The quick solution is to buy a Super Slot Fan and just put it under the video card. It'll take the air away from it and spit it out of the case, causing only the cool air to be left inside the case. Temperature dropped in our case by 13 degrees (Fahrenheit), which was a phenomenal success considering the most any other fan we've seen only drops it by 10 degrees. Just the fact that it takes the heat from the hottest area of your PC and exhausts it out the back of the case is reason enough to buy it. Components run faster and more stable when you have a good cooling solution.