Thanx to Arzie voor deze advertentie bij Planet Vraag & Aanbod. Bolder Hardware gaat overgeklokte K6-III Kryotech systemen verkopen:

Vooraankondiging Kryotech Systemen AMD 600 MHZ

Als eerste in Nederland kondigen wij aan een systeem wat draait op 600 MHz !

In dit snelheidsmonster zit een AMD K6 II met een Kryotech koelsysteem wat de temperatuur van de CPU op ongeveer -40 celcius houdt. De behuizing wordt speciaal hiervoor gemaakt en de cpu draait op een ASUS moederbord.

Dit barebone systeem komt in de volgende varianten:

- AMD K6 II - 600 MHz

- AMD K6 III - 500 MHz

- AMD K6 III - 550 MHz

Kijk deze week op onze site voor de specificaties !

www.bolderhardware.nl

010-2444855

sales@bolderhardware.nl

Afgezien van het feit dat Bolder hier helemaal nalaat om te vermelden dat het om overgeklokte K-zessen gaat, hebben wij tot op heden niet gehoord van 600Mhz K6-III Kryotech systemen. 500Mhz is de huidige limit (overgeklokt met super cooling).

Ook nog: Reinder heeft een leuk linkje gevonden voor goedekoope geheugen reepjes: www.geheugen.nu. Met prijsgarantie en gratis verzending!

Ik kreeg een mailtje van Lars, die een interview met John Romero gepost heeft:

I conducted a little Q&A session with John "My hair is long and shiny" Romero about IONRadiant and everything else related to Daikatana level-editing and general issues related to the Daikatana levels. The reason I for this Q&A session was to get more information about Daikatana level-editing possibilities to create some interest for the level-edting community in Daikatana level-editing and mod-creation. One of the major conclusions I took from all the news in the past and this Q&A is that Daikatana will be an awesome customizable game.

Check 't zelf bij Daikatana Level Heaven.

Windoos 98 Second Edition zal vandaag door if (User="Pro-M$") [echo "Microsoft";] else [echo "Mikrosoft";] aangekondigd worden. Volgende maand zal hij in de VS te koop zijn, voor de prijs van 89,95 dollar. Upgrades vanaf Win98 kosten $19,95. 40 piek voor een opgehevelde bugfix!?:

Is that worth $20? Sometimes when Microsoft wants to push new features, e.g. IE or ISDN support way back in the early days of 95, they came as free downloads and on more promotional CDs than you could shake a stick at. But with Windows 2000 locked in development for months yet (despite recent beta attacks), and looking not entirely suited for home users, Microsoft needed a stop gap product. And some stop-gap revenue, we cynics reckon.

Gamepost en Ars Technica hebben reviews gepost van resp. de 3Dfx Voodoo3 - 3000 en de ATI Rage Fury. Genoeg van die reviews gehad de laatste tijd. Ik zeg nix.

Uit het interview van The Hive met Metabyte werd eerder vandaag al duidelijk dat Metabyte gaat stoppen met z'n hardware divisie. The Register heeft er ook een nieuwsbericht over:

US developer Metabyte is to transform its Wicked3D hardware division into a software only operation, the company said yesterday.

The move will see the company discontinue its 3D graphics card and stereoscopic 3D system -- though support for existing customers will be maintained -- and focus on the software behind them.

That's likely to see the company making a bigger deal out of its 3D card connection technology, PGP (Parallel Graphics Processing). As reported by The Register earlier this year, PGP will allow graphics accelerator cards to combine their rendering power, much as 3dfx's Scan Line Interleave (SLI) technology allows two Voodoo 2 cards to operate as a single, double-speed board.

PGP, however, brings the same approach to other vendors' cards. Initially, it will support two cards from the same chipset developer -- two nVidia TNT 2 cards, say -- but eventually Wicked3D hopes to allow cards from different suppliers to be combined, and to support more than two cards.

Ik zie bij Ars Technica dat Windows NT4 Service Pack 5 gereleased is. De officiële versie welteverstaan. Dit zijn de belangrijkste updates:

- DHCP Server of SP4 Ignores Reservations
- SP4 forces cluster servers to be taken off and online
- Windows NT 4.0 SP4 Does Not Update MTS Files
- Duplicate SCSI Logical Unit (LUN) 0 When LargeLUNs Registry Key Enabled
- Under stress, a computer running Windows NT Server or Workstation may display a STOP 0x0000001E error message on a blue screen.
- Cannot configure ODBC logging when using Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.0 SP1, SP4, and Proxy Server 2.0.
- Secondary WINS query delayed by 1500ms even when primary WINS returns 'na
- Using SP4, RCP "host:foo ." fails whereas RCP "host:foo foo"
- SP4 systems access the hard disks every five minutes, which interferes with Power Management.

Het ding kun je hier gaan halen.

Storage Review heeft een review van de nieuwe next-generation IBM Ultrastar 18ES Ultra2 Wide SCSI drive gepost. Hier heb je wat info over het ding:

The 18ES achieves its 18.2 gigabyte capacity using a full platter less than the Western Digital Enterprise WDE18300, weighing in at 3.6 gigs/platter. The drive's seek time is listed at a swift 7.0 milliseconds. Spindle-speed, of course, remains at a tried-and-true 7200rpm. A 2 megabyte buffer, seemingly standard for today's SCSI drives, rounds out the package. The drive is backed by an industry-standard 5-year warranty.

Storage Review heeft veel benchmarks. Check 't out.

The Hiver heeft een interview gepost met Metabyte's National Sales & Marketing manager Kerry Philbat. Een paar weken geleden werd duidelijk dat Metabyte z'n PGC (Parallel Graphics Configuration - "SLI" in gewone mensentaal) technology had verpatst aan Alienware Systems. Dus waar gaat Metabyte zich nu mee bezighouden?

JC: Ok...the rumors have been flying for months since the news broke of your new technology...what have you got to announce today?

Philbot: Today we are announcing that we will be changing company direction. Prior to 2 years ago, we have solely been a software developer. 2 years ago we decided to get into the hardware business. This was meant to be used as a "Showcase" for our developments and grew beyond our expectations, taking us off guard. And we were not really prepared for all of the issues that came with being a part of being in the hardware business

JC: So what is the new direction that Metabyte is taking today?

Philbot: Today we will be announcing that we will change company direction to focus on software development once again. Kind of a 'stick to what we do best' type of philosophy.

Twee nieuwe stukjes zachtwaar: Mirabilis heeft een nieuwe versie van ICQ (99a v2.20 build 1800) gereleased. Je kunt 'm neerhalen van de ICQ download page.

Verder heeft 3Dfx een nieuwe MiniGL driver voor de Voodoo3 op z'n download site geparkeerd.

Intel heeft de rechtszaak, die het een aantal dagen geleden heeft aangespannen tegen chipset fabrikant VIA, gedropt. Was een 'vergissing':

The Intel spokesman said the law suit was being held in abeyance as a contingency, but should not have been filed last week. He declined to say whether the suit might be refiled in the future.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel late last year licensed its Slot 1 technology to Via for chip-set products, though details of the agreement have been kept confidential. Sources said they believed when Via announced plans to make a Slot 1 chip set supporting PC133 synchronous SDRAM, Intel raised objections. Intel itself shuns any support for PC133 memory, reportedly to avoid creating any interim competitor to Direct Rambus DRAM chips, which is supported by its own Camino chip-set solution.

3D Soundsurge heeft een artikel gepost met Winbench99 audio benchmarks van o.a. de Soundblaster Live!, Diamond MX300 en Yamaha Waveforce:

When it comes to the 3D sound performance it's clear that the MX300, Live, and Aztec's 368DSP all have such low CPU utilization that you shouldn't base your buying decision on these scores. The 4DWave-DX also got such low CPU utilization that it shouldn't be an issue unless you have a real slow CPU or framerates is king for you. For the Monstersound and WaveForce you will probably notice a slight performance decrease but more importantly you will, as mentioned above, have a less compelling sound experience in several games. The MX300's lack of more than 16 3D streams when using 4 speakers may be an issue in future games but I never noticed that 32 3D streams been important in any games that are currently available.

3D Soundsurge heeft ook Half-Life benchmarks.

Het russische iXBT Labs heeft een review geschreven over de Gigabyte GA-BX2000, het eerste moederbord met 'dual BIOS'. Ook heeft-ie 'Suspend to RAM', waarbij je je PC in standby kunt zetten en waarbij alle data in je RAM blijft. Na opnieuw aanzetten heb je je systeem dan binnen een paar seconden weer aan de praat, ipv de paar minuten die het normaal zou duren om 'm helemaal te booten.

In de praktijk blijkt het door gebrek aan hardware & software support helaas minder goed te werken:

Actually, it looks attractive. Moreover, such standby condition is included into ACPI specification and theoretically it should be soon supported by all the new mainboards with a separate memory power supply. However, the situation nowadays leaves much to be desired. The instruction manual included into Gigabyte BX2000 package lists very few devices supporting this technology. Besides, it states once and for all that SCSI-devices and Suspend to RAM are two absolutely incompatible things. As usual it is Microsoft and expansion mainboards manufacturers that are to blame: they haven't yet added Suspend to RAM support into their drivers. But there is always hope for the better. Everything is supposed to run impeccably in Windows 2000. And in the meanwhile you may try the Suspend to RAM function in your system but no one bets its proper work. [break]Voor overclocking is de GA-BX2000 simpelweg ongeschikt:[/break] Gigabyte mainboards seem to be in no way for designed overclockers. And Gigabyte BX2000 only proves the rule. If you decide to change its FSB frequency you'll have to open the case and to switch a couple of dip-switches in a different position. The range of supported external frequencies is relatively poor: 66, 75, 83, 100, 112, 124 and 133MHz. It can be easily noticed that even the most important frequency for Celeron overclocking - 103MHz - is absent here. Besides, there is also no way to increase the CPU core voltage. Moreover, Gigabyte BX2000 mainboard is armed with a special CPU over voltage protect technology, which won't let you boot the system with the CPU voltage exceeding the nominal value even if you isolate some contacts with a scotch-tape. So, if you are a dedicated overclocker Gigabyte BX2000 is not the right choice for you.

RealNetworks heeft een nieuwe music player gebouwd die zo ongeveer alle muziek standaarden, zowel de streaming (online) als download (offline) formaten. RealJukebox is de naam van het ding, en ja: MP3 doet-ie ook:

The big problem with online music today is that you need half a dozen player to get the most out of it. If Izzy and the Smegs release their latest single on MP3, you need an MP3 player. If, however, The Globules sign up for Liquid Audio, RealAudio, a2b or MS Audio, you'll need a separate player for whatever format they've chosen. That may not matter too much right now, while the online music audience is 90 per cent techies, but it's going to become much more of an issue as more mainstream music fans join in.

And this is where RealJukebox comes in, in that it theoretically allows users to replace all their standalone players for a single, multi-format system. RealJukebox has apparently also been designed to interface with various portable players -- Diamond Multimedia and Thomson/RCA have already signed up (see RCA unveils Lyra MP3 player) -- so what we have is a universal PC music system in the making, especially if Real doesn't ignore other computing platforms, including Linux, MacOS and even PalmOS, as it has done in the past.

The Register heeft meer info.

FullOn3D heeft z'n Elsa Erazor III preview geupdate met benchmarks van de nieuwe 1.73 Elsa TNT2 drivers. De resultaten met de nieuwe drivers zijn behoorlijk goed (+13% in Quake2 is spectaculair voor een driver update!). Check de update:

Bij Hardware Central hebben ze een Tennmax P3 TF cooler, een heatsink met 2 ventilators, gereviewed. Hier een stukkie:

So what differentiates TennMax’s P3 TF Cooler from other coolers? The first thing that will strike you is the dual fans that the P3 TF Cooler sports. With only one fan, heatsinks sometime receive more heat than the fan can dissipate, resulting in an overall system temperature increase. However, with 2 fans, the Celeron TF Cooler does a much better job of dissipating the heat transferred from the CPU to the heatsink. From our previous review of the very similar TennMax Celeron TF Cooler

WickedPC heeft een review van de Trident Blade 3D videokaart geschreven. Iedereen die ooit in het bezit is geweest van een Trident videokaart, of er op andere wijze mee in aanraking is geweest, zal er hoogstwaarschijnlijk geen blije ervaringen aan over gehouden hebben. Trident staat synoniem voor bagger, maar dan op je scherm. Tegenwoordig kennen ze bij Trident ook al zoiets als 3D Acceleratie, dus wat moeten we ons hierbij voorstellen ('decceleratie?'):

This is where the marketing jokes come in. On the box, Trident boldly states with no fine print that the Blade 3D is capable of running in 3D Winbench with a score of 1080. The Voodoo2 scores are claimed to be 640. This is one of the oldest, stupidest, and lamest marketing gags in the book. When I benchmarked the Blade 3D, on a Pentium III 500 nonetheless, I got results of 340 in 3D Winbench 99. How is that possible that my score was only 30% of the Blade 3D boxes claims? Quite easily explained, Trident lied. They claimed to me that this is meant for OEM bundles, and the low end user. If this is the case, why are they marketing this board as the best video card on the market, when it is quite obvious that it is not? Shame on Trident for doing this lame deed to the gaming community. When we search for a fast video card, the box should tell the truth rather than something that is 300% inaccurate. After starting Quake II in 1024x768, I quickly stopped benchmarking the Blade 3D after it got a whopping 17fps. The Blade 3D is capable of 1024x768 as its maximum resolution with a color depth of 16bit.

Dansdata.com heeft een review gebakken van de nieuwe P2-99 440ZX / socket370 moederplank van Asus. Hij's van Asus, dus de kwaliteit zal wel ok zijn. Voor overklokken lijkt-ie ook goed geschikt, want het doet aan voltage tweaking: zowel Vcore als VI/O! Softmenu of zoiets dergelijks kent-ie niet, dus je zult nog steeds moeten kloten met barbaarse jumpers :

A more recent overclocking feature is cranking up the "VIO", or input/output voltage. The primary effect of this on many systems is to allow RAM to run faster; in many cases it permits regular PC100 RAM to operate properly at 133MHz FSB. The downside, again, is more heat and possibly reduced lifespan.

The P2-99 supports both Vcore and VIO tweaking, but not in a very advanced form - there's a jumper for each setting on the motherboard, with a standard and "TEST" setting. I don't know how much the TEST setting actually increases the voltage in each case, but in my tests it did indeed make a difference.

Ook het franse Thompson gaat een portable MP3 player op de markt brengen. Ding heeft de naam 'Lyra' en heeft 32Mb flash ram:

However, the company's support for the controversial MP3 digital audio format, signalled last week by its acquisition of a 20 per cent stake in MP3 software specialist MusicMatch, was tempered by Lyra's 'play it safe' support for Microsoft's MP3 rival, MS Audio 4.0. However, Lyra also supports RealNetworks' RealAudio G2 format, so perhaps the decision to include MS Audio 4.0 is more about covering as many bases as possible than accepting Microsoft is about to dominate the online music format market.

Zie dit nieuwsbericht bij The Register.

Jeremy van AGN 3D heeft benchmarks van Unreal patch 221, 222 en 224 gepost op het AGN3D BBS. De framerates laten enige verbetering zien tussen de verschillende versies, maar echt dramatisch is het niet (in ieder geval niet wat Epic beloofde). Zie ook deze reactie:

Amen brother. I've gotten to where I play almost every game on my TNT rather than the Voodoo 2 SLI. The TNT looks so much better and the frame rates are generally well high enough to play at 1024x768 without a hitch. Unreal of course being the exception. After all this time waiting for the Holy 224 patch, I thought it would be phenomenal. Instead, I install it and start benchmarking and OpenGL and D3D still suck. But, I guess the problem is that Epic didn't see the problem. In response to an e-mail I sent months ago regarding the need for a patch to cure the crappy performance in D3D and OpenGL, Mark Rein stated "I'm sorry but you're completely wrong there. Unreal runs pretty well (not perfect yet)on the TNT if you use the latest Detonator drivers from Nvidia." I am not sure what his definition of perfect is, but it doesn't come close to mine.

Check deze thread op het AGN 3D / Voodoo Extreme message board.

Unreal Universe heeft een interview met Alan Willar, level designer van Unreal Tournament, geupt. Hier heb je alvast een vraag:

UU: I've heard people say that the reason they are looking forward to Unreal Tournament is the seemingly more "adventurous and radical" nature of the levels, do you think that these people will be dissapointed? Alan: Well, based on the number of levels (35+) and the massive amount of variations in those levels, I think there will be quite a few suprises for everyone :) My feeling is that everyone can find at least 3-5 maps that they REALLY like!

Klinkt ok. Check Unreal Universe voor de rest.

Microson.com heeft een review van de Viper V770 gepost.

The Viper V770 that we received was equipped with 32 MB of 6 ns Hyundai SDRAM based on 0.22-micron technology. At the boot, the card BIOS stated that we had the V770D version. A large heatsink was glued on the TNT2 chip, but there was no fan. With the help of the latest beta of Power Strip, we found out that the core frequency was 125 MHz and that the memory was clocked at 150 MHz. Diamond will offer a TNT2-Ultra model featuring the same chip, but clocked at a higher frequency.

Ik kan geen overklok info vinden in de review, wel hebben ze veel benchmarks en CPU scaling grafiekjes.

Firingsquad heeft een interview gepost met een mannetje van Diamond. Onderwerp zijn Diamond's nieuwe Viper V770 en Stealth III S540 kaarten.

Het staat nu vast dat de kloksnelheid van de V770 Ultra 150/183MHz zal zijn, dus niet de 175/200Mhz die Tom en Sharky in hun previews gebruikte:

When the TNT2 Ultra was first announced, Diamond was expecting to ship their parts at 175/200Mhz core/memory. Quite a few folks were skeptical however, and it seems they've been proven right. Most likely due to an inability to obtain good yields at 175Mhz core, high-end users looking to get the most performance out of their TNT2 will have to take their chances and do so through the Turbo Gauge. We're disappointed that Diamond was not able to deliver on their claims for this one, but it's unclear where the fault lies. Either way, 175/200 will still be the goal of the TNT2 overclocker.