Wees niet meteen bang dat we nu opeens verandert zijn in een tweede MS Webwereld (twee postings over WP binnen een uur), maar dit is misschien wel interessant. Wordperfect (ben ik nog steeds een aanhanger van) is op de weg terug, mede door de gratis Linux versie:

But away from WP's niches (which includes lawyers - and even Microsoft's outside lawyers for the trial), the product has been seeing gains of 50 per cent in the general business market. There are additional positive factors working in Corel's favour. One, which has probably not yet registered very significantly although it could account for some of the business market upswing, is the free WP for Linux, only slightly cut down from the full version, and which has just passed the million downloads mark, despite it being 23.6MB. Some 70,000 downloads a week are being seen.

Zie dit nieuwsbericht bij The Register.

Brandon Reinhart aka "Greenmarine" (Epic UT programmer) heeft z'n .plan geupdate met o.a. wat info over Unreal Tournament:

I am very happy with the kind of gameplay we've attained in UT. Things like multikill combos and killing sprees add a lot to deathmatch...adding more of a fightgame edge to the combat. Gameplay moves from just killing people to killing people in creative ways. By introducing elements like high air control and opponent momentum control (knocking your enemy around with rocket launcher or ripper) you get more skillful kills. From the feedback I've gotten from people who have actually taken the time to play with the game before they judge it, the gameplay is very solid. [break]Verder in z'n .plan een zooi info over E3 en Episode 1:[/break] Saw Star Wars twice today. Great film. Incredible light saber duels. Jar Jar Binks should have gotten waxed though.

Fijn om te weten, wanneer mogen wij 'm zien?

iXBT heeft een review gepost van de Creative Labs 3D Blaster Savage4 Pro. Hier heb je een stuk uit hun conclusie wat betreft de benchmarks (waar ze er erg veel van hebben):

Well, let's sum up all we have mentioned and make the final conclusions. First, concerning the Intel Pentium III based system. The graphics card Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 generally performed pretty well in API Direct3D, however, the drivers are a bit too raw yet and the multitexturing regime is thoroughly bad. Only 3DMark 99 MAX showed the true worth of multitexturing: the fillrate with multitexturing is almost twice as high as without it. And as for OpenGL support is leaves very much to be desired. Multitexturing support is the key thing about this graphics card, because the top chipset performance directly depends on it, and the drivers do not let the card to fully use the potential of this valuable feature. So, the oversight of S3 company is more than evident. However, it may be kind of consoling that almost all companies launch their new graphics cards with incomplete drivers. Take, for instance, ATI, which is still trying to rectify bilinear filtering of Rage128, and there seems to be no end to it.

That is why judging by working speeds we can undoubtedly recommend Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 to those users, who don't feel like loosening their purse-strings for a Riva TNT2, and who are not satisfied with Voodoo3 for some reasons (for instance, because it lacks 32-bit color support). If we take a look at the history of S3 Savage3D, at its evolution and constant improvement, we will become firmly convinced of S3's ability to introduce all the necessary enhancements and to release new drivers versions. We hope they will take note of all their mistakes and the new drivers won't have any problems with multitexturing.

Overklokken ging ook redelijk met de Savage4: iXBT was in staat om 'm op 143/143MHz te draaien (110/125 default).

Lees de intro maar ff om te weten wat ze daarmee bedoelen...

More and more articles on the Dual Celeron™ Rigs are being posted on the Internet every day, and it is alarming that the so-called ‘experts’ who write them purport that the Celeron™ outperforms the PII’s™ and Xeon’s™. Let make one thing quite clear, IT AIN’T SO. In an Intel based SMP computer, each processor [break]In c't heeft al vaker gestaan dat L2 cache erg belangrijk is bij SMP systemen. Maar als ik dan bijv. de Photoshop bechmarks bij Firingsquad zie, dan zie ik geen dramatisch vershil tussen dual PII en dual Celeron. Hardware Central heeft Photoshop benchmarks die het tegengestelde suggereren. Deze opmerking vinnik trouwens ook niet al te snugger:[/break] Intel knew the performance loss due to the small cache of the Celeron™, so they were intelligent enough not to enable the SMP capability of that processor. This is a typical case of “Buyer Beware” -- don’t believe everything you read.

Kan aan mij liggen, maar ik vind het dus echt veel waarschijnlijker dat Intel gewoon niet wil dat we een goedkoop dual Celeron systeempje gaan samenstellen dat altijd nog sneller is dan een single PIII die 6 maal zoveel kost...

Reacties?

Hadden ze bij Sharky Extreme gisteren nog een Celeron oc guide voor de 'arme' overclocker, vandaag zijn de overklokkers met te veel geld aan de beurt. Hier een stuk uit de PIII Overclocking Guide bij Sharky Extreme:

The best compromise of price and performance based on the experiences we've had so far lies with the Pentium III 450. For only $270 (current price) the majority of P3-450s overclock without hesitation to 558MHz. In fact, we've had several in the lab now that when using a less common FSB speed like 129MHz (4.5 x 129MHz) on an Abit, Soyo, or AOpen mainboard, can maintain the 581MHz speed without issue.

WP was Micro$ofty een maandje voor met hun Office pakketje, zie hier een berichtje:

Ongeveer een maand voor de lancering van de nieuwe Office 2000 suite van Microsoft, heeft Corel de nieuwste versie van haar WordPerfect Office 2000 suite gelanceerd. Wat opvalt in de nieuwe suite zijn de verbeterde HTML-conversiemogelijkheden in haar WordPerfect tesktverwerker, Quattro Pro rekenbladen en Corel Presentations. Het pakket bevat met Trellix nu ook een eigen HTML-editor die aan beginnelingen toelaat om in een handomdraai een eigen webpagina in mekaar te steken. Wie de Professional Edition in huis haalt, kan bovendien gebruik maken van de Paradox database die er m.b.v. JDBC voor zorgt dat het verbinden met een website kinderspel wordt. Daarnaast is er ook nog NetPerfect, een servertoepassing die ervoor zorgt dat de conversie en het publiceren van webpagina's vlot verloopt. Zoals u weet heeft Corel ook een licentie genomen op Visual Basic for Applications, een scripttaal van Microsoft die de internetmogelijkheden van de Corel toepassingen sterk uitbreidt. Er komt ook een Linux-versie van het pakket, maar deze is pas voorzien voor het einde van dit jaar. Dat het succes gegarandeerd is, mag blijken uit de meer dan één miljoen downloads van de gratis Linux-versie van haar WordPerfect tekstverwerker.

GamingEvents.com heeft een preview gepost van Mortyr.

The final will have 20 massive levels to travel and fight through and from the beta I must say they look to be pretty massive indeed. I was quite impressed with the first look at the beta, the visuals are rather nice and at times utterly stunning. Directional sounds will compliment the visuals further drawing you into this immersive alter-reality. Travelling through the citadel I could hear the screams of POW’s as they were brutally tortured, the clink of chains as the prisoners thrashed about in their cells and the ominous barking of German Shepherds as they picked up my scent.

The AI looks pretty good as well from my first look, the German soldiers attack you mercilessly when they have the upper hand and will either run or raise the alarm if you give them too tough a time. You’ll have 12 weapons from which to choose to give the Nazi’s a run for their money including the aforementioned jet pack and NVG’s, so you’ll not be at a loss for damage inducing tools.

Dit gaat best wel een wreed spel worden lijkt me, check ook deze screenshots (Gaming Eventes heeft er zes):

Blijkbaar zaten al die sites die nu een G400 review posten onder een NDA, want ze posten 'toevallig' net op de 20de allemaal hun review. Zo ook Matrox Users:

In my own personal opinion I think the G400 MAX is going to be an easy leader as far as 2D performance and overall image quality go, and one of the fastest if not the fastest 3D cards. I have had one or two minor problems with the G400 MAX as I have mentioned but I'll stress again it is a late beta board with late beta drivers so one or two glitches are to be expected and Matrox have been very keen to quickly track down and fix the source of my problems.

My only major concern is that the G400's will get let down by poor driver support as we have seen with the G200's to some extent. I'm sure this won't be the case, from discussions I've had with Matrox it really does sound like they have learnt from recent experiences and are determined that there will be no repeat. There is most definitely a Windows 9x OpenGL ICD already in a state in my opinion for public consumption and Matrox are saying there will also be a Windows NT OpenGL ICD when the boards ship. If this all does come together Matrox have got a formidable graphics card on their hands.

Ze hebben benchmarks, maar alleen in vergelijking met de G200, dus daar heb je bar weinig aan.

Sharky Extreme heeft een preview van de PowerVR Neon250.

In fact, the whole existence of the PowerVR Series 2 PC product has been the source of much speculation. Based on the PowerVR 250 chip designed by NEC and VideoLogic, the Neon 250 has taken a back seat to the other PowerVR Series2 chips used in Sega's Dreamcast console, the Sega Naomi arcade system and on the R-Cade Vision 250 from VideoLogic for the ArcadePC platform. Finally, the baby emerges from the bath water.

The PowerVR Series 2 technology is, in a nutshell, an enhanced version of the original PowerVR 3D architecture (PCX1 and PCX2 3D graphics chips). The performance increase involved is roughly five times that of a PCX2, with a fill rate of two times PCX2. It's been TWO LONG years since VideoLogic released their last chip. The PCX1 came out in November 1996 when the best CPU one could muster was a Pentium 166MHz (yes even without MMX!) and the PCX2 followed in June 1997. The original architecture caved in due to CPU dependency but with higher performance CPUs now being the norm, that bottleneck has vanished.

Bij JC las ik dit interessante stukje :

99/05/19, 10:23pm - Many thanks to Shawn for personally calling those nice CIE fellows (the second group purported to have K6-3-500 systems). According to he, they basically said that this chip is not in stock, but has been recently delayed until June 15th. Huh?? Delayed? Wasn't it supposed to come out *after* June in the first place? Curiouser and curiouser...

99/05/19, 8:56pm - Woo! Armand and KH broke a very interesting story involving 500MHz K6-3 being reported in at least two locales. Armand pointed us to these guys, who upon being called confirmed that these parts were in stock. KH went about and found this company who apparently have it, as well. There's also, I have noticed, a couple other places report a "K6-III/500" on pricewatch, those being Alpha International and Cyberpower. I checked out AI and couldn't find the K6-3-500 referenced on their site at all, but it was all over the place at Cyberpower, in systems ranging from $799 to $1099. Es verdad? Remarking, perhaps? AMD not telling us everything? Dunno yet. If something is up, I'm sure we'll find out in the next few days.

Hmmm interessant. Ik ben wel benieuwd hoe dat precies zit.

Alex kon natuurlijk niet achterblijven op Annand en daarom gooit ie er ook maar een review tegenaan.

D3D is certainly where the 'future' lies and with a G400 MAX and its 32MB, you'll be in the very best of hands. It really is exceptionally fast. The Forsaken scores were not only the fastest yet seen, but the astounding 32-bit performance certainly sets a precedent. The performance hit was minimal at 'worst' and at 800x600 in 32bit, frame rate was over 200fps. Even at 1600x1200 we were still seeing scores over 70fps in 32-bit on a Pentium III 500MHz. The multitexturing capabilities of the card under DX6 were also impressive as the Shogo: MAD scores show. We also gave the G400MAX a test run with 3Dmark Max99, where it not only passed all of the quality assurance tests, but it also turned in some impressive scores (especially at 32-bit).

Jammer alleen dat in OpenGL (met de huidige beta driver) het ding behoorlijk zuigt.

Hier krijgt iNTEL nog problemen mee, als die Russen van Elbrus eerder de 600 Mhz uitbrengen.

Elbrus, the Russian microprocessor company which secured funding from the Moscow government and others, is likely to produce its 64-bit running at 600MHz early next year. The processors will be produced at a small fabrication plant which will use .35 micron process technology on Applied Materials kit, as reported here earlier. The company is run by Professor Boris Babaian, and the team includes designers which claim the first breakthrough on VLIW (very long instruction words) years before HP took up the idea.

.shtml target=new>Hier zijn wat screenshots van Messiah, Shiny Entertainment's third person action/adventure.

Motorola heeft een succesje geboekt in de kopertechnologie.

Motorola researchers, in a technical breakthrough, have fabricated a multi-layer metal stack combining copper metal lines with a low-K porous film insulation, the company said Wednesday.

This is the first reported success in combining these materials in a multi-layer interconnect stack such as would be found on actual integrated circuits. The combination of copper, with its low resistivity and low-K dielectric materials, which sharply reduce parasitic capacitance, is regarded as necessary to the future of far-sub-micron integrated circuits.

Lees hier het hele verhaal.

AnandTech heeft de Matrox Millennium G400 & G400MAX onder de loep genomen.

Matrox definitely has a winner on their hands, the G400 is much more than everything the G200 should have been, and it's no surprise that such a combination of features, performance, and outstanding image quality will be making its way into the hands of quite a few anxious users that have renewed faith in Matrox. Myself included Let's just hope that Matrox can iron out the last few bugs with their ICD, and work on improving performance. Although the G400 will probably never reach TNT2 Ultra levels of performance, the closer Matrox gets, the better. The cards are ready and out in the open, you make the decision.

Anand heeft er ook weer lekker veel benchmarks in verwerkt, dus zeker het lezen waard

Tim vertelt hier wat over de vorderingen van de Unreal 2.25 patch.

The recent work on 225 has been focused on improving server performance and stability, and it has been paying off really well. It turns out that 224's server code was noticeably slower than 220, as a result of some code improvements I made but didn't test and time rigorously. The two bottleneck routines in the server are the visibility tracer and the actor replicator. I've been making the visibility tracer faster by processing all actors simultaneously and optimizing the code for a pure "yes/no" visibility test, rather than using the more general (and slower) line trace routine built into the engine. The actor replicator has gained significant speedups from a combination of low-level optimization (to the bit-stream writer, and replication condition caching code), and a new time-stamping system that speeds up replication by up to 50% on servers with high player counts.
Now, the 225 server is faster than all previous versions, and I'm working on some further improvements over the next few days.

Laten we hopen dat ie dan ook in de next few days wordt gereleased.

Volgens Betanews is er een nieuwe beta van ICQ99 gereleased:

A new beta version of ICQ is out, version 2.21 Build #1800. The previous version was 2.20 Build #1800, showing a one digit increase. New sounds have been added, not sure what else because the version history page has not been updated. It has not been posted to the popular download locations (Download.Com, Tucows, etc.) yet, but is mentioned at the ICQ download page. Check it out:

Je kunt het ding hier naar beneden gaan laden.

Duke regeert! 3D Action Planet heeft een korte preview van Duke Nukem 4 Ever. Hier wat spul:

This time around, Duke will be running and gunning in a true 3d environment, as opposed to Duke Nukem 3D’s "2.5d". After an initial start with the Quake 2 engine, the developers landed on the Unreal engine to power their creation. Assuming the guys at Epic get the code down, this means integrated multiplayer support. Even better, Duke 4 should ship with a "Duke-ized" version of UnrealEd, the Unreal engine editor. This means that custom maps will be more likely, which means increased value to Joe Gamer.

Duke 4 will also allow you to commandeer vehicles to use against your foes. Again, not a whole lot of information is available at this point, but it appears that you’ll be able to get behind the wheel of a Humvee, and maybe a jet ski (part of me wonders how they’ll work a jet ski into the deserts of Nevada, though).

Nog een waarschuwing voor Netscape gebruikers die een poging gaan ondernemen om de preview te bekijken: mijn NS4.6 crashte er tweemaal op .

GA-Source heeft een preview van SWAT3: Close-Quarters gepost. Hier heb je een plak over de gameplay:

The game takes place from a first-person point of view, with the interface existing as the inside of a SWAT team helmet with electronic display meters for tracking player health, the existence of noxious gasses and other warnings. Players have the ability to change points of view by switching to the SWAT cameras each assaulter has mounted on their helmets.

The heart of SWAT is special weapons and tactics and the element leader must be not only proficient, but a master of these. Included in the element leader's repertoire are tactics such as slicing the pie, shooting through walls, compliance, securing of suspects and evidence, deployment of CS gas, flashbangs and Chemlites. Weapons to master include the M4, a modified Less-then-Lethal M4 , the MP5 subgun, Benelli shotgun and the 1911 handgun -- All various calibers, all with their own knock down power.

En een paar screenshots (ze hebben er 9):

DiabloII.net heeft vijf nieuwe screenshots van Diablo 2 gepost. Hier heb je de beschrijvingen met link:

Blizzard have released five brand new screenshots of the newly revealed Barbarian. Two are set in Act III and Three in Act II. Shot One - Act III. Barbarian wielding a massive two handed battle axe. Shot Two - Act III. Barbarian with shield and sword outside entranceway to some sort of Temple. Shot Three - Act II. Barbarian running for cover from three fire casting arch mages. These have not been seen before but are reminiscent of the Arch Lich from Hellfire. Shot Four - Act II. tombs. Barbarian facing off three Claw Vipers. Shot Five - Act II. Barbarian taking on two adult Dung Beatles and two freshly spawned baby dungs.

Jeremy van AGN heeft een review van de Hercules Dynamite TNT2 geschreven. Net zoals bij andere reviews blijkt ook hier de overklokbaarheid van de Dynamite TNT2 erg goed te zijn. 200/225MHz lukte in eerste instantie niet, maar 190/220 liep wel stabiel:

After the reboot, it was time for a trip back to the friendly Hercumeter overclocking grounds and adjust the card to a more workable rate of speed. Moving the core speed down to 190 and the memory speed down to 220 was the rate that I decided to try this time. With that accomplished I closed the window and made my way on to another game of Q3Test, to attempt to work the card down to the bone. After launching Gamespy and picking a server, I was happy to see that the game actually launched this time. I managed to play for about 20 minutes with plenty of frags and getting fragged, but not one lockup. Visits to other games also went to prove that the Dynamite TNT2 will work fine at the higher frame rates for those of you wanting to submit your hardware to the abuse. You have to give Hercules’ and NVIDIA high praise for managing to pull off a card with such heavy overclocking ability. It looks like the Voodoo3 now has some heavy competition against it in the game of who’s card overclocks the best.

Lijkt er dus op dat de Dynamite TNT2 Ultra veruit de beste TNT2 kaart van dit moment is, helaas wel vrij duur (600 piek).

Volgens de Intel Roadmap, die wij precies een maand geleden op 'The Register' mochten aanschouwen, zou de volgende prijsdaling pas rond 18 juni plaatsvinden. Maar als we dit bericht mogen geloven, heeft Intel mede onder druk van AMD de datum vervroegd naar 6 juni.

The price of the 370-pin "socketed" version of the 466-MHz Celeron will fall from $167 to $142, while the 433-MHz version will be reduced from $141 to $111. A 400-MHz Celeron has been discounted from $101 to $91, and Intel has lowered the 366-MHz Celeron from $71 to $66, industry sources said. A 333-MHz Celeron will be priced at $60, down from $65. Celerons packaged in Intel's stripped down microprocessor module for the Slot 1 interface will typically be priced about $8 higher.