Yahoo meldt dat nVidia gaat zorgen voor de grafische kaarten op de AMD Professional Gamers League.

"The RIVA TNT2 is the obvious choice for these demanding gamers. World class gaming enthusiasts demand a platform that will provide high-quality graphics while pushing their systems to unheard of levels -- and with the Guillemot Maxi Xentor 32 Ultra, that is what they will be getting at the PGL championships."

AMD heeft trouwens ook allemaal PGL merchandise te koop.

Gamespot heeft een korte preview gepost van de Nomad, Creative's antwoord op de Diamond RIO MP3 player. Wat betreft features is-ie zeker uitgebreider als de Rio:

The Nomad ships with 64-megabytes of memory, 32 on board and 32 through a Smart Media flash card. But unlike the Rio, Creative's Nomad also comes with a couple of features you won't find on Diamond's offering: a voice recorder and an FM tuner. Additionally, the Nomad also comes with a docking station that doubles as a charger. The docking station connects to a PC via the parallel port and allows the user to download and upload any kind of data, not just MP3 files, transforming the Nomad into a 64-megabyte portable hard drive.

De prijs gaat rond de 179 dollar liggen voor het 32Mb model en $249 voor de 64Mb versie. Check Gamespot voor meer info.

GA Sports heeft 18 nieuwe screenshots van NFS4: High Stakes gepost. Hier heb je alvast 3 tumbnails:

Na lang onderzoek zijn ze toch tot deze conclusie gekomen.

Goh, wat een verassing...........

Het overgrote deel van de betaalde diensten op Internet draait om sex. Van de totale markt in de Verenigde Staten in Europa, die vorig jaar op 1,4 miljard dollar werd geschat, is 69 procent pornografisch van aard. Het belang van pornografie zal de komende vijf jaar relatief wel iets dalen, maar in absolute zin nog sterk toenemen

Volgens Chipzilla zelf:

Intel reckons the K7 will hit 100,000 units in the third quarter and a whopping 500,000 in Q4.

Jeremy van AGN 3D heeft alvast een aantal benchmarks van de Matorx G400Max gepost. Z'n review laat nog even op zich wachten omdat z'n word file met review weggetrashed werd (minder). Voor de benchmarks moet je even richting de news page van AGN 3D fietsen.

Na 1 miljard dollar te hebben geinvesteerd in de beveiliging van hun systemen, zijn de NASA computers nog steeds 'makkelijk' te kraken. En daarin zag de naarstige senator Liebermann (u weet wel, de man die zo graag wil dat spellen gecensureerd worden) weer een kans zich te profileren...

``We successfully penetrated several mission-critical systems, including one responsible for calculating detailed positioning data for Earth-orbiting spacecraft and another that

processes and distributes the scientific data received from these spacecraft,'' the General Accounting Office (GAO) said.

Having gained access to these systems, the report said, ``we could have disrupted NASA's ongoing command and control

operations and stolen, modified or destroyed system software and data.''

Firingsquad heeft het tweede deel van z'n Cooling Guide gepost. Deel 2 gaat over CPU Cooling. Er worden een paar heatsinks besproken, waaronder de Nen-n-Dude Glacier en Computernerd B-Cool! series. Naast de PII en de PIII komt de Celeron aan de beurt met o.a. de befaamde ComputerNerd Wopper. Zelfs peltiers worden besproken. Errug leuk allemaal. Check 't hier.

Leuk berichtje bij News.com. Laat ik m'n opmerkingen maar achterwege laten :

A rival to Microsoft accused the world's largest software maker of dumping Korean-language software into the South Korean market for as little as 10 percent of its fair price.

Hangul and Computer, which controls 60 percent of the word-processing software market in Korea--the only nation in the world where Microsoft isn't dominant--filed the complaint with the nation's Fair Trade Commission.

It accused Microsoft of selling Korean-language Windows 98 and three other products in a package to educational institutions and other bulk buyers for as low as 10 percent of their fair price.

"The worldwide giant is abusing its superior financial capacity, damaging us and its other competitors here," said Jhun Ha Jin, president of Hangul and Computer. "It's in clear violation of fair trading laws."

The Sanctum heeft een review van de 10.000rpm IBM Ultrastar 9LZX, de top wat betreft de Ultra2 SCSI schijven en de grote concurrent van de Seagate Cheetah. De performance van het ding is errug hoog (net zoals z'n prijs bdw ):

The first thing we noticed when running the UltraStar was the stealthy noise it emitted. Even in full out installs we hardly heard a noise from it. Also it's sheer speed was amazing. Even coming from Seagate's speedy Cheetah it was a large difference. Most of it was likely from the difference in buffer cache sizes. The UltraStar packs with a 4MB cache which helps in many different ways. While the drive is performing functions, it can read ahead and keep information stored in the cache, before wasting time in system memory. You can really see this in action, when installing software. Watching the install percent, you can see it jump from say 10% to 14%. This also assists in audio and video i/o, making the Ultrastar a good role for audio and video production.

Kert heeft een 3D Blaster Savage4 review op z'n page gepleurd. Kert lijkt er plezier in te scheppen om praktisch elk woord van quotes te voorzien, wat nogal irritant leest... Blabla, laat ik me focusen op de inhoud - hier een stuk:

The 'Savage4' processor can operate at 150 MHz without any form of cooling. Nevertheless, a heatsink has been thrown in to guarantee stability. Compared to 'Savage3D', 'Savage4' has an additional texture pipeline. To keep up with the dual texture pipelines, the triangle setup has been bumped up from 5 million in Savage3D to 8 million triangles per second. Unlike 'Savage3D', 'Savage4' graphics processor is clocked separately from memory. By default, '3D Blaster Savage4' has its processor clock at 110 MHz while memory is 125 MHz. 'Savage4' has abandoned Savage3D's 'Void and Cluster' 16-bit dithering in favour of the conventional 'Bayer Matrix' method. An 8-bit stencil buffer and single pass bump mapping are newly added features. While both processors are based on a 0.25 micron process, 'Savage4 PRO' appears to be the more clock tolerant of the two. When overclocked to 150 MHz, the processor is stable without a heatsink. To compare the performance of 'Savage4 PRO' and 'Savage3D, framerates in '3DMark 99 MAX' and 'Unreal' were measured.

The Register heeft een nieuwsbericht over de plannen van Gateway met de ouwe trouwe Amiga. Ze willen er een soort super simpele internet doos van maken:

Yet cheap hardware is still part of the programme. Gateway president and COO Jeff Weitzen said the company's mainstay will continue to be home computers. And Waitt said later: "We feel the technology now allows for us to develop very low cost products and we are going to definitely play in that market... Right now we'll be at $499 or $599 or $399 -- we're still working that out."

Start pushing much beyond that point and you move into the kind of low-cost system Amiga appears to be developing. In addition to maintaining OS development for existing Amiga machines, the company is, by all accounts, working on slimline home machines not dissimilar to the kind of thing Nintendo and Sony are developing, and Sega releasing -- games machines that also provide more general purpose functionality such as Net access, home networking and digital camera connectivity.

in C't juni '99, blad voor computer techniek, staat een artikel over valse Asus P2B moederborden. Deze moederborden zijn vooral goed te herkennen aan de doos waarin ze verkocht worden.
Een omschrijving van de tekst op de echte en de vervalste moederborden :

de echte : Asus company MAINBORD
de vervalsing: ASUS company 440BX (grote gele leters schuin naar rechsboven) P2B series 100MHZ mainboard

Er zal geen Alienware Voodoo3 PGC (Parallel Graphics Configuration) config komen. Mag niet van 3Dfx:

"We met with 3dfx VP of retail sales Richard Burns at E3," Alienware's vice president Alex Aguila told GameSpot News. "He stated that a retail PGC-enhanced Voodoo3 product would interfere with their own branding and assured us that 3dfx would do everything in their power to stop us." Although he couldn't give any specifics, Aguila mentioned that a number of retailers had expressed interest in carrying Alienware's upcoming Voodoo3 2000 PGC package. Nonetheless, gamers interested in PGC will be able to purchase the dual boards directly from Alienware when they become available sometime next month. In the meantime, the company is currently exploring other technologies and is talking with potential partners for other possible future PGC products. Coincidentally, Metabyte - developer of the PGC technology - has told GameSpot News that it has received a pair of PCI TNT2 boards and is busily testing them in tandem. We'll keep you informed of any new developments.

Koel, nu nog iemand vinden die de PGC kaarten naar Nederland gaat halen (ComptechWorld, Narwal? ).

Oja, meer info over de PGC/3Dfx toestand vind je bij Gamespot.

Ik kwam van 3Dnews.net bij deze site waar je een realvideo filmpje van Team Fortress 2 neer kunt halen. Filmpje is nogal low-quality en er loopt een irritante lijn over het scherm, maar het filmpje zelf is best wel goed. De graphics zien er behoorlijk realistisch uit (voor zover dat aan de hand van het filmpje beoordeeld kan worden) en vooral de bewegingen van de ventjes worden zeer realistisch geanimeerd.

Check 't hier (en je hebt uiteraard Realplayer nodig).

Bij PC.IGN hebben ze een review gepost van F16 Agressor. Ze vinden 'm redelijk:

The problem is that the game is too authentic to attract the casual gamer. It's not flying the plane or monitoring all the various cockpit systems. Nope. That part is pretty easy. What kills me about this game is that there is no sliding difficulty scale. You can select unlimited ammo or invulnerability, but you can't adjust the flight or combat modeling. So basically, here's this great flight sim that you can only play on one difficulty level. While it's incredibly realistic, it may be more of a challenge that the non-flight-sim-nut is prepared to handle.

Bij Gamers Central heeft een review van TOCA twee geupt:

This game is a faithful reproduction of the ToCa competition. It features all the cars from the competition and all the famous tracks like Brands Hatch and Silverstone. There are two aspects of the game that make it really stand out. First there is the attention to detail, from the reproduction of the circuits to the design of the cars which are accurate to the very last decal on the bumper (!). The other aspect that makes the game really good is the use of realistic physics models of the cars. It is absolutely impossible for you to try to win a race without making use of the car's brakes. This sounds a little obvious but in a game like Need For Speed 3 there is very rarely any need for the use of the car's breaks. In ToCa2 if you are not fully conversant in the use of the car's breaks you will spend a lot of time in the sand traps and gravel patches of the different tracks. As a result of that you will also spend a lot of time beating up on your keyboard because of your frustration (which is what occurred in my case).

En screenshots:

Laat ik weer eens te weinig te doen hebben, dus bouw ik een rondje screenshots. Check de sites voor meer & groter:

Giants (AVault)

Star Trek Deep Space Nine (GA-Source)

Braveheart (GA-Source)

Revenant (GA-Source)

M$ Links Extreme (AGN 3D)

System Shock (AGN 3D)

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms (AGN 3D)

VE heeft een review van de Asus P2B-F in elkaar geknalt. Beetje laat, maar goed. Het blijft één van de betere borden:

For a comparison, I could run my Celeron overclocked to 504 (not very stable though) on a BH 6 at 2.3V. The same Celeron 300a worked okay on the P2B-F at 2.2V. I did not get a chance to benchmark the Celeron at 504 because I sold it before I could...

The stability of the board is great! The only thing that I miss from the BH 6 is the software voltage tweaking. If you are an overclocker you will miss this too, but if you are like me, after you tape the pins of a processor at a certain voltage, you usually do not change it much. The jumper control of the board is fine. The jumpers are layed out very simply, and are easy to change (unlike a certain FIC VA-503+ which is a nightmare to change jumpers...). I noticed on the BH 6 that if you wanted to change your memory modules that you would have to remove your AGP card to do so. On the P2B-F there is just enough room to get my fingers on the DIMM locks (to keep the DIMM in place.). It's a subtle feature, but convenient.

Ik zag op Voodoo Extreme dat Valve een nieuw screenshot van Team Fortress 2 heeft gepost, met beschrijving:

One of our main goals with TF2 is to give teammates a lot of opportunities to work together. This screen shot shows a medic loading ammo for a soldier -- which makes the soldier's gun shoot faster and more accurately.

We also demoed the real-time voice communication system (with lip sync), the new MRM models, our parametric animation system, volumetric fog, etc.

Kewl

Extreme Hardware heeft een erg vette (18 pagina's lange) review rond de V3-3000 gebouwd. Laat ik maar maar stuk oc info pasten, de features van de V3 zullen inmiddels bekend zijn:

I wanted to duplicate the out of box experience of most gamers, so no extra heat sinks or cooling fans were applied to the review card. Rest assured that the Voodoo3 3000 can handle the heat, as it has the largest heatsink I've ever seen on a video card. Under this setup I could comfortably attain 190 MHz, but with the card's safety in mind, I decided on 185 MHz as the test speed. Remember, this is still 2 MHz higher than the default speed on the more expensive Voodoo3 3500. One other important note is that the review card came with 6 ns Hyundai SDRAM, which has been the overclocking favorite of the USENET crowd. The 6 ns Samsung memory is also prime for overclocking, though the varients using Siemens memory have had issues getting to the higher clock rates. It's easy to identify which memory you have on your V3 board, Samsung memory will have a "SEC" on the chip, Siemens will have "Siemens" and Hyundai has a strange-looking "H" symbol on the chip.

Check de review bij Extreme Hardware. Er zijn de afgelopen tijd veel V3 reviews gepost, dit is zeker één van de betere.

Op HardOCP vond ik nog een linkje naar een site met plaatjes van nog een liquid cooler. Ik vind het er niet al te efficient uitzien eerlijk gezegd (beetje weinig surface contact) maar oordeel zelf.

YAMAHA INTRODUCES WORLD'S FIRST 6X WRITE/4X REWRITE CD DRIVE. Dat schrijft Yamaha hier in een persbericht.

The new unit incorporates all the features of Yamaha's other award-winning drives. It uses SCSI-2 I/F, maximum 10 MB/sec. burst transfer rate (synchronous transfer) and features Yamaha's proprietary LSI chip set, optical head and the new Write Strategy for reliable high-speed/high-quality recording. The half-height, 5.25-in. format drive will be available in June 1999.

Nog even wachten dus.

Hier hebben ze wat screenshots van de Savage4 kaart van Number Nine, waarbij S3TC gebruikt wordt.

Ik las net dat het 1 jaar geleden was dat Unreal door Epic Games gereleased is, bij Unreal Universe hebben ze er een artikel over. Daarin staat veel over het verleden, heden en de toekomst van Unreal

Nearly four years in development, Unreal had a fairly large fanbase that was lured in by the breath-taking screenshots that had been released. People knew that Unreal was special. Special in the way it looked and special in the way the game was layed out. The sheer size and beauty of the single player levels was really something different than most other games.The Unreal engine, developed by Tim Sweeney was a breakthrough in the 3D game world

Ik vond bij PC Paradox trouwens ook net een (korte) review van de film Star Wars Episode I, dat wordt een vette hit voor Lucas Film

Ik kreeg via Diederik (aka bandwidth upper) een link naar een PHP / MySQL tutorial bij de Webmonkey. Als je verder wilt dan het bouwen van statische html/flash sites dan kun je mbv PHP en MySQL erg simpel super dynamische database driven sites bouwen. Hier heb je een stuk uit de intro, voor het geval je niet weet wat PHP en MySQL is:

Enter PHP and MySQL. These two make up what must be the best combination for data-driven Web sites on the planet. You needn't take my word for it. An unofficial Netcraft survey shows that PHP usage has jumped from 7,500 hosts in June 1998 to 410,000 in March 1999. That's not bad. The combination was also awarded Database of the Year at Webcon98, where it received a lovely tiara.

MySQL is a small, compact database server ideal for small - and not so small - applications. In addition to supporting standard SQL (ANSI), it compiles on a number of platforms and has multithreading abilities on Unix servers, which make for great performance. For non-Unix people, MySQL can be run as a service on Windows NT and as a normal process in Windows 95/98 machines.

PHP is a server-side scripting language. If you've seen ASP, you'll be familiar with embedding code within an HTML page. Like ASP, PHP script is processed by the Web server. After the server plays with the PHP code, it returns plain old HTML back to the browser. This kind of interaction allows for some pretty complex operations.

Bij de weg: Tweakers.net draait ook op PHP en MySQL. Als je in Nederlandse webhoster zoekt die PHP/MySQL kan draaien dan moet je ff naar Sitelite internet fietsen. In de VS is pair.com een goede en betrouwbare provider.

Eric heeft z'n bigass 3D accelerator roundup uitgebreid met een review van de Matrox G400 / G400Max:

The G400 chipset seems to be one that scales very well onto faster Pentium III CPU's. The results that I've obtained with the G400 and the G400 MAX cards show very little difference between 640, 800 and 1024 resolutions when it comes to framerate. This means that in these low resolutions the CPU, my Pentium II 400, is the limiting factor. Unfortunately I do not yet have a Pentium III (anyone willing to supply me one in exchange for advertising space ??) so I could not verify Pentium III performance, but according to Matrox the G400 MAX should score about 5000 on 3DMark 99 MAX in the lower resolutions on a PIII 500.

So in the lower resolutions the G400's are not up to speed compared to Voodoo 3 and TNT2, but who cares about 640 and 800 these days? When you move beyond 1024x768 the G400's become a major player, the G400 MAX outperforming TNT2 cards in most benchmarks. Put that together with excellent image quality and environment mapped bumpmapping (which is not the same as environment mapping) and you've got a card which is a top choice.

De benchmarks vind je op deze pagina.

Volgens BetaNews komen er geen SBlive-drivers voor Windows 2000 totdat Windows 2000 gereleased word
CL begint steeds verder te dalen in mijn aanzien.

We have had numerous people emailing us about our fix a while back and the possibility of some beta drivers from Creative Labs. Here's a little excerpt from the Creative Labs newsgroups:

By the time Windows 2000 ships, we should have release drivers available. However, we are not currently making beta drivers available to users.

Chris Owens

Creative Labs, Inc

Voor meer informatie, kijk ook eens op de Sound Blaster Live! Newsgroepen