The Register heeft een nieuwsbericht gepost over de Cyrix Gobi en Mojave:

National Semiconductor subsidiary Cyrix is showing Socket 370 Gobi motherboards on its stand at the Computex trade fair.

And a representative said that it is continuing with its plans to introduce its Mojave technology using the same infrastructure.

It was continuing to develop products and relationships for the up coming products, he said. The first Mojave 370s will start appearing in quantity towards the end of this year.

Ik dacht dat National Semiconductor was gekapt met de Cyrix processors? Blijkbaar zit er nog leven in. Een foto van de Gobi chip vind je trouwens hier.

En hier dan deel 2:

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms sneak peek (Gamecenter)

Rollercoaster Tycoon review (3DGaming.com)

Sanity screenshots (Gamers' Crypt)

Flight Unlimited preview (AGN 3D)

Tachyon preview (AGN 3D)

Star Wars Episode 1: the Phatom Menace review (FullOn3D)

Descent 3 screenshots (Vertigo Extreme)

Wheel of Time screenshot (Speedy3D)
Diablo II screenshot (Blizzard)
Team Fortress Classic game guide (Gameguides.com)
Onofficial Half-Life FAQ
Roque Entertainment interview
History of Star Wars games (Gamespot)
Spec Ops 2 interview

Tijd voor het dagelijkse rondje game reviews, screenshots e.d.

System Shock II screenshots (PC Zone UK)

Messiah screenshots (Messiah Press)

Machines review (AVault)

Home World first look (Gamepower)

Shadow Man preview (Gameprix)

Nihilistic (Vampire: the Masquerade) interview (RPG Tales)
Hell-Copter download (28,45Mb) (AVault)
Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 review (Electric Games)

Michael Andrawes, huurling van Anand, heeft een review gepost van het Gainward 6IBA slot1 mammabord. Niets, maar dan ook helemaal niets, lijkt bijzonder te zijn aan dit ding:

Gainward's i440BX board, the 6IBA, is a great improvement over their first entry at AnandTech with much improved performance and stability. Unfortunately, that improvement and stability only brings them up to par with other average boards. If you don't demand too much from your computer, the Gainward 6IBA will get you by just fine. However, unless you get an incredible deal, there's really no reason to pick the merely average Gainward over more stable, higher performing, and more feature packed motherboards.

Moch je toch geïnteresseerd zijn, dan kun je de review van AnandTech hier lezen.

Hothardware doet z'n naam eer aan door een review van de Tennmax P3 TF Cooler te posten. Het ding heeft 2 ventilators en zoals de naam doet vermoeden is-ie bedoelt voor de PIII. Plaatjes:

Hothardware heeft temperatuur 'benchmarks' en die vallen eigenlijk nogal tegen: op een PIII @ 558Mhz is het temperatuursverschil met een normale PIII koeler 3 graden Fahrenheit. Daar betaal je dan 28 dollar voor...

AGN Hardware heeft een review gepost van de Everglide mousepad. Dit is niet zomaar een ordinaire muismat, dit ding is goed!:

Basically you can tell if a mousepad is good within the first 10 seconds of use. The Everglide mousepad is the smoothest yet best tracking mousepad I've ever used. It is ungodly smooth. I was afraid that it would be really smooth but have zilcho tracking. This isn't the case however. The surface of the Everglide mousepad has tiny bumps which give excellent tracking but don't hinder the smoothness. Other vinyl pads are very smooth but the mouse just slips away since it has nothing to "grab" onto when you stop moving. Using the Everglide mousepad is actually less work because it is so effortless to use. This helps to eliminate that stiff wrist feeling that can build up after a long gaming session. For kicks, I grabbed the cutting board from my kitchen to compare it. It does look similar but the bumps aren't nearly as fine and it's nowhere near as smooth. Durability wise, this pad isn't going to wear out. In five years there is no reason why it won't be as smooth as the day you bought it.

The Techzone brengt de zoveelste review van de V770 Ultra. Er zit wat info in over de overklokbaarheid van de V770. De ervaringen van The Techzone:

The Viper V770 Ultra is very overclockable. It runs at 185/220 with just the stock heatsink fan. We're sure we can get the core speed to 190+Mhz with the Global Win heatsink fan that was used in the V770 test.

Lijkt er dus op dat de Viper V770 behoorlijk goed te overklokken is, meerdere reviewers komen tot goede resultaten.

Goed nieuews voor bezitters van een socket7 plank met ALI chipset: ALI heeft nieuwe AGP drivers gereleased die een shitload aan problemen moeten verhelpen. Hier is de soep, weggeplukt bij Riva3D:

1. Support Windows 95(OSR2.1)/Windows 98/Windows 98SE.
2. ALi AGP Driver 1.60 adds registry key to help Windows98 Device Manager to display proper chipset driver properties, like Provider, Date & Version.
3. Support AMD K6-2 CXT core/K6-III MTRR feature. When ALi AGP Driver 1.60 detects an AMD CXT core CPU, it sets up MTRR to enable this feature.
4. S3 Savage3D is not stable on M1621 system, ALi AGP Driver 1.60 has solved this problem.
5. ALi AGP Driver 1.50 does not work well in Win98 with the Savage4. System may turn into BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). ALi AGP Driver 1.60 has solved this problem.
6. System may turn into BSOD when executing Turok on Intel i740 and M1621 based system. ALi AGP Driver 1.60 has solved this problem.
7. Solve system poor performance for Intel i740 in Windows 95. Need Intel i740 driver version v3.2.
8. Asus P5A bios 1005 sets up M1541 GAT mode and this will cause problem in ATI Rage 128. ALi AGP Driver 1.60 has solved this problem.
9. Add support for nVidia TNT2.
10. Add support for 3Dfx Voodoo3.
11. Fix nVidia TNT playing DVD frame drop.

Je kunt de nieuwe drivers hier neer gaan halen.

U-Games heeft een preview gepost van Unreal Tournament. Level design in UT lijkt net zoals bij Unreal weer erg goed te zijn:

Another one of Unreal's strong points, especially at a singleplayer level, and perhaps increasingly so at multiplayer too, was the strength of it's level design. Not only were they very well mapped and balanced, but the variation present in them was quite striking to say the very least. I was therefore quite intrigued to take a gander at the state of play with regard to the levels present in Unreal Tournament, especially with the words of Epic's Mark Rein running around in my mind. "We're not the slightest bit constrained by a story to play out so the levels range from those with a World War II feel to undersea bases to moving trains etc…" Well, I have to say that from what I've seen so far Epic certainly haven't lost any of that attention to detail or eye for variability which permeated their last creation. Far from it. The multiplayer arenas of Unreal Tournament include scenery ranging from imposing medieval castles, to new world galleons, and from second world war beaches to speeding present day trains. The usual assortment of future-world maps is included for good measure too.

De graphics zijn erg goed, alleen mogen we hopen dat de engine inmiddels wél een beetje relaxed draait met niet-Voodoo kaarten:

Hoewel Tom er volgens Brain Hook weer naast zit, is het toch altijd leuk om benchmarks te zien.

Running Q3 on a Celeron 400 doesn't change the picture much. TNT2 is even extending its lead a bit and G400 drops down quite significantly. G400 is indeed heavily depending on the CPU-performance, which is why it takes such a hit with Celeron. Savage4 scores identically to its PIII 550 results, it's obviously already at its fill rate limit.

Tom kijkt vooruit naar de aanstaande Apollo Pro+ 133 Chipset van VIA. Maar hoewel we wel een waardige tegenhanger van de Camino kunnen gebruiken, is het nog niet echt om vrolijk van te worden.

It's an old issue that VIA's AGP-performance lacks behind the AGP-performance of Intel's BX chipset, which is why VIA's PC133 lacks some 9% behind BX in Expendable-performance. The same is also valid for VIA's MVP3-chipset compared to Ali's Aladdin V chipset. The office performance of the PC133-platform is indeed slightly better than BX at 100 MHz FSB and on par with BX at 133 MHz FSB. The most disappointing result is achieved in the memory stressing Naturally Speaking-benchmark though. Even BX at 100 MHz FSB is already faster than VIA's PC133-platform, but BX at 133 MHz is way faster.

Als we Tom nog mogen geloven, zal de overgang naar 133 Mhz FSB en AGP 4 zowiezo maar een marginale prestatie winst met zich meebrengen. Dus dan zou de Camino, na de introductie van de Abit ATA/66 borden eind deze maand, ook niet echt interessant meer zijn.

Deze TNT2 kaart van Guillemot is bewapend met 32MB 183MHz RAM en 150MHz core speed. De review stelt eigenlijk niks voor, het is meer een pagina ouwe koek, zonder een benchmark. Kijk zelf maar.

Much like the TNT, the TNT2 handles Direct3D incredibly, reclaiming the TNT's title of fastest Direct3D board on the market. Most Direct3D games like Midtown Madness and Forsaken, where very playable in 1600x1200 and 1280x1024, a claim which no other board can say, but the Voodoo3 3000 comes very close, it will be interesting to see the Voodoo3 3500 take on Direct3D. Of course, the board takes full advantage of DirectX 6.0 as well.

Inplaats van stands te bezoeken, zoekt Alex vandaag naar nieuws achter gesloten deuren. Het levert interessante info op over de NV10 en de Camino.

Most interestingly was the identical line being touted by the aforementioned sources with regards to the projected performance of the NV10, which is said to be somewhere in the region of four times that of the TNT2 (the current 350MegaTexel/second fill rate is already high). Many of you will already know that NVIDIA is aiming to take 3D graphics into the 'next stage of realism' by sporting hardware T&L (transformation & lighting), clipping and geometry features on-chip but what if we told you that this will be backed up by a 64MB-128MB memory specification? Obviously full AGP 4X support will increase the memory bandwidth considerably too.

De NV10 zou volgens OEM sources al in oktober in de winkels liggen. Dus ik snap niet waarom ik nu 600 piek aan een utra TNT2 zou moeten uitgeven, als deze al binnen vijf maanden achterhaald is door zijn grote broer.

Ik zag op AGN3d dat er een filmpje(30MB!!) beschikbaar is dat over de gameplay, wapens en andere features gaat.
Het is een quicktime filmpje van 30MB, en je kan hem hier downen, hij is wel ingepakt d.m.v. Winzip, dus moet je hem eerst uipakken.

Ik heb hem zelf nog niet gezien daar ik op mijn werk alleen maar een simpel 56k modempje heb.
Dus laat ff weten of het tof is......

Brian Hook's laatste .plan update:

Okay, about the Tom's Hardware stuff. I'm a little burned out when it comes to getting in another pissing match over the stuff, so I'll just stick to the facts:

- irrespective of legal issues pertaining to his possession of the IHVTEST, it is not a valid benchmark program since the code in it is radically different than the code used in Q3TEST. So if you want to know how fast your card runs with IHVTEST, then use his numbers. If you want to know how fast your card will run with Q3TEST, use ours.

- the reason we do benchmarking is because A.) we know our software, and are thus aware of what likely bottlenecks will exist and how to properly measure the contribution of those bottlenecks; B.) we have no advertising affiliation when we post benchmarks, and do not need advertiser revenue (from sources that pose a significant conflict of interest when it comes to objectivity) to sustain ourselves; C.) we are engineers, and we understand how the basic underlying principles of the scientific method work.

We don't like it when other sites run benchmarks in a suspect manner, and in the past Tom's numbers, methodologies, and motives have all been suspect.

That's all I have to say on the matter, I'll let others argue the finer points.

Tom leert het ook nooit.

Storage Review heeft een review gepost van de Fujitsu MAG3182LP SCSI harddisk. Het ding draait op 10.000rpm en lijkt op alle vlakken de vergelijkng met de Seagate Cheetah aan te kunnen:

The MAG3182LP is Fujitsu's second 10k rpm Ultra2 SCSI offering, a direct competitor to the third-generation Cheetah 18LP. The specs of this 18.2 gigabyte drive, however, read a bit more impressively across the board. Instead of the Cheetah's 3.0 gigs per platter, the MAG3182LP features 3.6 GB/platter. The Fujitsu's specified average read seek time of 5.0 milliseconds comes in just a hair faster than the Seagate's 5.2 ms. Finally, the MAG3182LP's 2 meg buffer is twice the size of the Cheetah 18LP's one meg. A five-year warranty protects the drive.

Uit de bechmarks blijkt dat de Cheetah toch iets sneller is. Check Storage Review voor meer info.

Ik lees bij Voodoo Extreme dat Bruce Lewis (zelfde gozer als van GLDoom?) een Doom versie voor WinCE heeft gereleased. Nu kun je dus vanaf iedere plek op deze aardkogel Doom op je handheld spelen . Zo krijgen die dingen ook meteen een zinnige functie (het 'toetsenbord' van zo'n Kompak WinCE is way te klein om er op te kunnen typen).

Anyway, DoomCE kun je hier gaan halen en de readme vind je hier.

Yep, dat lees je goed: Brian Hook zal id Software verlaten. Hier is de info uit z'n .plan update:

Egads, how rumors fly so quickly and brazenly. And how scary that they are often so close to the truth and yet so far. :-)

To make a long story short, I'm leaving id.

My work at id has been a pivotal and important part of my life. I've learned a lot about programming, team work, and dealing with being in a position of high visibility. Even better, I've made some really good friends. The owners here have given me a great opportunity to advance myself both professionally and personally and they've rewarded me far better than expected in the process. This is a once in a lifetime gig, and will mark one of the most significant periods in my life.

For all these things and more I am hugely appreciative to Kevin, John, and Adrian. I cannot emphasize enough what kind of a privilege and learning experience it has been working here and, specifically, working with John. The type of talent, genius, and hard work he has demonstrated is the kind of thing you see once in a generation, and I feel privileged to have been able to work with someone of his caliber.

The team here consists of some of the most talented people I have ever worked with, and it was one hell of a ride working with so many people that simply will not accept anything but the best from you or them. These guys have done a stellar job with Quake2 and Quake3 -- which will OWN the first person deathmatch market -- and going forward, I expect even bigger and better things from this crew.

And of course -- the fans. You guys and gals rock. I may have had my disagreements with some of you in the past, but most of all, if you're flaming at me, it's because you care, and I'd much rather have you folks argue with me than not give a damn.

Crap, I'm getting all teary eyed and shit, so instead of turning this into some James Cameron acceptance speech, let me wrap up.

I will probably remain here another week or two cleaning up loose odds and ends, getting things transfered over cleanly, and saying my goodbyes. For business stuff, if you are an IHV your interim point of contact will be Graeme (zaphod@idsoftware.com). I expect that I will continue to receive e-mail here for a bit, so I will start forwarding relevant e-mails to the appropriate parties.

There is no sinister reason for my departure, it's actually an age old story: I got an offer from another company that, quite simply, I could not refuse. Later this week a press release will be issued announcing my new position, and I'm sure some of you will not be surprised when you see where
I've ended up. :-)

Signing off,

Brian Hook

Wat-ie dan gaat doen? Hmm...Bill stopt ermee en Brian Hook wordt de nieuwe CEO van Mikrosoft? Je moet toch wel een erg lekker aanbod krijgen wil je id verlaten?

Jaja, onze vriend Bill gaat zijn grootste concurrent een beetje bespioneren en zoekt daar nog mensen voor !

Primary responsibilities include competitive analysis of Linux, both for providing product planning for the development team and for technical assistance to Microsoft’s sales force.

Lijkt 't je wat dan kun je je hier aanmelden.

ATI heeft een licentie genomen op de MIPS (de power achter Silicon Graphics!) archictuur. Hier is de muffe press release van Yahoo Finance:

ATI Technologies Inc. announced today that it has licensed the MIPS® architecture to further enhance the digital video capabilities of its industry-leading graphics and multimedia technology. ATI is the world's largest vendor of computer graphics and multimedia products, and according to recent market research holds 46 percent of the US graphics distribution market. MIPS Technologies is the world's primary architect of 32- and 64-bit embedded processor technology. MIPS Technologies licensees are the only companies today shipping 64-bit embedded processors, in volume, for digital consumer products.

``ATI is actively diversifying its product line, based on our core competencies in graphics and multimedia products,'' said Adrian Hartog, vice president and general manager, components division, ATI Technologies Inc. ``We intend to be a major force in important emerging markets like set top boxes and consumer computing devices, and our licensing agreement to use the MIPS® architecture provides ATI with another key building block that will make us a world leader in these new markets.''

``ATI is a leader in consumer graphics and as such is an excellent fit as a strategic partner of MIPS Technologies,'' said John Bourgoin, president and CEO of MIPS Technologies, Inc. ``Teaming with ATI will enable the MIPS® architecture to strengthen its drive to penetrate the set top box and other consumer devices.''

De Creative 3D Blaster TNT2 is een kaart waarvan we nog niet zoveel reviews gezien hebben. GA-Source had er een paar dagen geleden, Gamers Depot nu ook. Hier heb je wat info uit hun review:

Check out those scores!! I can definitely live with them. All games felt smooth and rich in color. And for those of you who've been complaining about green smoke in Kingpin on V3, OK I admit ... smoke does look better on this card. In fact, I'm here to tell you it's steam, not smoke. Go buy one of these cards and look again. Quake3Test looks noticeably better on this card, both in 16-bit and 32-bit, than on other cards that do not handle such large textures. Only in Quake3 Test can I see a significant difference in image quality between V3 and TnT2 (i.e. 16-bit vs. 32-bit). No other game in my arsenal was visibly any different. Q3Test was quite playable at resolutions up to 1280, but at 1600x1200 I had to break out my Aspirin 'cause it was getting a little shaky. Here's the bottom line for me: this is as good as it gets - at least for now.

...kan geen oc info vinden in de review.

Jeff van Thresh's Firingsquad heeft een review van de Viper V770 op het net geparkeerd. Firingsquad heeft heel veel benchmarks van de V770 in vergelijking met de V3, en telkens blijkt de Viper sneller te zijn:

This review is about the Viper 770 cards, and not the broader topic of TNT2 vs. Voodoo3. However, I think it bears mentioning that all the benchmark results show the TNT2 outperforming the Voodoo 3 across the board. The sole exception is GLIDE support under Descent 3! This is even more amazing if you consider that the Voodoo3 enjoys a ten to fifteen percent default clock speed advantage against the TNT2. The Voodoo3 family weighs in at 143 and 166 megahertz, respectively, while the Viper 770 family clocks in at a mere 125 and 150 megahertz. [break]Uiteraard hebben ze ook getracht om het ding over te klokken: 160/200MHz bleek het maximaal haalbare:[/break] Here are my overclocking results with all the TNT2 cards I have encountered to date:

LeadTek S320-II 32mb. Default 125/150, Overclock 160/150 MaxiGamer Xentor 16mb. Default 135/166, Overclock 165/180 Viper V770 32mb. Default 125/150, Overclock 165/185 Viper V770 Ultra 32mb. Default 150/175, Overclock 160/200

Die oc info vind je trouwens hier (dan hoef je niet eerst langs 11 pagina's met benchmarks te browsen).

Mortyr Network heeft een review gepost van (hoe kan het ook anders) Mortyr. De bedoeling van dit spel mag inmiddels bekend zijn: moff...euh, ik bedoel nazi's omleggen. Slimme nazi's:

Enemy AI (another category I wanted to break off on it's own), is good. Far better then most games, it really shines in the upper difficulty levels. The game starts off at a level that is too easy for most hard-core gamers, though for more casual gamers it will provide a nice challenge without being overly frustrating. The most difficult level will a provide more then enough challenge and frustration for even the most seasoned gamers As the difficulty level goes up, it adds more enemies as most games do, but the enemies also get smarter. They begin to duck and dodge more, and their aim vastly improves. They also seem to notice you sooner, and call for backup sooner as difficulty goes up. While the AI may not break new ground, it is above the average shooter.

Het spel heeft dus veel overeenkomsten met Wolfenstein, maar de graphics...

You've come a long way baby .