News.com heeft een artikeltje gepost over AOL, die naar wegen zoekt om geld te verdienen met ICQ. Op zich is dat erg logisch, alleen het vinden van een goede 'cash-cow' is wat moeilijker. Eén van de mogelijkheden is 'opt-in marketing':

But Leonsis said the real revenue driver is waiting in the wings: opt-in direct marketing. While not formally unveiled, the idea is to have ICQ users develop a one-to-one communications channel with e-commerce vendors or other services. For example, if a user wants to know when Amazon has a book sale, the company can notify the ICQ user through a buddy list message.

"You could envision on your buddy list your banker, stock broker, or travel agent," said Leonsis. "This would be a very convenient way to communicate with them."

Using opt-in marketing is widely accepted by privacy advocates and industry analysts as a positive way to market to Web users. Instead of sending out spam, or mass unsolicited emails that peddle goods and services, users can choose whether they want to receive offers from vendors.

"As long as they approach it as an opt-in option, they'll get the best response from consumers," said Ray Everett-Church, counsel for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email.

Whether these models yield dollars will depend on the ICQ user. There has been little indication of what the user wants and whether the user wants to buy.

Abit heeft wéér een nieuwe plank aangekondigd, zo las ik bij AnandTech Web News. De ZH6 is een slot1 plank gebaseerd op de 440ZX chipset, dus een gemankeerd BX bord en daarom waarschijnlijk minder interessant voor de 'power' tweaker:

Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, May 28th, 1998-ABIT announces their newest motherboard using Intel's 440ZX 66/100MHz chipset and Slot 1 architecture with Soft Menu IIT, the ZH6. ABIT's ZH6 is the newest Intel ZX based mainboard with Slot 1 and the ZX chipset that provides a super price/performance solution for the Basic PC segment.

High Features ABIT's new ZH6 is the most comprehensive product in it's class with 3 DIMM, One AGP, Five PCI and Two ISA slots. The new Intel? 66/100MHz Chipset, the 440ZX AGPset, is built on the Intel? 440BX 100MHz AGPset architecture bringing Intel quality and reliability to PC users at an entry level price. Running with 100MHz capability, the ABIT ZH6 comes with all of the latest advancements and trends in the motherboard industry, including but not limited to; all the specifications for, AGP for improved 3D graphics performance at a lower cost, APM/ACPI power management, Ultra DMA 33 support, Infrared peripheral support, USB, PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, CPU auto-detect, AWARD write protect anti-virus, and Power Wake On.

Game spot UK heeft een preview van Max Payne gepost. Naast vette graphics zitten er en aantal nieuwe gameplay elementen in het spel, zoals het gebruik van slow motion:

One of the more novel aspects of Max Payne is its use of slow motion. Throughout the game, the player will see many scenes play out in slow-motion action scenes that let you fully appreciate the game's level of detail while at the same time giving that ever-so-important movie feel. The slow motion will be scripted into the game, so that it will automatically kick in at predetermined times.

[...] The designers also plan to have a fully slow-motion multiplayer mode to provide a new dynamic to the standard deathmatch. According to Järvilehto, this option will let you take more time to plan your moves and savour your enemy's destruction. Although it remains to be seen whether this element will appeal to gamers used to fast-paced fragging, the Remedy crew is very excited about this newest twist on the multiplayer theme. [break]

En nu weg toch met Max Payne bezig zijn: the Gathering of Developers heeft gisteren een 31 Meg grote Max Payne movie gereleased. Wie het filmpje te groot vind om te downen kan bij GA-Source terecht voor preview:[/break] Max Payne can performing the coolest moves I have even seen in any 3rd person game, including Raven's Heretic II. From the standard crouch to the "John Woo-style" sideways jump while shooting both guns to falling backwards then flipping back up in karate style. Max Payne can perform moves that other game characters have only dreamed about.

Firingsquad heeft een review van de Matrox G400 in elkaar gedraaid. Het gaat hier om het normale model (dus niet de G400Max) die waarschijnlijk op een kloksnelheid van rond de 125MHz draait (Matrox wil niet zeggen wat het precies is). De review van Firingsquad is zoals gewoonlijk weer erg compleet, o.a. met een pagina over CPU scaling, waaruit nogmaal blijkt dat de G400 erg veel CPU power lust:

What do these graphs show and mean? Well, through our benchmarking, a recurring theme that we noticed is that the Millennium is very CPU dependent. You can see from the graphs that upping the CPU yields substantial performance increases. Even the jump from a PIII 500 to 560 yielded good performance gains in many of the tests. What this means is that if you have a slower CPU, you may want to think carefully about the G400, as it seems to work best with powerful CPUs.

The other noticeable characteristic of the Millennium G400 through these charts was the very nominal performance hit that is incurred for using 32-bit rendering over 16-bit rendering. The G400 excels in high-quality graphics settings, which means 32-bit rendering and a higher resolution. At these high-resolutions, the image quality of the Millennium is superb.

JC heeft een artikeltje gepost waarin hij alle inmiddels bekende info over de Intel Cascades (zeg maar 'Coppermine Xeon') bij elkaar heeft gezet. Volgens de info van JC krijgt de Cascades een tri-level cache design krijgen, vergelijkbaar met de K6-III:

Specs:

- 16k data L1

- 16k instruction L1

- 256K on-die L2,

- between 512K and 2MB, maybe as high as 4MB, of cpu MHz L3 cache improved throughput, reasonable latency L3 cache

Ik zag bij Rivastation een kewle post over een of ander zelfbouw-kabeltje waarmee je de Elsa 3D Revelator aan de praat kunt krijgen op andere TNT kaarten:

A wiring was send to me that allows you to use the ELSA 3D Revelator glasses with non-ELSA cards. Only a strereo capable driver is needed. At this time only ASUS delivers such a driver. I didŽnt try it myself but the author assured me that it works. Download the wiring and a manual here:

Tom heeft het tweede deel van z'n Intel Roadmap gepost. Besproken worden de nieuwe slot1 en socket370 Coppermine's. Ook heeft Tom info over de Coppermine-128, een Celeron met SSE:

I guess you are a little bit confused to find the name `Coppermine' even in combination with the name `Celeron'. Well, the explanation is pretty simple. Since we've just learned that Intel's `Streaming SIMD Extensions' are `indispensable' already now (which I didn't know so far), Intel thinks that the poor Celeron-user deserves his portion of SSE as well. Now we know that the current Celerons using the `Mendocino'-core are a Pentium II core plus 128kB on-die L2-cache. Coppermine is Pentium II core plus SSE plus 256 kB on-die L2-cache. The logical consequence would be that the new Celeron with SSE enhancement is nothing than Pentium II core plus SSE plus 128 kB on-die L2-cache. This is equal to a Coppermine-core minus 128 kB L2-cache and there we are, Intel calls that `Coppermine-128'. You may be surprised why we have to wait until Q2 next year until Intel will bless us with a SSE-enhanced Celeron. The roadmap has the following answer: "Strong yields of Mendocino have pushed Coppermine-128 later into Q1'00" - I guess it's too bad for us poor customers that `strong yields have pushed', otherwise Celeron would have received the SSE-intoxication-blessings earlier.

Verder heeft-ie de specs van huidige Intel PIII/PIII varianten (Klamath, Deschutes, Mendocino, Katmai, Coppermine enz.) op een rijtje gezet. Errug handig allemaal.

3DNews.net heeft een editorial gepost over Open DVD en de dood van DivX (gisteren bekend gemaakt). Voor het geval je net zoals mij geen flauw idee hebt wat Divx is, heb je hier een korte uitleg uit het artikel van 3DN:

For those of you that have managed to avoid the entire DivX debate, here it is in a nutshell. Divx was an encrypted form of DVD that sold for $4.99, around the price of a rental, supposedly. You could watch the disc an unlimited number of times for 48 hours after buying it, and thereafter had to pay $3 each time. The discs could be upgraded to "silver" for an additional $20, which gave them an unlimited number of viewings. Sounds pretty reasonable, right? So what was the downside?

The downside was that several movie studios, Buena Vista in particular, had agreed to release DivX versions of their product first, and some had decided to avoid Open DVD altogether. Of those that were releasing Open DVD's at all, they were generally delayed by several months.

Aah, nu snap ik ook waarom iedereen zo blij is met de aankondiging dat DivX niet op de markt gebracht zal worden .

Volgens Apple Insider heeft Apple moedwillig G3's gemankeert waardoor deze niet overweg kunnen met toekomstige G4 upgrade cards:

According to the source, "Apple has intentionally disable the ability to use a G4 processor card in the current Blue and White G3s via its new firmware update. We know this was done intentionally because the previous version of firmware does not have a problem with the presence of a G4 processor." [break]...en de reden hiervoor volgens The Register:[/break] So how likely are the rumours to be true? Circumstantial evidence suggests they might well be. With a die size many times larger than the current PowerPC 750 chips (see Naked PowerPC G4 seen on Web) yields on the new chip are likely to be low, pushing up prices and, more importantly, limiting supply. Preventing existing G3s from working with the G4 would severely limit the demand for upgrades, in turn cutting down the number of chips upgrade manufacturers require, and thus increasing the number of chips Apple can buy.

HardOCP heeft de V3-3000 een behandeling gegeven. Ik denk dat onderstaande pics wel duidelijk maken wat ik hiermee bedoel ...

Met deze vette Gamma blower waren ze bij HardOCP in staat om de V3-3000 op 178MHz te draaien. Dat valt toch wat tegen, aangezien de 3000 standaard al op 166MHz draait:

As you can see the V3 3000 in my experience turns out not to be the best overclocking board we have seen in Unreal. This is not to say it did not perform totally kickass, just did not get the big performance increase we are used to seeing with knocking a card up 12MHz or so. Even so, this card is blazingly fast and smooth even in single player situations at very high resolutions.

Check www.hardocp.com voor meer info.

Bij OSOpinion heeft iemand een editorial gepost over Linux. De conclusie is interessant:

In MY personal opinion, Linux is nothing more than the latest craze. It has existed for a long time, and will exist for a long time to come, but all these notions as it being the "new alternative" are just ludicrous. The bottom line is that Linux does not have the interface consistency to make it appealing to end users and it uses a software philosophy that makes it a very poor choice for developers. If Linux truly were a good choice for everyone, it would have been popular a long time ago.

Als we News.com mogen geloven dan hebben magnetische media hun laatste tijd gehad. Natuurlijk niet echt heftig nieuws (is allemaal vrij logisch met de dalende prijzen voor CD-Rewriters en recordable/rewritable CD's). Hier heb je een stuk uit het artikel:

Recordable-rewriteable CD-ROM technology (CD-RW)--which allows users to record their own CD-ROMs and play them back on stereos or PCs--is steadily becoming the storage platform of choice among PC manufacturers and consumers.

CD-RW drives come with only a few high-end PCs now, but declining prices, improvements in speed easier-to-use interfaces, and other factors will prompt PC makers to start including CD-RW units as a feature in more models by 2000. Performance users, meanwhile, already can get CD-RW drives that run DVD disks as an added bonus.

The migration will likely mean the decline in sales of magnetic storage devices such as Zip drives, but Iomega does not intend to go quietly. Executives readily admit the storage maker is looking at technologies like recordable CDs, and sources say an announcement regarding optical storage could come next week at PC Expo.

Glide Underground heeft een interview met John Danforth en Steve Mosher van Creative. Uiteraard gaat het gesprek rond de controverse rondom de Creative Unified drivers. Verder kwam ik ook nog stukje tegen over de reactie van Creative op de fusie tussen 3dfx en STB:

What is your response to 3DFX's cutting off of their chip line and making boards themselves?

3DFX bought STB, because they thought STB would secure all the OEMs, By buying STB, they gave us and our partner NVidia some great wins in the marketplace. So we say, "Thank You."

Early in development (pre-ComDex), the chip was called the Banshee 2, because it IS a Banshee only with another TMU. We had real problems with the lack of 32bit rendering and RAM. We were looking at the Voodoo3 chipset and didn't know what to do with it because it was only 16-bit, and 16 MB. All the other chip vendors are on 32-bit and 32MB: more color depth, bigger frame buffers. Nvidia, S3, ATI, and Matrox all realized that quality counts, while 3DFX took a Banshee core and renamed it Voodoo3. I am really happy that 3DFX bought STB, because it gave us the opportunity and the chance to compete against the Voodoo3, which is technologically challenged

Unreal Universe heeft 3 pagina's met Unreal Tournament screenshots online gezet. Uiteraard ben ik onbeschaafd genoeg om ff 3 tumbnails te jatten:

FiringSquad heeft een review in elkaar gedraaid van Descent 3. Het schijnt een mooie game te zijn met grote levels en vette wapens. De review is erg uitgebreid en er zijn ook 70 screenshots in opgenomen! Ben je wel even zoet mee dus...

So what does Descent 3 bring to the table that's new? First of all, you're no longer restricted to cramped indoor areas as you were in the first two games of the series. In Descent 3 you're going to be flying your craft through the same mine-shaft type of levels but also out of the claustrophobia and into the "outdoors." Secondly, the missions no longer consist of "find the blue key, open blue door, find the red key, open red door, find exit." Lather, rinse, repeat. The designers of Descent 3 recognized this weakness in earlier titles, so they worked to try and create some very interesting levels and force you to do a bit more than just run, gun, and open up locked doors all the time.

Nog een review vandaag bij AnandTech, alleen dan niet door Anand zelf maar z'n vriendje Michael Andrawes.

De review gaat over de Promise Xconnect, een ISA kaart waarmee je IDE devices ook aan de achterkant van je pc aan kunt sluiten.

Deze oplossing schijnt alleen toch niet zo goed te werken omdat de ISA bus beperkt is tot maar 5 MB/s en hij erg veel CPU power gebruikt.

Dan hier even een stukje over voor wie de kaart dan wel een oplossing kan zijn:

So who should buy the Xconnect? Basically, if you are out of drive bays and simply cannot get rid of any current devices, then this may be a good solution for a relatively low speed device. Of course, at about $70 for the Xconnect, it may just be more effective to buy a new case. Maybe if you plan to install the kit in multiple computers so that devices can be moved around. In both situations, the Xconnect is more appealing if you don't have USB or you already have the device in IDE form and are not purchasing something new. Otherwise, just stick to USB for Zip drives, CD-ROM's, tape backups, etc. and leave your hard drives inside your computer.

Anand, die de laatste dagen flink bezig is met reviewen, heeft nu alweer een review van een moederbord online gezet. Dit keer gaat het om de Rioworks XDG-LS. Dit is een dual Xeon moederbord en dus voor de meeste mensen niet erg interessant vanwege de prijs.

En voor de mensen die toch wel een dual Xeon moederbordje willen hebben is het een redelijke oplossing aldus Anand:

The XDG is a decent solution, not the best, and far from the worst. Does it mean that you should go out and embrace RIOWORKS as a high end motherboard supplier? Not at all, however it does mean that if the price is right, RIOWORKS is a company worth watching. If it's true that all companies eventually get their 15 minutes of fame, when RIOWORKS gets theirs, the results should be quite interesting to say the least...

Hier zijn een paar van de nieuwste screenshots van deze nog uit te komen racegame.

Hier staan er nog veel meer!

Veel reviews van deze kaart de laatste tijd, deze is van Gamers Depot. De review is maar twee pagina's, weinig overklok info (alleen dat het mogelijk is) en een paar Quake II benchmarks.

En dit kwam eruit:

With the MSRP of $199.00, there simply is not another Ultra TNT2-based card on the market right now that can match the Xentor32's price/performance delta. I'm sure by the time it hits all the store shelves you'll even be able to find it cheaper. Guillemot has definitely delivered. It'll be very interesting to watch and see how the competition responds to this kind of pricing. Even so, you'll still be hard pressed to find a better overall value.

Hier staat de rest.

Andy van BXBoards heeft een review van de AOpen AX6BC Pro gepost. Deze nieuwe plank van AOpen heeft een busspeed range die vergelijkbaar is met die van de Abit BX6-II en doet nu ook eindelijk aan voltage tweaking!

The AOpen AX6BC was a top notch board, and the AX6BCPro builds on that, by retaining all the reliability, speed, and stability we have come to expect, but the all new Pro version wears its newly found overclocking credentials with pride. The Pentium III @ 560 was totally stable, as was the P2-300 SL2W8 at 4.5 x 117 - the first time this has ever been 100% on any board. Clearly the extra work on the capacitors has borne fruit here, and of course, the voltage tweaks work wonders for overclocked stability

Klinkt lekker! Check de review voor meer info over deze nieuwe wonderplaat.