AMD gaat op 5 juni de prijzen van z'n CPU's omlaag gooien, zo weet Riva 3D te vertellen:

AMD Sent word to me that as of July 5th they will be dropping the prices on some of their CPU's. Here is the excerpt of the email sent to me.

"AMD PROCESSOR PRICE DROP EFFECTIVE JULY 5th In order to maintain leadership in the market for the best price/performance, AMD will be announcing a price move on processors effective July 5th."

I am not sure which processors will drop in price, I am trying to find out that information myself...

Uit een nieuw rapport van Mercury Research blijkt dat het marktaandeel van Intel in de low-end sector weer is gestegen. Uiteraard ging dit ten koste van AMD (die het financieel toch al erg zwaar heeft):

Figures from market research company Mercury Research, which reported that AMD managed to secure 16.1 per cent market share in the last quarter of 1998, show that Intel has clawed its way back in the entry level market.

The latest set of figures from Mercury now show that AMD's share fell to 13.6 in the first quarter of this year, while Intel's share rose from 75.9 per cent to 80.3 per cent.

The Mercury figures show that AMD has lost share to Intel's Celeron. During the course of this year, Intel has remorselessly cut the cost of its entry level processors, which are practically identical to Pentium IIs.

The Register heeft een paar geruchten van de straat geraapt, die erop wijzen dat Intel misschien zelf pc's gaat bouwen:

The Register has suggested to Intel Insiders on several occasions that Chipzilla is but a few short steps away from building and selling its own PCs. On each occasion the reaction has been subtly different. A year back they laughed; six months ago they said it would never happen; today they stare at their shoes and mumble something non-committal.

[...] Intel makes 80 per cent plus of the CPUs on the planet. It makes motherboards for them. It makes graphics chipsets (well, it tries) and graphics cards, it makes networking gizmos, cameras and complete videoconferencing systems which already carry the Intel logo on the box.

The only thing Intel doesn’t make is the cases to put the stuff in, the disks and RAM.

In other words, the chip behemoth builds a whole hell of lot more of what goes into a computer than any PC company on the planet. At the high end, Intel builds almost ready-to-run systems based on the Xeon in what it bills ‘time to market’ offerings enabling smaller OEMs to put together complex server and workstation configurations in the shortest possible time – ever wondered why all mid range Xeon servers look the same? – they’re all built by Intel.

[...] Buying Gateway (or Compaq?) would be one option for Intel’s PC ambitions, but suppose Chipzilla were to offer each of its leading OEMs the chance to build a different concept PC and put an Intel badge on it while continuing with their mainstream designs for the more staid customers.

Ik krijg hier net van Kenneth Verburg (webmaster van Simracingnews.com) een mailtje dat ze daar een nieuwe GP500 fansite hebben opgezet:

"We're happy to announce to have launched our first dedicated website www.gp500.net. This is the first fansite on the Internet for Microprose's newest Bike Sim; GP500 and has full support from the developers.

This site will feature the latest news, downloads and articles on GP500 until its release and after that GP500.Net will be the #1 source for setups, guides, downloads and competitions. The guys from Infogrames Melbourne House will be answering some of your questions on our GP500 Forum as well.

Today we have 8 new screenshots, an updated First Look and a complete new site for GP500, what could you ask for more? Well, a GP500 Desktop wallpaper? Coming up this week as well as a very exclusive article!

Stay tuned on Stefan Petrovic's GP500 Fansite as we'll have updates for you almost every two or three days. And get that discussion going on the GP500 Forums!

Enjoy!

Er gaat het gerucht de ronde dat er een nieuwe serie Xentor TNT 2 Ultra 32 mb kaarten in omloop is, die niet de oorspronkelijke 175 / 183 setting hebben, maar geclocked zijn op 150 / 183 (of zelfs 175). Voor de duidelijkheid: dit is niet waar, althans niet volgens Guillemot ! Bolder heeft voor mij even contact opgenomen met Guillemot en dit is wat ik terugkreeg:

Welnu, het zit ongeveer zo in mekaar: Deze kaart trekt 6 ampere uit je agp slot, en niet alle moederborden ondersteunen dat, de boel kan dan crashen of gewoon helemaal niets doen. Om de clocking van 175-183 MHz te houden heb je dus nodig een moederbord die dit ondersteunt. Als dit niet zo is kan je mbv een clocking utility van Guillemot de busclock terugzetten naar 150-175, ook wordt geadviseerd om de bios te flashen met een nieuwe beschikbare en de laatste nieuwe drivers te gebruiken. Van guillemot kreeg ik nog een lijstje met moederborden die succesvol met de Xentor getest waren: Asus P5A, Asus SP98, INtel LX, Gigabyte 686 LX3, Freetech TF600, Asus P2B(s), Seattle 440, Freetech P6FGLi, Abit BX6, MSI 6119. Er zijn dus niet twee verschillende kaarten in omloop, maar sommigen moeten de kaart ietwat afremmen om hem aan de praat te krijgen op hun moederbord.

Als dit allemaal op de waarheid berust, is dat probleem ook weer opgelost. Zo wordt die Xentor misschien toch nog wel zeer interessant...

Firingsquad heeft een review gebouwd rondom de nieuwe AOpen Ax6BC Pro plank. De plank doet aan voltage tweaking en heeft een Softmenu-achtig FSB config dingetje:

The AX6BC Pro has some very nice features that clearly pushed its ability to perform with great stability, even under overclocked situations. The gold-plated heatsink did its job of keeping the BX chipset cool. The big capacitors near the CPU do a good job with supplying the CPU with adequate power in power-hungry situations. Additionally, a good variety of bus speed settings were available in the BIOS setup. The jumperless bus speed and voltage adjustments are pretty standard, nowadays, but not standard enough that we welcome any board that has them. As an added little plus, the AX6BC Pro comes with Norton Antivirus.

Weer een BX6-II killer? Lees 't bij Thresh's Firingsquad.

Met de recentelijke overname van Diamond door S3, zou nVidia wel eens een van zijn meest belangrijke klanten kwijt kunnen raken. nVidia (probeert) eist namelijk van haar klanten dat zij alleen maar videokaarten met een nVidia chip levert en daarnaast geen andere videokaarten produceerd. Als ze met dit soort mikro$oft praktijken doorgaan, dan zullen ze in ieder geval Diamond kwijt raken.

When the S3-Diamond merger is completed, it will leave NVIDIA as the sole independent chip company in the business, so we inquired if NVIDIA is considering a similar move to the ones 3dfx and S3 have made. Their answer was succinct: “We have a proven record, we are very profitable and we have a very stable business model. There is no need for us to change it.” When presented with a question concerning a possible merger between NVIDIA and another company, the response was just as clear: “There are no mergers being pursued with NVIDIA.”

Maar voor hoelang nog?

Bij 3D Action Planet hebben ze een review van het Unreal: Return to Na Pali mission pack op hun site gepoot. Hier een blurb over de single player gameplay:

Let me just say one thing... The single player levels are superb! One of the best single player levels I've seen in any FPS comes to us from Epic's Cliff Bleszinski. The "tyridium processing plant" level (originally cut from Unreal) is intense, scary, and simply amazing. Matthias Worch, Shane Caudle, and Dave Kelvin's level work also shine. The level team on this package doesn't get any better.

En de graphics zijn zo te zien ook niet slecht:

AVault heeft een artikeltje gepost over de status van Mortyr (spel zonder uitgever):

The Adrenaline Vault has learned that the long-gestating publishing fate the 3D action game Mortyr is close to being resolved, though it will be a little longer before the price and launch date are announced to the public. According to Mirage Media, some unannounced “new strategies” are being formulated as a result of the impending announcement.

In response to our June 19 report that the title has had a history of development problems it is still attempting to overcome, a representative of Mirage claims no three year deal was signed with Interactive Magic; one was discussed internally and negotiations had begun, but the deal was never finalized. Additionally, Mirage claims I-Magic did not purchase Mortyr for $200,000, but rather "much more." Mirage also maintains its status as a developer is not in peril; rather, it is improving its upcoming title and planning both an add-on and a sequel. The sequel will reportedly include numerous enhancements, including curved surfaces and bump mapping. Here is a list of recent enhancements to Mortyr and a series of screenshots we snapped using a playable version of the game dated June 14:

De screenshots en de lijst met enhancements vind je in deze posting van AVault.

Ook AGN Hardware heeft een review gepost van Guillemot's TNT2 kaart. Het betreft de 16Mb 'vanilla' TNT2 versie, op een snelheid van 135/166MHz. De exemplaar van AGN Hardware kon erg lekker overgeklokt worden:

Given all of these reasons why overclocking is a sensitive subject, when it comes to the Xentor 16, we found that with PowerStrip, a 3rd party graphics utility, we were able to push the 135MHz core on the Xentor to 170 MHz before we started noticing any artifacting. By adding a standard Pentium CPU fan to the heatsink we were also able to get the Memory clock to 195MHz before we noticed any corruption in the image. That is a 21% increase in the core and a 13% increase in the memory speed. Remember, overclocking produces extra heat, and the card may require better cooling to reach these speeds in your system.

Gigabye heeft nieuwe drivers voor Windows 2000 vrijgegeven. Het gaat om drivers voor de GA-630 Banshee videokaart.

Hier.

Sysop Solutions heeft weer een kewl overclocking artikel geschreven. Dit keer hebben ze een liquid cooling systeempje gebouwd. Zoals we van Sysop Solutions gewend zijn is het artikel weer voorzien van een aantal duidelijke foto's, zoals deze twee:

Cool of nie? Hier heb je een stukje uit de intro:

We have been talking about liquid cooling and discussing liquid heat exchangers for some time now, however we were a little hesitant to get involved in the technology. It seemed at the time like there was nothing on the market being produced on a large enough scale to be cost effective when used in computer applications for cooling CPUs. Typically good liquid exchangers were reserved for high-end applications and the medical industry. In addition we contemplated making our own liquid cooled heat exchanger but this seemed too labor intensive and also it would not serve as a proper example because it would be very difficult for most of our reading public to duplicate and implement.

Voor het artikel moet je ff verder fietsen richting Sysopsolutions.com.

AMD heeft vandaag de K6-2E aangekondigd, een speciale versie van de K6-2 die bedoelt is voor embedded systemen.

AMD (NYSE:AMD - news) today announced shipments of the AMD-K6(tm)-2E processor, the industry's first dedicated embedded processor with innovative 3DNow!(tm) technology, superscalar MMX(tm) technology capability and 100-MHz frontside bus support.

The newest member of AMD's E86(tm) family of x86 processors for embedded applications, the AMD-K6-2E processor offers embedded system developers a new level of performance within the cost-effective Socket 7 and 100-MHz Super7(tm) infrastructure.

``The AMD-K6-2E processor is an excellent solution for embedded system developers who want exceptional x86 performance at an affordable price and fast time-to-market within the industry's most prevalent and best-supported architecture,'' said Bob McConnell, vice president and general manager of AMD's Embedded Processor Division.

``For example, the AMD-K6-2E is an ideal choice for embedded applications requiring high performance with low-power consumption, such as central office switches, high-speed network routers, industrial control systems, information appliances, point-of-sale terminals, printer controllers and Microsoft® Windows® compatible single-board computers.''

In de press release bij Yahoo vind je meer info.

Maxtor heeft vandaag een nieuwe serie DiamondMax Plus 6800 hard drives aangekondigd. De schijven draaien op 7200rpm en hebben net zoals de nieuwe IBM / Western Digital schijven een cache van 2Meg. Hier heb je wat geblaah uit de press release:

Maxtor® Corporation (Nasdaq: MXTR - news) today announced the DiamondMax(TM) Plus 6800 hard disk drive, the third generation of its award-winning DiamondMax Plus product line. Bringing server-class features to the desktop, this 6.8GB per disk product couples 7200 RPM performance with the spectacular data throughput afforded by Maxtor's new DualWave(TM) multi-processor controller. The combination of these features has been shown to increase overall computer system performance by more than 20 percent over previous generation drives.

[...] The DiamondMax Plus 6800 features an average seek time of less than 9 ms and the UltraDMA 66 interface. With the largest buffer now available on a desktop drive, this drive's 2 MB cache incorporates high-speed 100MHz SDRAM memory for enhanced-performance UDMA-66 transfers. The result is that the DiamondMax Plus 6800 affords a level of performance in accessing all types of media and data files previously available only in server class drives. Whether manipulating content downloaded from the Internet, using digital video or audio, or working with personal entertainment applications, this new 7200 RPM drive provides users a readily apparent performance boost.

[...] Also featured is a second-generation enhancement to ShockBlock(TM), Maxtor's revolutionary drive mechanics. Designed to protect the drive from damage caused by improper handling, the new ShockBlock design has demonstrated the ability to withstand up to 1,000G short-duration shock loads without drive failure.

In addition, the product incorporates MaxSafe(TM), the industry's most comprehensive data protection package. MaxSafe operates continuously in the background to automatically detect, isolate, and repair drive problems. Maxtor's UltraDMA-66 also improves data integrity by performing cyclic redundancy checks to detect transfer errors between the system and the hard drive.

[...] Volume production of the DiamondMax Plus 6800 will begin in August. Qualifications are now underway at leading PC manufacturers worldwide. Estimated retail pricing for the DiamondMax Plus 6800 27GB is $399.

Planet Hardware heeft de 50,1Gig dikke Seagate Barracuda gereviewed. De schijf draait op 7200rpm en ondersteund de Ultra2 SCSI LVD interface:

One of the key issues in choosing the buy SCSI hardware over IDE is the increase in performance levels. SCSI is going to allow you to obtain higher sustained transfer rates than IDE. One thing to keep in mind here is that the max throughput level of 80MB/s is not often achieved. You should average somewhere between 20-30MB/s transfer rates during most transfers. The bottom line here is that it is still a better throughput than what IDE can offer, which is a 66MB/s max transfer rate for UltraATA 66 based drives. This means that the average transfer rate is going to be somewhat lower than what SCSI can offer.

Check Planet Hardware voor de review.

Ik kwam bij BXBoards nog wat info tegen over de plannen van Intel om de Celeron zodanig te verminken dat-ie geen SMP meer kan doen. Dit zegt Andy er over:

Nevertheless, the straw that broke the camels back in this case seems to be the new Abit Dual Celeron board, the BP6. With a board now available that directly supports dual Celeron operation, it is hard for Intel to point to one of their major marketing claims for the Pentium II/III line, as clearly one of the major advantages is only very thinnly hidden in the Celeron line. As I understand it, the forthcoming Celeron 500, will be dual crippled from the world go, with this modification applied to newer Celeron's as well. This will require only a small change in Intels' FAB's - just disconnect pin AN15 (to which soldering is required for Slot1 modifications), and the chip is no longer dual capable

HardOCP heeft een review gepost van de Soyo SY-6BA+III, een plank met een flinke rij busspeeds én Vcore voltage tweaks!

First off, Front Side Bus speeds: 66/ 75/ 81/ 83/ 90/ 95/ 100/ 105/ 110/ 112/ 113/ 115/ 117/ 118/ 120/ 122/ 124/ 126/ 133/ 135/ 137/ 138/ 140/ 142/ 144/ 150/ 155MHz. If that is not enough for you, I think you can pay an extra $20 and get the whole set of 100, but only if you act soon!! Really though, I have had great time tweaking with the extraordinary range of FSB's that are here. If you can't tweak your CPU with these, you just can't tweak.

Serieuze concurrentie voor Abit's BX6-II? Lees de review van HardOCP (en wacht op de BE6 ).

Hot Hardware heeft een review in elkaar gezet van de Onstream SC30 tapestreamer. Het apparaat ziet er ongeveer zo uit:

De drive heeft een capaciteit van 30Gig (compressed) en een snelheid van 7,2Gb per uur!

We decided to go ahead and back up our IBM 9 Gig Drive to see if we got anywhere in the ballpark of the "up to 7.2Gig/Hour" data rates. We ran two passes of the backup on our Pentium III 450 rig with 128MB of RAM.

Our first pass was intended just to let the drive sit and do its "thang" undisturbed. While backing up our data, the drive was extremely quiet only whirring slightly as it streamed data on to the tape at approximately an average of 70MB/minute. Our drive was only about half full of data and the back up took an hour and 15 minutes for 5.6Gigs. This a substantial improvement over traditional tape drives that would have taken more than 3X the time it took the SC30.

Ik lees bij AnandTech Web News dat Guillemot een nieuw BIOS gereleased heeft voor z'n Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 TNT2 kaarten. Hier zijn de details:

This new BIOS has been developed to solve the incompatibility problem of some motherboards with Maxi Gamer Xentor 32. The AGP 2.0 specification requires a power supply of 6A at 3.3 volts for the AGP port. Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 consumes up to 6A at 3.3 volts when running 3D games, but some motherboards fail to deliver more than 5A. As a result, the PC crashes in 3D games when the motherboard fails to deliver sufficient power intensity to the Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 AGP port. This new BIOS reduces the power consumption of the Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 board such that these motherboards will be able to supply new intensity required by Maxi Gamer Xentor 32. To update your Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 BIOS, please unzip the BGX329X0513.ZIP file to a directory on your hard disk, switch to Real DOS mode and run the program 5ABIOS.EXE.

Je kunt 'm downloaden bij Riva3D.

JC heeft RC5 en CPUMark benchmarks te pakken gekregen. De benchmarks zijn afkomstig van personen die zich om begrijpbare redenen (AMD NDA) niet bekend willen maken. Allereerst RC5:

Anyway, using the P6 core the K7 eats 1,644,825 keys per second at 600MHz. No word on the K7 core results, because there does not exist a K7 core for rc5 ... yet. Some optimization folks I know are busy drooling over stuff they think they may be able to do to work the K7 higher. If anybody happens to have a K7 box and is willing to bench some test builds for rc5 on them for our coders, we certainly would not complain since this may hasten the optimization of the K7 core.

BDW: m'n eigen C300A op 464Mhz doet 1280KKeys/sec (zou theoretisch 1655KKeys/sec op 600Mhz kunnen zijn). Verder heeft JC CPUMark resultaten waaruit zou blijken dat de K7 ongeveer 9% sneller is dan een PIII met vergelijkbare kloksnelheid. Check de info op www.jc-news.com/pc.

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van de Maxi Gamer Phoenix 2 van Guillemot. Dit is een low-budget kaart gebaseerd op de nVidia Vanta chip, die op 100MHz draait. Verder heeft de kaart 8MB SDRAM (125MHz). In de USA kost ie slechts $70

As the measured results indicate, the Phoenix 2 is somewhat handicapped by its limited 8MB of SDRAM. It's particularly noticeable at higher color depths and resolutions were 10 -16MB is required in order to maintain the true performance level of the graphics core.

Still, the Phoenix 2 does deliver a mostly pleasurable gaming experience at 800x600x16bpp or even 1024x768x16bpp 3D resolutions. As long as a buyer's expectations remain within reason we believe the Phoenix 2 will satisfy its owners while keeping their PC cost budget under the radar of the old ball and chain....

Een uitgebreide review van Theme Park 2, Theme Park World is gepost bij The Adrenaline Vault.

Two major technological innovations distinguish Theme Park World both from its predecessor and from RollerCoaster Tycoon. For starters, this is the first offering of this type to take full advantage of hardware video acceleration, permitting a much more textured, three-dimensional and realistic look to the rides. Second, and more importantly, Theme Park World breaks new ground by allowing you not only to construct rides, but also to ride them after they are done. For people accustomed to first-person shooters, the perspective used should make them feel right at home. For everyone else, such an experience should accentuate the feeling of the rides' actual excitement (as well as the vertigo and nausea) experienced by the customers, rather than just the feeling of tradeoffs experienced by theme park managers. Molding the first-person perspective into something convincing will be quite a feat, but the designers claim the additions of rumble, damping and curve prediction make it extremely realistic. Beyond checking out the rides, you can even view the sideshows.

Ook zijn er een paar screenshots hier te vinden.

Een paar instellingen voor je BIOS + uitleg als je een V3 in je systeem hebt hangen.

Video BIOS cacheable - Should be enabled. This feature should boost performance slightly.

Video BIOS shadow - Should be enabled. This, too, should boost performance slightly. If you experience problems, disable this and restart your PC.

VGA Palette Snoop - Should be disabled. This is an old feature that is not required by the Voodoo3.

PCI Palette Snoop - Should be disabled. This is somewhat like the feature above. It should not be enabled for the Voodoo3 unless problems occur.

Hier is de link.

Sam Hell heeft weer een nieuwe 10 Questions gepost. Dit keer met Scott Youngblood van Dynamix, het bedrijf achter Star Siege Tribes.

5. What would you say were the advantages to using the "Core Libraries" as opposed a thrid party engine such as Quake2 or Unreal?

Outdoor/Indoor technology. Both the Quake engine and the Unreal engines are GREAT for rendering the insides of buildings... but for Tribes we needed something with much more flexibility. Granted it took us quite some time to develop the engines but we think that it was worth the investment. Also, doing our own graphics engine has allowed us to make changes on the fly that might not have been possible if we had licensed someone else's engine

Je vind het volledige interview hier.

Twee 'exclusieve' foto's van een enorm lelijk uitziende plastic druppel in een moederplank gestoken. Klik hier.

De Rambus chip van LG (voorheen Goldstar in Europa) lijkt wel heel erg veel op het uiterlijk van de Spintel Card. Ik ruik een rechtzaak. :-)

De petitie tegen de Phoenix BIOS reclame heeft dus (naar verwacht) niet geholpen. Yahoo! zal dus een van de eersten zijn.

Yahoo! has cut a deal with BIOS maker Phoenix Technologies Ltd. to offer Internet access to users during the boot-up sequence of the new PCs. Distributing Yahoo! Connections services through Phoenix's system software products will enables users worldwide to immediately connect to their choice of Yahoo!'s 19 World properties. Distribution of Yahoo! on Phoenix BIOS chips enables one-touch access to default home pages for Yahoo!'s main site (www.yahoo.com) as well as Yahoo! sites for Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, UK & Ireland, Australia & New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Brazil, Canada and Latin America. Phoenix Technologies’ BIOS system software is currently designed into more than 70 percent of all PCs sold, and millions of other devices. Information about Phoenix and its products is available at www.phoenix.com.

70 procent Phoenix? Ik zie volgens mij meestal Award, gelukkig.

Na navraag bij Elsa kreeg ik te horen dat we de Ultra TNT2 van Elsa, de Erazor III Extreme Ultra, niet eerder dan eind juli hoeven te verwachten.

Our samples have passed all tests and we have planed to produce an ERAZOR III "Ultra" and release it at the end of july.

:-(

Hardware Upgrade heeft z'n Videocard comparison (waarvan ze een aantal dagen geleden het eerste deel posten) uitgebreid met CPU-scalability, image quality en 16 vs 32-bit info. Hier heb je een stukje copy/paste uit de image quality page:

Riva TNT-2, Riva TNT and Rage 128 have the best image quality, because of 32 bit rendering support and the better definition of the image than 3dfx's chips; also Savage 4 images are of highest quality, comparable to Riva TNT one. My personal opinion is that differences between the best images (taken at 32 bit rendering) and the worst ones (16 bit with 3dfx chips) are evident, but that you've also to consider the smoothness of the action reproduced and find the correct balance between these two aspects; I believe it's a question of points of views and the final advice is to try and find out, if possibile, what's best for you, playing some 3D games with both 3dfx based cards and the "32 bit rendering" generation of video chips.

Dimension128 heeft de laatste TNT / TNT2 beta drivers online gezet. Aan de filename te zien gaat het om versienummer 2.03. De downloads (Win9x en NT4) vind je hier.

Tech Junkie heeft een review gepost van de Elsa 3D Revelator IR (de draadloze infrorood versie dus). Hier hebben we een plaatje van meneer de Tech Junkie himself:

De review is in feite een follow-up van de eerdere (niet-kabelloze) 3D Revelator review van Tech Junkie. In de follow-up kijken ze naar de verschillen:

The IR version is really, really much better than the cable version. The glasses are made of hard plastic, unlike the 'toy soldier' plastic that came with the cable version. Even the fit feels better. The glasses are much tighter and stick to your face, while the cable version seems to keep falling off.

The most obvious improvement is the IR. I've been running the Revelator cable version for more than a month and one of the most annoying things that can happen is when you get a bit carried away, yank your joystick in the opposite direction and the cable gets caught, pulling the glasses off. Not a very nice experience.

Hypernix heeft een nieuwe versie van Gooey (chatproggie, zie deze nieuwsposting) gereleased. Hier heb je de info van Betanews:

Last week we talked to the folks at hypernix about some bugs in Gooey, and they promised a bug fix release. Unannounced, the new beta is available for download from their FTP. Gooey is a groundbreaking Internet tool enabling people simultaneously browsing the same Web site to communicate with each other. With Gooey, chat is not restricted to specific areas or sites but turns into an integral, natural part of your browsing. Using Gooey, you can chat on virtually any site on the Web. Gooey breaks the wall between Web surfers and turns the Web from a labyrinth of HTML pages into a lively, human environment. Gooey brings together people who share the same interests and Net habits, creating the first Dynamic Roving Community on the Internet. As a Gooey user, you get a constantly updated list of all the other online users on any site you visit. With its friendly, intuitive interface, Gooey lets you conduct group and private chats, exchange information and tips and meet new friends while exploring your favorite sites.

De Win9x versie kun je hier neer gaan halen, de NT4 versie staat hier. Beide hebben een bestandsgrootte van rond de 1850Kb.

Ik lees bij Demonews dat er een nieuwe versie van Windowblinds is gereleased. Hier's de soep:

"After a long hard month of work we're finally about ready to release WindowBlinds 0.93 to registered users of WindowBlinds and Object Desktop users. It should eliminate resizing issues in the vast majority of cases and hopefully have improved stability. Some programs will still need to be excluded, sorry but that will be a fact of life as some programs are simply too finicky to try to work around but we'd say about 95% of the programs out there work fine with WindowBlinds. Ironically, it's mostly drawing packages that can be finicky (3D Studio, Photoshop, Photopaint, Paintshop Pro, PMVIew, etc.)."

En voor het geval je niet weet wat Windowblinds is: check deze 2 screenshots van skinz.org:

...en zo zijn er nog véél meer skins.

Planet Unreal heeft een shitload (79 in totaal!) aan Unreal: Return to Na Pali screenshots online gezet. Hier heb alvast 3 tumbnails:

iXBT heeft weer zo'n lekkere lange IDE roundup in elkaar gezet. In dit tweede deel worden nieuwe 7200rpm schijven van IBM, Quantum en Western Digital (=IBM) getest. Hier is een stukje over de Winmark benchmarks:

Well, let's have a look what we have here. As we have expected the results shown by IBM and WD were almost identical, since they were made basing on the same technology. The only difference between them was the CPU utilization: a bit higher by WD. And the last thing we would like to draw your attention to is the numbers characterizing the harddisks performance while working with FrontPage 98. It is exactly the situation when the buffer size plays a really important role! In fact, the data transfer takes place not to the platter but directly to the buffer. However, it was a bit disturbing that the result obtained turned out more than the bandwidth of ATA/33: 36000000/220=34.3MB/sec. But as for us, we think that this result appeared due to Windows cache used during the benchmarks. Quantum Fireball KA Plus proved the best of all in terms of platter read speed, but then a relatively small buffer size - 512KB compared to 2MB - played the devil with the whole show.

Best wel goeie info voor het geval je op zoek bent naar een nieuwe schijf. Check iXBT voor info & benchmarks.

Graig van Sharky Extreme heeft de Anchor Chips EZLink gereviewed. De EZLink is een van de eerste op USB gebaseerde netwerk kits. Dit maakt de installatie natuurlijk erg. Voor normaal huis-tuin-en-game gebruik blijkt de performance acceptabel te zijn:

Anchor Chips states that the EZLink USB Instant Network should be able to transfer up to "5M bits/sec" between PCs, which is roughly a megabyte every two seconds.

You were probably asking yourself "what's the catch" while reading this rosy portrait of the EZLink USB kit, and now you've found it.

We don't predict that a home network used primarily for gaming or web surfing will ever tax the EZLink USB's maximum performance level, at least that's what our staff found while using the system. In games like Quake3 or Half-Life for example, we found that ping times stayed in the 15 - 20ms range while using the USB LAN kit, which allowed for an almost identical experience to our standard Ethernet LAN. Also, for file transfers up to 200MB the time to transfer hovered in the three to five minute rage, depending upon file sizes and quantities which is acceptable for most home use.

Speedy3D heeft een artikeltje bij elkaar geraapt waarin ze de features bespreken waarvan ze hopen dat ze in de V4 ondersteund zullen worden, bijv. bump mapping of single pass quad texturing:

Single pass quad texturing

Forget single pass multitexturing. Instead of spending tons of money having a really fast core processor MHz wise, 3dfx should develop single pass quad texturing. This would easily quadruple the pixel processing power. This would make the pixel processing speed upward to 1000-1200 M/texels a second, in games that support quad texturing.

Tweak3D heeft een korte review van de Montego 2 Quadzilla gepost. Dit is weer zo'n Aureal Vortex II kaart met quad speaker support. Hier heb je een stukje over de geluidskwaliteit:

The sound quality of the card is very good. The lack of simple bass/treble controls was annoying, but made up for by a 10-channel equalizer. The software supplied with the card is hard to use, however. The mixer supplied with the SB Live is easier to use than AudioStation 32. The Live also has far more effects (due to EAX), in fact you can't use any effects with the Montego 2 except chorus/reverb for MIDIs.

Verder errug weinig info in de review.

The Register heeft een nieuwsbericht gepost over de Linux vs Windows NT server test van PC Week (zie deze nieuwsposting). Er staan een paar interessante dingen tussen:

Mindcraft's tests had claimed NT outperformed Linux as a file server by 2.5 times and as a Web server by 3.7 times. PC Week, bless 'em, doesn't seem to draw attention to the point, but its Labs results come up with NT being 2.3 times faster as a Web server (IIS 4.0 versus Apache) and around about the same as a file server. They also found that Linux performance didn't collapse when client load exceeded 16 computers, as Mindcraft's Apache benchmark had found, and the performance difference was a lot narrower on a single CPU box, although NT still won.

[...] PC Week also reports that the lack of a multithreaded IP stack in the Linux networking subsystem causes a performance plateau in the OS, and the charts in the report are particularly interesting. They show fairly conclusively that Linux was barely able to take advantage of multiprocessor boxes at all, so this is a hill the OS needs to climb soon. PC Week Labs Report.