Soyo heeft een nieuw slot1 plankje in elkaar getimmerd (leuke woordkeuze ). Het ding heeft 29 FSB settings, doet aan voltage tweaking en heeft een jumperless Softmenu-achtig BIOS instel gevalletje. Klinkt niet slecht!

Soyo today announced that its SY- 6BA+3 motherboard will feature new components and software-driven features designed to maximize the performance of Intel’s new Pentium III CPU as well as the management of systems built with the SOYO motherboard.

The ATX footprint motherboard will also be bundled with Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus to protect board components and software from virus attacks, as well as Symantec’s Norton Ghost disk cloning software, and Virtual Drive CD-ROM emulation application.

SOYO’s SY-6BA+3 motherboard has been reengineered with a new clock generator that allows the CPU Frontside System Bus (FSB) and PCI bus clock to be configured 29 different ways -- from 66MHz-155MHz -- in order to fine-tune the system bus speed for performance-oriented applications such as 3D modeling, animation or gaming. The new design also protects overclocked systems from crashes, particularly when using PCI bus add-in cards, because the redesigned SY-6BA+3 automatically sets the PCI bus clock to a safe level when the CPU FSB is set. When users overclock the CPU FSB, the PCI bus clock will be automatically clocked to a safe level. Other enhancements geared to overclocking include adjustable CPU Core voltage. Users can set CPU Core voltage directly through the BIOS directly without jumpers.

Ace's Hardware heeft nog wat spul over de Cyrix / VIA deal op de frontpage staan. Onderstaande info is een samenvatting van een EBNews artikel:

- Cyrix will most likely become a standalone subsidiary of Via, with the Cyrix design team retaining its current headquarters in Richardson, Tex., said Stan Swearingen, vice-president of standalone microprocessor marketing at Cyrix. Swearingen will become general manager of the new subsidiary, which plans an IPO either in Taiwan or the U.S. to raise capital and as an incentive to retain the Cyrix engineers.

- the deal does not involve either National's production fab in South Portland, Maine, or the x86 patent license National signed with Intel in 1976.

- According to Swearingen, National does not have the right to sell its x86 license, but there are other, undisclosed alternatives, he said. "We'll be doing due diligence in the next month," he said. "We believe we have a bulletproof method to handle the [intellectual property]."

- . . . Cyrix plans to sample its Socket-370 Gobi processor in four weeks, with production in time for Christmas. The Mojave core will ship in Christmas 2000. . .

Tech Junkie heeft een review van Creative's Ultra TNT2 kaart klaargebakken. De 3DBlaster TNT2 Ultra draait op 150 / 183Mhz en beschikt over 5,5ns Huyndai SDRAM. Goed voor overklokken?

The 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra is clocked at standard clockspeed of 150MHz and 183MHz memory speed. Since it only has 5.5ns onboard videorams, will the card be as easily overclockable yet functional at the same time? I tested out on 175MHz for clockspeed and 200MHz for memory speed all via Powerstrip, and are pretty amazed of the extra gain. These results are based solely on what my system generate and should be considered only as referencing. The 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra is tested using shipping drivers as it is.

Rob "Innerloop" Huebner, van Nihilistic Software heeft een .plan update gepost als een reactie op de .plan update van John Carmack, over de speciale manier van gebruik van dynamic light sourcing.

One issue we had with the system early on is that in some cases the fill rate can get a bit nuts. At first we did a system whereby the entire light-affected face was rendered with additional passes, one per light. If you had a degenerate case with a huge face that filled a large part of the user's screen and 20 tiny light decals, the fill rate costs of this can be enormous and slap down even a top-end card. We got around this (partly at least) by implementing an alternate method where the light decal face is optionally clipped to the edges of the face its applied to. Z-fighting issues may come up with this on some cards, we haven't tested everyone's hardware yet.. Another nice benefit is that the system is easily interchangable to vertex lighting for smaller faces. Also, if you have a face that for whatever reason doesn't have a lightmap, you can still use a textured light to give it an accurate highlight. Its also independent of lightmap resolution, which gets rid of that "motion alasing" you can sometimes get with a slow-moving or nearly stationary light source. The lights can be a bit jaggy, but their motion across the face is so smooth you don't notice.

Het lijkt er dus op dat het voor- en nadelen heeft.

Nihilistic werkt trouwens aan een spelletje dat er grafisch wel leuk uitziet. Een soort RPG.

Kijk hier voor het spel.

Kijk hier voor de .plan update.

Binnen een week kunnen we updates verwachten voor 3 populaire software titels:

Winamp

"Improved the shuffle logic for 2.24.

Optimized the minibrwoser status drawing code, it might have been causing problems.

Still trying to rewrite the generic docking code to work 100%.

2.24 on the way soon."

Unreal

versie 2.26 is onderweg:

"... is undergoing technical inhouse testing, but will be availeble soon."

Alien versus Predator

Zeer binnenkort kunnen we een patch verwachten voor dit spel waardoor men EINDELIJK een save-optie tot zijn(haar?) beschikking krijgt.

Zwaluw kwam hierheen gerent met een krant onder z'n arm, na het stukkie gelezen te hebben was het zijn bedoeling het ff online te zetten.

Offcourse ff gedaan dus, wanteh het is de moeitte waard en ik heb hier nog niemand gezien die het erover heeft gehad (terwijl het vanmorgen in de krant stond, Eindhovens Dagblad).

Het artikel kun je hier lezen...

Errug kewl dus, ben benieuwd of het iets gaat worden, zou wel goed zijn want het werkt met Linux, heheeh dus mooi geen M$ shit!!!

c't heeft eigen Linux vs WinNT webserver benchmarks gedraaid, waaruit blijkt dat de combinatie Linux / Apache opeens wél sneller is dan WinNT. Persoonlijk heb ik meer vertrouwen in c't dan in PC Week of Mindcraft. Hier heb je wat copy/paste uit de conclusie:

First of all, we must say that additional CPUs for plain web server operation with static HTML pages are a waste. Even with two Fast Ethernet lines there's only a moderate less than twenty percent increase. It seems that CPU performance is not the decisive factor with these tasks. The graphs indicate that the Primergy server itself didn't have to work to its full capacity at all.

Linux's comparatively bad results when tested with two network boards show that Mindcraft's results are quite realistic. NT and IIS are clearly superior to their free competitors if you stick to their rules.

To clarify it once again: These results correspond to a load beyond 1000 requests per second. In comparison: At peak times, the Heise server deals with about 100 requests/s. Also, we are talking about purely static pages which on top of that are already present in the system's main memory. Our tests showed that Mindcraft's result can't be transferred to situations with mainly dynamic contents - the common case in nearly every sophisticated web site.

In SMP mode, Linux still exhibited clear weaknesses. Kernel developers, too, admit freely that scaleability problems still exist in SMP mode if the major part of the load comes through in kernel mode. However, if user mode tasks are involved as well, as is the case with CGI scripts, Linux can benefit from additional processors, too. These SMP problems are currently the target of massive developing efforts.

In the web server areas most relevant for practical use, Linux and Apache are already ahead by at least one nose. If the pages don't come directly from the system's main memory, the situation is even reverted to favour Linux and Apache: Here, the OpenSource movement's prime products leave their commercial competitors from Redmond way behind.

Voor info en benchmarks moet je ff richting de c't website fietsen.

Packard Bell schopt een groot deel van de bureau hengsten de deur uit. Dit omdat NEC op het punt staat heel Packard Bell de grond in te schoppen.

The move comes as PB's parent, NEC, is increasingly concerned over its subsidiary's poor financial performance, a concern that recently culminated in a statement by NEC president Kouji Nishigaki that PB would be sold off or shut down if it didn't start showing an improvement, pronto. PB VP of corporate communications Ron Fuchs told US newswires that the company was on track to cut its losses to $100 million this year, down from around $500 million, after hacking costs by 42 per cent last year. The company has lost money for the last three years running, largely as budget-priced PCs have badly eroded its marketshare, particularly in the US -- all very ironic, given PB achieved its initial success undercutting the likes of Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

Ik kan bijna niet wachten tot we hier kunnen posten dat NEC Packard Bell failliet heeft laten verklaren.
Nu de FiF computer rommel nog weg...

Tim Sweeney heeft een update gepost op de Unreal Tech Page, met info over Unreal patch 226a die deze week beschikbaar zal komen. De Direct3D performance zal wederom verbeterd (/minder slecht) zijn:

We're testing 226a internally now. The results of are good so far. If no significant "non-driver" problems are found, we'll have Unreal 226a out later this week. Here is the kind of feedback we're seeing on D3D Unreal performance.

"First client impressions, after zonking it with a couple of really nasty, detailed, clippy, high polycount maps: incredible improvement! I got through DMDowntown, my personal UnrealRavager(tm) with nary a clip, pop or tick. Switching resolutions works well now, but you have to have the latest Hercules driver (now using 1.70, dated 6-28-99) for it to work, or you get a critical error. ALT-ENTER works fine too, thanks Tim (now I can get multiple screenshots without exiting and restarting Unreal). DMBreakfast, a new map which uses a great deal of UnrealEd rendered graphics, played very well too.

This is a quantum leap for the 'in game' video speed on the Hercules TNT2. Most impressive. I'll try to get this patch on the Nali City game server (unreal://207.53.187.28) tomorrow so we can all beat it up.

-Pete, PlanetUnreal"

This isn't a miracle improvement, but TNT, G400, and Rage 128 owners should see clear speed and smoothness gains. Just make sure you get the latest drivers available for your card.

-Tim

GT Interactive -bekend van de vele games- heeft bekend gemaakt dat het gaat reorganiseren, of dat het de boel gaat verkopen aan iemand die wel geld in het (verliesleidende) bedrijf wil stoppen.

GT announced today that it has retained Bear Stearns to seek "a financial recapitalization, merger or sale." [knip] The announcement was fueled by a severe loss in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1999. GT's net loss for the fourth quarter of fiscal 1999 was $72.3 million, or $1.00 per share, compared to net income for the fourth quarter of fiscal 1998 of $0.4 million, or $.01 per share.

Gamecenter heeft een review van de InterACT FX Racing hweel op hun site geparkeerd. Het FX Racing wheel is een soort stuurpistool, waar op wonderbaarlijke wijze ook nog force feedback in verpakt zit. Hoewel, force feedback blijkt niet echt lekker te werken:

The force-feedback motors require two AA batteries or a 4-volt DC adapter, neither of which is included. This is annoying, but a much bigger problem is the quality of the force feedback. Though the dual-motor design provides for discreet movement in either direction, the overall effect isn't much better than a "rumble pack" add-on for a video game controller. The forces are jarring and clumsy--the effect feels less like the movement of a precision instrument and more like a mouse crawled in and is trying to escape. Even in games with excellent force-feedback support, such as Viper Racing and Need for Speed III, the clunky forces deliver the opposite of the desired effect: they detract from the immersiveness of the game.

Ennuh, dit is dus wat ik met een stuurpistool bedoel :

Unreal Universe heeft een review van Unreal: Return to Na Pali online gezet. Ze geven 'm een rating van 85/100:

The levels are some of the coolest Unreal levels I've ever played. Legend levelers did a good job of using the original bad guys in a good mix with the new creatures featured in the mission pack. From what I played you encounter A LOT of mercenaries. The levels themselves are very well put together. Sometimes you got to go back a few times to check some stuff out, making sure you didn't miss anything. Others you just sit there and look around at the detail put into them.

The new weapons and creatures really shine in this pak. The Combat Assault Rifle is really an awesome weapon. To bad you run out of ammo really fast. 400 rounds are about enough to take down one Skaarj and that's all you can carry at one time. The grenade launcher and rocket launcher are just about the same as they are in any game that features them. If it were Quake or Unreal, something's just never change.

Niet helemaal off-topic: voor Unreal Tournament screenshots kun je terecht bij Gamewire, daar hebben ze er 16 in totaal.

FPS3D.com heeft een review gepost van de Abit BX6-II. Een errug relaxte slot1 plank (heb 'm zelf ook):

The BX6 2.0 comes complete with most all of the features you will need when building or upgrading your computer. It supports Slot 1 cartridges such as the Celeron 266MHz-433MHz, PentiumII 233MHz-450MHz, and PentiumIII 450Mhz-550Mhz. The BX6 2.0 also supports AGP 2x(Advanced Graphics Port) for all of your graphics needs. Most motherboards only have 2-3 DIMM sockets for memory upgrades, the BX6 2.0 comes with 4. That leaves you with alot of room for future expansion. The CPU SoftMenuII is one of the best features Abit offers with the BX6. It makes it easy for the average Joe (no offense News Updater Joe!) to add a healthy boost to their processor for maximum performance.

Revisie 2 van de BX6 zal binnenkort trouwens worden afgelost door de nieuwe BE6. In de tussen tijd kun je de review van FPS3D checken.

Gisteren ging het nog om een onbevestigd gerucht, nu lijkt het er daadwerkelijk op dat Cyrix overgenomen zal worden door VIA Tech. Hier heb je de info uit een nieuwsartikel van ZDNet:

Via Tech confirmed reports that it would buy the Cyrix x86 line from National Semiconductor Inc (NYSE:NSM), a major Silicon Valley firm that bought Cyrix two years ago -- but failed to make it profitable.

Via Tech said it was convinced Cyrix was viable despite its David-and-Goliath competition with Intel's Pentium, which dominates the global market for central-processing units, or CPUs, the central brains of a computer.

"We are not afraid to compete directly with Intel. We have had many fights with Intel Nasdaq:INTC) before," said Via Tech sales and marketing chief Ted Lee, who announced the deal in Taipei.

Hopelijk zullen de nieuwe CPU designs van Cyrix (Gobi en hoe ze ook allemaal heten) dan toch in produktie genomen worden (zeg ik als oud 6x86 gebruiker).

CPU Review is een petitie gestart tegen de plannen van Intel om de Celeron te castreren, zodat-ie niet meer gebruikt kan worden in dual CPU configuraties (zoals met een Abit BP6 plankje):

On the 25th of June, 1999 my friend JC's site (JC's PC News'n'Links) reported a rumor that Intel has started disabling the AN15 pin of Socket 370 in order to stop people from running cheap SMP systems. The Register also reported JC's rumor.

I hope that the rumor is baseless, but just in case it turns out to be true, I have decided to run a petition to ask Intel to not remove the SMP capability from Socket 370 Celeron A's. If you would like to participate in this petition, please enter your name, city and a valid e-mail address in the form below.

Ik heb weinig hoop dat Intel zich iets van zo'n petitie zal aantrekken, maar uiteraard kan het geen kwaad om ff je naam in te vullen.

Intel en Microsoft zullen morgen op het Workstation Leadership Forum een gezamelijke presentatie houden tbv de promotie van de "Wintel" architectuur voor workstations:

Gates, the chief executive of Microsoft, and Barrett, his counterpart at Intel, will be the featured speakers tomorrow at the Workstation Leadership Forum in Burlingame, California. The two executives will be joined by corporate customers as well as other executives.

[...] The move into workstations has clearly benefited both companies and their computing allies. Intel/Windows NT workstations are growing at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 24.8 percent, according to figures provided by the companies from IDC while revenues are growing at around 20 percent.

By contrast, sales of traditional RISC/Unix workstations are shrinking by around 5 percent in terms of units and 9.5 percent when it comes to revenue. Moreover, Wintel-based machines are increasing in performance and power, and in the process, competing more directly against RISC machines in all segments of the market. In the past, Wintel workstations were more prevalent in less power-intensive markets, such as finance, and not as widely accepted in markets with extravagant graphics needs, such as film and video.

The movement, however, isn't as lockstep as it looks. Although its market share remains small, the Linux operating system is growing in popularity among workstation users as an alternative to both

Windows NT and Unix. Even stalwart Microsoft allies like Dell Computer are loading it onto their workstations.

De volgelingen van Thresh hebben een Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 onder vuur genomen. Ook over deze Ultra TNT2 kaart (default 175/183) weer een stukje over de overklokbaarheid:

Starting out, we raised the core speed to 190MHz (+ 15MHz) and the memory to 200MHz (+17MHz), since 190/200 are nice round numbers to try to hit. Starting up some benchmarks results in visual artifacts, leading to an eventual freeze. Hmm. After the reboot, we bumped the clocks a little bit lower to 185/195, and resumed the benchmarking. This time, things were going smoothly through the first 3Dmark 99 benchmark, without any visual degradation. However, around the middle of the second test, we got another freeze and lockup.

The eventual realization through testing was that our particular Maxi Xentor 32 would not overclock past 175/200. Remember, this will vary from case to case, at least with the core speed, as cores may be different in their overclockability due in part to the yield of the chips they come from. The RAM clock, on the other hand, is probably pretty indicative, since 5.5ns rated RAM is going to be 5.5ns rated RAM, regardless of yield.

Check de review bij Thresh's Firingsquad.

The Sanctum heeft een review gepost van de Dynamite TNT2 Ultra. Hier heb je een stukje over de overklokbaarheid van de kaart, die - zoals bekend - erg goed is:

As you know we don't suggest overclocking, but since many users perform it and sometimes the gains are good we decided to see what this card could do for us. We started out at the stock 175/200 and went for 195/225. At 195/225 we ran several games for a few minutes but that speed didn't hold for long. Our next stop was 190/210 and this speed held well. We also hit 183/210 with no problems. This all depends on the quality of your cards RAM and could also yield better speeds then our card. Some of the performance gains at 190/210 were very good.

Speedy 3D heeft een interview met nVidia gepost, hier heb je vast twee vraagies, hier staat de rest. Helaas geen info over de NV10...

KP: 3dfx is always trying to go that one bit better than Nvidia and it's next chip looks set to just break ahead of yours, do you think your next chipset can beat 3dfx's when it comes to the crunch?

DP: I'm not sure what 3dfx has up their sleeve for the fall, but I do know that we have captured the title of technological leader and we plan to retain that title.

KP: Will Diamond be producing future Nvidia products?

DP: As far as future generation products go, I'm not sure, we will cross that bridge when we get there.

Niet echt tweaking nieuws maar het leek me toch wel interessant : Slashdot, de site met nieuws van en over nerds is opgekocht door een bedrijf genaamd Andover.net. In een uitgebreid verhaal legt een van de oprichters van Slashdot uit waarom. Hier een quote :

Why did you do this?

Slashdot keeps growing. The overhead and costs associated with running this beast has become astronomical. Hemos and I work marathon weeks, and there still isn't enough time to get everything done. There are always banner ads needing selling, stories needing posting, perl needing hacking, and readers with questions needing answering. Besides that, our single channel ISDN connection is awfully saturated, and the "Business" work of running this website is beginning to be nearly as much work as the "Website" part of the site.

We had 2 options: get cash from some investors and hire a staff, or or find a company that we felt understood what we wanted to accomplish here, and use their money to hire help.

Hiring our own staff would mean hiring suits and marketing people. We decided that simply being acquried would allow someone else to worry about the suits and marketroids- we would simply benefit from their existing business infrastructure, and we could concentrate on what we already know how to do: Run a website.

Nou maar hopen dat dit een goede invloed heeft op de (naar mij mening) goede en leuke nieuwsvoorziening van /..

Games.net heeft een TNT2 roundup (zelf noemen ze het 'TNT2 Tournament') in elkaar gedraaid. Het deelnemersveld bestaat uit een Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor 32, Asus V3800 Deluxe, Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra, Diamond Viper V770 Ultra en Hercules Dynamite TNT2. Hier heb je een stukje uit de review van de Dynamite TNT2 (en volgens mij bedoelen hier ze de Ultra versie):

The Hercumeter allowed configurations of between 125MHz and 200MHz for the engine clock speed and between 143MHz and 235MHz for the memory clock speed. We were able to achieve a stable 185MHz/210MHz combination before icons started glitching in Windows and programs wouldn't run. The combination of the overclocking and newer drivers enabled the Dynamite TNT2 to achieve a rate of 75.3 fps in the Quake III test--the highest in this roundup (granted, it leads by about 1 fps). We saw no problems with graphics quality, and colors were bright and rich. The Dynamite TNT2 seems to have passed all the tests.

News.com heeft een nieuwsartikel gepost over een nieuwe Apple Palm handheld. De Newton krijgt een opvolger?

Apple continues to ponder coming out with multicolored Palm handhelds under its own name, although the project has been put on the back burner to ensure that its new consumer portable gets out the door.

Prototypes of a handheld organizer, which use 3Com's Palm operating system, have been spotted around the company's Cupertino, California, headquarters, said sources close to the company. Like the iMac, the Palm-based devices, if released, would come in a variety of colors and be marketed under the Apple brand.

For 3Com, the deal has precedent: Palm Computing makes an organizer that has IBM's name on it. For Apple, the move signals an ongoing interest in a market it pioneered, then abandoned in 1997 with the cancellation of the Newton handheld computer. Because the development is largely controlled by Palm, a Palm licensing strategy presents far less risk for Apple. [break]Verderop in het artikel staat ook nog wat info over nieuwe iMac's, die in de herfst op de markt geplant zullen worden:[/break] Meanwhile, the company is also readying a new generation of iMacs for release in the fall.

These new machines are expected to continue the iMac design tradition, but will be revised to allow for easier access to the computer's innards, like the newest versions of the Power Mac G3 systems have, sources said. The system is expected to provide other new features such as a larger screen. A new generation of desktops would also fit in with Apple's commitment to refresh the product line annually--the iMac hit the store shelves in August of 1998.

Ik zag bij Betanews een posting over dit proggie. Wellicht leuk voor de kabelaars:

Got word of a new beta named CableTraffic. CableTraffic is described as a program that monitors your cable internet conection and maintains a log of interruptions or otherwise poor service. This log may even help you to obtain refunds for service you are not receiving, and lead to improved cable modem service.

Je kunt het proggie hier naar beneden halen.

Hehe, Bill heeft weer een nieuwe hidden feature bedacht voor Win98. Deze is best wel grappig: hij voorkomt dat je Windoos kunt booten :

Microsoft has owned up to the latest bug in Windows 98, acknowledging a flaw in the System File Checker - a program designed, ironically, to keep a PC running smoothly - that could render the system unbootable.

According to Microsoft's Personal Support Center Web site, the behavior occurs because of incorrect information about the source cabinet locations for some Windows 98 system files. As a result, the System File Checker cannot locate the necessary files and consequently fails to reboot.

John Schultheiss, an executive at BigFix, a software business that identifies PC issues, says that users are being encouraged by PC companies to run the System File Checker whenever possible, but should actually avoid it until the bug is corrected.

Microsoft recommended that users restart their computer with the Windows 98 start-up disk, choose Start Computer With CD-ROM Support from the Windows 98 Startup menu, and re-extract the affected file at a command prompt using the Extract.exe tool.

More information about the System File Checker bug can be found at support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q192/8/32.asp.

FullOn3D heeft een benchmarks gepost van de nieuwe v2.03 Detonator drivers op een K6-2 systeem. Uit de resultaten blijkt dat er nauwelijks vershil is met de 1.88 drivers:

All in all it looks like the performance is not all that much different from the official 1.88 drivers. A bit faster in lower resolutions, but slightly slower in higher. If you are not having any stability problems with the official release, I suggest that you stay with them. However, if like me (and many others that I know) you are having some annoying stability problems with them, I would most definately advise you to grab a hold of these beta drivers and give them a try. Hey, it worked for me!

Wellicht is de situatie op P6 systemen anders (ivm 3DNow! enhancements).

Ik kwam weer via AMD Zone bij deze japanse site waar ze een paar wazige foto's hebben van Slot-B moederborden:

Ik kwam via AMD Zone bij deze duitse gaming site, waar ze Quake2 Crusher benchmarks hebben gedraaid op een Ahtlon-600 systeempje:

Ein allererster Benchmark der GameStar-Redaktion mit AMDs neuem Flaggschiff K7 ergab erstaunliche Werte. Auf dem Testsystem mit einem K7-600 und der Ultra-TNT-2-Karte Viper 770 kam der Crusher-Benchmark von Quake 2 auf zirka 70 Frames pro Sekunde bei einer Auflösung von 1027 mal 768 Pixeln. Zum Vergleich: Ein mit 550 MHz gektakteter Pentium II kam mit der selben Konfiguration nur auf etwa 45 Frames/Sekunde.

Als die resultaten te vertrouwen zijn, dan wordt de Athlon een behoorlijk ass-kickende CPU voor games.

Eerder vandaag een nieuwsposting over een interview met Mark Rein / Unreal, toen John Carmak / Quake3 en nu Matt Wood / DNF, da's een leuk rijtje . Matt Wood is level designer bij 3D Realms. Hij werd geinterviewed door 3D Map Realm. Hier heb je wat stuff:

How important is each aspect of a game in terms of the entire product's overall quality? (for example, is having flashy new technology in the game more important than a really fun play experience?)

Personally, I have always put gameplay and fun above looks. But tech doesn't always fall into the catagory of 'the look'. I think if you have great new tech and don't integrate it effectively into your game to where its fun, then that is wasted tech. As far as I'm concerned, the technology could be incredible, but if you don't have a solid designer or artist with a great idea on how to use it, it's pretty much useless. Overall though, I would say that It's really hard to say one is any more important than the other. [break]...en om ons gerust te stullen: Duke4 gaat ass kikcen :[/break] Anything else you'd like to say?

You guys wont be disappointed with Duke Nukem Forever. You will be no less than blown away by it. 'Hail to the King, Baby....'

PC Paradox heeft een viertal Permedia3 screenshots gepost. De image quality lijkt errug goed te zijn:

As you can see, the Permedia3 sports some amazing high quality gaming. All shots were taken in 32bit color (except Quake2) and at 1024*768. I especially liked the Plasma Shot (shot2), and if you are of the unfortunate slow connection category, this is the one you should look at.

Here is a little bit of info about the Permedia3 which we just recieved. So far, the card is an excellent one, although it may not be the epitomy of gaming performance, if you use other graphics applications other than your games, this is definitly a good card.

De shots staan hier.

Zonet hadden we nog een interview met Mark Rein, nu is collega John Carmack aan de beurt . Het interview is van CGO:

CGO: Will there be a ranking system in the multiplayer game?

JC: No. We considered doing that, and in my original Quakeworld experimentation I had global ranking on everything, and it was a really interesting issue because that split the community almost down the middle. There were people that like it and thought it was a great idea, and the other half thought it took away from the game, and there were valid arguments for that too. There were behaviors you would start seeing from people where, a lot of time when you are playing on servers you're kind of just goofing off, having a good time, trying goofy stuff or just playing casually with you friends. When every frag was logged, people got a lot less friendly. You'd see people who would abort out of games they saw somebody tough enter the game, because they didn't want to risk having a fair fight. There was a lot more whining and complaining. The right way to do it would be to have it optional, where servers would be logged or not. As soon as you're into people setting up their own servers with their own rule modifications, it's just a huge can of worms. I would rather allow more diversity to happen by just allowing people to change the rules on their servers and run modifications and things like that, rather than to have it be "here is the game, in crystallized form, which we are going to be ranking people on." I think there are going to be servers that have rankings for just the people who play on those servers. You're not going to be able to say "I'm the best player in the world"… there is definitely value to that, but what it would take away from the community as a whole, it's just a non-optable thing.

Er zit best wel veel info in dit interview. Oja, ook nog 3 screenshots:

In navolging van Thresh's Firingsquad heeft nu ook Riva 128 een review over het Abit BP6 moederbord geschreven.

Ze melden o.a. dat er wel degelijk bussnelheden tussen de 100 en 110 Mhz zitten met stappen van 2 Mhz en dat ze van Abit hebben gehoord dat er in nieuwe biossen misschien nog wel meer bussnelheden bijkomen.

Hier alvast een stukje uit het artikel over of een dual systeem eigenlijk wel nut heeft:

Well, at the moment there is quite a bit of anticipation over Quake 3 Arena and it's SMP (dual mode) support. Even bold statements have been made by ID Software that a dual processor system will beat any PIII 550MHz system. But will a dual 450MHz Celeron system outperform a PIII 550MHz is the question that we need to ask. We will have to wait for the next release of Quake 3 Test or the game itself to know for sure and more than likely Windows 2000 will be needed to make it happen.

Also if you plan to run a small to medium sized server for your company, for your home or even better for a Quake server, then the ABIT BP6 is a definite top choice for the job. If you do 3D rendering or video editing on the side or in-house and money is an issue, then dual 300As, 466MHz or 500MHz Celerons on a ABIT BP6 is the way to go.

Dark Viper heeft op UnrealContest.com een interview gepost met Mark Rein, waarin wat heen-en-weer gechat wordt over Unreal Tournament:

DarkViper: I understand that there are plans to release a demo for UT before the game is released. Can you share any info about what gamers should expect in the demo?

Mark Rein: Yeah, a demo is definitely in the works. Right now we are anticipating shipping with Free for All

Deathmatch,Team Based Deathmatch and (Team Based) Domination maps. These may change but we want to give the community something to whet their appetites before we ship the retail version.

The great thing is that it will also give participants in the Make Something Unreal Contest the opportunity to begin creating maps for the next two categories well in advance of the next contest submission dates. As long as they have a copy of Unreal and the UT Demo they will really be able crank out some impressive stuff.

We also have some new UT movies coming out soon. Keep an eye out for the movies and the demo in a couple months or so.

Pete's Hardware heeft een paar Quake2 en Quake3 benchmarks van de Neon 250 (PowerVR Series2) gepost.

We started off with the obligatory Quake2 Crusher test. Once again, improvements all-round: at 1024*768, we got 55.5 fps, up from 51.1 fps, and at 800*600, the score leapt from 55 to 63.3 fps : that's a 15% improvement! Sure, the test system was a PII 550 instead of 500Mhz, but under Crusher, that's still a big improvement, and shows how extra driver development time before release can boost performance.

Then we fired up Quake3. Unfortunately, due the absence of a reliable Timedemo test, the best we (or anyone) could manage was to run around with the FPS counter turned on and get a feel for the speed. We also picked a polygon intensive scene and captured the frames/sec at the same position for a 16 / 32-bit comparison in both 800 and 1024 resolutions.

The results? Always difficult to quantify, especially the final column, which shows the potential speed hit incurred by switching to 32-bit rendering. Unfortunately, we don't have a PIII 550 to run our own TNT2 Ultra or Voodoo3 through the same test. If anyone is lucky enough to own any of these, please grab some screenshots by standing in the same place and send them in, and we'll post them alongside these. (Note that everything is turned to maximum)

Voor een tabelletje met benchmark resultaten moet je ff bij Pete's Hardware gaan kijken. De performance hit bij 32-bit rendering lijkt vooralsnog erg heftig (16% in Q2 en 35% in Q3).

Het volk van Voodoo3.net heeft een bezoekje gebracht aan de 3dfx headquarters. uiteraard hebben ze over dat tripje een report gebakken, waarin ze vertellen hoe fijn het was om in de 3dfx kantoren te mogen stuiteren. Ook deze errug fijne opmerking over nVidia :

While doing and seeing all of this, I got to hear and see a bunch of new stuff. But, it's all under an NDA(non-disclosure agreement) so, that cannot be said. I can say one thing though, and it's directed to nVidia....you guys suck!! Ummm...that's all...carry on.

AGN Hardware heeft een review gepost van de errug dikke 47Gig Seagate Elite. Dit is geen schijfje dat je zomaar in je gamedoos gaat zetten:

The Seagate Elite 47 is truly a big drive. Weighing in at a full 7 pounds (3.17 kg) we immediately appreciated the fact that this drive was in its own enclosure. The drive itself is massive: 3.25 inches high, 5.75 inches wide and 8 inches deep (86.2mm x 146.1mm x 203mm), making it appear more like something out of server history books than a current product.

Omdat het maar een 5400rpm schijf is (hoewel met 4Mb cache), is-ie trager dan de snellere 7200 en 10.000rpm Barracuda's, Cheetah's en Atlassen. Wel leuk voor backup space in fileservers. Check de review bij AGN HW.