Als je nog zit te twijfelen of je de Mortyr Demo zal gaan downloaden, lees dan eerst eventjes deze review van de demo.

Weapons are one of, if not the, high-points of the game. The demo features six authentic WWII-era firearms (well, they at least seemed authentic to my ignorant eyes), which are all incredible in terms of how they look and how they feel. Initially, you'll only have access to your combat knife and ability to kick things (taking an obvious cue from Duke Nukem 3d). As you progress though, you'll obtain pistols, machineguns, and heavy machineguns. Maybe it's just me, but I've always found weaponry from this era to be incredibly cool methods of unleashing utter chaos with. There's just something stylish about running rampant with a now archaic machinegun and tearing up everything in sight with wild fury. All of the weapons are equipped with some kicking sub-woofer blasting effects as well, adding that much more to the experience.

Bij Riva Extreme melden ze dat ze in een blad wat specs zijn tegen gekomen van nVidia's geheimzinnige NV10. Hier heb je een gedeelte, de rest staat hier.

Transformation & Lighting acceleration with DirectX 7.0 and OpenGL

estimated 15-25 million triangles/second

350 MHz RAMDAC

about twice the fill rate of current generation 3D chips

HDTV support

motion compensation for full 1080i/480p HDTV displays

x-y video scaling acceleration

colorspace conversion

AGP 4X

32 meg and 64 meg versions

Hardware Upgrade heeft ook al een review van de Abit BP6 dual socket 370 moederplank. Op deze plank kun je heel handig twee Celeron's op kwijt. Voor de review, klik hier.

Abit BP6 is an unusual motherboard: the presence of two Socket 370 allows to use it only with Celeron PPGA CPUs, even if it allows to create dual processor configurations with reduced costs. The presence of different bus frequencies, with increase range of 1 MHz, and the possibility of changing separately the Core voltage of each processor are features appreciated by those who plan to overclock one or two Celeron CPUs; the presence of bus frequencies between 83 and 100 MHz allows also to come close to the maximum frequency achievable for the processor, particularly if you use a Celeron 400 MH or higher frequency. The construction is detailed; the only limit is the lack of a fourth DIMM memory slot, which should be present with dual processor systems.

The system stability has always been high and this is the same for the performance; the presence of so many configurations for bus frequency allows to optimise the performance, seen the tolerance level to overclock of the processors used.

It is a very good motherboard for dual Celeron PPGA configurations; the limit of this motherboard, comparing the BP6 to dual Slot 1 motherboard, is that you can’t upgrade it to processors other than Celeron PPGA (but it seems that the production of these processors will go on in the future) and the fact that Intel plans to turn off the support for dual processor configuration for Celeron CPUs, making it impossible to create dual Celeron systems with new CPUs (at the moment there're no certain informations on this item).

3D Audio Immersion heeft een korte review geschreven van de Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla. Deze soundcard is voorzien van een Aureal Vortex II chipset, heeft quad speaker support en is net zoals de Xitel Storm Platinum van een S/PDIF interface voorzien.

Loading up this card I felt that it was going to be a "El-standard" Vortex2 board, but I was pleasantly surprised. It sounded cleaner and had a better initial tonal balance than the others, but you can fix that with the 10 band equalizer. The card was clean, and basically noise free. The physical quality of the board was up to snuff, 'cause I accidentally dropped it. Ooops. It also came with a CD-audio cable, which I didn't use because I use the Belkin $12 ones at Best Buy, exclusively (It was cheap anyway).

First off, I am basing this review off of the drivers that shipped with the card. So they were not the 2030 drivers that were recently released. So needless to say, I had issues with my Four Point Surround 2000 speakers. But tossing those aside *cough* I was pleased by the quality A3D support. Defined, clear, and smooth are words that come to mind. The demos were good, and the Half-life was even better. The card came with a "special version" of X-Wing Alliance, and that was awesome to listen to and play.

Sharky Extreme heeft het tweede deel van zijn Private Eye klaar. Dit keer gaat het over de nieuwste videokaarten op een AMD K6-III, hij lult wat over Monolith's advanced LithTech 2.0 Engine (met zeer fraaie plaatjes) en vertelt ons het geheim van Quake 3 benchmarking. Voor dit en meer, klik hier!

The High-Performance PC Guide heeft een review gebakken van de Abit BE6 Slot 1 i440BX moederplank met ATA66. Check de review hier.

The Abit BE6 is really a superb motherboard. Abit not only did a very good job when they designed this motherboard but as a fact they surpassed themselves. The idea to add an onboard ATA66 hard disk drive controller is very brilliant as it gives a very good option to those waiting for the upcoming Intel Camino chipset. Besides, it adds 4 more hard disk drives to the system and to my knowledge it's the only BX board to do it. In my opinion, the Abit BE6 is probably the best surprise of the first 6 months of 1999.

ComChip heeft een kleine stukkie geschreven over Ome Bill's Windows 2000. Je kunt het artikel hier vinden.

Actually there is a reason why it makes your system slower. With Windows 95, you get DOS and Windows built in, plug and play support and plus you get more features than Windows 3.11. Same case with Windows 2000, you get a system that's a lot more stable, and a password system that actually works, this is practicularly important when you are using it in a company. You don't want other people to go into your computer and mess up your reports just to get you fired

Configuring NT 4.0 was also another way to quickly lose your hair, as again you are pulling your hair out just trying to find all the configuration tools which are scattered all over the place. With Windows 2000, most of the tools are found in the Control Panel which made me say "Finally".

There is finally a device manager in Windows 2000 that won't make everyone pull their hair out when they are trying to install something. I'm surprise that it took the programmers at Microsoft to figure out that the Windows 98 device manager style of managing drivers is more user-friendly and organized than the NT style. A hardware wizard was also added, which helps you install the drivers of your new hardware.

Finally there is an option to boot in safe mode, so if a key driver dies, you can actually try to fix it as opposed to re-install everything.

Er zijn nieuwe Windows 2000 .INF files uit voor alle smaken Voodoo kaarten, nu compatible met Windows 2000 RC1 build 2072. Voor de download locaties, check deze site.

Over bij Thresh's FiringSquad hebben ze het vibrerende stuur van Logitech eens getest. Ondanks de mindere kwalitiet pedalen is het best een lekker stuurtje, vinden ze. Check de review hier.

The pedals are the least impressive looking of the setup, and they handle about as well as they look. First of all, they press straight down into the floor, which is contrary to the way that real pedals move - along a forward axis. Second, there is very little resistance to the pedals, making them not only unrealistic to use, but very difficult to precisely control. Third, they're small. About the only nice thing the pedals do is accept the power supply feed; this means there's only one cable (a 25-pin) to run up to the steering wheel.

This isn't to say that the pedals are unplayable, but they leave much to be desired. The best pedals (apart from the Nova's) were the Thrustmaster pedals. The Thrustmaster pedals are larger, have good resistance (and different resistance for braking and accelerating), and push forward instead of down. Oh well. We can't all be perfect.

AGN Hardware heeft net een review van de Altec Lansing ACS54 Speakers online gekwakt. De set bestaat uit 4 speakers en een subwoofer, en dit alles voor een vrij zacht prijsje. Klik hier voor de review.

The biggest reason to upgrade to a new site of speakers is so you can have 4 speaker audio to hook up to your new sound card. The ACS54 does a great job of playing your favorite games for EAX support and I am sure A3D as well. I hit the playing field in a few games including NFS High Stakes, Aliens vs Predator and even Q3Test. The ACS54 provide great sound all correctly routed to the 4 different speakers. The subwoofer also works quite well providing accurate playback of guns, auto and more at a level that is sure to send the cops after you.

Bij Reverend hebben ze de oude driver van de Voodoo3 vergeleken met de nieuwe driver, die reeds is gereleased. Check het artikel hier.

With these, 3dfx Interactive has introduced some ability to tweak the alpha-blending rendering qualities of the drivers and games that support such a rendering feature. Alpha-blending is a feature that enables pixels to "look" solid, transparent (or partially so) or even invisible. An example would be explosions and its resultant smoke (if the game implements smoke). Map alpha-blending to polys and you'll get other effects such as see-through glass and water.

This document, albeit just a short one, was created just after installing these new drivers. I was eager to test it out in just one instance or game - Q3TEST (which, really, don't qualify as a "game" since it's just a test release). Much of the complaint from Voodoo3-users have been the awful screen-door effect look of the smoke of explosions (esp the Rocket Launcher's). I've seen it myself and as a user, couldn't wait to see what this driver set improves upon. So, I fired up Q3TESTv1.07. I'd taken some screenshots based on the previous drivers set to compare with these new drivers.

Superweb, een Rotterdamse internet boer, gaat internet toegang aanbieden voor 35 piek per maand, zonder telefoonkosten:

Kabelexploitant Eneco verwerkt het telefoonverkeer van dit aanbod, dat landelijk zal zijn.

Superweb zegt zich volgens Erik van Ravensberg meer op beginners dan zware gebruikers te zullen richten: 'We bieden geen pop3 e-mail, maar louter e-mail via het web.' Elke 2 uur zal de verbinding even worden verbroken, maar daarna is die weer beschikbaar.

Check Planet Multimedia voor het complete nieuwsbericht.

Yup, het is dus waar: de Union of Cracking Gods, die vanuit het niets de eerste plaats op de daily rankings veroverden, hebben gebruik gemaakt van een gehackte client:

Yes, my friends, now we all have to admit this unpleasant fact: distributed.net has been severely damaged by a malicious hacker. Some of our friends even go so far as to say that this is the end for "the largest computer on Earth" as we know it. Everybody understands the consequences: if somebody was able to crack the client, then the others will also be able to do it (I know that at least one of the members of Team HackZone has already independently duplicated Shaman's findings, purely for the purpose of testing , of course.)

I tell you, people: Shaman is not a hacker, because hackers fight the system, and Shaman fights the people that fight the system. There are a lot of young guys out there who call themselves "hackers" just because they can handle a debugger and can crack some copy protection. No way, guys. Being a hacker means abiding by hacker ethics. Do you know what it is, Shaman? I doubt so. No matter what his skills may be, deep inside Shaman is a typical "little hax0r guy" with his ego the size of Kremlin. He didn't want to just submit a "security issue" like decent people do, instead he made a show of himself acting as a "cracking god".

Shaman's attack on d.net is the clear case of the slaughter of the children - no one has ever thought that the client would be hacked, because it would defeat the purpose of the challenge - to find the key, not to show up first in the stats.

Now, since the cat is out of the bag and the "fake" blocks are indistinguishable from the "real" ones, what do we do?

What worries me most of all in this situation is the silence of distributed.net staff. Hey guys! keeping your mouth shut in the times of crisis is definitely not the best PR strategy! You need to keep in touch, to ask people for help - don't be proud, you know we are willing to help you and support you. Open a hotline-chat-IRC channel-web board-whatever, assign a dedicated person to the case, create a task force, do something!

After all, there are thousands of us and our cause is good, so can't we do something together to show the "cracking gods" that we are not giving up?

Meer info vind je op deze site. De Kraakgoden zijn inmiddels uit de daily stats verdwenen. Het blijft natuurlijk de vraag in hoeverre dit gevolgen zal hebben voor het RC5 project. Er zijn immers ongecontroleerde blokjes naar de keyservers teruggestuurd, waar de key in had kunnen zitten.

Netscape gaat iPlanet heten. Gelukkig heeft deze naamsverkrachting geen gevolgen voor de naam van mijn favoriete browser, die mogen we gewoon Netscape blijven noemen . PC World brengt het nieuws:

"The fact that they replaced the Netscape name with a meaningless one argues that they saw a negative value to the Netscape brand. And that's only something companies do after they've done a lot of research," said Jeff Tarter, editor and publisher of Softletter.

"The chickens have come home to roost on company behavior. Netscape burned a lot of developers. It's not surprising that their open-source effort [Mozilla.org] has not gone too far. A lot of people have a story about getting burned by Netscape," Tarter said.

The only Netscape-branded products remaining will be the Navigator and Communicator client products, but the future contour and full naming of those products may also be soon changing. A team of Sun and former Netscape engineers are at work on a new AOL client, and perhaps other types of Java-, XML-, and HTML-oriented clients.

Okee, ik ben er een beetje laat mee, maar 3dfx heeft dus nieuwe drivers voor de Voodoo3 gaar gebakken. Dankzij een nieuw Alpha-Blending tweak dingetje is de beeldkwaliteit volgens 3dfx de beste van allemaal! (*proest* ):

A new Alpha-Blending Quality control panel allows customers to select Automatic, Sharper, and Smoother settings. By choosing the appropriate settings for their favorite titles, consumers can experience the most realistic graphics possible, particularly for games that utilize alpha-blending rendering techniques for visual effects such as transparency (water or glass), translucency (artifacts that partially obscure objects, such as smoke, clouds or explosions), lensflare and reflections.. The three settings offer maximum flexibility for users to find the Alpha-Blending Quality combination that best meets their preferences: Automatic: Setting this mode allows the driver to determine when to use 3dfx's new Alpha-Blending Quality technique as needed. This is the Default mode. Sharper: This option turns off the Alpha-Blending Quality technique, which results in a sharper image and removes some of the "screen door" effects on the image. Smoother: This option activates the Alpha-Blending Quality technique, which results in a smoother image without the "screen-door" effects that can appear in some games.

Meer info over de drivers vind je in dit artikel van Voodoo Extreme en op deze page van de 3dfx site.

Combatsim heeft een review gepost van de Quantum Atlas 10K, volgens Storage Review de snelste SCSI drive van dit moment (ook sneller dan de Seagate Cheetah). Combatsim vergelijkt de schijf met een oude Quantum Viking2 en een nieuwe Western Digital Expert ATA/66 drive:

ompared to my former drive, the Viking2, the new Atlas gives over 200% increased performance. It's also interesting to note that while offering massive gains in overall transfer rates, the 10K consummed fewer CPU cycles than the Viking, at least in the WinBench tests.

On the other hand, as the latest in IDE technology the WD Expert fares much better, trailing the Atlas in most tests by roughly 30%; however, both WinBench and Threadmark's transfer tests showed a very wide gap, with the latter displaying a 250%+ difference between the drives, though CPU usage was certainly higher with the Atlas.

Ik kwam bij Sysop Solutions dit plaatje van een quad PII/Xeon moederplank tegen. Dit is zeker geen bescheiden jongen ! Zo te zien kun je er ook een leuke hoeveelheid geheugen op kwijt...

Combatsim heeft een flinke review gebakken van de Xitel Storm Platinum, een best wel flexe geluidskaart (eerder schreef ik er een review over) die wordt geleverd met een Force Feedback koptelefoon:

Initially, I felt that the bundled and unbundled packages were on the expensive side. But after comparing the overall value of the sound card and headset (Storm Platinum Gamers Pack), against other offerings by Creative, Diamond and others, I changed my mind. Creative's and Diamond's equivalent sound cards have bundled games but no force feedback headset. I'd rather trade bundled games for such a headset, or for a lower price if no headset is supplied. To me, bundled games are a marketing ploy to justify a higher price point.

Sysop Solutions heeft meer info over de voltage problemen van de Abit BE6 moederplank (check ook deze posting):

The technical rep. from ABIT USA returned my call this afternoon and after some discussion he was able to give me all the details on the BE6 motherboard voltage problems as he understood them.

With regards to the initial matter of the BIOS not saving the setting for the CPU voltage. This problem should only occur on a small numbers of initially released motherboards (~200). ABIT will be accepting these boards back for modification or exchange in order to correct this problem immediately. As I indicated in an earlier news update on the page, it is possible for you to correct the problem yourself by removing the resistor located at R59, however this is not high on my recommendation list as it is a surface mount component and if you don't have the proper tools to do the job right, you could do more harm than good to your new motherboard. ABIT recommends that you simply return the board for a newer revision. ABIT also remminded me that any tampering with the resistor would viod the owner's warrenty.

With regards to the second matter of the -5V DC and -3.3V DC on the BE6. We realized a few days ago that software utilities such as Motherboard Monitor were unable to read these voltages correctly and hence could not display them. Well here is the explanation. The current Winbond chip on the BE6 (W83783S) has no spare inputs to physically read these voltages, hence software tools will not be able to recognize them. ABIT will be discussing this matter at a meeting held at the company tomorrow and it may be determined at that stage whether or not the Winbond chip will be changed on the BE6 to accommodate these voltage readings in future revisions of the board. For now you will have to make do without them.

I want to also commend the technical rep. who responded to all the questions that I posed to him and also returned my call the following day with more answers to questions that were left on-answered the day before. His professional attitude reflects well on the company he speaks on behalf of. I have no doubt that ABIT will not let these minor problems tarnish their reputation as one of the premier manufacturers of motherboards on the market today.

Steve's nieuwe iBook wordt voortgekacheld door een speciale koperen versie van de G3 processor, zo schrijft News.com in dit nieuwsbericht:

The new iBook laptop uses a specially designed low-power copper chip from IBM to achieve its "all-day" battery life that Apple Computer interim chief executive Steve Jobs described when he introduced the product at the Macworld conference yesterday in New York.

The 300-MHz chip is an "optimized" version of the PowerPC 750 processor, according to sources familiar with the iBook's internal hardware. The chip's circuit "interconnects" are based on copper, a technology that IBM has used in its 32-bit processors since the fall of last year. Thirty-two bits generally refers to the size of a piece of data that a chip can digest in a single "clock cycle." [break]In het artikel ook nog een regeltje info over een 1GHz PowerPC:[/break] IBM expects PowerPC chips running at 1 GHz (1,000 MHz) to be shipping in samples in 2000 and in computers in early 2001. These are targeted at its RS/6000 line of workstations and servers.

Ik quote uit een mailtje dat ik van Tinker kreeg: "Het lijkt wel een moderne wafelrooster!" Inderdaad .

Matrox Users heeft benchmarks verovert van de verbeterde G400 OpenGL ICD in Powerdesk 5.2x (momenteel nog in ontwikkeling). Helaas heeft MURC geen referentie met de huidige drivers, dus het is moeilijk te zien in hoeverre de framerates met de nieuwe drivers omhoog getilt worden. 36fps op 1280x960 met de G400Max in Quake2 Crusher.dm2 lijkt me in ieder geval niet slecht.

Ion Storm's dialy informant heeft een kort interview gepost met John Romera, de man achter Daikatana. Hier heb je 2 vragen:

Haskins: First off…give us an update on the progress of Daikatana since E3.

Romero: Since E3, Daikatana has made impressive progress. We have some new graphics features, better sound fidelity, fixed lots of low-level bugs in the game and are almost final on our major map pass.

Haskins: How’s the AI coming along?

Romero: The game's AI is doing better than ever. We have the sidekicks running around the maps doing shotcycler jumps and generally doing a good job maneuvering the levels. Monster AI is moving along and will see a major push very soon.

Symantec heeft een beta versie gereleased van Speed Disk voor Windows NT. Hier heb je de soep van Ars Technica:

Symantec has released a beta version of Speed Disk for Windows NT which you can grab here. Why do you need Speed Disk 5 for Windows NT? Maximum PC has some info from a study that had some very interesting findings. It seems that many NT admins are turning to defrag software to help boost performance. They went on to say that 50% of workstations had more than 1000 fragments per file, and servers were even worse. When we installed defrag software on our NT servers where I work, we noticed substantial performance increases. For more info on NT defragmentation, take a look at Cæsar's review of Diskeeper 4 from last November. And then, check out Pander's amazing NTFS special.

Het beta dingetje kun je dus hier naar beneden laden.

Ik kwam dit tegen bij Ars Technica: een proggie waarmee je de Win9x BSOD properties kunt customizen. Wat dacht je van een hippe roze foutmelding? Helemaal leuk wordt het als je die settings gaat anpassen op andermans computer . Check deze page voor info (jammer dat het niet werkt met WinNT).

EETimes heeft een behoorlijk dik artikel gepost over het Intel Rambus vs PC133 geklooi. Vorige week werd bekend dat Intel PC133 (zoals verwacht) in heroverweging ging nemen, dit ivm de problemen bij de produktie van het zogenaamd superieure Rambus DRAM (eerder toonde Tom aan dat PC133 op dit moment sneller is dan Rambus DRAM). Hier heb je een hap uit het artikel van EETimes. Zie ook de belachelijk hoge Rambus prijzen:

PC133 does have a large cost advantage over RDRAM, however. "We now offer a PC133 128-Mbyte DIMM at $143 per unit," said Robin Chang, associate director of product marketing for Acer Technology Inc. "In comparison, our 144-Mbyte RIMM module costs about $840."

But, with consumers receptive to the appeal of faster-megahertz memories, and cost considerations ever more important, sources said Intel almost surely will take its chip sets to the PC133 speed. The sheer cost difference between the SDRAM and Rambus solutions continues to plague Intel's decision, made in December 1996, to support the Rambus technology.

MacWilliams said the recent sharp decline in the price of the PC100 SDRAMs — albeit with a small bounceback over the past 10 days — has widened the price gap between the SDRAMs and Rambus DRAMs. "The DRAM vendors are losing lots of money on SDRAMs," MacWilliams said. "As prices go down they are less willing to track the same aggressive pricing with RDRAMs."

While the additional cost of making an RDRAM is estimated by Intel to be from 20 percent to 30 percent higher than SDRAM at most DRAM vendors (one vendor said its cost adder was 50 percent), the prices charged for RDRAMs in the early days of the marketplace are four to five times as much as for SDRAMs. And while DRAM vendors try to charge as much as possible for RDRAMs, the collapse in the SDRAM price has made the difference between the two memory types particularly glaring, MacWilliams said.

DRAM vendors are charging a stiff premium for RDRAMs running at 400 MHz, which delivers 800 Mbits per second by reading data from both the rising and falling edge of the clock. Estimates for the price of a 128-Mbyte RIMM vary considerably. Intel said such a module would cost about $200. A DIMM of similar density, populated with 64-Mbit PC100 SDRAMs, would cost about $80.

One small module maker in Taiwan said its 128-Mbyte RIMM sells for $840; Intel officials dismissed that price as an aberration. Hyundai Electronics America said it is currently selling 128-Mbyte RIMMs "in the high $300-to-$400 range," said Farhad Tabrizi, the company's strategic memory marketing manager.

The price of the 128-Mbyte RIMM should drop to $250 by the fourth quarter, at which time the 128-Mbyte PC133 DIMM will sell for about $100 to $125, Tabrizi said. The 100 percent premium will reflect the higher cost of the RDRAM package, the more expensive testers, and the larger die size of the RDRAMs, he said.

Ars Technica heeft tweede deel van z'n K7 preview op het net gezet. Zoals we van Ars gewend zijn gaat het hier weer om behoorlijk heftige & gedetaileerde technische info. Hier heb je de intro:

Last time we talked about the execution engine of the K7, and how it's got enough horsepower to do more work per clock cycle than any other x86 processor on the market. But as I hinted at in the end of Part I, all of those execution units do you no good, however, if you can't feed instructions to them fast enough to keep them fully occupied. That's where the front end of the CPU comes in. The front end is like a backstage area for instructions, where they get all primped up and ready to go out to the execution engine and do their thing. There's even a fussy guy with a French accent who has a space cadet haircut and really good shoes, running around saying things like "Places people! Places!" and "You know what to do!" Ok, not really, but it's close. Let me explain.

Explainen gebeurd hier.

Mars Technologies (ja, zo heet die site ) heeft een review van de Iomega Clik! drive online gezet. De Clik! drive heeft een capaciteit van slechts 40Meg en is daarom vooral bedoeld voor notebooks en digitale camera's:

Although a palmtop with a PCMCIA interface might make better use of the Clik! Drive, I don't see laptop owners rushing out to buy one. For a little more space in their laptop case, a laptop owner could have one of Iomega's other drives allowing them to store more information per disk for less money. Digital camera owners on the other hand are a good target. The unit provides a way for the user to store information from Flash or SmartMedia on Clik! disks. This gives digital camera users more freedom. For instance, while away on vacation, after filling up your digital camera's memory, you can simply remove your Flash or SmartMedia and dump its contents onto one of the Clik! disks. In addition to that, the unit's parallel port interface is much faster than the serial interface on most digital cameras.

Terwijl er nog volop wordt geflamed over de zin en onzin van UltraATA/66 (aka ATA/66 aka UDMA/66) lees ik bij Overclockers' Workbench dat er alweer een nieuwe standaard onderweg is: ATA/100. Wat moeten we ermee?

4th quarter this year, there is a very high potential that ATA/100 will be announced with products following this specs. What it means is that in the near future, we should be able to get 3 x what ATA/33 can perform. Maybe it's time to rethink about upgrading Harddisks :-)

Kyle van HardOCP heeft meer info over de foute batch BE-Zessen met aangebrande Softmenuutjes.

I was waiting to get some confirmation from the boys over at ABIT on this before starting some kind of scare and now it seems safe to discuss this. Apparently a small group of the new BE6s has a problem with the hardware that will not allow you to tweak the voltage. It seems as if the R59 Resistor will have to be removed from the board. ABIT has said that there are less than 200 of these boards out there.

I am not sure as to how they are going to handle the situation yet, but I am sure ABIT will make good. I have never seen them not treat their buyers right. Just in case you are wondering, I have a BE6 out of that first group that is performing great! [break]Bij Overclockers' Workbench zeggen ze min of meer hetzelfde: [/break] If you have been reading my posts on the net and on this site, ABIT came with a quick solution. This is from ABIT Taiwan.

"..... you have to have the R59 resistor removed." Regarding whether they will collect the bad boards. I am still expecting a reply from them. So come back soon for more news updates direct from Taipei.

We just got of the phone with ABIT USA a few moments ago with regards to some information we recieved from Gary at Overclockin.com and Alex at Motherboard Monitor. It has become evident that some ABIT BE6 motherboards have a problem with the BIOS setting for the core voltage of the processor. Regardless of what this is set at (e.g. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3V DC), the setting always reverts back to 2.0V DC when the BIOS is saved and re-booted

Bij Storage Review (van wie zou je het anders verwachten?) hebben ze een review van de nieuwe IBM Ultrastar 18LZX SCSI drive op de site geplakt. De 18LZX draait op 10.000 toeren per minuut, heeft 5 platters van elk 3Gb en heeft een seek time van slechts 4,9 milliseconden, een nieuw record! Ondanks z'n heftige specs blijft de schijf in prestaties achter bij de Quantum Atlas 10k, de huidige SCSI kampioen:

Despite its impressive specifications and new technology, the Ultrastar 18LZX fails to keep up with the Quantum Atlas 10k. The Business Disk WinMark 99 run under Windows 95 reveals the IBM drive trailing the Quantum unit by 10%. The margin thins under NT, with Big Blue's disk trailing the Atlas by 7%. NT tests place the 18LZX behind the Atlas by 6% in the Business WinMark and by nearly 11% in the High-End.

Tests run under Adaptec ThreadMark display significantly widened margins. Here the Atlas blows away the Ultrastar, leading by margins of 39% and 27% respectively under Win95 and WinNT.

Net zoals de Seagate Cheetah en Quantum Atlas is de schijf weer ideaal voor mensen met teveel geld: de verwachte prijs van de 18LZX is $899 (en tel daar ook nog maar wat importheffingen en andere vormen van gedwongen overheids support bijop).

Koen van Hardwareinfo.net heeft een 3D Woordenboek op z'n site geplant. In het artikel vind je uitleg over leuke termen zoals Alpha-Blending, Mip Mapping en Z-Buffering. Over dat laatste onderwerp hier een stukje:

Z-Buffering slaat bij genereren van een pixel niet alleen de x,y-coordinaten op, maar ook de diepte, ofwel de z-waarde. Wanneer een nieuwe pixel gemaakt wordt met dezelfde x,y-coordinaten, dan worden de z-waardes van de nieuwe en de oude pixel vergeleken. Als de nieuwe pixel zich achter de oude bevindt wordt hij niet op het scherm gezet. Door de z-buffer onstaat dus een juiste rangschikking van 3D-objecten. Als de z-waarde 0 is dan is het object helemaal vooraan, hoe hoger de z-waarde, hoe verder weg. De Bit-Diepte bepaalt hoeveel diepte-waardes er mogelijk zijn. Een 16-bit Z-Buffer is werkelijk het minimale en kan soms toch nog voor enkele foutjes zorgen. Een 24-bits of 32-bits Z-Buffer is veel idealer. Bij lagere Z-Buffer dieptes kunnen er onnauwkeurigheden ontstaan in de diepte-berekening, wat kan resulteren in verkeerd gerangschikte objecten.

AGN Hardware heeft een review van de Soundblaster PCI 512 in elkaar gedraaid. De PC 512 is nieuw, dus het is niet onwaarschijnlijk dat je net zoals mij nog nooit van deze kaart gehoord heb. Afgaande van de specs lijkt het een soort SBLive! Value te zijn, alleen dan zonder de software utilities:

Creative Labs newest soundcard is the SoundBlaster PCI 512. The audio sound processor that drives the PCI 512 is the same sound processor found in the SoundBlaster Live! and SoundBlaster Live! Value Edition cards. Support for Direct Sound, Direct Sound 3D and EAX extensions is provided by the PCI 512's EMU10K1 sound processor. For DOS gaming SoundBlaster 16 emulation is provided. Surprisingly, this is Creative Labs value priced soundcard, as it's priced at only around $79 (MSRP). To top it all off, it also offers excellent quad speaker-out support.

Tech Review heeft een CPU Overclocking Guide bij elkaar geschreven. In het artikel vind je de gebruikelijke info over multipliers, busspeeds e.d. OC Newbies (niet denigrerend bedoeld ) lezen 'm hier.

Thresh heeft weer eens een primeur met de eerste Celeron 500 review. Of wij overklokkers opgewonden moeten raken van deze processor valt op het eerste gezicht te betwijfelen: het ding heeft een multiplier van 7,5 en met de normale moederborden hou je dan weinig opties over. Gelukkig hebben we daar Abit's BP6, die maar liefst 23 busspeed settings onder de 100MHz heeft. Dankzij de BP6 was Firingsquad in staat om het ding op 80MHz FSB te draaien, daar waar 83Mhz niet mogelijk bleek:

This is where the fine adjustment capability of Abit's latest SoftMenu 2 shines. We then worked back from 83MHz in 1 and 2MHz increments in order to determine the absolute top speed at which the processor could remain stable. At 82MHz (615MHz), the Celeron would POST and boot up, with random crashes during Win98 loading or benchmarking. 81MHz was not available, so we moved down to 80MHz, an even 600MHz. Here, the CPU stayed rock solid, even after several hours of testing.

600MHz is generally accepted as nearing the manufacturing limits of the Deschutes/Mendocino core, and the .25um process as well. The heatsink was never more than 24oC, while the BIOS thermistor reported a crisp and chilly 32o C directly under the processor core. Since neither heat nor peripherals are evidently issues in our overclocking tests, it's safe to assume that at the current temperature, our CPU has reached the end of its clock speed line. Now, if we could supercool the processor down to -40o C, it's theoretically possible to gain an additional 20% increase or so, as CMOS components run faster when cooler. This however, isn't a realistic solution for most users.

Het volk van The Techzone vond het nodig om een review van de Dynamite TNT2 Ultra te posten. Zoals inmiddels bekend mag zijn heeft de Dynamite TNT2 helemaal geen bezwaar tegen overklokken. The Techzone zet 'm op viagra en haalt 190/220Mhz:

After the reboot, it was time for a trip back to the friendly Hercumeter overclocking grounds and adjust the card to a more workable rate of speed. Moving the core speed down to 190 and the memory speed down to 220 was the rate that I decided to try this time. With that accomplished I closed the window and made my way on to another game of Q3Test, to attempt to work the card down to the bone.

After launching Gamespy and picking a server, I was happy to see that the game actually launched this time. I managed to play for about 20 minutes with plenty of frags and getting fragged, but not one lockup. Visits to other games also went to prove that the Dynamite TNT2 will work fine at the higher frame rates for those of you wanting to submit your hardware to the abuse. You have to give Hercules' and NVIDIA high praise for managing to pull off a card with such heavy overclocking ability. It looks like the Voodoo3 now has some heavy competition against it in the game of which card overclocks the best.

De afgelopen maanden hebben we niet zoveel reviews meer gezien van deze kaart (hij is ook al vrij oud). Dimension X haalt 'm uit het stof. Hoewel, Vortex II regeert nog steeds:

The wave playback as wel as the playback of 3D sound streams is phenomenal. Especially with a four speaker setup the sound in games takes a whole new dimension. To put it simply, the sound in games is nothing short of awesome.

Biznizzy heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid waarin ze uitleggen hoe je twee V3's in Win98 aangekacheld kunt krijgen. Dit kan leuk zijn als je per ongeluk een monitor teveel hebt :

“But why two Voodoo 3s dude? Isn’t that a bit excessive?” Look at it this way. For all the talk about Voodoo 3s 3D capabilities, the fact that their 2D is so good has been overlooked by many. When you consider that a Matrox G200/PCI card costs around $100, why not get a card that can do quality 3D as well for your secondary adapter? While the secondary adapter will not currently handle any 3D, supposedly the boys and girls in Redmond are working to change that. If that’s indeed the case, you’ll be ready for them with your nice V3 2000/PCI already on hand . Also,in light of the recent announcements by 3dfx regarding rebates on retail boxed versions of the Voodoo 3s, you can’t go wrong from a price/performance standpoint using the Voodoo 3 2000\PCI as your secondary card. As for the big brother Voodoo 3 3000/AGP, It will handle any 3D chores necessary, at a price far less expensive than the TNT2 Ultras and without the IRQ conflicts. This is a very desireable setup if you follow the install instructions I’ve laid out.