Over bij een Duitse screenshots site staan nog wat nieuwe plaatjes van Earth 2150, een 3D strategy game. Klik hier voor de screens, ze zien er echt wreed uit!

Over bij ComChip hebben ze een preview in elkaar gedraaid van de Apple iBook. Ze zijn er wel weg van, hij krijgt een overal score 9/10. Anyway, check de preview hier.

iBOOK is a notebook computer that is geared towards the internet. The 300-megahertz PowerPC G3 processor and 32MB of SDRAM is more than adaquate for the internet. It also has a 3.2GB IDE Hard Drive, Built-in 24X CDROM, 56k modem and even a 10/100BaseT Ethernet card! If you want, you can get the 11-MBPS Air Port wireless networking card which I will talk about later.

I should talk about the iBOOK's battery for a second. It promises up to 6 hours of battery life, but these figures are always a little off the reality so expect 4-5 hours on average if you are always running electric intensive stuff on it. Even with 4-5 hours between charges is great so I wouldn't worry about the battery for this notebook.

SystemLogic heeft een review klaar van de Cambridge SoundWorks FourPoint Speakers van Creative. Schijnen goede speakers te zijn voor $99. Hier heb je een stukkie:

Overall, the Cambridge SoundWorks FourPoint Surround Speaker Setup was well worth $100. It's a very good, quality set of speakers. I do suggest that if you do get the Cambridge SoundWorks FourPoint Surround Speaker Setup, be sure to pair it with the Soundblaster Live! or Live! Value. Any other sound card would not do justice to this incredible set of speakers. If you can get past some of the minor problems, you will really enjoy the sound that this speaker set pumps out. The unbelievable sound quality of these speakers is a quality that I believe no other company can rival. Whether you’re the simple gamer, or the go-all-out type gamer, this setup truly delivers the "killer gaming experience"

Ik zie trouwens nu dat er bij AGN Hardware ook een review is van de Cambridge Soundworks - Microworks Speakers.

Ik lees bij Beta News dat Alex van Kaam een nieuwe beta van zijn MotherBoard Monitor heeft gereleased, een handige mobo temperatuur, voltage & fan controle proggie . Dit is de soep:

This program will try to access one or more of the following chips: LM78, LM78-j, LM79, LM80, WinBond W83781D, WinBond W83782D, WinBond W83783S , GL518SM, GL520SM, ADM9240, ADM1021, ADM1020, MAX1016, MAX1016a, FMS2701 and LM75 on your motherboard and will try to provide you with information about your motherboard's temperature, voltages, fan speeds and cpu temperature. The main new feature that needs testing is the autodetect of the chips, this is a switch you can turn on or off on the general tab. When this is turned on it only show sensors in the sensor list that it has detected. Asus P3B-f support and the issue of the -5 voltage on the Abit BE6 has been fixed. Take a look:

Het zaakie kun je hier neer gaan halen.

Over bij SysOp hebben ze een review van de TennMax Pentium3 TF Cooler. Schijnt toch een goede cooler te zijn:

We know it looks like a "Beefeater" but how well does it perform? After some chit-chat about what we wanted to do in order to beat this thing up we decided that we were going to try to push our PIII 450 to 558 + MHz, something that was all but impossible with the stock Intel heat sink. We chose to monitor the CPU temperature at different clock frequencies and compare our results against Intel's sink. Here is what we found:

First of all the processor fired up just fine at 558 MHz. We ran Quake II for three hours straight and it did not lock up once. The P3 TF heat sink is definately able to transfer heat more efficeintly and a drop of almost 4 degrees was logged when compared to the Intel sink. Be mindfull that we were not even able to running the PIII at 558MHz with the Intel sink. It sure looks like TennMax did their homework when it comes to thermoelectrics. The products does what it promises!

Computer Scientists in de USA hebben het voor elkaar gekregen om transfer speeds van 1 Gigabit te bewerkstelligen naar gewone desktop PC's in een LAN, via TCP/IP waar het internet ook mee werkt. Alleen hebben we er nu vrij weinig aan, Desktop PC's zijn nog niet in staat zoveel data ineens te verwerken. Hier heb je een stuk uit het artikel.

The backbones of current LANs can run at a gigabit per second but the data transfer to a desktop computer connected to the LAN is limited by the network card, usually 10 or 100 megabits per second.

The Duke LAN is experimental and operates within a small space but Professor Chase believes the techniques developed there could eventually help computer users obtain more efficient access to larger scale networks, including a future version of the Internet. It might also mean that standard TCP/IP type software could be used for such cutting edge applications as wiring together individual desktop computers into a massively parallel supercomputer.

"What we've done is narrow the gap between standard TCP/IP communications that everybody loves and knows how to use and has the software to use and these more cutting edge technologies that are harder to use and difficult for people to program," said Professor Chase. "Over decades a lot of very smart people have done a lot of work trying to write the software that allows TCP communications at very high speeds. In some sense, what we have done really is show that they got it right." he added.

Ook AGN Hardware heeft al een heel artikel over de T-Buffer van 3dfx geschreven. Ze hebben zelfs mpeg filmpjes die de voordelen van de T-Buffer laat zien. Screenshots van deze filmpjes staan ook in het artikel.

[update] Als je meer wilt lezen over de T-Buffer, deze sites hebben allemaal artikels geschreven:

Thresh's FiringSquad
Beyond 3D (incl. 3dfx Powerpoint presentatie)
ShugaShack
Gamers Depot (alleen plaatjes)
ZDNET
Combat Sim
VoodooMag
IGN PC
Gamespot
Reverend (met een vleugje Voodoo4)
Penstar Systems

Earlier this week a group of us were flown to the offices of 3dfx to get a look at their upcoming technology. This look would allow us to be able to get a better idea of what to expect from their future video chip prowess. When I thought of future technology, I was expecting to see the upcoming Voodoo4 or whatever the name ends of being. Sadly enough the Voodoo4 was not shown to us, so the tears will continue to flow from my eyes over the next few weeks while I wait on the release of the Voodoo4 info. What we did see was a part of the upcoming VoodooX chip family, the impressive T-Buffer. Because of the lack of higher powered Voodoo4 power, all of the demos of the T-Buffer were shown on Quantum 3D based systems with multiple Voodoo2 cards. This means that the movies and screenshots you see are run on lower video quality hardware then the future cards from 3dfx.

The T-Buffer is a new feature of the upcoming VoodooX that was designed by 3dfx’s Gary Tarolli and promising to offer true photo-realistic features to your computer. The T-Buffer features several different features including true Anti-Aliasing, Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Soft Shadows and Soft Reflections.

Als je 3dfx's officiële White Paper over de T-Buffer wilt zien, met gedetaileerde info en plaatjes, klik hier.

3dfx heeft hun next-generation technology aangekondigd, genaamd T-Buffer. Met deze technologie wordt de beeldkwaliteit weer drastisch verbeterd, o.a. met behulp van nieuwe features als spatial anti-aliasing, motion blur, depth of field en soft shadows. 3dfx mikt hiermee op fotorealistische graphics op 60 frames per seconde. Sharky Extreme is er meteen opgesprongen en heeft een zeer uitgebreid interview afgenomen met Scott Sellers van 3dfx om over zijn T-Buffer te praten...

Omdat het zaakie allemaal vrij technisch klinkt heeft Sharky ook een artikel geschreven om het allemaal uit te leggen, wat ook wel nodig is. Dat artikel vind je hier. Zeker het lezen waard, elke feature wordt met behulp van screenshots uitgelegd.

The most dramatic effect of the T-Buffer engine is its ability to perform real-time full scene spatial anti-aliasing. But let's first describe what aliasing is. In very basic terms, aliasing is a graphical effect that results from sampling too little data to get the smooth edges that exist in the real world. Anti-aliasing smoothes out the edges of diagonal lines that are very apparent in today's 3D engine games. Even the most untrained eye can clearly see diagonal lines, which have jagged edges ('jaggies') caused by the collaboration of pixels that obviously have edges (being squares). Scenes without anti-aliasing show 'stair/step' effects. Look at an object with a near vertical or near horizontal line and you will see what we mean.

Bij Singularity is een review te vinden van de BE6 moederbord van Abit, met Onboard UltraDMA/66 support. Hier heb je het gedeelte over overclocking:

Overclocking on the BE6 is just as simple. At a touch of the keyboard, you can make a quick FSB speed change or tweak the voltage up or down. The BE6's settings retain the same degree of flexibility in the FSB speed manipulation that boards such as the Abit BM6 and ZM6 mainboards currently provide.

The FSB selection of 105Mhz, 110Mhz, 115Mhz and 120Mhz up to 150Mhz makes overclocking fun. It is known that quite a large number of Celeron CPUs run well at 100Mhz FSB but fail at 112Mhz FSB. One of the Celeron CPUs tested falls into this category, so instead of selecting the 112Mhz FSB, I selected the 110Mhz FSB and it booted and ran through all of my demos without crashing. If you think that 110Mhz is just too much for you, you can always switch to 105Mhz FSB. 5~10Mhz increments may not seem like a big deal but in overclocking, every little bit counts!

Bij Computers R Us hebben ze het derde deel online gezet van hun nVidia NV10 preview. Stond er in de vorige twee delen nog dat Guillemot half september met een NV10 based videokaart op de markt zou komen, nu is dat ineens niet meer het geval!

We first had a confirmation that Guillemot will release a NV10 card in September. Then I called Guillemot after they contacted me. They told me that the release date was changed to Fall '99. Today I got a mail from Guillemot stating that they don't know when they will be releasing a NV10 card.

I know that this has confused a lot of people, I'm pretty confused myself. Both Guillemot and I are really sorry for the change in release date the last 4 days. I promise that I will get back to you, when I have the release date of the NV10 card confirmed. This doesn’t mean we won't be seeing a NV10 card in this year. I still have a statement from a guy at Nugen Media (official UK distributor for Hercules), he’s saying that we will be seeing a NV10 card from Hercules in September / October.