Via Ace's Hardware kwam ik op een link naar een duitse site die ik nog niet kende: Hartware.de. Zij hebben een behoorlijk uitgebreide review geknutseld van AMD's nieuwe trots: De K7/Athlon. (ik blijf gewoon K7 zeggen ) Er staat erg veel info in, het bekende over de architectuur, en ook veel benchmarks. Ook hebben ze hem proberen te overklokken: (let niet op het engels, dat is door een vertaalsite vertaald.

Overclocking was unfortunately not possible for us. To the Motherboard there was not no documentation and also Jumper for adjustment any bus frequencies or multiplicators was to be detected. Additionally there were no configuration options in this in the BIOS Direction.

According to specification of AMD the Athlon neither on the multiplicator nor on the bus clock and also not will be determined on a certain clock frequency. How a thus possible Overclocking is to be executed then, is however at the moment still unclear. Simply it is not to become probably, because also an illegal Remarking of the Athlon is afraid AMD. As before with a simple Jumper it will not probably go. Architecture is also a little more complicated than with the Pentium a III, since here now CPU bus (200MHz) and memory bus (dependent on the chip record, first 100MHz) are separate. Possibly one will have to open the housing (Package) of the processor, in order to modify that or the Multiplier. Thus a Overclocking for the Freaks would be enabled, for an illegal Remarking would be however much too complex such a methodology for a large number of processors. This would not be a good method to prevent around Remarking however at the same time Overclocking to exclude completely.

Hier kan je de rest vinden. (Sorry, ff later toegevoegd)

Volgens de directeur van de AMD-fabriek in Dresden is AMD er in geslaagd een K6 te produceren met gebruik van koper-technologie. Deze K6 dient als "opwarmertje" voor de productie van de K7 Athlon. Mogelijk komen er zelfs een paar koper-K6-en op de markt. Check dit bericht bij The Register

The director of AMD's Fab 30 in Dresden said today that the company had succeeded this month in producing a K6 using its copper technology. But success with the K6 in copper is merely a warm up for production of the K7 Athlon, according to Hans Jeppe, who runs the facility, He confirmed that the fab was capable of producing 5,500 wafer starts a week, but declined to say how many of the dies would be good ones. There will be 300 K7 Athlons per wafer at .18 micron.

Op een Midtown Madness Fanpage staat een vrij uitgebreide review van de Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Wheel. Hier heb je een stukkie over dit vibrerend stuur, de rest staat hier.

The MS Wheel is deadly accurate. The wheel measures the degree of turning with the same system found inside most computer mice. An optical sensor examines a disk that has small holes in it, and as you turn your wheel the sensor calculates the speed and direction of the holes as they pass infront of it. This provides unprecedented accuracy, and you never have to recalibrate the wheel again, ever. This neat innovation does not require special support from games, so the wheel is just as accurate in each game you play, old or new. The optical sensor is in no relation with the FF effects, so even if the gears inside the wheel would one day give up, the wheel would still control accurately.

Bij ComChip is een kort verhaaltje te vinden over hoe je het beste je privacy op het internet kunt behouden. Ze gaan o.a. in op Spam, passwords en dat soort dingen. Niet zo uitgebreid, maar toch best leuk om even te lezen.

Does everyone of you know that it's legal for your boss to read what you have in your email? Of course it's only legal if you are using their own internet connection and email system. So use your own, because there is a higher chance for your boss to read your email than someone in your ISP. Try to delete the emails that you don't want people to know about, or put it in a safe place before you delete them.

If you are really into privacy, use a free web-based email service such as Hotmail. I know that it isn't the safest thing, but it is a lot safer than your own ISP email account as these email services require your personal information but doesn't say anywhere that they have to be true.

Bij 3D Wars staat een artikel over de strijd tussen 3dfx en nVidia. Niet alleen over de V3 en TNT2, maar ook over hoe het begonnen was en wat we nog kunnen verwachten. Hier heb je een stukkie:

This rivalry became well known during the forth quarter of 1998. When 3dfx announced the Voodoo3, and Nvidia announced its RIVA TNT2. Before this, both companies were working with board manufacturers and making chipsets. 3dfx mainly focussed on 3D Acceleration, while Nvidia produced 2D/3D video card solutions. They both went in opposite directions as well, with 3dfx making the Banshee. Yet, once they announced the Voodoo3 and RIVA TNT2, it was direct competition. Both companies were set out to make a complete 2D/3D video card. Did it work? To most extents, yes, it did. Both cards are very strong in several areas, and not so stable in others. 3dfx chose not allow card manufacturers to produce the Voodoo3 cards. Instead, they merged with STB to form a much larger 3dfx. STB would now make the Voodoo3 cards under 3dfx’s name. Nvidia chose to allow other companies to produce the boards that would hold the RIVA TNT2 chipsets.

Absolute PC heeft een review gepost van een vrij interessante hoofdtelefoon, de Sony Sony MDR-NC5. Deze hoofdtelefoon zorgt ervoor dat je vrijwel niks meer van je omgeving hoort wanneer je deze b.v. aansluit op je cd speler. En het schijnt ook echt te werken!

Impressive sounding. And that’s just how these headphones sound…damn impressive. I was surprised at how much sound it really does cut out. This is without anything playing through the headphones, once you get it hooked up to your computer or CD player, you can’t hear a thing happening around you. People can stand in front of you and talk and you won’t hear anything they say. This provides for a very high quality playback of your music. When I go on a trip and get used to the music being played through them it just doesn’t sound the same when I play it on my normal home theater system or anywhere else. Which brings me to my next point. Traveling. These are without a doubt the best thing you can buy in preparation for your next trip. On airplanes it takes away much of the noise of the airplane around you and takes away all of the crying babies and complaining passengers. I read the other day that some people in New York are walking around with them on with nothing playing so that they don’t have to listen to the people around them. Sounds good to me

Over bij Ars Technica hebben ze een uitgebreid artikel geschreven over dit hele SMP / Dual Celeron gedoe, over hoe en wanneer het onstaan is en hoe het nu eigenlijk werkt. Hier heb je een plak:

To understand what's going on here, you need to know a little bit about dual-processor systems. When you've got two processors, one of the main issues you have to work out is who gets control of the bus and when (this issue is called bus arbitration). Back in the 386 days, when you only had one processor on the bus calling the shots, bus arbitration wasn't an issue. The old Intel CPUs had a bus request pin (BREQ#) that would go low when the CPU needed the bus, and that's all you needed to worry about. In today's world, things are a bit more complicated.

MP3 players schijnen populair te worden. Daewoo komt binnenkort ook met zo'n ding op de markt, en iXBT Labs heeft er vast eentje van hun gekregen om te testen. Check de uitgebreide review hier.

So, looking at the specs we can notice a few absolutely new details for a portable player. The first thing that catches our eye when we take MPIO, is the built-in microphone and REC button. However, as soon as we turn the player on, it appears solely the LCD display that draws our attention. Wow, it is a real LCD display! It is not a segmented one as we saw by Rio or MPMan, but a true screen similar to that of a notebook, though it is a an LCD monochrome. But still, you can hardly deny that Daewoo has made a significant step forward. Of course, a cool MP3 player is not enough. You have to carry out a lot of different operations before you are able to listen to some MP3 music. First of all you have to install the player manager - MPIO Desk on your PC and save the required files in the player memory. That's why we suggest studying the player software and then passing over to the practical use.

Bij Voodoo.dk is een kort interview te vinden met 3dfx. Over de volgende generatie kaartjes willen ze (nog) niks kwijt helaas... Anyway, hier heb je er twee, op Voodoo.dk staan er nog 5.

Voodoo.dk: About the Next product in line: What is your thoughts about the DXTn (S3TC), transformation and lighting. We know that NV10 will have this, but will 3dfx's next product feature these things?
Keith - 3dfx: I can't talk about unannounced future products.

Voodoo.dk: Since all the competitors of 3dfx are using 32-bit color, what will 3dfx do here. Continue with 16-bit or doing 32-bit for all further products?
Keith - 3dfx: With the introduction of AGP4x, larger local frame buffers, and games that support 32bit color, you can expect 3dfx to arrive with the BEST 32-bit color.

Over bij 3D Alpha hebben ze een kleine review gebakken van een Super Socket 7 moederplank, de Asus P5A. Zeker geen uitgebreide review, maar hier heb je een gedeelte:

The ASUSTeK P5A is an ATX form factor motherboard, (There is also an AT version that has less expansion slots. See bottom for prices on both the AT and ATX form factor versions of this motherboard) that features quite a lot of room for expansion. It's equipped with five 32-bit PCI slots, two 16-bit legacy ISA slot, and one 32-bit AGP 2x graphics card slot. There are three DIMM expansion slots for PC100 SDRAM. On some models, there is onboard sound, however, the quality of the sound was 32 bit (and in my honsest opinion, 32-bit sound simply isn't good enough), however, the onboard sound can be disabled by changing a jumper setting if you happen to buy another sound card. There's a good half meg (512kb) of onboard SRAM for L2 caching, but, there are higher models that feature a whole meg of L2 cache onboard.

Zowel Thresh's FiringSquad als de Review Zone hebben een review in elkaar gedraaid van Intel's Pentium III 600MHz processor. Dit stukkie is gejat uit de review van FiringSquad, de review van de Review Zone vind je hier.

The P3-600 doesn't feature any big changes. It's based on the same .25 micron Katmai core as all the other P3 processors. It features 32KB of L1 cache running at the core clock speed and 512KB of external L2 cache running at 1/2 core clock speed. The processor is only available in the slot-1 compatible SECC2 form factor. Once Coppermine moves the L2 cache on-die, Intel will be able to manufacture the P3 in a 370-pin PPGA format. For now, the external L2 cache makes the slot-1 cartridge a necessity.

Basically, the P3-600 is a higher clocked version of the previous P3 processors. The only big difference we noticed was increased external L2 cache speed. To support the new 600MHz core clock speed, Intel had to up the cache speed to 300MHz. Of course, the processor still features all the SSE goodness that will let us through Intel's big blue door to the internet.

Op Software Center hebben ze een benchmark van 10 Mp3 Players waaronder: Winamp 2.24

Hier een stukie uit de intro.

Hello people and welcome to SC's mp3 bench page.

Here you will find latest speed tests of our (and your) favorite mp3 players.

All tests were and will be done very thoroughly and I will not leave anything for you to think about (at least I hope). Tests are/will be done monthly.

And again, this is speed not feature test.

Read on...

Lees hier de rest.

In dit artikel van The Register zeggen ze dat iemand van HardOCP een geheime roadmap van intel gezien heeft, waaruit blijkt dat de P3 in heel 2000 niet in een socket(418?) zal verschijnen. De Merced (!!) zou er echter WEL in moeten komen, en er is ook al weer een nieuwe socket gezien... Nou ja, check het uit:

The page shows packaging for Intel processors through until the second quarter of next year and states that customers do not need to think about 418 pin grid array (PGA) sockets for Pentium IIIs for the whole of next year.

One processor, however, which does and will have 418 pins next year is the infamous slow moving river Merced, as reported here earlier. (Chipzilla sockets it to us).

As that article shows, another pin number to remember is 502.