Uit een onderzoek van WebSideStory blijkt dat Internet Exploiter inmiddels drie maal zoveel gebruikt wordt als Netscape. Een trieste zaak dat zoveel mensen achter Bill's achterwerk aan blijven hobbelen:

Taking full advantage of its strategic placement and prominence on new US personal computers, Microsoft's [NASDAQ:MSFT] Internet Explorer is beating Netscape's Navigator in the Web browser wars. According to a study released today by San Diego, Calif.-based WebSideStory, an Internet trends analysis company, Explorer users outnumber Navigator users by a three-to-one margin. A similar study in March by WebSideStory found that Explorer users outnumbered Navigator users by a two-to-one margin.

"The browser race is all but over," said Jeff Johnston, WebSideStory marketing director. "When we reported that Explorer was beating Netscape in March, the two-to-one numbers were a huge story. This latest development is incredible."

Results of the study, which can be found at StatMarket.com (http://www.statmarket.com ), were culled from over 30 million Internet users visiting over 114,000 Web sites during the past four months. According to Johnston, the statistics provided by StatMarket are based on actual browser usage, not installed base numbers. Through August 2, 1999, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (all versions) accounted for 75.31 percent of the total market. Netscape has slipped to 24.68 percent.

Microsoft's version 5 of Internet Explorer has shown dramatic increase in usage since its beta release last March. It is up to nearly 25 percent from a 2 percent launch. Meanwhile, all other browser usage is either declining or has remained flat since the beginning of 1999. The 3.x browsers, both MSIE and Netscape, are plummeting - down 60 percent since January, while 4.x browser usage has eroded by approximately 25 percent. "Unless you're Microsoft, the numbers aren't great for anyone. But since March the news has really grown worse for Netscape," added Johnston. "You could make a case for Netscape if you were simply counting installed browsers, in which Explorer has a decided advantage. But the active use numbers are more embarrassing for Navigator." [break] Uiteraard heeft de groei niet zoveel te maken met het feit dat IE beter zou zijn dan Netscape, maar wel met het feit dat op zo'n beetje elke nieuw geïnstalleerde pc een kopie van IE te vinden is:[/break]

Could Explorer's popularity have anything to do with its prominent placement and easy access on new PCs? Most definitely, said Johnston. "I would say that people are using Explorer because that's what's there. Netscape is popular with business users, who are savvy about the Internet. But the moms and pops who look for browsers on the family PC use what's there. And in most cases, what's there is Explorer."

Ik kwam bij Coolinfo nog wat info tegen over de Evergreen AcceleraPCI, een PCI upgrade kaart met daarop een Celeron processor en 64Mb SDRAM. De (manke) processor upgrades van Evergreen hebben altijd al de gewoonte gehad dat ze duurder zijn dan een (frisse) moederbord + CPU + memory upgrade. Bij de AcceleraPCI blijkt het niet anders te zijn:

Evergreen also continues to improve another CPU option--AcceleraPCI, the company's unique processor/memory upgrade on an add-in PCI card. The product, which first became available in the spring, initially had an internal programming problem and also worked slowly with systems equipped with bus-mastering graphics cards (mainly high-performance cards designed for gaming). The company has fixed the programming problem in current releases of the product, and will fix the bus-mastering problem with Version 2 of AcceleraPCI, now slated for October. The AcceleraPCI equipped with a Intel Celeron-433 and 64 MB of memory sells for $399. The company will continue to sell other basic upgrade processors, including a 333-MHz ($169), 233-MHz ($119), and 200-MHz ($99) models.

Natuurlijk heeft ook onze vriend Anand een review over de AMD Athlon getikt. Anand heeft een flinke emmer benchmarks gedraaid, waarmee hij niet alleen de Athlon en PII/PIII vergelijkt, maar ook nog eens de performance verschillen bij gebruik van een TNT2, Voodoo3 of G400 mee neemt! Hier heb je een hap uit z'n conclusie:

I don't have to give you a conclusion here, the benchmarks speak for themselves, the Athlon is the fastest desktop x86 processor on the market. It would take at least a 700MHz Pentium III to start to beat AMD's Athlon, but even if Intel does release a Pentium III 700 ahead of schedule, the price of a lower clocked but faster Athlon will still be lower than a 700MHz Pentium III. There is nothing in Intel's current family of processors that can match the performance of the Athlon, even the forthcoming Coppermine will have trouble competing against AMD's latest flagship. [...] Luckily the news seems to be good so far, yields on the Athlon aren't great, but they're not poor. Assuming AMD can deliver on the demand for the Athlon (OEMs will start advertising Athlon based systems starting August 16, 1999), the next question is who will make the motherboards? Until recently, there haven't been many decent quality boards for non-Intel platforms, the Super7 market is the perfect example of that. Our first in lab experiences with Athlon boards haven't been pleasant and we can only hope that the right motherboard manufacturers will step up and support the Athlon.

De review met véél benchmarks vind je hier.

Planet Hardware heeft een review gepost van de GlobalWin FDP32 cooler, dat super dikke ding waarvan we een paar dagen geleden al plaatjes hebben geplaatst. Het leuke is dat Planet Hardware de cooler heeft getest op een BP6 mobo, een bord waar de FDP32 in eerste instantie veel te groot voor blijkt te zijn. Dat wordt hakken!

Mind you these suckers looked big in the ad over at Global WIN, but I figured, "ahh, trick photography". Boy was I wrong. I got the shipment in and opened the box and looked at these suckers, they're freakin' huge. So huge in fact they wouldn't fit in my BP6 motherboard. It seems when Abit made the BP6 motherboard, they put this "pile" of capacitors above and below the sockets. I guess they never thought people would put 1/2 LB of aluminum on the board. In order to get it to fit, I had to get medieval on them with the hacksaw. (For other BP6 owners, you just cut off the outermost ribs, it fits with less than an 1/8"after you trim off the heatsink) The aluminum is good and strong, (I found this out during the cutting process) and I personally like the fact it's unpainted. I've often wondered why manufacturers insist on painting the heatsinks black. I realize it doesn't make much difference one way or the other, but deep down I feel the unpainted heatsink will transmit and disperse the heat more efficiently. Either way the Global Win heatsinks are MUCH bigger than the ones shipped from Intel for instance. They're heavy, too, both which help draw heat from the CPU in what appears to be a very efficient manner. Better than the alpha coolers? I couldn't tell ya, but I will say these are cheaper, that HAS to figure in there somewhere.

HardOCP heeft een review van de Abit BE6 in elkaar gedraaid. Hier heb je een stukje:

First off, looking at the ability to overclock the board successfully, ABIT has supplied us with the following bus speeds: 66, 75, 83, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 115, 120, 124, 133, 140, and 150Mhz. A groovy little Intel 440BX chipset with AGPset which we have come to already take for granted. Kinda like all those bus speeds eh? Was not too damn long ago that if you had 66, 75, and 83MHz you where the big man on campus!

The PCI dividers scale as follows also: 1/2 utilizing 75 - 83MHz, 1/3 utilizing 100 - 120MHz, and 1/4 utilizing 124 - 150MHz.

All of this should be more than enough to get you on your way to building a serious PIII system that will last you for a while. As usual, I am never satisfied. I would have liked to have seen a couple more settings between 124 and 133MHz. It would have allowed a few of us to tweak those PIII-450s a notch more. Overall though, it is more than sufficient.

Tweak3D heeft een review gepost van een 9,1Gb Fireball KA Plus harddisk. De schijf draait op 7200rpm en heeft een cache van 512Kb:

I'd have to say I really like this drive. It is fast, and there's no doubt about it. It makes a huge impact in the times it takes to get things done. You'll waste much less time waiting for that new game to install, or for that file to copy, or for that level to load.

But what makes me like this drive so much is definitly the price. Only $140 for a drive with these specs? It's a great price/performance bargain. If you thought ATA/66 would be too expensive, keep in mind that you can get this hard drive and the Abit BE6 motherboard for under $300 USD (total). That's a pretty good bargain considering the performance this hard drive puts out.

Nu ALi hun chipset heeft geintroduceerd kan VIA natuurlijk niet achterblijven. Die 2 gaan flink cuncurreren op het gebied van features, en dat is alleen maar goed voor de consument denk ik. Bij Yahoo kan je het hele bericht lezen. Dit zijn VIA's features:

A two-chip set, the VIA Apollo KX133 consists of the VT8371 North Bridge and VT82C686A ``Super'' South Bridge.

Key Features

Supports AMD Athlon processor

200MHz front-side-bus

AGP 4x

Supports up to 2.0 GB of 100/133MHz SDRAM and VCM memory types

PCI 2.2

ATA 33/66

4 ports USB

Integrated AC-Link for AC-97 audio and HSP Modem

Integrated Super I/O and Hardware Monitoring

Integrated KBC, RTC

Advanced system power management with ACPI and OnNow

North Bridge: 516-pin BGA VT8371

South Bridge: 352-pin BGA VT82C686A

ALi heeft vandaag z'n Slot A chipset aangekondigd. Alles zit erin: PC133, Double Data Rate SDRAM, 4XAGP en UDMA/66 support:

ALi's Chip Set for the AMD Athlon processor will be a highly integrated solution providing full performance for the AMD Athlon processor at a very competitive price. This product will combine ALi's expertise in Northbridge technology and architecture with its highly integrated Southbridge family to provide exceptional performance to desktop systems. Included in the chipset will be support for PC-133, DDR, 4XAGP, and UDMA 66/100.

Blijkbaar is Intel onder de indruk van AMD, want op 22 augustus gaan ze al wéér de prijzen van de PIII en PII chips omlaag gooien. Hier heb je de info van The Register:

The company has just notified its distributors and dealers that it will cut its prices again on 22 August next on Pentium III and "selected" Pentium II chips.

The move is unscheduled and will put further pressure on AMD.

In the email, Intel said: "With this price move, Intel is delivering higher performance and better value in the performance desktop market segment." ®

The Register heeft een nieuwsbericht over een nieuwe technologie waarmee 2300Gig aan data op het formaat van een PC Card samengeplakt zou kunnen worden. Klinkt weer erg leuk:

A team of UK researchers from Keele University have developed a "three-dimensional memory system" which, they claim, offers the highest storage densities ever achieved.

In fact, the technology can squeeze 2300GB into a PC Card-sized device, according to yesterday's Mail on Sunday.

[...] CMR MD Mike Downey was particularly bullish about the innovation, describing it as "big as the creation of the microchip". He predicted the technology would eliminate the hard drive, and that once the new memory system goes into production, units will cost only £35 to make.

Ik kwam bij Overclockers' Workbench deze info tegen van de Widodo socket370 watercooler:

This is really neat !! and it's for Socket 370! This second generation heatsink by Widodo has improved features. Firstly, the new design has a narrower and spiral design for the water flow. This will indeed create more contact with the CPU underneath. Secondly, the locations of the water input/output locations are shifted nearer to the CPU DIE which is the hottest. The dimension is 50x50x15mm. A full review is coming up soon.

Zou errug cool zijn als dit ding voor een redelijk prijsje te koop zou zijn. Zo te zien past-ie ook uitstekend op een BP6.

Ook Sharky Extreme heeft een review van de AMD Athlon gepost. In de Athlon review survey van JC wordt de review van Sharky bij het grof vuil geparkeerd: Sharky zou extreem pro-Intel zijn, de gebruikte benchmarks zouden waardeloos zijn en de opmerking dat de Athlon-650 zo ontzettend duur is vergeleken met de PIII-600 gaat nergens over.

Eerlijkgezegd kan ik me hier ook wel wat bij voorstellen, want de manier waarop Mako / SE de Athlon gebenchmarkt hebben is inderdaad wat vreemd en ook de beoordeling van 7,5 lijkt me wat aan de lage kant voor een innoverend produkt als de Athlon. Anyway, hier heb je een plak uit de conclusie van Sharky Extreme:

If the slight risk of future peripheral non-compatibility doesn't worry you, and you're not concerned with your PC's final price tag, then we do in fact recommend the Athlon 650 CPUs when they become available in OEM machines on the 16th of August, or when resellers finally receive them sometime in September.

This doesn't keep us from also recommending the Intel P3-600 CPU to the majority of our readers however, as it offers over 90% of the speed that the Athlon 650 CPU does, with a price tag that's significantly lower.

Either are choices that will likely satisfy their owners for years to come, but neither the Athlon nor the Pentium III are far enough apart in price or in performance at the moment for us to push people in a singular direction as we used to with the K6-3 vs. the Celeron debate.

Ace's Hardware heeft z'n Athlon review online gezet. Volgens JC's bezoekers het beste Athlon artikel tot nu toe. Hier heb je een interessant stukje over de overklokbaarheid van de Athlon:

The already impressive clockspeeds of the Athlon are ramping up even better than expected, as the fastest Athlon currently available is at 650 MHz. This is 50 MHz higher than AMD announced and reliable sources tell us that the Athlon-550/600 are good overclockers, capable of reaching 650 MHz and more.

However, The Athlon will not be easily overclockable in comparison to current products. It is necessary to have a hardware device that connects to the "Golden Fingers" of the CPU to change the multiplier settings.

This device is not widely available, but industry sources tell us that this will change in the future. The first Slot A motherboards can't use memory bus speeds greater than 100 MHz, but do not despair. Other, well informed sources informed us that future (Q4 '99?) Slot A motherboards from ASUS and FIC will provide selectable memory speeds. So, despite the fact that changing the multiplier will be difficult, if not impossible, you should be able to overclock.

Dat laatste, over de mogelijkheid om de busspeed omhoog te gooien, klinkt in ieder geval al positief .

Uiteraard heeft ook AGN Hardware een Athlon artikel gepost. Hier heb je een stukje uit hun review:

As it stands now I cannot find one complaint against the Athlon CPU, AMD has done an amazing job making sure that this new CPU is a true step above Intel's offering. CPUs and chipsets are not the same though, and is seems that the AMD Irongate/Viper chipset has it's share of problems. The first issue that is a bit strange is the fact that the memory is only PC100. The end result is slower memory performance that results in lower game performance at the higher resolution levels. A move to PC133 would introduce a new level of performance for gaming that would truly bring the Athlon to a faster level. I am using a reference motherboard though, so future retail boards should offer support for PC133 memory if that is what you need. 200MHz memory on the other hand would cost you an arm and a leg, so I doubt they will support that yet. Another fault of the chipset seems to be a low level of ATA66 support. Even when using the same hard drives, I was getting a rating for the Athlon system that was 1MB+ slower. Hopefully the VIA chipset or the next generation AMD chipset can offer a solution to this.

Firingsquad heeft op de Siggraph in Los Angeles wat info bijeen verzameld over de (afgaande op de specs) errug kewle Glaze3D videochip van Bitboys. Wat dacht je van een 1,2Mpix/sec fillrate en Embedded DRAM (eDRAM) met een throughput van 9,6Gb/sec? Hier heb je een stukje uit de preview:

It looks like the Glaze 3D chip is finally going to make it to silicon with a little help from Infineon, the company previously known as Siemens Semiconductor Group. Bitboys has a silicon group at Infineon helping them with the layout. They expect silicon in December or January, and they plan to ship in Q1 or Q2 2000. How fast is Glaze going to be? Well, the standard 150MHz quote doesn't sound too "next-generation" by today's standards, but it's an approach we're likely to see from everyone in the near future. With dual and quad-texturing pipelines, the need for a higher clockrate is partially alleviated. Is this the right approach to 3D? Well, we feel it's a good interim solution. In the end, MHz matters. However, today's graphics port doesn't have enough power or space to accomodate increasingly powerful processing units. Until a fundamental change in AGP is implemented, we're going to have to make do with innovation over brute force

Voor de details kun je hier terecht.

FullOn3D heeft een interview gepost met AMD ventje Drew Prairie. Het het interview vind je errug veel info over de Athlon, o.a. dit stukje over de overclocking ...euh... remarking protection van de Athlon:

FullOn3D: Can you explain the type of overclocking protection the Athlon has (since Athlon’s can not be overclocked like the “standard” CPU)? Is this your method to combat Athlon remarking?

AMD: I wouldn't call it overclocking protection, I'd call it remarking protection. The goal has always been to make sure consumers get what they pay for and are not being taken advantage of. To accomplish this, we have implemented a way that makes it difficult for remarkers to adjust the clock frequency of the CPU without having some specific knowledge on how the CPU works. The clock has not been locked in any way.

Aureal heeft nieuwe NT drivers voor de Vortex1 en Vortex2 gereleased. Hier heb je de details:

The Vortex 1 NT4 1.17.01 reference drivers fix an uninstall problem which stopped new drivers from being installed and fixed WHQL issues.

The Vortex 2 NT4 2.04.06 reference drivers have the following changes:
- Support for more sound card codecs
- Fixed Wave and MIDI playback to output 2
- Fixed uninstall problem which stopped new drivers from being installed
- Fixed WHQL issues

Lijkt erop dat het met deze drivers wél mogelijk is om 4 speaker output te krijgen onder NT (dat lukt niet namelijk en is best wel jammer bij het afspelen van audio CD's en MP3tjes). De drivers kun je downloaden bij 3D Sales Unlimited. Daar zouden binnenkort ook de nieuwe v2035 Win9x Vortex2 drivers moeten verschijnen.

Hercules heeft niet Win9x drivers voor z'n Dynamite TNT/TNT2 kaarten elkaar geknutseld. Versie 1.71.10208, gebaseerd op de nVidia Detonator 2.08 drivers, kun je hier neerladen (desgewenst in het engels, frans, duits of italiaans).

Koen Crijns van Hardwareinfo.net is druk in de weer geweest met zijn Athlon systeempje (waarschijnlijk een van de weinigen in Nederland). Zijn Athlon rapportage behelst 3 artikelen:

AMD's nieuwste "Pentium III Killer"
De AMD Athlon van binnen en van buiten ...

http://www.hardwareinfo.net/technology/100899-Athlon/nl.html

In dit uitgebreide, vrij technische, artikel wordt de nieuwe CPU helemaal beschreven. Aan bod komen o.a.: markt-positie, wie/wat/wanneer, specificaties, architectuur, bus-structuur, bandbreedtes, productie-procede, overklokken, prijs-strategie, etc. Uiteraard zoals gebruikelijk alles in duidelijk Nederlands.

Pipelining Uitgelegd

http://www.hardwareinfo.net/technology/100899-Pipelining/nl.html

Aangezien "pipelining" het codewoord is voor de snelheids-verbetering van de AMD FPU-units heb ik een apart artikel geschreven waarin dit systeem duidelijk wordt uitgelegd. Benodigdheden voor dit artikel zijn slechts een aantal zakken vuile was, een wasmachine, een droger en een strijkijzer. ;-)

AMD Athlon 600 Test

http://www.hardwareinfo.net/tests/100899-AMD-Athlon/nl.html

In dit artikel is de door AMD beschikbaar gestelde AMD Athlon 600 MHz machine uitgebreid getest en vergeleken met Intel's Pentium III. Uitgevoerde tests zijn o.a. 3D Mark, CPU/FPU/3D Winbench, Winstone, Quake II Crusher, MP3 Compressie, etc. Zoals verwacht is de nieuwe AMD Athlon de absolute winnaar.