Speedy3D heeft ook maar een harddisk koelingssysteempje besproken. Deze keer de King Kong, van GlobalWin. Het schijnt dat deze dingen in zijn tegenwoordig. In of niet in...hier's een lappie tekst:

This cooler is basically designed to blow the hard drives hot air out of the case. This is a very simple yet good concept. It doesn’t require the fans to blow cool air around the case, or something complicated like that. In fact even if your case has bad air circulation, this cooler will still be effective. It takes the hard drives hot air and blows it out of the system. So, for this cooler to work all you need is a hard drive that produces hot air or a lot of hot air by the hard drive. The more hot air that the hard drive produces, the more effective this cooler becomes.

Meer weten ? Lees de hele review hier.

VE vermeldt weer eens dat er nieuwe DF 2 screenshots beschikbaar zijn. Deze keer op TacticalPlanet. Het zijn er 5 om precies te zijn, alvast een voorproefje:

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AGN Hardware heeft weer een videobewerkings doosje onder de loep genomen. Compleet met test videos en al. Graag opnemen met je pc, of toevallig een camcordertje in de buurt....? Dan is de Studio MP10 wellicht interessant om even te bestuderen. Een hapje tekst:

Pinnacle Systems' Studio MP10 is unquestionably the best option on the market for MPEG-1 encoding. If you want to share videos with the family, or just put together your own collection of videos, the Studio MP10 is exactly what you need. As for buying one, I saw them in Compusa for $289 (Retail) and there is always the Internet where it was as low as $214.

Een beetje prijzig misschien, maar kwaliteit kost geld. En kwaliteit is dit volgens AGN zeker.

Volgens mij heb ik hier al eens eerder iets over gehoord. Maar blijkbaar is het weer zover: Door de sterke vraag naar ZX en BX moerderborden is er een tekort ontstaan, zodat het iets langer duurt dan normaal voor ze weer leverbaar zijn. Intel houdt het allemaal niet meer bij

In an email sent to its channel, the chip giant said: "Due to a worldwide chipset shortage on 440BX and 440ZX AGP sets, some Intel Branded Desktop Boards may have limited availability during the next few months.

"All 440BX and 440ZX based desktop boards are in extremely strong demand. Some current orders and all new orders received from Intel authorized distributors may have longer than expected lead times."

Het schijnt nou toch wel menes te zijn...aangezien Intel zich zorgen maakt, omdat het de hele klantenbasis treft. Lees het hele artikel op TheRegister.

Op AGN Hardware kwam ik een kort berichtje tegen over een nieuwe versie van WCPUID:

Dan sends wod that a new version of WCPUID is available to download. This program tells information about your CPU including voltage, family, cache size and latency, etc. New to this beta is AMD Athlon support.

Je kunt hem hier neerladen.

Bij BK Computing staat een review online van de welom bekende 3dfx Voodoo3 videokaart. Hier heb je een stukkie, de rest vind je hier.

As you can see in the benchmarks, it easily beats a TNT card, but what worries me is what score the Voodoo3 would get if it was clocked at 90MHz core, like the TNT. This leads me to believe that the TNT chip is a better chip that the Voodoo3 chip, and I can't wait to get a TNT-2 based card which I should be able to get soon.

However, in the Unreal timedemo, which is optimised for 3dfx chips, the Voodoo3 is almost double the speed of the TNT. So if you play games such as Quake II, III, Unreal, Half Life, e.t.c. the Voodoo3 is a winner, and I expect it will beat the TNT-2 which I should soon be getting, in Unreal.

If you are thinking of getting a graphics card for applications that use DirectX 3D, get a TNT-2, but if you are using games which are optimised for 3dfx chips the Voodoo3 3000 or the 3500 will be an excellent choice.

The Register meldt dat Intel bovengenoemde processors binnenkort van z'n produktielijnen gaat kieperen:

As reported here earlier, the Pentium III/450 is being phased out and stocks are already drying up. That fact is now confirmed by Intel, in one of its regular missives to its distributors and dealers.

But the Pentium III/450 will not feel lonely when it reaches the wastes of the virtual Intel Siberia. Cold, perhaps, but not lonely.

Five other parts will join it in the lonely trek across the steppes, although the Intel document sent to its channel says that the parts have "limited availability".

The other parts patiently queuing to get off the platform and onto the train are the 550 MHz Xeon (BX805KY550512), the 500 MHz Xeon (BX805KY500512) and the following unfortunate boxed members of the Pentium II family: the400 MHz SECC2; the 400 MHz SECC; and the 350MHz chip.

Tweak3D heeft een review van de 3DCool Super Duper Slot Fan op het net gekwakt. Eerst maar ff een plaatje:

Deze dingen hebben we al vaker gezien. De Super Duper schijnt echter weer een verbetering te zijn van de oude 3DCool Super Slot Fan. Tweak3D maakt een vergelijking:

In conclusion, 3DCool improved on a great product... Adding a thinner design, more power, and greater cooling ability makes the Super Duper Slot Fan everything the Super Slot Fan wasn't while still keeping the unparalleled charm and ingenuity of the original. Definitely a best buy to any hardware enthusiast interested in shedding heat and overclocking for better system performance. 3DCool has done it again with yet another great cooling product!

Volgens ZDNet zal de PSXII (dat ding waarvan wij PC gebruikers spontaan in onze broekjes zouden scheiten) op 23 januari 2000 gereleased worden:

Financial firm Merrill Lynch predicts that the PlayStation 2 -- Sony Corp.'s next-generation game machine -- will hit Japanese shelves on Jan. 23 at a hefty price of 45,000 yen (U.S. $391), according to a report published this week.

Even at that price, Sony will barely cover the cost of the parts needed to build the machine, ZDNN reported in a previous article. In addition, the machine will have to contend with Sega Enterprises Ltd.'s own game machine, the Dreamcast, which has been available in Japan for almost a year.

While Dreamcast machine will hit U.S. shelves Sept. 9 at a much more affordable $199, analysts have predicted that the PlayStation 2 will become the giant in the market.

Merrill Lynch's outlook is also optimistic. The report pegs initial shipments of the PlayStation 2 at 400,000 units with a total of 1 million consoles sold during the first three months of 2000.

[...] The aggressive plans will drain the company's coffers, according to the Merrill Lynch report, which predicted that Sony's PlayStation division will post a $110 million loss in the year ending March 2000.

Extreme Hardware heeft een interview gepost met Brian Burke, PR manager van 3dfx. In het interview babbelen ze wat over de nieuwe T-Buffer technologie, die 3dfx voor het eerst in de Voodoo4 zal toepassen:

Extreme Hardware: What is the visual difference between using a T-Buffer card with current 3D games (like NFS3) compared to developer-supported T-Buffer 3D games that will come out later?

Brian Burke: As for the spatial AA, there will be none. All the APIs have support for full scene AA already. Because of the huge performance hit on today’s 3d accelerators, it is seldom implemented. As for the other features like motion blur, soft shadows and depth of field, they are not supported in any APIs. We will be faced with a task like we had when we introduced multi-texturing with the Voodoo2, in that it will take some evangelizing on our part. We control GLIDE, so they will all be supported in GLIDE. We are lobbying Microsoft to have them included in the next version of DirectX. We also can add them via the OpenGL extensions, or the DirectX extensions. I do not think it would be fair to characterize the fact that there is not support for these new technologies in current APIs. 3dfx is taking steps to advance 3d technology instead of doing the same things other 3d accelerator manufacturers are doing. It is good for the industry when someone pushes the envelope, it forces everyone to step up and deliver better products to the consumer.

Zie voor meer T-buffer info deze Siggraph 99 nieuwsposting.

Tim Sweeney heeft een update gepost op de Unreal Tech Page, over DirectX 7 support in Unreal Tournament:

Some people have been asking about our plans for supporting the upcoming DirectX7. Unreal Tournament will ship with DirectX6 support, and will be compatible with (but not optimized for) DirectX7. As soon as Microsoft has released DirectX7 and we've had a chance to optimize the code for DX7 and test it across a wide range of cards, we'll release an Unreal Tournament patch with complete DirectX7 optimizations. This has been the plan all along.

DirectX7 has lots of cool new features. The ones which Unreal Tournament will exploit are:

- Improved texture management.
- Hooks to enable 3D card drivers to perform their own texture management to improve performance.
- Optimized polygon path for significantly faster polygon rates.
- Windows 2000 support. -Tim

VIA heeft de specs van z'n nieuwe Apollo KX133 slot-A chipset online gezet:

The VIA Apollo KX133 is the ultimate chipset solution for the AMD Athlon™-based high-performance desktop systems.

The Apollo KX133 raises the bar on PC performance through its support for the AGP4x, PC133, 200MHz front-side-bus (FSB) and ATA-66 technologies.

With first-to-market implementation of AGP4x, the Apollo KX133 supports the next wave of high-performance graphics cards guaranteed to take your 3D gaming experience a step beyond.

The Apollo KX133 supports the AMD Athlon 200MHz double-data-rate Alpha EV6-based FSB, the fastest processor bus yet for desktop PCs. This architecture provides twice the FSB throughput of current-generation 100MHz Pentium® III-based systems.

Further building on VIA's PC133 agenda, the Apollo KX133 integrates an advanced memory controller architecture that supports the wide range of PC133 and VC/133 DRAM types now available.

Support for ATA-66, the latest fast-IDE transfer protocol, advances HDD access and data throughput and boosts overall system performance.

Additional notable features of the Apollo KX133 include four USB ports; AC-97 link for audio and modem; integrated hardware monitoring; and advanced power management.

VIA heeft ook nog een paar leuke tabelletjes en grafiekjes, die vind je hier.

CPU Review heeft een artikeltje in elkaar geklust waarin ze de prijzen van PIII en Athlon CPU's en moederborden met elkaar vergelijken:

At 500Mhz, the price difference dropped by two percent in one week; at 550Mhz the price difference actually increased by almost four percent; and at 600Mhz there was a dramatic 10% drop in the difference.

It looks like we will be paying a bit more for an Athlon based system than for an equivalent clock speed Pentium 3 - at least until the motherboard manufacturers ramp up production and lower prices on their motherboards.

All of the other components that go into building a PC would be the same in an Athlon or Pentium 3 based PC the only difference in price will be the cost of the motherboard and CPU.

The difference in cost will likely become even smaller as prices drop; and as a percentage of total system cost the difference is insignificant.

Betanews weet ons te vertellen dat Alex van Kaam een nieuwe beta heeft gereleased van Motherboard Monitor v4.10:

Alex van Kaam sends word that a new beta of MotherBoard Monitor is out. 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.

MBM v4.10 Beta2 kun je hier neer gaan laden.

Voor wie nog niet genoeg kan krijgen van Athlon plaatjes kwam ik bij Overclockers' Workbench deze foto's tegen van een naakt recreërende Athlon: