Gamers Depot heeft een review gepost van de I-Jam MP3 Player. Dit nieuwe MP3 dingetje maakt net zoals de LG MPFree gebruik van 16Mb memory cards:

The I-Jam Mp3 player uses small memory cards that each hold 16MB of data. We're told that 32MB versions should be out "soon". The use of these cards is a great idea, however, the main drawback that we quickly found was that it became quite bothersome to keep switching memory cards every 3-5 (depending on the size of each song) songs. I'm sure that once the 32MB version are out, this will be easier to tolerate.

To store your musical treasures on these cards the unit comes with a memory card reader/writer that plugs into both your parallel port for data, and keyboard port for power. The inherent cool factor about parallel, is that it means you can use this device on just about any PC out there regardless of it's operating system. The drawback, of course, is the somewhat slow rate of data transfer.

Ars Technica heeft een review van de Asus P3B-F in elkaar geschroefd. Wie nu denkt dat Asus hiermee een super overklokbaar plankje in huis heeft, die heeft het mis. Volgens Ars gedraagd de P3B zich nogal wazig...

The BE6 ran that processor at 558 MHz (124MHz FSB * 4.5) without a problem, but the ASUS just couldn't get there. It wouldn't boot above 504 MHz (112 MHz * 4.5) for me, no matter what I did. I tried to work my mojo through the JumperFree BIOS menu and the dipswitches, but to no avail. At 504MHz, the board was quite stable, hence I was a little surprised to see higher FSB speeds bring that thing to its knees.

But the strangeness didn't stop there. I noticed that once I overclocked the CPU and booted into Windows, I'd get a blank screen on restart. Nuthin'. Mind you, this wasn't a problem when I ran the mobo at standard bus speeds. No voltage tweaking or adjustments could get me around this sticking point.

All of this would be easier to stomach if I didn't have to go through two boards to get something working. Two boards? Yeah, I couldn't get my RAM into the first one I received! The DIMM slots just would not allow my RAM to fit. I'm thinking, "this is odd...never had this problem before." I mean, after fiddling with it for a bit, I had to stop and recite my SSN, walk a white line, and take a breathalyzer: what could be the problem? Had someone slipped some gin into my kool-aid?

Dusseuh, Abit kameraden: we hebben weer een nieuw argument om die Asus-lijers af te zeiken .

SysOp Solutions heeft een review van de inmiddels welbekende Abit BE6 UltraATA/66 moederplank op het net gezet. Hier een stukje copy/paste over de jumperless CPU setup:

This is certainly a topic that we could rave on and on about for hours. ABIT's BIOS is nothing short of exceptional. Soon enough Softmenu II will become a household term. Children everywhere will be screaming about it in the streets. Yes, this is how much we "adore" the BIOS. Allow me to explain. Softmenu II offers the user the ability to adjust the CPU multiplier settings and also has a barrage of FSB (front side bus) options 66, 75, 83, 100, 103, 112, 117, 124, 129, 133, 138, 143, 148, 153 . This makes it a delightful tool for those of use interested in overclocking the PIII or any other processor where 100MHz is a great starting point but certainly not somewhere we want to finish. Also Vcore voltage adjustments range from 2.0 - 2.7. Another necessity for the average speed demon. We know that as we increase the FSB the processor sometimes becomes unstable and needs a higher voltage to run smoothly at. Naturally multiplier settings can also be adjusted and changed. Another point to note is temperature readings can be obtained through one of the BIOS's operation screens.

The PCI divider depending on the FSB settings are as follows. Divide by 1/2 for 75-83MHz, divide by 1/3 for 100-120MHz and divide by 1/4 for 124-150MHz. The BIOS is definitely one of ABIT's strong features driving its mainboard sales.

Onze russische vrienden van iXBT Labs hebben een review geplatst van de Hewlett Packard CapShare 910, een handheld scannertje waarmee je snel papieren spul in kunt beamen. De intro zou je op z'n minst nieuwsgierig moet maken:

Photography has always included a special separate field, which dealt with capturing documents, namely with microfilming books in the libraries and photo-spying. If you have ever read a detective story or seen a James Bond movie, you probably remember that secret cameras and microfilms were always an inalienable part of the plot. And can you imagine a spy without a tiny camera hidden or fastened somewhere, for instance, on a sleeve or in the glasses rim (remember "Mission Impossible"). Well, today the stationary photocopying is already quite well developed, there is the whole bunch of different scanners, which can brilliantly capture and store any document in the electronic form. As for the compact portable devices, they can be regarded as a spy modification of a normal thing. So, the first product we got was a hand-held scanner from Hewlett Packard - CapShare 910.

Check iXBT voor de review.

Ace's Hardware heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid waarin ze de performance van een Savage4, Riva TNT2, Voodoo3-3000 en G400 Max op een Athlon-600 systeem vergelijken. Hier heb je een stukje uit de conclusie:

The TNT2 is still the best all-around board, managing to keep the framerate high in nearly every single benchmark. It's a safe option with all the features you want from a video card today.

That doesn't mean that there isn't an alternative, despite the lackluster performance in Half-life OpenGL (play Half life in DirectX instead) and a few other OpenGL games, the G400 MAX is a worthy competitor if paired with a monster CPU, such as the Athlon 600. The higher the image quality and resolution requirements become, the better the G400 performs compared to the competition.

Ik wist niet eens dat er ideeën voor een Doom film waren, maareuh, dat projectje is nu dus vergaan. Hier heb je het overlijdensbericht van GA-Source:

It sounds as if the big screen version of the Doom computer game has gone belly up. According to the IGN SciFi website, John Carmack owner of Id Software and one of the programmers of the game revealed at the QuakeCon gaming convention that the project is kaput. The site quotes Carmack as saying that the company looked at "at a couple of scripts" which were described as "awful." Carmack also revealed that TriStar let the film option on the project lapse and no one else has come looking to pick them up. One of the scripts mentioned may have been the script to have been written by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, as reported in the Insider way back on December 21, 1998.

Tim Sweeney (Epic coder) heeft de Unreal Tech page geupdate met info over illegale beta copies van Unreal Tournament:

Unreal Tournament development note In response to the pirate punk who has been claiming to have a "final" version of UT...

Unreal Tournament isn't finished yet, so there isn't a final version. We're still polishing, fine-tuning, and optimizing the game and will 'till it's done.

Believe me, when UT goes gold, we'll be announcing it here prominently.

Until the demo and release version are available, any copy of UT you see is an unfinished beta version; unless you're a reviewer who received such a copy direct from Epic or GT, having such a copy is illegal. These versions are clearly labeled "confidential beta version" or "release candidate - not for distribution" in at least 5 places in the program. In addition, they have time-bomb logic which will cause them to stop functioning after a certain amount of time. So if anybody gets hold of a version of UT before release, it should be pretty clear that it's not legitimate.

-Tim

Dus als iemand popi denkt te zijn door te zeggen dat-ie Unreal Tournament nu al heeft, dan ligt hier het bewijs dat dit niet waar is .

Extreme Hardware heeft een review gepost van de Matrox G400 (de normale versie op 125/166MHz). Dat de G400 snel kan zijn en dat-ie een aantal toffe features aan board heeft weten we inmiddels. Over z'n overklokbaarheid is echter nog nauwelijks iets bekend. Extreme Hardware gooit er een Powerstrip tegenaan en brengt de kaart naar 162/216MHz:

From the minute that I installed the G400, I had a strong feeling that it would be a good card to overclock. Overclocking for the most part is luck of the draw with chip yields, but what encouraged me was that the onboard RAM was ultra-fast 5ns RAM. Most TNT Ultra cards with memory clocks at 183-200Mhz come with 5.5ns RAM. Therefore, the G400 should be able to overclock rather well from its default 166Mhz memory speed. And overclock it did. Using Powerstrip, I was able to attain a memory speed of 216Mhz, which resulted in a core speed of 162Mhz (from the default 125Mhz core), because the memory and core speeds are bound together. Furthermore, the overclocked G400 was rock stable, and I had no errors or crashes. In benchmarking, the 30% increase in clock speed produced real world increases of 25-40% (depending on the resolution, with larger increases at higher resolutions).

Voor veel G400 info en benchmarks kun je hier terecht.

FPS3D.com heeft een nieuwsposting over de compatibiliteit van de HightPoint HPT366 controller op de Abit BP6 en BE6. Onderstaande info is afkomstig uit een gesprek van een FPS3D.com bezoeker met de Abit tech support:

According to Abit, HPT366 (the chip powering the BP6's UDMA66 features) doesn't work with all UDMA33 hd or cd drives. For most people, there are usually some compatibility problems. Abit said only UDMA66 hard drives are guaranteed to work with HPT366.

What does this mean? It means that you won't get the "support for up to 8 devices" that many people promise with the HPT366 controller working in tandem with the normal IDE ports. If you are having problems with a CD-ROM, Zip Drive or anything else that is plugged into the BP6, BE6, or Hot Rod 66's HPT366 ports, you should transfer them to the old IDE ports.

This is strange because UDMA66 is supposedly completely backward compatible but Abit says that you're lucky if you can have a CDROM and DVD on the HPT366 controller without screwups! UDMA33 is completely backward compatible... Hmm I wonder what's going on?

Just to clear things up there is no significant performance improvement (for those who thought otherwise) from using a UDMA66 port from a UDMA33 port with only a UDMA33 compliant device. So it shouldn't be a problem unless you're juggling 8 devices already.

HPT366 Drivers for Windows 2000 are available but you have to request them from Abit support. An Abit engineer said just toss them an e-mail requesting the driver, and they'll send it your way.

Voor de Win2k driver moeten we dus allemaal ff massaal bij Abit gaan zeiken . Zelf heb ik met m'n IBM UDMA/33 harddisk, Philips 40x CD-ROM en IDE Zip drive geen problemen met de HPT366 controller. Met de BIOS update van een paar dagen geleden zouden de problemen met IBM/WD UltraATA/66 schijven ook opgelost moeten zijn.

Anand heeft een artikel geschreven over de eerste chipset die officieel een 133 MHz FSB ondersteunt voor Slot1 en Socket370 systemen. Het is best een uitgebreid artikel, met alle fouten die VIA in het verleden heeft gemaakt, en de nieuwe oplossingen die VIA en Intel te bieden hebben. De prestaties zijn echter nog steeds lager in spellen dan die van de BX chipset op de standaard 100 MHz. Met Business applicaties is ie wel ietsje sneller. Het enige leuke eraan is dat je de FSB flink kan opvoeren zonder dat je AGP bus op een onmogelijke snelheid loopt:

The 1/2 AGP clock divider opens up a word of new possibilities for overclocking. The 133MHz+ FSB settings are now much more viable options, even at 150MHz, the AGP bus is still running at 75MHz which is around 14% over the specification, and is manageable for most AGP cards (it's almost the equivalent of running the 112MHz FSB on a BX board). At 150MHz, your PCI bus will be running at 37.5MHz, or 1/4 of 150MHz, which is also very manageable for most PCI cards as it is the equivalent of running your FSB at 75MHz on a motherboard that only supports the 1/2 PCI clock divider. Unfortunately with all Intel CPUs shipping in clock locked states, putting the 133MHz+ FSB settings to use would be overclocking your CPU far beyond reasonable limits, so you're most likely going to have to wait until 133MHz FSB CPUs begin shipping before taking the full advantage of any chipsets with 133MHz FSB support. And since Intel controls the flow of CPUs in to the market, the first 133MHz CPUs will hit conveniently with the launch of the Intel Camino chipset, but the same overclocking principles apply to the Camino as well.

Nu nog een processor vinden die betrouwbaar is over te klokken met een bus van 150 MHz...

Op betanews las ik dat dat Vertical Horizon een portable aparaatje gaat uitbrengen wat MP3 cd's en "gewone" audio cd's kan lezen (en afspelen...) en dat allemaal draagbaar. Bovendien komt er ook een versie voor thuis op je stereo doos. Opzicht wel ideaal natuurlijk...Het ding heeft een deadline tot de 31e van deze maand...

Vertical Horizon has developed a player that plays both standard CDs and MP3 CDs. Consumers will no longer have to rely on their PCs and CD ROMs to enjoy CDs with MP3 files. The player features a microprocessor that controls the identification of the signal from the disc, and depending on whether or not it is a CD or MP3 file, runs the file through a MP3 decoder. The player is available as both Home Stereo type and Portable type.

Ik ben benieuwd hoe de muziek industrie hierop gaat antwoorden...

Gamespot is laatst bij Guillemot op visite geweest en heeft wat info over de nVidia NV10, waar Guillemot ook een kaart van zal gaan uitbrengen. Dit is de info:

While no official statement has been made, it's no secret that Guillemot will be manufacturing a video card based on nVidia's upcoming NV10 chipset. While visiting Guillemot last week, GameSpot News learned a couple of additional bits of info regarding the powerhouse chipset.

It seems that nVidia might not be bin sorting (testing and releasing chips at different MHz speeds) the NV10 as it did with the TNT2 chipset, because Guillemot will only be manufacturing one NV10 board instead of two. In fact, while we were in their offices, top Guillemot execs had just finalized that board's retail name and box art. Unfortunately, we can't reveal that info just yet, but be on the lookout for an official announcement from Guillemot in a few weeks. In the meantime, ECTS attendees will have a chance to take a firsthand look at Guillemot's NV10 product on the show floor, although it's not known whether the company will show it publicly or limit viewing to private demonstrations.

Binnenkort komen we dus eindelijk meer te weten....

The Register meldt dat een computerboer in Engeland (Dabs Direct) een prijsopgave en een datum heeft opgegeven voor de PIII 600Mhz. met 133Mhz FSB.
Het beestje zou vanaf 26 september voor ongeveer Fl. 1750,- over de toonbank moeten gaan... Misschien leuk om die op een Gig te krijgen???

Intel wil het bericht ontkennen noch bevestigen:

An Intel representative said: "This is probably a typo." He said that all Intel had committed to was to produce the part in the second half of this year -- and the company is on schedule so to do.

Check deze link voor het hele bericht en deze link voor een plaatje van de advertentie.

Ik lees hier op betanews.com dat Microsoft haar doel lijkt te gaan halen qua planning van de releases van Windows 2000. Release Candidate 2 staat gepland voor september en RC3 voor oktober waarna ze de laatste beta eind oktober willen uitgeven voor de echte beta testers en OEM's...

Microsoft has uploaded Windows 2000 Interim Build 2099 to their beta site in preparation for release. With Release Candidate 2 slated to launch in September, this release is a good sign that Microsoft will hit their target. After Windows 2000 Release Candidate 2 is released in September, Microsoft is expected to squash any last minute bugs and ship out Release Candidate 3 to top beta testers and OEMs in early October. Microsoft plans to hit RTM (Release to Manufacturing) in late October, although this date has been shifted a few times and could very well be pushed back even further. Shortly after RTM, tools from Comet will emerge for the newly released OS, as well as other applications from well known companies such as Novell. The fourth and final version of Windows 2000 known as Datacenter Server, which has enjoyed a separate beta program, will finish testing in the coming months after RTM

Afwachten of dit een beter product wordt dan de laatste 2... we zullen het wel zien.
'tis en blijft afwachten met Windows...........
Kijk hier voor het hele bericht.

3D Alpha heeft een review geplaatst van de Diamond Rio PMP300 portable MP3 speler met 32MB aan opslag capaciteit. Check hem hier.

The Diamond Rio as you may or may not already know is an excellent product! I'd recommend it to anyone who had a PC with Windows95/98. Its great you can have your MP3's or MP2's from your favorite artist in a mix, and it is so easy to change. What is also nice is that 1 AA Battery can last you an entire 12 hours of play, one thing that kills the battery is the constant turning off and on, the only thing this excellent product needs is a Back-lit display. Other than that I think Diamond has it made. If you are a Macintosh user I'd recommend the Diamond Rio PMP500, which uses the USB Port, which is about twice the speed of the PMP300 model, which goes into the Parallel port. So if you would decide to buy the Rio PMP300 you can get a $50 Dollar rebate from Diamond Multimedia, but not on the SE. Once again Thank you Diamond Multimedia for making such a useful product.

Bij de hardware sectie van Voodoo Extreme is een review geplaatst van de MS-6163 moederbord van Micro-Star. Deze plank met de BX chipset blijkt een goede keus voor overklokkers:

Micro-Star has not only crafted a board that lets you overclock as safely as possible, but one that lets you overclock as powerfully as possible. There is simply no other motherboard that offers the wealth of options that this one does. All via the handy CPU Plug & Play III section in the BIOS setup, you can select one of 26 (!!!!) front-side bus (FSB) speeds, set the core voltage anywhere from a stock 2.0V to a steamy 2.4V, configure automatic thermal protection settings (so, for example, if your CPU hits 125ºF, it’ll shut down automatically) and tweak the voltage settings of your BX chipset itself, from 3.3 to 3.6 volts. In addition, the 6163 automatically adjusts the PCI/AGP dividers so that even at a blazing 133MHz FSB, your expansion cards will still run at (or near) their 33/66MHz specs. The highest they ever go is 41/82MHz - still well within operable limits, as far as any of my components were concerned.

But do all of these gimmicks work? They sure seem to. During all of my testing, I was unable to make this motherboard become the bottleneck. First, I pushed my system father than the RAM would go, and once that was remedied, it went as far as the CPU would go. Assuming the rest of your system is up to par, and you have adequate cooling, the 6163 Pro will push any CPU you might try in it, to be the fastest it can possibly be. I never had a crash that was un-traceable to another component. On my old motherboard, my P2-350 would only run stable-ly up to 396MHz (3.5x112MHz); now it’s running at a beautiful 420MHz - 20% faster than default. And with an engineering sample Pentium III, using underclocked multiplier settings (so as not to make the core run faster than it possibly could), the 6163 Pro would push FSB’s all the way to the limits imposed by my EMS PC133 HSDRAM - we’re talking in the 150MHz’s here, kiddies.

Overclockers' Workbench heeft de Abit BP6 mobo eens getest, het bekende Dual Celeron moederbordje. Hier wat over de overklokbaarheid, zie de review voor meer.

As I mentioned earlier on, ABIT BP6 remains dedicated to their overclocking fans. A peek at the BIOS shows that the SoftMenu II remains and the new change is the second section CPU Power Supply for both CPUs can be tweaked accordingly. e.g. one can set to run at 2.0v and the other 2.1v.

The rest remains quite the same as BH6 v1.1 or BX6R2. The other difference is the inconsistent FSB that is in the different models of ABIT mainboards.

The BP6 supports quite a good range of FSB for you to tweak.

Supported FSB are 66, 72,75,78, 80,82,83 ~100 at 1mhz intervals, 124 and 133Mhz as documented. When i tried to tweak the FSB, I noticed that it also supports the additional of 104, 106, 108, 110Mhz. The range of FSB settings really tempts me to test out all combinations with dual processor. Strange enough, I am able to run Win98 very smoothly @ 110 x 4.5 but in Windows NT Server, it crashed and hung quite a number of times. So my current NT is running at 100x4.5! and it rocks.

Surprisingly, there is no 112, 115, 117 or 119 before it jumps to 124Mhz. Test have shown that my Celeron 300a (SL36a) can run steadily on the BE6 at 120Mhz FSB but failed at 124Mhz. How nice if BP6 also has this set of FSB for the DUAL Celerons. By the way, my MSI TNT 2 runs at 1/1 AGPCLK/CPUCLK on this board.

Deze kan er nog wel bij: Tweak 3D heeft nog een review online gegooid van de Xentor32 Ultra TNT2 kaart. Check hem hier.

What's to be said here? After all, it's a TNT2. The image quality is excellent, crisp, and clear. As my monitor's peak resolution is 1280x1024, I can't comment on the extreme resolutions; however, I can say that up to 1280x1024, the Xentor 32 delivered, in both 16- and 32-bit. Working on the Desktop, the TNT2 is second only to the Matrox G200 and G400, which is nothing too surprising. Still, the Xentor 32's 2D acceleration is fast, with no noticable image distortion - really a given these days, especially with higher-end chips.

As for 3D, this card is about as good as it gets. 3D worlds are rendered with sharp lines, vivid colors, and smooth animations. Playing games is a joy. Q3 Test is, or course, a given. In 32-bit color, it's absolutely stunning. Rollcage was great, as well. Even at 1280x1024 in 16-bit, the game was fast, Fast, FAST. I noticed that some of the smoke effects were a tad dithered and banded, so I dropped it into 1024x768, switched to 32-bit, and all was good: more than fast enough and chock full of eye-candy.

Okay... so how 'bout a few others? I tried to test a broad range of games with the Xentor 32 - some Direct3D and some OpenGL - in order to get a feel for the board's overall usability. The consensus? Well... Half-Life looked great, as did Need For Speed III. Shogo and Descent 3? Gorgeous. Kingpin, Expendable, and Unreal? Not a problem. The rendering in all of these games was great.

Hands down, the Xentor 32 dishes out some of the best image quality I've seen. Simple as that.

Storage Review heeft een review geschreven van de Western Digital Caviar WD205AA ATA/66 harddisk, een 5400rpm schijf met 6.8 gigs per platter. Het komt er op neer dat dit een errug rap schijfje is:

Like its predecessor, the WD205AA sets new heights in 5400rpm ATA drive performance. Business Disk WinMark 99 tests run under Windows 95 place the Caviar 11% higher than archrival Maxtor's DiamondMax 6800. The margin increases even more in the High-End test, with the WD leading the Maxtor by 18%. NT results, the traditional strength of Maxtor drives, were very telling. In the Business WinMark, WD manages to squeak by Maxtor for the first time ever with a 2% lead. The High-End WinMark, however, was as decisive as they come, with the Caviar blazing past the 6800 by an astonishing 39%!

The WD sets record ThreadMark scores for an ATA drive. It annihilates the 6800 under Windows 95, torching the Maxtor drive by margin of 52%! The gap under NT was almost as wide, with WD's drive leading by 42%.

The heat and noise generated by the WD205AA is quite similar to that made by the DiamondMax 6800 (or the Fireball CX, for that matter). Seeks are detectable though quite muffled. The drive operates cool to the touch.

Western Digital has followed up its Editor's Choice AC420400 with another commendable offering in the WD205AA. The only drawback is its rather conservative three-platter design, making this drive smaller than both the DiamondMax 6800 and the IBM Deskstar 25GP. If you can handle having only 20 gigs, though, this Caviar is the premiere 5400rpm ATA drive, even giving most 7200rpm units a run for their money.

Ook bij Thresh's FiringSquad, een review van de Voodoo3 3500 TV. In de review is verder ook een kort interview met 3dfx opgenomen, check het zaakie hier.

Taking into consideration the high operating temperatures of the Voodoo3 chip, we decided to see if the 5.5ns memory could stand a little more strain than the chipset itself, and liberated an old 486 cooling fan from its heatsink. We were able to snuggly position the fan over the 3500 TV's heatsink (and in the process completely block the adjacent PCI slot), and ran our tests again. This time, the 3500 reached a stable operation speed of 208MHz! Not too shabby indeed!

Remember that overclocking is far from an exact science, and depending on any number of factors, including chip production, board and misc. component quality, and motherboard designs, your mileage may vary.

Bij Thresh's FiringSquad hebben ze even een babbeltje gehad met Brett Sperry, de man van Westwood. Uiteraard hebben ze het over Tiberian Sun gehad, die volgende week in de winkels ligt . Hier heb je een klein gedeelte, meer vind je hier.

What's new about Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun? We created new units, new game strategies, new graphics, a new kind of battlefield, dozens of new game features, and a completely a new 3D game engine. Several aspects of the original C&C gameplay dynamic have been retained while others evolved. When our fans play Tiberian Sun they'll see we have retained all of the best aspects and traditions which were in our previous C&C games in addition to so many new things mentioned above. Best of all, I think they will appreciate the quality and depth we are building into Tiberian Sun which will make it a game with lasting value, intrigue, and fun. Can you give me a brief outline of the story line? What has happened since the other games? In many ways Red Alert was the prequel to the C&C line. Red Alert was the introduction to the C&C story line and took place in the latter half of the 20th century. This is where the epic struggle actually began. The first C&C took place in the last part of the 20th century where you were in the role of a commander aided by EVA who gave you new ways to control the battlefield as never before. Both GDI and The Brotherhood of NOD were competing to get you to their side. You could choose to fight the good fight with GDI or to wage guerilla war with the Brotherhood of NOD. In Tiberian Sun, the timeline moves forward into the 21st century where the world has become an interesting and altered place. Both sides have significant new technologies and the war has taken on a much more global scale versus C&C, which was a more regional story that took place in Europe and Africa.

Check ook het interview voor wat nieuwe screenshots!