Bij RivaStation weten ze meer dan ze willen/mogen zeggen. Over 3 dagen gaan we meer horen. Allereerst zal dan de aankondiging plaats vinden van de Elsa Erasor IV, oftewel de NV10 en dan zullen we ook meer te weten komen over die TNT2 Pro chipset.

Natuurlijk ben ik geïnteresseerd in de NV10, maar ik denk dat deze kaart wel eens kort bij de 900 a 1000 piek kan gaan kosten, daarom ben ik ook zeer geinteresseerd in die TNT2 Pro...

Maar goed, de tijd zal het leren, misschien valt de prijs van de NV10 zwaar mee en kostie maar zo'n 700 gulden

Aside you see a quick snapshot of a prototype card of the new ELSA ERAZOR III Pro with NVIDIA TNT2/Pro. Details are NDA yet but weŽll see some small surprises soon. More about that after the 31.08.1999 ;-)

Plaatje van de TNT2 Pro ?

Bij Glide Underground hebben ze het hele verhaaltje over Glide Wrappers (stukjes software die 3dfx's Glide ook op andere videokaarten laten werken) nog maar eens samengevat in 1 artikeltje.

So what exactly is a Glide wrapper? Well, you'll probably have heard of Glide before, it is 3DFX's propriatery graphics API which is used by it's Voodoo range of cards, and not by any other card on the market. Glide lets programmers make spectacular looking visuals with very little hassle, and so it became popular about two years ago due to 3dfx spotting an opening in the market and capatilizing. So, what do you do if you need Glide for a game, but don't want to shell out for a new Voodoo graphics card? You use a Glide wrapper.

Tjek de rest hier.

Eindelijk... na lang, lang, lang wachten is er dan de demo van Prince of Persia 3D.

In 1989, the Prince of Persia legacy was launched and with it the beginning of the action/adventure genre. Now in 1999, the Prince returns using landmark 3D and animation technology. Sharpen your blade, ready your bow and arrow, and enter 12th Century Persia. Tread carefully and keep your wits about you, because your demise might just lie around the corner.

Downloaden kan hier, bij The Adrenaline Vault.

De Russische jongens van iXBT-Labs hebben een uitgebreid artikel geschreven over de korte termijn plannen van Intel. Ze bespreken dus o.a. 133FSB, de i820 chipset en de Coppermine processor. best wel interessant, lees het artikel hier.

0.18 micron technology into life! This slogan is the best way to describe the events, which are planned for 25 October. This day will be the beginning of the mass sales of Pentium III processors made with a new technology and stuffed with a new core - Coppermine. 256KB L2 cache working at the core frequency and similar to that we have in today's Celeron promises a new performance upsurge. Besides, Intel has also optimized the work with L2 cache, which will also contribute to this performance rise.

Coppermine doesn't require any external L2 cache microchips, which forced Intel engineers to provide their Pentium II and Pentium III with a special cartridge. The whole thing was assembled on a plant in Ireland reequipped especially for this purpose. With regard to this fact the novelty may see the light in both existing form-factors supported by the today's mainboards - Slot 1 and Socket 370.

Slot 1. By this day we will already be using the systems with 100 and 133MHz system bus, so the new Coppermine cores, as well as Katmai ones, will also be available in two versions: for 100 and for 133MHz. On 25 October we will get five different options: 600/100, 650/100, 600/133, 650/133 and 667/133MHz (note: not 666 but 667 - Intel seems to believe in superstitions ;-).

As for Socket 370, the situation is more interesting. Some time ago it was still planned that PPGA Coppermine, or FC-PGA (Flip-Chip) as they are called in this case, will use a new but backward compatible Socket 418, which will differ from Socket 370 by an additional internal row of pins connected to the ground or power. This was made because of the stability problems of 0.18 micron crystals packed into PGA.

Er zijn nogal wat mensen die last hebben van chronische vastlopers met hun TNT2 videokaart. Tech-Review had dit ook door, en heeft daarom een handige troubleshooting guide op hun site geplant. Hier heb je een stukkie:

It has come to our attention that a large number of TNT 2 owners have experienced problems running 3D games. The most typical problem being that the computer stalls when a 3D game is opened. Several hundreds of people have no idea why this occurs and have tried everything from formatting their hard drive to trying several different brands of TNT 2 boards. In fact this problem has nothing to do with your Windows setup or driver conflicts for the most part.

Why should any of us purchase a $200 video card if the darn thing is going to crap out on us on our favorite 3D games? We shouldn't! But the problem isn't related to the TNT2 card itself, it's related to your motherboard. That's right folks! Some motherboards, especially those used by OEM manufacturers, are prone to voltage problems with the AGP bus. The TNT 2 cards, for the most part, require the full amount of voltage power supplied by the AGP bus specification. However, some motherboards do not completely support the voltage settings specified by the AGP specifications. This in turn causes a power problem with your video card and motherboard, and results in the stalling of the video game and computer.

In order to diagnose this as the problem there are several steps you can take. The first test involves disabling AGP support which you will need to download Direct Control to do.

Lees hier verder!

Bij AGN 3D hebben ze een hele verzameling screenshots online gemikt. Ziet er niet slecht uit moet ik zeggen. Hier heb je er een paar.

Bij Deez Tech hebben ze een review online gegooid van de Celeron 466MHz. Ze hebben ook wat aandacht geschonken aan het overklokken van de processor, verder dan 581MHz kwamen ze niet. Lees het hier.

As you can see, going over 581 Mhz is a no go. While it's still respectable, it's kind of a bummer not being able to go to 600 Mhz; although, realistically real world performance difference between 581Mhz and 600 Mhz is very minimal almost unnoticeable. This Celeron certaintly does not exhibit the overclocking capabilities of the Celeron 300A, it still brings you to the next level. I'm not saying that 600Mhz is impossible with a 466, it's just not stable, and I'm sure a better yield of 466s would be able to run at 600Mhz quite stable. At 600 Mhz the Celeron booted into Windows just fine, but it could never go through a complete run of Winstone 99 without crushing. Maybe with better cooling it might had been possible. Keep in mind though, for this experiement I was using GlobalWin's monster heatsink, so better cooling in this case would signify active cooling.

On the flip side of things, overclocking the Celeron 466 doesn't give you the capability of utilizing your high speed PC-100 or PC-133 RAM that you may have installed in your system. What's more, the Celeron 466 running at an 83 Mhz bus will have a slight disadvantage when compared to a CPU running on a 100 Mhz or higher bus, mainly because the memory speed will be lower, thus affecting the throughput of the data in the memory bus. I will illustrate this point in minute. Let's take a look at some benchmarks first.

Ook bij GameSpot, een review van Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun. Nu de game eindelijk uit is zijn de meningen toch redelijk verdeeld. GameSpot vindt het in ieder geval een puike game en bekroond hem met een 9.6. Lees de review met 21 screenshots hier.

As mentioned earlier Command & Conquer fans are not going to faint from astonishment when they encounter the new graphics in Tiberian Sun. Although the basic technology and the iso-metric viewing angle remains the same, increased resolution and colour pallette has made a big difference to the game. Proper 3D interaction with the environment has also made the game more realistic and challenging. Vehicles travel slower uphill and faster downhill and weapon effectiveness is also governed by height differences between the location of units.

Perhaps the most interesting change is in the interactivity of the landscape. Terrain is deformable and pock-marked battlefields are not only attractive, they also become crucial to strategies. Cratered terrain can be used as an area-denial tactic while some land areas can be directly targeted and blown up to create fresh paths.

Another significant addition are bridges which can be crossed over, under, and blown up ­ the latter becomes a tactical science in itself. Blown-up bridges can be used as a temporary defence, denying enemy access until they can rebuild them, and if you lure an enemy force across a bridge and then blow it up, you can cut them off or destroy them in transit.

Although the game doesn't feature the extensive naval units of Red Alert, several units can travel on waterways, sometimes bypassing bridging requirements ­ GDI's Hover Multiple Rocket Launchers and the tough, versatile APCs which are valuable recon vehicles.

NOD has its own way of dealing with landscapes and this involves extensive burrrowing ­ Devil's Tongue Flame Tanks and Subterranean APCs can be used to breach base defences and surprise armies or harvesters.

GameSpot heeft een kleine preview van de game Rally Masters. Er staan ook wat screenshots bij, en de graphics zijn echt bloedje mooi! Check het hier.

Digital Illusions, the Swedish-based developers of Rally Masters, have certainly aimed to make this one of the most comprehensive rallying games ever, with over 17 unique cars from both old and new rally groups including the F2, WRC and Group B categories. As you'll see from our impressive selection of shots, the cars are all modelled in immaculate detail with special effects like reflection mapping, transparent glass effects, lens reflections and realistic on-screen car damage which affects car handling and performance, contributing to the ultra-authentic feel.

Test your mettle against 24 of the world's top rally drivers, including Hannu Mikkola, Stig Blomqvist and both Alister and Colin McRae. A huge variety of different tournaments and championships are available, including the Rally Masters Challenge Cup, Single Races, Time Attack and Ghost Play and the world's premier rallying - the FIA-sanctioned Michelin Race of Champions. See how you fare in this ultimate test of driving nerve and skill.

En zie hier wat screenies:

Jawel, misschien kijken jullie allemaal na de recentste reviews helemaal uit naar de G400 Max van Matrox. Ik in iedergeval wel. als er een kaart is van deze generatie die ik hebben wil dan is het de MAX wel.

Mensen die daar al vroeg vertrouwen in hadden hebben nu mazzel. De lijsten met voorinschrijvingen bij winkels schijnen al redelijk lang te zijn, en de levering is vooralsnog traag.

Als je een maand of 2 geleden al nummer 13 op de lijst was bij één bedrijf, en in heel nederland pas 16 geleverd zijn... kun je er toch wel van uit gaan dat je nog even wachten kan!

Wil je hem hebben, dan zul je dus toch nog even geduld moeten hebben..

Sterkte Stef in deze komende dagen!

Oei, wat spannend - een modem review! Nouja, dit ding van Diamond ziet er wel leuk uit:

One of the things I like most about this modem is appearance and size. This is the smallest modem I have ever seen! It is as big as a normal CD in size. Another cool feature is that the modems casing is translucent allowing you to see its "guts". On the casing are the words Diamond ( actually its more like part of the actual casing), a stylish SupraExpress logo and four lights. My previous modem had about 10 lights on it so some users may be a bit disappointed by this. The fours lights are OH, SD, RD and ON. OH is for On-Hook, SD is for Sending Data, RD is for Receiving Data and ON is for..well..On Behind the modem are two phone line connectors and the USB connector. More about USB later on in the review.

Meer info vind je in de review van Planet Riva.

Tech-Review heeft een review van de Maxtor Diamondmax 6800 online gezet. Deze schijf heeft een capaciteit van 27,2Gig, bij een platter-size van 6,8Gb en een rotatiesnelheid van 5400rpm. Persoonlijk heb ik het vanwege de slechte overklokbaarheid nooit zo gehad op Maxtor schijven. Over de betrouwbaarheid van deze schijf op hogere PCI busspeeds heeft Tech-Review helaas geen info...

Performance wise, the 6800 rates slightly above average and quite higher than a normal ATA 33 drive. As we review more large hard drives, which should be on their way right now, we will compare and contrast performance issues and why some hard drives rate higher than others. The 6800 boasts 2 MB of cache running with 100 MHz SDRAM memory, which is intended to improve performance. Also included is Maxtor's DualWave multi-processor controller, which is supposed to increase system and disc speed by reducing overhead. Take everything involved and the benchmarks still tell the tale. And from our results the 6800 is good and plenty fast.

Armin van FullOn3D heeft een review gepost van de Tennmax Mega7, een behoorlijk grote socket7 / socket370 cooler. De omvang van dit koelbeest doet de standaard Intel koeler naar mammie roepen:

Armin heeft de Mega7 getest op een Abit BP6, waar de heatsink trouwens maar net op pastte:

I asked TennMax for two MEGA7 coolers, one for each Celeron 366 CPU in the machine.

I had previously used the boxed coolers Intel ships with the retail boxes and achieved a stable system at 451 MHz and a maximum stable single CPU system at 484 MHz with the better of the two CPUs.

Using the MEGA7 I raised the dual rig speed slightly to 462 MHz which was the best I could do with the CPU2. This CPU wasn't very cooperative beyond that no matter what voltage I inflicted upon it. Using just CPU1 I achieved an excellent 550 MHz at 2.1 volts core speed.

The Tech Zone heeft een review gepost van de Blaster PC, Creative's eerste poging om een kant-en-klare PC te bouwen. Het machientje dat door The Tech Zone werd getest bestond uit een PIII-500 met 128Meg, SBLive!, DVD drive, Dxr3 MPEG decoder en een Riva TNT (vanzelfsprekend allemaal Creative hardware):

The first thing you notice about the Blaster PC is that big volume control knob on the front of the machine. It looks way cool. You can really tell this is a multimedia computer. The Blaster PC also comes with an excellent set of multimedia speakers which is made by Cambridge SoundWorks of course.

The volume control isn't the only thing on the front of the Blaster PC. A few manufacturers have relocated some of the ports to the front of their computers but Creative has gone overkill. Behind a sliding panel at the bottom of the comp, you can access USB, audio input/output, joystick, MIDI, SPDIF video and optical ports. There is even accommodations for FireWire! Not enough you say? How about a built in FM tuner? Nothing like listening to your favorite FM station while surfing the net. :-)

Electronic Review Zone heeft een review van de Xitel Storm Platinum (Aureal Vortex II, quad speaker, TOSLINK S/PDIF interface) neer gemikt. Hier heb je een stukje over bijgeleverde force feedback headphones:

Now, If you are looking for that "Extra zing" in your experience, then there is an optional item you can purchase with your Platinum soundcard. The Force Feedback Headphones add that "Extra zing" as it were. Basically the Force Feedback Headphones are your everyday standard john or jane headphones, Except for one major difference. The one difference that makes this headphones stand out from basically any other that you'll see is, they have a built in power amplifier, allowing fine-tuning of vibration and volume. The other great feature of these headphones is that you can actually turn off and on the vibration. They actually have 3 settings: Off, Medium, and High, Personally I prefer medium, sometimes high can get bothersome during games, but, if you are looking for an intense feeling then high might be for you. These headphones aren't just great for gamers, they are superb for music and movies, giving you the low end bass that you deserve. Another great feature with these headphones is that you don't need the soundcard to use them. Basically what allows you to use these headphones on any audio/video device is the Built in amplifier and control unit. I have personally tested these headphones and they are great!

Zie voor meer info over de Storm Platinum ook mijn eigen review .

EETimes heeft een artikeltje over een kudde nieuwe MP3 produkten die we uit de richting Japan kunnen verwachten. Er zit best wel interessant spul bij, bijv. een piepklein MP3 spelertje van Sony:

Compactness is one area where the Japanese expect to rise above the crowd. If its prototypes are any indication of its product plans, Sony could come out with a fully contained player the size of a pack of gum that consumers can string around their necks. Toshiba and Matsushita are also leaning toward the small and sleek, according to observers.

But perhaps more important in the long haul, the companies will attempt to link their audio players to other devices, such as a PC or a set-top box, via flash cards. Sony, for example, offers two versions of its popular Vaio PC with Memory Stick slots. Consumers will ostensibly be able to store downloaded music on the card and then transfer it to a portable player. Sony also has been promoting the MagicGate copy-protection scheme within its flash cards as a way to provide players and recorders with encryption and authentication. The company also has copy-protection schemes for hard drives and networks, OpenMG and Super MagicGate, respectively.

Sony has stepped up its marketing campaign to bring in more backers for Memory Stick. Among those that have expressed interest are Aiwa, Casio, Fujitsu, Olympus, Sanyo and Sharp, though their support has not yet translated into product rollouts in all cases. [break]...en in de toekomst kunnen we de MP3'tjes gewoon vanuit een muur naar beneden laden: [/break] Matsushita's Morishita, meanwhile, envisions consumers downloading songs from a set-top box, storing them in an SD card and then listening on a portable player.

Music kiosks, which would let users walk into a convenience store and download a tune, are another possibility. Sanyo, for one, said it will aim toward developing these kiosks, as will Liquid Audio's Japan subsidiary. Liquid Audio plans to introduce its Web page in the next month, allowing Japanese Web surfers to download music. But because the Internet infrastructure in Japan is still immature compared to the United States, the company is also negotiating with Japanese retail outlets to set up kiosks that will use its Secure Portable Player Platform for preventing illegal copying and rewriting. - Additional reporting by Yoshiko Hara.

Erg leuk allemaal. Check EETimes voor het volledige artikel.

Voor wie (letterlijk) cool wil zijn (en zich niet in budget beperkt voelt) is de Kryotech Cool Athlon 800Mhz wellicht wat. Volgens GA-Source zal de levering van deze systemen in september beginnen:

KryoTech, Inc., an AMD partner, announced earlier this month its new 800 MHz system based on the next-generation AMD Athlon processor. The Cool Athlon 800 is the world's first PC system to be commercially sold at this processor speed. KryoTech's minus 40ºC cooling system enables a standard AMD Athlon processor to run at the thermally accelerated speed of 800 MHz.

The Register bericht over geruchten dat de release van de PowerMac G4 (Sawtooth) mogelijk wordt uitgesteld tot mei 2000, omdat het Apple niet lukt om een stabiel G4 moederbord in elkaar te sleutelen:

Reports on The Register back in July that Apple may not ship Power Macs based on the upcoming PowerPC 7400 (aka G4) appear to have been confirmed by sources within the Mac maker.

Previously, we reported that attendees at an Apple publishing roadshow in Toronto had been told by company people that the Power Mac G4, also known by its codename, Sawtooth, would not be shipping until May 2000.

That information came hard on the heels of claims from Motorola insiders that the chip company was having real problems getting its final silicon done on the PPC 7400. Motorola immediately contacted The Register to deny the rumours -- head of semiconductor marketing Will Swearingen promised the chip would get a major

Swearingen would not (understandably) comment on Apple's PPC7400 support, but his promise suggested the problem with the Power Mac G4 was not the CPU but the machines new motherboard design.

And, according to Mac-monitoring Web site AppleInsider, it's now emerging that that is indeed the case. Reports there reckon that Apple is having a tough time getting Sawtooth up to production standard quality, and has fallen back on a safety measure to ship a version of the current Power Mac G3 with a PPC 7400 installed.

Voodoo Extreme weet ons te vertellen dat er al weer een nieuwe versie van WinAMP gereleased is. Zo te zien is versie 2.50c vooral een bugfix:

- Full version has MJF support
- Fixed icon assignment bug
- Added option for old-school playlist editor buttons
- Fixes EQ volume setting bug
- Removed playlist editor child options
- Vastly improved window stack positioning code
- Fixed some rare and strange docking bugs