Thresh's FiringSquad heeft een review gebakken van Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Hun conclusie is dat de game erg goed is, behalve dan dat de multiplayer zwaar beroerd is, (waar ik me in zekere mate wel in kan vinden).

Now on to the bad, and I'll keep this brief too since I don't want to think about it too much. Multiplayer blows. Completely. Well, nearly completely. If you're playing a friend and agree not to do cheeseass infantry rushes (GDI: disc thrower. NOD: infantry/rocket/engineer), the game can be decent. If it's a pickup game in Westwood Online or you and your friend are out for quick wins, it will be exactly as I describe. Even if you're on a HUGE map, if you take the time to build a refinery, war factory, then all sorts of tanks, you'll die because the infantry will rape you. None of the tanks are effective, at least cost effective, against infantry, except the Devil's Tongue, but even that gets raped by discers/rocket dudes. Tiberium fields are pretty lethal to infantry and your enemy might have to cross quite a few of them, but medics generally can keep the casualties down.

Bij Electronic Review Zone hebben ze een korte review online gezet van de TennMax Stealth V3 Fighter, een Voodoo3 cooler. Dankzij dit beestje heeft hij zijn Voodoo3 3000 op 190MHz draaien. Check het hier.

I used Gary Peterson's overclocking utility (available at www.voodoo3.net) to push the default speed of my Voodoo3 3000, 166 mhz, higher. With the factory heatsink still on my Voodoo3, I was able to get the card running at a speed of 174 mhz. Not bad, although the heatsink was scalding hot. I installed the TennMax Stealth V3 Fighter, and was pleased to find it running flawlessly at 174 mhz. I upped it more and more until I finally reached 190 mhz! That is a 24 mhz speed boost. For just an idea, the Voodoo3 3500 TV is slated for 183 mhz. With the TennMax Stealth V3 Fighter, you have a good chance of having Voodoo3 3500 TV speed or beyond for an extremely lower price.

Basically, the TennMax Stealth V3 Fighter is an excellent addon to your Voodoo3. You can take a chance and overclock to the speed of a Voodoo3 3500 for the extra framerates, if needed. If not, you can enjoy a longer life of your video board due to the cooler running temperature. The price is only $23.50, but even so, it is a pretty tiny fan.

De USB maniacs van USB Workshop melden ook dat USB 2.0 wel tot 3 keer sneller zal zijn dan aanvankelijk verteld werd afgelopen februari. Met 360-480 Mbs zal USB 2.0 nu wel 30 tot 40 sneller zijn dan USB 1.1. Lees hier meer.

A group of PC industry leaders announced today that the speed target of Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 is two to three times faster than what was disclosed at the Intel Developer Forum in February.

Earlier this year, the USB 2.0 Promoter Group, consisting of Compaq, HP, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, NEC and Philips, announced an early speed estimate of USB 2.0 being 120 to 240 Megabits per second (Mbs), or 10 to 20 times faster than USB 1.1. This latest increase in the speed target puts the rate now at 360-480 Mbs, or 30 to 40 times faster than USB 1.1.

The revised and significantly higher target rate is a result of analyses conducted by the USB 2.0 Promoter Group that conclude that speed can be raised without additional cost or complexity over the previous estimate.

``This achievement on USB 2.0 will further build the great momentum of USB into even more demanding user applications, such as image creation and interactive gaming, and provide an effective upgrade path for today's USB peripherals,'' said Pat Gelsinger, Intel vice president and general manager, Desktop Products Group.

Bij USB Workshop lees ik o.a. dat Hewlett Packard twee nieuwe cd-rewriters op de markt brengt. Eentje in SCSI uitvoering (HP CD-Writer Plus 9200i series), maar ook een USB variant (HP CD-Writer Plus 8200e series). De eerstgenoemde brandt op maximaal 8 speed, terwijl de USB versie het bij 4 speed houdt. Hier heb je wat info, klik hier voor meer.

Hewlett-Packard Company today introduced two new series of CD-RW drives with SCSI and USB interfaces -- the HP CD-Writer Plus 9200i series and the HP CD-Writer Plus 8200e series, respectively. With the addition of these drives, HP offers users a wide range of connection options, including SCSI, USB and IDE interfaces.

The HP CD-Writer Plus 9200i series is HP's leading-edge CD-RW drive. HP's first SCSI-solution writes at up to 8X transfer speed and reads data at up to 32X transfer speed. Designed for the performance-conscious customer, this drive offers read speeds faster than many CD-ROM drives.

The new plug-and-play HP CD-Writer Plus 8200e series has a USB connection that writes data at up to 4X transfer speed and reads data at up to 6X transfer speed. This offers users a cost-effective option that is easy to use and allows customers to move the drive between PCs.

``With the addition of these drives, HP rounds out its CD-RW product portfolio for home and business users alike and gives its customers more choices in performance, price and connection,'' said Kim Burch, CD-RW product manager for HP. ``These drives give users more options: SCSI provides higher performance and USB provides ease of use.''

The HP CD-RW drives combine the compatibility, flexibility and storage capacity of a CD with the ``drag-and-drop'' ease of use of a floppy disk. CD-RW drives allow users to create, write, rewrite, store, manage and share data, music, photos and more on a CD just as they would save information to a floppy. However, CDs can store up to 650MB of data -- the equivalent of more than 400 standard high-density floppy disks or 20,000 scanned pages of text.

Het gaat nu erg rap met de GeForce 256 informatie die vrijkomt. Dit heb ik nog bij elkaar verzameld:

3DGPU.com (was nv10.net) heeft het volgende:

- Een officiële GeForce 256 FAQ

- Een "features and benefits" pagina. Alle voordelen van de GeForce 256 worden hier uitgelegd.

- Een lijstje met aankomende GeForce 256 supported games:

- Wat screenshots van de nVidia GeForce 256 demo.

[break]Riva3D heeft ook nog wat spul:[/break]

- Wat technische info over AGP 4X Fast Writes, Cube Environment Mapping, Microsoft DX7 en Tranform & Lighting. (allemaal in .pdf format.)

- 20 screenshots van een nVidia demo.

Als laatste bespreekt de site Bjorn3D ook nog wat technische features van de GeForce 256. Vooral T&L komt uitgebreid aan bod.

Beyond 3D heeft nu ook een review van de Voodoo3 3500TV online gemikt. Met de release van de NV10, uh, GeForce 256 zo dichtbij is deze kaart nu wel wat aan de late kant eigenlijk. De TV tuning en video editing features blijven natuurlijk wel geinig. Voor de review, klik hier.

There was one extremely serious problem with the 3500TV with online gaming. It seems that Quake2 engine based (I think with all of them, though I’m not certain) there is a stuttering problem and really effects game play. From my understanding, this problem only exists with people using Internet Explorer 5 though. 3dfx is working on a fix for this, though it is not yet available.

I can really say I'm extremely impressed with the Voodoo3 3500TV. It has to be the most feature-rich board that I’ve ever used. The TV tuner is great, as is the video input. The FM radio is also a very interesting aspect, and it is very convenient. The performance is great, although there are some features missing from the Voodoo3 chip. Overall, I was extremely happy with the board.

So who should get this board? Well that is difficult to answer. If you already have a next-generation 3D accelerator, you might be better off staying away. Chances are you’re happy with what you have now. Now if you are looking for a new board and really want a TV-tuner, I’d certainly check out the 3500TV. While the Voodoo3 might not have 32-bit rendering and AGP texturing, it is still, in my opinion, a great chip. It is blazingly fast. So if you want speed and TV, certainly don’t overlook the 3500TV.

nVidia heeft de officiële press release van de GeForce 256 gepost. Hier heb je het ding:

AUGUST 31, 1999 – NVIDIA™ Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) announced that it has secured GeForce 256™ design wins with five of the top PC OEMs, including: Dell® Computer Corporation, Gateway, Compaq Computer Corporation, Micron Electronics, Inc.™ and NEC Direct. In order to meet the high-volume requirements of these customers, NVIDIA also announced it has begun full ramp of the GeForce 256 graphics processing unit (GPU) into full production.

"The GeForce 256 GPU is being accepted even faster than the RIVA TNT2 was," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA Corporation. "We've clearly accelerated our growing lead in the 3D graphics market and, as the first company to deliver an integrated transform and lighting solution, we're securing design wins across the board."

By adding the GeForce 256 GPU to their already successful product line, the industry's top PC OEMs will be able to deliver more complex, lifelike images; rich, realistic environments; enhanced artificial intelligence; and physics than ever before possible on a desktop PC. With the ability to deliver an unprecedented 15 million triangles per second and 480 million pixels per second, PC users experience a whole new level of visual realism.

The GeForce 256 GPU takes full advantage of all of the breakthrough features of Microsoft's® new DirectX® 7.0 application programming interface (API), and provides full support for OpenGL®. The combination of GeForce 256 and feature-rich APIs delivers the best quality graphics for entertainment, education, business and e-commerce applications and guarantees a new level of performance.

The GeForce 256 GPU supports up to 128MB of frame buffer memory and AGP 4X with Fast Writes to support the storage of high-quality 3D textures and a 350MHz RAMDAC, to drive the most extreme resolutions, color depths and ergonomic refresh rates, up to 2048 x 1536 @ 75Mhz. In addition to DirectX support, the GeForce 256 GPU provides full support for an OpenGL® ICD (Installable Client Driver) for Windows® 2000 and Windows NT®. [break] Verder hebben ze ook nog een press release over OEM support voor de GeForce 256:[/break] Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) announced that it has secured GeForce 256™ design wins with five of the top PC OEMs, including: Dell® Computer Corporation, Gateway, Compaq Computer Corporation, Micron Electronics, Inc.™ and NEC Direct. In order to meet the high-volume requirements of these customers, NVIDIA also announced it has begun full ramp of the GeForce 256 graphics processing unit (GPU) into full production. [break] En tenslotte ook nog een press release waarin nVidia bekend maakt dat inmiddels 6 videokaart-bakkers GeForce-256 planken zullen produceren: [/break] NVIDIA™ Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) announced today that six of the top independent graphic accelerator manufacturers have selected the recently announced GeForce 256™ graphics processing unit (GPU) for their add-in-card product lines. Creative Technology, Ltd., ELSA Inc., Guillemot Corporation, Canopus Co. Ltd., ASUSTeK Computer Inc. and Leadtek Research Inc. have all announced their intention to ship new, highly anticipated graphics boards based on NVIDIA's GeForce 256 GPU. The first graphics cards will be available on retail shelves beginning in late September.

Ik zag op Voodoo Extreme dat Mark Rein een vette posting op het GT Forum heeft gezet over de nVidia GeForce256. Zoe te leven heeft-ie erg veel vertrouwen in deze kaart:

Nvidia is definitely going to change the world of graphics.

Nvidia is going to announce the GeForce256 which is the product name for the NV10 their new "GPU" chip which supports hardware accelerated transform and lighting. Tim Sweeney and I saw it running behind closed doors at Siggraph and we were totally blown away. We saw some incredible demos with previously unimaginable numbers of polygons in real time, fully-lit, game-quality framerates and resolutions.

Nvidia is going to ship it this September and from a practical standpoint it's approaching the power of Sony's next generation Playstation's graphics hardware.

What's really interesting is that this is just the start of some pretty amazing hardware to come from them. They released TNT2 only 5 months ago and here they are today with GeForce256 less than a month away. Just think what kind of chip they'll be shipping when Sony's next generation Playstation actually does arrive.

Here's the cool part. Looking forward to Fall 2000 you'll probably be able to buy a Celeron 600 or AMD Athlon 600, 128Mb of RAM, a DVD-ROM, a 15+ Gb hard drive, a monitor and a GeForce256 in the $1,200 range from name-brand companies like Dell. Wow!

GeForce256 completely blows the PC graphics world wide open. There are a whole bunch of extremely impressive graphics cards coming out this year like GeForce256, Savage2000, and whatever 3DFX is going to call their next card. I'm sure others like ATI, 3DLabs, and Matrox will ring in with new offerings soon enough too. But so far Nvidia has upped the anty considerably and it will be interesting to see who responds when and with what.

So what else would I really like for Christmas? I'd like to see the graphics companies finally stop selling their older generation "value" parts like Riva128, original TNT, Rage 2, Rage Pro and others so system integrators wouldn't be tempted to ship these chips just to save a few bucks. That way everyone buying a system, even the low-end systems, could be assured of compelling 3D graphics performance right out of the box. I'd also like to see some decent graphics chips make their way into laptops so I could finally buy a kick-ass laptop capable of playing 3D games the way they're supposed to be played.

BTW, for you nay-sayers there WILL be games which can take advantage of the hardware T&L and the other features of the GeForce256 including DXTC texture compression. As a side note with GeForce256 Nvidia will fully support palletized textures which means this card will really scream with Unreal Tournament! It would have anyway because the fill rates are so high but this just makes it that much faster to boot.

Tweak3D heeft als eerst een preview gepost van de nVidia GeForce 256. Ja vrienden, dat is de naam van de NV10! (samentrekking tussen G-Force en Geometry). Ik vind het in ieder geval al een kewle naam. Hier heb je een overzicht van de specs:

- 32 texture samples per clock
- Full speed, 8-tap anisotropic filtering
- 15 Million triangles/second
- Sustained DMA, transform/clip/light, setup, rasterize and render rate
- More than 70% of the chip active at all times
- Up to 6 triangles "in flight" at a time (normally 1-3)
- Super-pipelined for very low latency between engines
- Cube Environment Mapping
- Vertex Blending
- 256-bit Rendering Pipeline
- 8 hardware lights
- 350 MHz RAMDAC
- AGP 4X with Fast Writes
- Highest Quality HDTV video playback

De GeForce256 kan net zoals de Savage2000 4 pixels per cycle renderen. Volgens Tweak3D is de fillrate 480MPix/sec, wat me nogal vreemd lijkt (dan zou het ding op 120MHz lopen). Tweak3D heeft verder een aantal toffe screenshots waarmee je het effect van de T&L engine kunt zien. Die info vind je allemaal hier.

De techies van The Tech Zone hebben een review online gezet van Asus' P3B-F moederbord. Deze bord volgt de PC99 standaard, heeft 4 DIMM sloten en is o.a. voorzien van een Soft Menu. Hier heb je een stukkie over de overklokbaarheid, de hele review vind je hier.

The biggest benefit of a jumperless motherboard is of course its ability to overclock your CPU without having to open your case to set jumpers. The Asus P3B-F allows you to adjust CPU multiplier, FSB, voltage to 2.4V, and AGP divider all in software. For all you Asus hardcore out there you can still do it the old fashion way if you so desired.

The range of bus speeds are the same as Abit's BE6. You can chose from 66, 75, 83, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 115, 120, 124, 133, 140, 150Mhz bus.

The 124 and 133Mhz bus allows you to chose between 1/3 or 1/4 PCI dividers. Above that bus speed, it's all 1/4. AGP divider can be either 1 to 1 or 2/3. Like Abit, Asus didn't add a 1/2 divider for AGP bus. Without a 1/2 AGP divider, using any bus speed over 133Mhz is pretty much ruled out as most AGP video card won't work above an 89Mhz AGP bus speed (2/3 of 133Mhz = 89Mhz AGP bus).

The P3B-F is not as stable as the Abit BE6. The Asus was unable to run my Pentium III-500 at 620Mhz. The best it can do was 600Mhz (120x5) at 2.2V. It was able to run my Celeron 366 at 605Mhz but it required 2.2V to do it. The Abit BE6 can do 605Mhz at default voltage and can take the Pentium III to 620Mhz at 2.20V.

This is a bit of a let down. Asus has always been known for very stable motherboards. I guess they mean stable at stock speeds only. The Abit BE6 is clearly better than the Asus P3B-F if overclocking is your thing.

Performance wise, it's the same as most other BX motherboard. Motherboards today are so close together that benchmarks are pretty useless as they're all within 2% of each other. What it comes down to is features and how stable it is.

AGN Hardware heeft een interview gepost met Mike Buchanon van S3, over de Savage2000:

Q: Your Four Texel Architecture sounds quite interesting, but also a bit confusing. With the current dual-texture processors, you are only able to take advantage of the extra power with games that support them. This is only a smaller level of games such as Quake 2 and others. Have you worked out a way to have all Direct3D games and OpenGL games work with the four texel architecture, or will the games still have to support them within their engine?

A: The architecture is really designed to sustain high fill-rates in a multi-textured environment, so it is primarily designed to be able to handle 2 textures at 2 pixels per clock at a very high sustained fill-rate. A byproduct of the design is that it can handle 4 textures as well. Most content today and in the future will at a minimum have a high percentage of their polygons supporting 2 textures per polygon and we expect this to move to 3 and 4 textures per polygon as we move forward. Once again we will be working with the ISVs on this and we expect that they can take advantage of this through the standard APIs without any special hooks required for our architecture.

Q: S3TL is quite impressive, thanks to the ability of Tranformation & Lighting to bring a new level of image quality to games that is equal to the latest Disney movies. Can you tell us a little bit about your decision to carry the S3TL? Also will you be working to have more S3TL supporting titles coming out from game developers?

A: I cannot really comment on the T&L that will be on NVIDIA's next generation chip. We did not consider NVIDIA when we were designing this. We looked at the APIs (DX7 & OpenGL) and we designed our geometry acceleration engines to be compliant with those APIs and what they were doing. So we intend to support the feature set as it is provided to us as it is provide to us by the two standard APIs that everyone is using. (DX7 & OpenGL)

Ik kwam bij Vooodoo Extreme deze info tegen over Mortyr. Zo te lezen is het spel in Polen (waar het ontwikkeld werd) al gereleased:

A last! Today, which is August 30, 1999, we started selling Mortyr in Poland. We are talking with abroad companies about selling Mortyr in the West, and it seems that possibly soon Mortyr will hit the world's shelves. Soon more detailed, official informations. In the meanwhile I'd like to inform that in spite of the great subtitles on our Eastern brothers' versions claiming that their Mortyr, although unauthorised, is "full", "final", "complete" - this is not true. The old code, unoptimised levels, logical errors - playing that is a mess. I know what I'm talking about, for I collect pirated versions of the game, I've been taking big part with.

Next news: Mortyr Cover Demo is ready. Like the full, released version, it has all the bugs of Internet Demo fixed (thanks to all the folks who wrote us e-mails. You helped us a lot!). There are three levels in the demo - each of them is compiled of several ingame levels, with different textures, lights, weather and enemies. This gives you some cool stuff to play, while not duplicating the game. If you are interested in including our demo on you magazine's CD, please contact us at @mirage.com.pl. There are some new levels in Mortyr itself, so the screens, section has been enriched.

Ik kwam bij Riva Station deze superwazige press release van Elsa tegen:

3Di-internet 3D interactive provides true three-dimensional display of web content on any PC

Aachen, August 30, 1999-The latest innovation of the Aachen-based ELSA AG is about to provide a revolution in Internet display.

The newly developed ELSA software, i3Di, soon to be shipped with the already successful REVELATOR 3D glasses, opens up a truly three-dimensional perception of the Internet to a wide circle of users.

In time for the Internationale Funkaustellung (IFA), the consumer electronics show in Berlin, ELSA engineers have succeeded in visualizing three dimensional web content in a way that results in true spatial perception.

ELSA thus for the first time provides the technical environment to experience the global Internet in an additional dimension and at consumer prices.

During the past weeks the advanced technology of the ELSA 3D glasses has already been well received by the gaming community, providing the viewer with an image that appears to be truly three-dimensional. The Internet magazine "Tommorrow" describes the ELSA 3D REVELATOR in the current August issue: "These glasses could revolutionize the game world!"

Klinkt cool, maar wtf is het?

Vince van Extreme Hardware heeft een review van de Creative Webcam 3 op z'n site geparkeerd. Hier heb je een stukje over de performance van dit apparaatje:

While I'm not a webcam buff, I found the performance at most resolutions to be very good. The only problem I had was at 640x480, and at that point the image became quite jerky and not at all suited for home video. The performance also has a bit to do with the CPU and memory of your PC, as the Pentium III performed a bit better than either the Pentium-266 laptop or the home machine when outfitted with a PII-300. Even with the PIII-450, I couldn’t really get a smooth video capture at 640x480, but still images were adequate. On the other hand, any resolution below 640x480 ran like the wind on my PCs. The snapshot button on the WebCam 3 was an excellent touch and I found it quite a lot easier when taking stills. As for the colour and light features, I noticed that the automatic light adjustment, while slow, worked quite well in adjusting from sunlight to artificial. Lens adjustment could have been made easier, and the lens rim was a tad too small for me to adjust properly.

Riva 3D heeft een editorial gepost over de toekomst van 3dfx. Volgens Riva3D zal 3dfx z'n strategie aan moeten passen om niet in moeilijkheden te raken. Riva 3D trekt hierbij een vergelijking met de positie van IBM aan het eind van de jaren '80:

What happened to IBM when they tried to introduce their own proprietary Microchannel architecture bus to replace the aging XT bus serves as a classic example of what can go wrong. IBM basically owned the PC market, with the success of the PC and XT series of personal computers, until faced with clone manufacturers who provided a cheaper alternative to IBM's premium priced PCs. While the rest of the PC industry began knocking out the specs for the next generation bus, IBM relied too heavily on their brand name as they tried to recapture the corner on the market by creating their own bus. Initial support was good due to IBM's developer support program, but as support for their competitor's AT bus grew, the Microchannel architecture eventually flopped. Big Blue almost took an unrecoverable fall as a result. Had it not been for their diversified product line, IBM might very well have died right then and there.

3DFX now appears to be in a very similar situation. While the rest of the graphics industry focuses on optimizing their products for D3D and OpenGL feature sets, 3DFX will have to execute their business model flawlessly in order to avoid failure

Intel zal vandaag op het Intel Developer Forum de eerste Merced samples demonstreren. The Register heeft info:

Intel will also announce a further series of IA-64 initiatives including a specification called DIG64, intended to promote cross interoperability between Merced and other platforms. The operating systems which aim to run on Merced include Linux, IBM/SCOs Monterey, Win64, HP/UX, Sun Solaris and Novell Modesto.

We reported recently that Intel had succeeded in producing successful silicon and had managed to boot Linux but was having problems with booting Win64. Tomorrow will demonstrate whether a small army of developers from Microsoft have been able to iron out teething problems with the silicon.

Intel bobo Pat Gelsinger heeft op een ronde tafel meeting gezegd dat hij VIA (fabrikant van semi-brakke chipsets) als een grotere bedreiging ziet dan AMD (fabrikant van een super snelle x86 CPU's). De verklaring achter deze wazige uitspraak:

He said: "We're concerned about competition. Are we paranoid about competition from Asia? Yes, we are. We're seeing more and more first class silicon from Taiwan. Furthermore, they've got cheap capital. We are paranoid about Taiwan and we expect them to be very competitive, more so than AMD. They're a very potent force and we take them seriously."

Gelsinger said that Intel would respond to AMD's introduction of the Athlon K7 in the same way as it had done for the last 20 years.

Intel, he said, would respond with superior branding, superior technology and better execution.

Meer info vind je bij The Register.

AOpen heeft een nieuw BIOS voor de AX6BC gereleased. Rev 2.41 kun je hier downloaden.

Verder heeft Abit nieuwe BIOSsen voor de Abit BX6-II en BH6 Rev1.1 (de versie met héél veel busspeeds) op z'n FTP gezet:

BH6 Rev 1.1 BH632NK.EXE
BX6 Rev 2 BXRMW.EXE

Microsoft heeft bevestigd dat Windows 2000 wél over multi-monitor support zal beschikken. Betanews brengt het nieuws:

Rumors have been flying recently about whether or not the final version of Windows 2000 would include multi-monitor support. After a recent article in PCWeek claimed Microsoft was dropping the handy feature, beta testers asked for the official word from Microsoft and it came. Windows 2000 will include multi-montior support upon release, and will be able to take advantage of upcoming software and hardware that utilizes it.

Ik kwam bij EETimes een interessant artikel tegen over Rambus en de hoge produktiekosten van Rambus RIMMs (momenteel zijn die dingen minimaal twee keer zo duur als vergelijkbare SDRAMs):

Several factors are keeping upward pressure on prices, Mailloux said. RDRAM's die size is about 25 percent larger than SDRAM's, and RDRAM chips need more expensive packaging. Inadequate testers have also boosted overall production cost.“The biggest concern among customers is the cost,” said Mailloux. “I don't realistically see how we can sell [RDRAM chips] for less than a 50 percent premium anytime soon.”

[...] To whittle the premium, he said, RDRAM developers are working on reducing the die penalty to 10 percent. Further, he said, as memory vendors travel the production learning curve for the parts and as testers improve, RDRAM chips that run at full speed will become more plentiful. [break] Verder ook wat info over DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAMs, die o.a. door de nieuwe VIA Athlon chipset ondersteund zullen worden: [/break] For now, Micron is sampling 128- and 144-Mbit RDRAM chips on a 0.18-micron process at $45 each in 1,000-unit quantities. Mailloux said high costs may lead some to consider alternatives like DDR DRAM, which the company is sampling in 64-Mbit densities. “Most of our initial interest for DDR chips is in servers,” he said. “OEMs are concerned about the cost of Rambus where they will [use] gigabytes of memory.”

[...] DDR DRAM technology is similar to SDRAM, thereby simplifying every phase from R&D to manufacturing to test. Mailloux said about 70 percent of the manufacturing stage for DDR chips is the same as for basic SDRAM. Further, he said, the dice are the exact same size, and testing is not significantly different.

“In the long run, DDR should cost about the same as SDRAM,” he said. “We're seeing about a 10 percent premium now.” While most SDRAM chips are tested on 32- and 64-site heads, which offer rapid throughput, current RDRAM test heads hold just eight chips. And the test systems cost several million dollars.

[...] For now, RDRAMs' premium may squeeze them out of consumer PCs, where SDRAMs are expected to dominate. And DDR appears to be the better fit for high-end servers. That could relegate Rambus to the limited market for performance desktops and perhaps to low-end servers and workstations, said Mailloux.

Cor en kornuiten hebben op de Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) de release van een DVD video-recorder aangekondigd. Het apparaat maakt gebruik van het DVD+RW format en zal midden volgend jaar op de markt geplant worden:

The Dutch giant demonstrated a DVD video recorder based on the company-developed DVD+ReWritable (DVD+RW) Video format, at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 1999, Europe's largest consumer electronics show held here this week.

In the demonstration, Philips showed that recordings made with a DVD video recorder on DVD+RW discs will play back on any existing DVD video players -- those offered by competitors as well as by Philips.

This drive by Philips to commercially launch its DVD+RW video-format-based DVD video recorder within a year comes as the industry faces the irreconcilable fragmentation of rewritable video-disk formats. Different camps are pushing several different rewritable formats including DVD-RW, DVD-RAM as well as Multimedia Video File (MMVF) developed by NEC. Other consumer-electronics companies including Matsushita Electric and even Sony -- a co-developer of the DVD+RW format along with Yamaha, Ricoh, Hewlett-Packard and others -- remain silent on plans to offer digital video-disk recorders. They pointed out that recording capacity and picture quality -- enabled by the DVD+RW video format -- may not satisfy consumers' needs today. Other industry executives also expressed concerns over copy-protection issues. On a 4.7-Gbyte single-sided disc, the Philips-developed DVD+RW video format can record two to four hours of video.

Voor de complete info zul je ff richting EETimes moeten fietsen.

De Hotmail beveiligingskrater (zie deze nieuwsposting) is inmiddels door Microsoft dicht gegooid, zo bericht Techweb:

Microsoft's Hotmail free e-mail service went back up around 10 a.m. PST Monday, after the company took it down for about an hour to deal with a major security breach.

The problem involved a website that posted an HTML script, which could be used to access accounts by typing in a user name. Once inside, someone using the script could read, erase, or send mail from the account.

De geruchten dat de release van Win2k wordt verschoven naar 2000 worden luider (en als er geruchten zijn dat een Microsoft produktie wordt gedelayed, dan is dat meestal ook zo). Hier heb je wat info uit een nieuwsposting van GA-Source:

Two sources, both Microsoft partners, said the company will formally launch Windows 2000 in January. One source said that Microsoft would make a soft announcement by the end of the year to cushion the public relations blow.

The other source said that by the time the January rolls around - when Microsoft will follow in Apple Computer's 1984 footsteps by launching the product during the Super Bowl - Windows 2000 finally will be in the channel, but just barely.

A few days ago, appearing at Dell Computer's user conference in Austin, Texas, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates said he was "pretty sure" Windows 2000 would be ready by the end of the year. "We are very close to the final shipment," Gates said.

Despite this, exactly what the high-tech industry will see by the end of 1999 from Microsoft is still uncertain - gold code released to manufacturing or boxes of Windows 2000 Server and Professional on shelves?

Armin van FullOn3D heeft een editorial gepost over Transform & Lighting acceleration, dat o.a. door de S3 Savage2000 en de nVidia NV10 ondersteund zal worden:

What we'll really see is more detailed 3D models, which will add to the realism of games, as well as better physics modelling, which also will improve the game experience.

What we won't see soon is a convinving improvement of the playable game resolutions above 1024x768 or really good antialising at 800x600 and above, the brute force renderers are just too weak for it - and VideoLogic is too weak to push their tile based renderer hard enough to make an impact.

What I also predict is heavy fire from the marketing departments to gloss over this lack - they have to sell these things to recover the reseach and development costs, after all. I don't think NV10, Savage 2000 or maybe 3dfx Voodoo4 will really be 4th generation chips, their memory interfaces will prevent them from adding the very significant output to their predecessors' abilities to create feasible accumulation buffer effects or convincing antialiasing. We'll end up with highly detailed but still ugly views.

Interesting... Check FullOn3D Opiniated voor het complete artikel.

Ook Sharky Extreme heeft een preview van de S3 Savage2000 gepost. Hier heb je een stukje over de T&L features van deze kaart:

S3TL is supposed to be three times more efficient than a CPU at this particular number crunching stage, which begs the question of how both Intel and AMD will respond? They certainly can't be overly 'thrilled' that 3D chip manufacturers are 'off-loading' from the CPU, thus making the need to upgrade the CPU not as necessary. The more efficient Savage 2000 S3TL will then enable, according to S3, four to ten times the amount of polygons and lighting complexity via Direct X7 and OpenGL implementation.

From our conversations with S3, it became apparent that they are going to be taking a slightly less aggressive stance on T&L in comparison to NVIDIA. They feel that the games industry needs some time to 'adopt' T&L efficiently. Indeed once this happens, game developers will not only be able to use more polygons and lights (up to 8 dynamic lights!) but in addition, these freed-up CPU processor cycles can then be used for AI, collision detection, physics, etc.. In the rush to adopt 3D graphics, game developer's attention to these features has lagged behind so it could turn out to be another plus for getting more depth into games, not just pretty pictures.

Volgens Sharky gaat de Savage2000 in oktober in massa produktie. De prijs van een Savage2000 plankje zal afhankelijk van het model naar verwachting tussen de 169 en 250 dollar bedragen.