Onze grote vrienden van IDG Webwereld brengen het nieuws dat A2000 Internet, samen met Telekabel en Gelrevision, naar Chello zullen verhuizen:

A2000 heet vanaf vandaag UPC Nederland. Per 16 september verandert de naam van de A2000 internetdienst in Chello. Abonnees zijn hoogst verbaasd en reageren verontwaardigd.

Klanten die enkel kabeltelevisie en telefonie afnemen van A2000 zullen weinig merken van de switch. Internetabonnees moeten echter een migratie doorstaan. De ongeveer 16.000 kabelinternetters, die nog niet op de hoogte zijn gebracht van de wijziging, zullen allemaal een nieuw e-mailadres krijgen en moeten zich onderwerpen aan de voorwaarden van Chello.

[...] In Nederland behoren naast A2000 ook Telekabel en Gelrevision tot UPC. Die bedrijfsnamen vervallen ook.

Het complete verhaaltje lees je in dit nieuwsbericht van Webwereld (en thanks to Harry voor de tip).

Op AGNhardware vond ik een review van de Matrox Millennium G400. Misschien interresant voor de Matrox fans (don't we all?):

The Marvel G400 is quite impressive with performance and features, bringing a new level of gaming to your PC. Even though the TNT2 Ultra is still going to perform by a few frames per second faster with some games, they are not going to be able to offer this level of features. The Dual-Head technology is gorgeous, the DVD features on both the TV and your PC is impressive beyond thought and the EMBM support also provides a new level of game development. Even the upcoming S3D and NVIDIA cards are not going to support Dual-Head technology or EMBM, so even though their performance will be faster in a few months, their lack of support for those features is depressing.

De review kan je hier lezen.

Op AMD zone las ik dat VIA een stel nieuwe drivers heeft uitgebracht. Het gaat om een pakketje van 4 drivers met daarin het volgende:

The 4-in-1 driver is suitable for all VIA chipsets using Windows 95, 98, 98SE, NT. This driver will install the:

- IDE Busmaster (2.1.41)
- VIA AGP 3.55
- IRQ Routing Driver (1.3a)
- VIA Registry (ACPI).

Also included is the VIA DMA Tool which facilitates the adjustment of DMA settings. The 4-in-1 Driver will automatically detect which versions of drivers you are currently using as well as determine the necessity to upgrade.

De drivers kan je hier downloaden.

3DGaming.com heeft een preview van de ATi Rage Fury Pro neer gemikt. 'Pro' staat hier voor de opgefokte kloksnelheid en de toevoeging van S3 Texture Compression:

The combination of a DXTC enabled high performance 2D/3D graphics chip and the unique Rage Theater technology, makes the Rage Fury Pro a clearly compelling product for not only the avid gamer, but also the family PC. As a low-end to mid-range card, ATI's primary competitors will be the S3 Savage4 Xtreme and Matrox G400. The Savage4 Xtreme is on equal footing with ATI in terms of multimedia performance, however its 3D won't be as fast as ATI nor will it have the Rage Theater feature. In favor of S3, the Stealth III Xtreme is $130, which is likely to be cheaper than ATI. The G400 seems like a closer competitor. Both should have nearly equal 3D performance, however the comparison is far more interesting than this. ATI has S3TC but Matrox has Enviroment Mapped Bump Mapping. ATI has Rage Theater powered DVD while Matrox has DVDMax. Finally, ATI has Rage Theater Video-Input vis-à-vis Matrox's DualHead Twin Monitor support. In other words, the two Canadian giants have both infused their products with unique features designed to make their cards more than just toys.

Volgens The Register, die de info weer van een japanse Mac site heeft, zal de iMac II volgende week op de Apple Expo Paris geïntroduceerd worden:

According to the source, Apple is preparing two models: one with a 13in TFT display, the other with a 15.8in LCD screen. The former will ship with a built-in CD-ROM drive, the latter with a DVD-ROM unit. Both machines, the site says, will support Apple's AirPort wireless networking technology, but since this is a key part of Apple's product strategy, AirPort support was always a given. Apple will ship the machine in a variety of colours, including a more sober white and grey model aimed at offices.

All of this sounds plausible given what's leaked out about the next iMac already. Current specs. include a 400MHz PowerPC 750 (aka G3) processor with 512K backside L2 cache, 64MB RAM, 8GB UltraDMA/66 hard drive and a couple of much-requested FireWire/IEEE1394 ports.

Meer info over de tweede generatie AaiMacs vind je hier.

Ace's Hardware heeft weer een erg diep artikel over de Athlon architectuur in elkaar gemetseld. Hier een hap uit het artikel, over de memory performance van de EV6 en GTL+ bus:

In June '98, AMD fastest processor, the K6-2 300, only ran 3 times faster than the memory clock speed. In other words, memory speed is becoming more and more of a limiting factor in PC architectures. The Athlon will benefit from faster memory modules as the 200 MHz EV6-bus (bandwidth = 1.6 GB/s) can easily swallow the bandwidth delivered by a DDR SDRAM at 100 MHz (bandwidth = 100 MHz x 2 (double rate) x 8 bytes = 1.6 GB/s). The Slot A specifications will even allow a 266 MHz EV6 bus, so DDR SDRAM at 133 MHz could be put to good use. Coppermine, on the other hand, will hardly benefit from RAMBUS at 400 MHz (PC 800, Bandwidth = 1.6 GB/s) as the GTL bus is limited to 133 MHz (Bandwidth = 1.06 GB/s).

Sharky heeft een nieuwe issue van z'n 'Sharky's Private Eye' column gepost. Deze keer o.a. info over de Athlon socket versie:

Several sources pointed out the fact that Slot-A is not going to have (at least on the lower-end) a long lasting life for the Athlon as AMD plans to move to a socket based Athlon 'Select' launch next year for the low-end. The Socket 423 (number of pins) could change and plans are to build more capacity for memory and integrate an 8MB L2 cache. You can expect Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI et al. to be releasing socket based Athlon motherboards in Q1 of next year. More good news for AMD comes as the company has allegedly gotten their Dresden factory online, thus the shift to .18micron happening by late November is rapidly becoming a distinct possibility. Bearing in mind that the Athlon 700 is due to start shipping in October, AMD looks certain to grab yet more attention. [break] Tevens info over nieuwe CPU's van Intel, waaronder de 'Tejema'. Geen idee waar dit ding vandaan komt, ik ben 'm op nog geen enkele Intel roadmap tegengekomen (Tejema is gebaseerd op de Willamette?): [/break] The most exciting news we heard was of Intel's plans for their "Tejema" 1.2Gigaherz processor. Yes that's right- 1.2GHz. Current plans are to release this mammoth CPU in the second half of 2000. This release time frame might well change if AMD can get their ramp up to speeds approaching 1Ghz by that time.

Sharky gaat verder met info over de ATi 'Aurora', Videologic Neon 250, Sega Dreamcast, Daikatana, Unreal Tournament en meer. Dat spul lees je allemaal hier.

Ik lees bij Slashdot dat Redhat de beta versie van RH6.1 (codenaam Lorax) op z'n FTP heeft geparkeerd:

A new beta of Red Hat is out, available at the Red Hat FTP site. This presumably pre-6.1 release is named Lorax, with quite a bit of new features (note: this is beta and is NOT intended for everyone). Perhaps the biggest is their new installation program, Anaconda, featuring gtk+ and text interfaces. Even better, Anaconda is GPLed. Mirror list available here. Check it out.

Storage Review heeft een review van de Western Digital Expert WD273BA op het net gekickt. Deze nieuwe ATA/66 schijf draait op 7200rpm, heeft een platter size van 6,8Gb en gaat net zoals z'n voorganger vergezeld van een 2Meg grote cache. Dankzij dit alles wordt de vorige week tot ATA king of the hill bekroonde Maxtor DiamondMax 6800 al weer van z'n troon geschopt: de WD schijf is sneller:

As the successor to the 7200rpm Editor's Choice drive in our recent Drive Roundup, the WD273BA is a drive from which we expect nothing less than the best. In a way it delivers, setting record scores for an ATA drive in Windows 95. In some cases, however, the margin of victory was disappointingly slim. Let's take Business Disk WinMark 99 results, for example. The WD drive (which is, after all, based on Win-9x-powerhouse IBM's technology) edges by the DiamondMax Plus 6800 by a nearly unnoticeable 2%. When it comes to the High-End Disk WinMark, the Expert triumphs by a beefy 18% margin. It should be noted, however, that the DiamondMax is rather soft in the High-End WinMark in Win9x. When comparing the Expert to another new-generation drive, say, the Quantum Fireball KX, the Expert still leads, but by a less impressive margin of 8%.

3D Soundsurge heeft een review van de Klipsch ProMedia v2.400 speakers online gezet. De set wordt geleverd met een 160Watt subwoofer en 4 60Watt satellites! Het is tevens de eerste THX gecertificeerde multimedia speaker. Errug heftig spul dus:

The subwoofer is simply awesome and the satellites bring out more of the high end than any other multimedia speaker I have tested. In fact, they actually have better frequency response than my home stereo system! The sound is nicely balanced right up to around 75-80 percent of power output. Beyond that level I found the satellites got somewhat harsh and were no longer blending well with the subwoofer. The satellites are so good that they will expose flaws in your system. I confirmed that the flaws are in the rest of the PC and not the Promedia’s by exchanging the satellites with another leading brand and the difference was amazing.

The Micro Tractrix horn mounted dome tweeter produces incredible high end. This really brings something to light. A look at most multimedia speakers will show that they all claim to go to 20,000 Hz. What the specs do not show is at what sound level and at the risk of gushing, the Promedia’s really show how big a difference there can be. This revealing nature makes placement of the sound card all the more important so be sure that you have the soundcard with a good s/n ratio (that basically all the second generation cards listed below) placed in a "quiet" PCI slot.

3D Soundsurge geeft een rating van 99,5%! Check de review voor meer info over deze supergeile (250 dollar kostende) set.

De BE6 is nog nauwelijks op de markt of Abit heeft al weer een opvolger klaar staan. De BE6-II is van een nieuwe klok generator voorzien die maar liefst 100 busspeed settings uit kan poepen!

Ook nieuw is de BF6, vergelijkbaar met de BE6-II maar dan zonder ATA/66 controller en met 6 PCI slots:

De specs van deze borden vind je bij de OC' broeders van HardOCP.

BXBoards heeft een Vortex II shoutout gepost, met een vergelijking van de Diamond Monster Sound MX300, Xitel Storm Platinum en Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla. Van deze drie kaarten werden de Storm en Turtle Beach als beste bevonden:

The Xitel card has a digital (coaxial) connector, so transfering digital sound will not be a problem at all (i.e. no quality degradation). The headphones are a very novel idea, and are excellent overall. The bass returns on these headphones are amazing, and coupled with the force feedback it provides a somewhat unique experience. If you are the hardcore gamer, than this is the primary choice- keep in mind the Quadzilla is hot on its feet and you would not be disappointed with either.

The Montego II Quadzilla is a unique soundcard as it has a host of great features for the audio enthusiast. This card is presently in my gaming system and I am very satisfied with the excellent drivers and other audio programs that Voyetra Turtle Beach provided with the card. I have fooled around with some of the audio programs and would like to say that dabbling with these programs has started a new audio interest for me. This card comes with oodles of software, and a lot of it can be put to good use, so look this way for a great solid card with lots of cool software. I would like to add that this is the only card in this shootout with an S/PDIF connector as part of the package, so higher quality sound could be yours with this card.

Tom en zijn handlangers hebben het tweede deel van hun 32 Graphics Card Meltdown online gezet. In dit deel vind je een zware verzameling Shogo, Expendable, Descent en Quake3 benchmarks. Een conclusie is er nog niet, want die volgt in Part III. Wel heeft-ie een stukje over de neergang van Hercules:

It's sad to see the business go under with such a great product line. I still included the card in the review for the folks that might be able to still get a hold of one. I'm sure they're still floating around in some warehouses. I will definitely miss the performance and quality of Hercules TNT family of products. I felt the same way when Canopus stopped making cards for the U.S. market. The real loses came to the consumers who couldn't get the high-end products anymore.

Andy van BXBoards heeft een review gepost de Shuttle AE14. Yup, alwéér een i810 mobo review bij BXB. Dit exemplaar van Shuttle lijkt de zaken echter beter voor elkaar te hebben dan de low-end plankjes van andere fabrikanten:

This is an excellent product, and shows just what can be done with the i810 board if you put your mind to it. Whereas most manufacturers are firmly pitching for the low end with their implementations, Shuttle have gone for the Full Monty here, with a specification to match many full blown BX boads.......the AE14 is certainly the most well rounded i810 board we've seen, with excellent expansion and is a decent overclocker too! If you want a i810 board, then the AE14 should be right at the top of your shopping list.

Ace's Hardware heeft een posting met VIA chipset info, afkomstig van een aantal onleesbare Taiwanese nieuwssites:

VIA has been in a lot of spotlight lately and they have gained so much momentum from PC133 initiative, Cyrix and Centaur buyouts etc. that they are now aiming high to overtake Intel as the World's main chipset supplier in 2001. With Intel gaining attention by disclosing its future roapmaps at the recent IDF, VIA is certainly not waiting long in announcing its own future plans. According to this this PC Home Taiwan report , VIA is releasing a newer version of Apollo Pro 133 which supports 4X AGP, Apollo Pro 133A, soon. Apollo Pro 133 has been very popular lately among motherboard makers thanks to the shortage of BX chipset and the trouble-plagued i810 chipset. Also, in order to keep up with the increasing demands for bandwidth by peripherals (UATA-100, 4 USBs, AMC-97 Codecs etc.), VIA will incorporate into its chipsets a new architecture feature called HTML (High Throughput Memory Link). HTML is VIA's very own way of increasing the throughput between the South and the North Bridges. By using HTML to support a 200 MB/s transfer rate Link-Bus between the two Bridges, data transfer between the CPU and the peripherals can be sped up accordingly. In the future this data transfer rate will be increased further to 400 MB/s.

As for integrated chipset solutions, VIA intends to roll out Promedia II soon. Promedia II will give end-users the option of upgrading the graphics card in the future because it does support a 4X AGP slot besides the integrated graphics adapter. And as pointed out by CTech Taiwan earlier, this Promedia II solution will be incorporated into VIA's Slot-A solution, KX-133, to make KM-133 -- a low-cost integrated chipset solution for the AMD Athlon processors. In a related report, CTech Taiwan reveals that VIA intends to incorporate IEEE 1394 (Firewire) into its chipsets by next year. Promedia II, which will be produced in quantities early next year, will be the first VIA chipset to incorporate IEEE 1394.

3ag.net, oftewel 3D Accelerated Gaming, heeft een review van de Elsa Erazor III eXtreme online gezet. Deze kaart is enigzins vergelijkbaar met de ATi All-in-Wonder en 3dfx Voodoo3-3500TV: er zitten namelijk allerlei handige video-in en video-out features op:

Enough to fit pretty much all your needs. Everything worked impecibly, with the exception of audio. None of the cables were marked audio, and no instruction of how the audio was to work could be located. For exporting purposes, I suppose a VCR-Stereo jack would work. I can't express how amazed I was with the video capabilities of this card. I could capture 1600x1200 with no lag on it, and it worked great every time. Getting it running was no problem, except the audio thing. This is a great addition to the already wonderful TNT-2 core, and gives it an advantage over almost any other TNT-2.

Daiki heeft de specs (thanks Sake voor de link) gepost van de Freeway FW-K7VM moederplank. Ik heb geen idee waar die fabrikant opeens vandaan komt (nooit van gehoord?), maar het plankje is in ieder geval erg relaxed: busspeeds van 90 tot 150MHz, met heel veel tussen settings. Dit maakt Athlon overclocking mogelijk zonder dat je levensgevaarlijke operaties op de Athlon PCB uit hoeft te voeren:

Type	FW-K7VM
CPU	Enhanced 3DNow!(TM) AMD Athlon(TM)
	500MHz / 550MHz / 600MHz / 650MHz ~
Chipset	North Bridge: AMD-751(TM) chipset 200MHz FSB EV-6 bus
	South Bridge: VIA VT82C686A chipset
System Logic (CPU/SDRAM Frequencys)	90,95,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107, 108,109,110,111,112,113,114, 115,116,117,118,119,120, 121,122,123,124,125,133,140,150MHz
Vcore	1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 2.0V
Vi/o	3.31,3.4,3.56V
System Memory	168pins 3.3V DIMM×3
	PC-100 SDRAM max768MB
Slot	AGP×1 AGP 2.0 AGP 1X/2X
	AMR×1
	PCI×5 PCI 2.2 ,Bus master
On Board Sound	AC97 V2.1 CODEC
PCI IDE	PCI IDE×2
	UltraDMA/66, UltraDMA/33, PIO Mode 4-3, PCI IDE Bus Master mode 2
I/O	Floppy×1
	Serial×1
	ECP/EPP Parallel×1
	PS/2(TM)Key Board×1
	PS/2(TM) Mouse×1
	USB×4
Power Management	Enhanced ACPI
	Wake-On-Ring
	Wake-On-LAN
	Fan Off-start
Form factor	ATX
	ATX Power supply
System Management	System Hardware Monitor (Fan,Voltage, CPU temperature, system temperture
BIOS	2Mb AMI BIOS
	Several CPU/SDRAM MHz settings
	HD/SCSI/ZIP/CD/Floppy/Network boot up
etc	Chipset driver
	PC Probe
	Trend PC-cillin Anti-Virus

[break] Ho, wacht: ik lees net bij Ace's Hardware dat dit vage Freeway bordje in feite een ge-OEMde Asus is: [/break] Thanks to Firebird and Daiki for notifying me of Freeway's annoucement of its K7 Motherboard, FW-K7VM . Now Freeway does not make its own motherboards, but sells motherboards OEM'ed by other motherboard makers. If you remember, Freeway's Super-7 motherboard FW-TI5VGF was made by TMC. So it's believed that this FW-K7VM is actually OEM'ed by Asus and is very similar to Asus's yet-to-be-released K7 board, K7M. In any case, FW-K7VM certainly looks like an interesting motherboard because it could well be the first overclockable K7 motherboard. It boasts, besides the normal 5PCI/1AMR/1AGP/3DIMM layout, an interesting combination of variable Vcore (1.3-2.0v) and VI/O (3.31,3.4,3.56V) settings, and more importantly, vast CPU/Memory frequency settings of 90-100Mhz (5Mhz increment), 101-125Mhz (1Mhz increment),133,140 and 150MHz! Woohoo!

BDW: volgens JC is de FIC SD11 in de VS al leverbaar, voor een prijs van 185 dollar.

3DGaming.net heeft een verhaaltje in elkaar gedraaid over een naar 600MHz overgeklokte PIII-450. Er worden een paar standaard overklok trucjes uitgelegd, maar in feite komt het er gewoon op neer dat je geluk moet hebben...

As we established in the Alpha heatsink review, the cache on the Pentium II/III series is probably the most frustrating factor in overclocking. The Pentium III 450 comes with either -4ns or -4.4ns cache. We'll only be working with -4ns cache, since those are the ones that will make it to 600MHz

Since the cache runs at 1/2 the speed of the processor, we need to find chips with cache that will run at 300MHz. Well, a -4ns part is only spec'ed to run at 250MHz, so even with 4ns cache, you aren't guaranteed to hit 600MHz. This is where the special report gets interesting.

Dansdata heeft een comparison gepost van de Asus V3800 Magic en de Leadtek Winfast S325. Beide zijn TNT2 Model 64 'Butterfly' kaarten met gemankeerde 64-bit geheugen bus:

All of these cards deliver roughly the same performance, although the Butterfly would probably win by a decent margin if you stuck a fan on its heatsink (which is easier said than done). They don't, however, offer amazing value for money, possibly because they've all got the not-very-useful 32Mb of RAM. By the time games can routinely make use of this much video memory, NVIDIA's recently announced GeForce super-card will be out, possibly along with similarly specified offerings from 3Dfx and other makers. There'll probably still plenty of Model 64 cards on the shelves then, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd been pushed to half their current price by superseded TNT2s and Voodoo 3 boards.

Extreme Hardware heeft de specs van Leadtek's GeForce 256 kaart te pakken weten te krijgen:

- NVIDIA GeForce-256, 256-bit Graphics Processing Unit
- 350MHz RAMDAC display resolution up to 2048x1536 32-bit
-32MB memory on board
- Support AGP 2X/4X with Fast write Support
- Driver optimized for P.III SSE™ and AMD 3D NOW™
- DVD Software included
- Optional Digital Flat Panel out maximum resolution support 1600x1200
- Optional TV-out support NTSC/PAL

Overclockers.com heeft een review gepost van de Xtreme Heat Sink, een koelertje waarmee je de cache chips van je PII/PIII koud kunt krijgen. Volgens de ervaringen van Overclockers.com helpt het, want een PII-333 die voorheen nauwelijks stabiel was op 500MHz/2,3V doet het tot 550MHz!

I mounted the assembled unit in my Abit BE6. With the Xtreme Heat Sink and the Alpha installed I am now able to run this processor at 550 (5 x 110) at 2.2 volts! It will run 500 @ 2.1 where it previously would only do this at 2.3 volts and still lock up.

PVR Net heeft een aantal Neon 250 Quake3 screenshots gepost. De beeldkwaliteit ziet er goed uit en de snelheid schijnt ook okee te zijn:

I got the screenshot function in Q3ATest working now, so snapped a whole bunch of Q3A shots on the Neon250. Even though I've seen this running before, the richness of colour and image quality are pretty amazing on Neon250. Furthermore, it's perfectly playable at 1024x768 in 32bit on a Celeron300 clocked to 450 (128MB memory). Enjoy.

De elf hi-res (1024x768) screenshots vind je hier.

Speedy3D heeft z'n ECTS 99 report online gezet, met o.a. info over Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament, C&C: Renegade en Warcraft III. Hieronder twee screenshots van Team Fortress 2: