Volgens News.com verloopt de amerikaanse release van de Sega Dreamcast voorspoedig: op de introductiedag werd er meer omgezet gedraaid dan tijdens de release van Episode One (op zich niet zo verwonderlijk aangezien de Dreamcast ietsie meer kost dan een bioscoopkaartje...). :

First the good news: The highly anticipated Dreamcast console reaped $97 million in sales during the first 24 hours on the market, beating even the opening day gross of this summer's blockbuster Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, the company boasted. But the explosive debut of the game console was marred by some faulty game CDs that resulted in some early customer gripes. Sega's Dreamcast console has been touted as one of the first products to realize the much-hyped vision of convergence between television and computer.

Priced at $199, the device ships with a Web browser on a disc that allows gamers to access the Net from their television. The console features a 200MHz processor, 3D graphics chip, and preferred Internet access from AT&T WorldNet. Sony is expected to introduce the next generation of its Playstation next year, which will compete head-to-head with Sega. Because the Dreamcast combines high-quality graphics, gaming, Internet access, and Microsoft's Windows CE-compatible content, pundits have projected that the console represents the next wave of home computing. [break] Naast dit blije nieuws ("Our wildest expectations have been exceeded and we believe this is only the beginning") is er echter ook minder blij nieuws: [/break] But that vision became a little cloudier today, amid complaints that some Sega titles did not work. Some Sonic and Blue Stinger games and Web browser discs from one manufacturer were faulty, a Sega spokesperson confirmed. Less than one percent of games and less than one percent of browser discs were affected, the spokesperson said. The total number of games shipped was not disclosed. Sega released 18 game titles with the Dreamcast. "It's a small amount, but it's still important," the spokesperson said.

Betanews weet te vertellen dat Matrox nieuwe drivers voor de G400 heeft klaar gebakken:

- Millenium G400 ICD beta display driver (587Kb)
- Millenium G400 Windows 95/98 display driver (4,22Mb)

Ik kwam via JC bij dit anti-Mac artikeltje dat op zich wel grappig is. Je zult wel helemaal naar beneden moeten scrollen voor de up-to-date anti-Mac argumenten (het begint namelijk met niet-multitaskende Macs e.d. - dat kunnen ze inmiddels wel):

"The new PowerPC G4, architected by Apple, Motorola and IBM, is the first microprocessor that can deliver a sustained performance of over one gigaflop. In fact, it has a theoretical peak performance of four gigaflops."

That's nonsense. The very nature of the Intel and AMD instruction sets allows them to easily exceed 1 GFLOP in most floating point code. In truth the theoretical maximum of 2GFLOPs for a 500mhz P-!!! or K6-2 or Athlon is very easy to comve very close to on real world code. Its part of what is leading to continually higher and higher frame rates of games like Quake. (I wonder if Apple is at all interested in running timedemos head to head with comparable PCs.)

"Velocity Engine"'s ability to hit 4 GFLOPs requires that back to back MACs are peformed on every clock (counting a MAC as two operations). No other combination of "Velocity Engine" code will deliver that level performance.

"The Power Mac G4 comes with an ATI RAGE 128 graphics accelerator."

Well good for you. As of 08/31/99, the ATI Rage 128 was two generations behind the state of the art. nVidia announced the availability of the G-Force 256 graphics accelerator which adds 50 GFLOPs of performance to an x86 enabled PC, in addition to an unparalleled level of graphics performance. This obsoletes the nVidia TNT2-Ultra which in turn obsoleted the ATI Rage 128. In Job's otherwise well calculated drive to subsume existing PC technologies, he failed to realize the incredible volatility of the graphics industry and has ended up with a lemon. [break] JC heeft zelf ook wat info over de G4: [/break] You know, I wish I could find a middle ground. We're in the midst of all this hype right now on the G4 -- it's a well performing part, in my opinion, and I do think AltiVec has much more promise than 3DNow! or ISSE, but it certainly isn't "nearly three times as fast" as a Pentium III. Like Athlon, it does appear to have some advantage over the PIII, but the advantages of the G4 are so far shrouded in mystery. Even with its spec scores, since the reported spec95 test system had twice as much L2 cache and faster memory (CAS2 vs. CAS3 has been reported) than the actual G4 systems Apple is selling, performance of the production part is uncertain and probably will be until Motorola publishes their scores at spec.org. I'm waiting diligently. [break] En om te voorkomen dat ik nu de hele Apple nieuwsgroep over me heen krijg, er is ook positief nieuws: [/break] Tired Of Hacks, U.S. Army Switches To Macs

After a series of hack attacks, the U.S. Army has switched from Windows NT to Mac OS-based servers running WEBSTAR Web server software for the Army home Page, according to the U.S. Army Public Affairs department. A report in ArmyLINK News says the Macintosh does not offer remote logins and is considered more secure.

De amerikaanse overheid zoekt naar mogelijkheden om open source software toe te passen. Reden hiervoor is bezorgdheid over beveiligingsproblemen en grote afhankelijkheid van Microsoft produkten:

The National Security Council soon will create a new office to assess the ways federal agencies could make greater use of open-source, or nonproprietary, software that is freely available to anyone and has codes that are not secret.

"One of the areas we are very interested in looking at is open-source code," a senior White House official told Federal Times.

The effort ultimately could affect the types of software the government purchases for network servers and desktop applications.

[...] The new office will assess the costs and benefits of using open-source software to operate many government computers. Also to be determined are the cost and technical obstacles to communication between systems using open-source and the proprietary software now in use.

The White House official declined to say how extensive is the administration's plan to diversify its reliance on operating systems software. A chief reason for the effort, according to advocates, is to address concerns that Microsoft operating systems are vulnerable to malicious computer viruses and hacker attacks. This is partly because the Microsoft software is proprietary and security vulnerabilities are more difficult to find and correct, said Przemek Klosowski, a NIST physicist and leader of the Washington, D.C., Linux User's Group.

Het complete verhaaltje lees je in dit artikel van Federal Times Online.

Black & White Wire heeft 8 screenshots van Black & White (de nieuwe god-sim van Peter Molineux en kameraden) op het net gezet. De graphics zien er al redelijk goed uit:

Bij 3D Wars hebben ze een interview afgenomen met Scott Sellers en Brian Burke van 3dfx. Ook in dit babbeltje schuiven ze de GeForce weer aan de kant, maar informatie loslaten over hun eigen product, ho maar... Hier heb je vast 3 vragen, de rest vind je hier.

[Q]: Does the next generation product have more than one redering pipeline (the Voodoo3 only has one, but can multitexture)?

[A]: We are not prepared to disclose at this time the technical details of our next product. However, I think it's safe to assume it will be untouched performance-wise for the majority of games out there...

[Q]: Do you see Nvidia'a new GeForce 256 as a potential threat to your plans? Is 3dfx planning to launch a whole new chipset, or base your next graphics product on the existing Voodoo architecture?

[A]: We certainly view the GeForce as a competitor to our next generation product. However, we believe the capabilities of the T-Buffer with its full-scene spatial anti-aliasing and other cinematic effects, combined with other new features which we have not disclosed, will make for a product which is much more compelling than what we've seen from the GeForce announcement.

[Q]: Do you see Nvidia'a new GeForce 256 as a potential threat to your plans? Is 3dfx planning to launch a whole new chipset, or base your next graphics product on the existing Voodoo architecture?

[A]: We certainly view the GeForce as a competitor to our next generation product. However, we believe the capabilities of the T-Buffer with its full-scene spatial anti-aliasing and other cinematic effects, combined with other new features which we have not disclosed, will make for a product which is much more compelling than what we've seen from the GeForce announcement.

Speedy 3D heeft een review online geschopt van Videologic's Sonic Vortex 2 A3D soundcard. Hier heb je een stuk uit de conclusie:

Overall I’m dishing this sound card a 9.0. How can that be? Well besides the fact that it didn’t have a great price or awesome sound quality, it did have a good bundle. Future Beat 3D was excellent and so are all the things you can do within the Sonic Max Properties. It far out paces the control panel of any other sound card on the market today. VideoLogic’s Sonic Vortex2 is above the pack in offering a good useful bundle. By using the Vortex2 chipset they are providing good sound quality for games and anything else you listen to. If you are in the market for an Sound Card that supports A3D 2.0, has a decent price, and need to convert sound files to MP-3’s, then I have a board for you. The Sonic Vortex2 from VideoLogic is the board you are looking for. You can purchase this card for $70 at the Outpost (www.outpost.com) by typing in VideoLogic in the search area.

Bert McComas (oude bekende van THG - deed daar ooit een aantal diepe RAM artikelen) van InQuest Market Research heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedouwd waaruit zou moeten blijken dat PC100 SDRAM geheugen gemiddeld 25% sneller is dan PC800 Rambus:

Though the results have yet to be independently verified, performance figures quoted by Mr. Bell generally indicate that under normal conditions, Rambus degrades the performance of Microsoft Office 2000 applications by an average of 25% as compared to PC100. Using a benchmark called Office Bench, Dell's engineers contrasted a BX chipset platform using 100MHz SDRAM against a Camino platform with 800MHz Direct Rambus. Other than DRAM and chip set, both systems were configured identically with 500MHz processors.

Hierbij moet wel gezegd worden dat Rambus zwaar in het nadeel is omdat de data over een 100MHz bus van chipset naar CPU moet (SDRAM en Rambus hebben dan allebei dezelfde maximale bandwidth, maar Rambus kamt met hogere latencies).

News.com heeft een nieuwsbericht gepost over de dwaze prijs stijgingen op de geheugen markt. In het artikeltje worden een aantal oorzaken genoemd voor de prijs explosie:

Although the price hike is real, its cause is tough to pin down. Production problems at some manufacturers and cutbacks in memory module manufacturing are rumored to be the cause, according to some sources.

Other possible, more factual, contributing factors: a nationwide electricity grid blackout in Taiwan earlier this summer that caused plant shut-downs, a transition to higher-capacity chips, and increased demand because of higher-than-expected PC sales.

[...] Kingston's Dreher cited a July electrical grid blackout in Taiwan as a factor in the price rise, stating that supply was affected by as much as two percent at that time. She also said that severe supply constraints in the market for flash memory--used in cell phones and digital cameras--is causing a scare in the DRAM segment.

Other manufacturers and analysts contacted today also noted the blackout and a rumor that Micron was having trouble with production yields as it transitions from 64-megabit to 128-megabit chips, causing panic buying.

[...] On the other hand, Dataquest's Guidici said that PC sales are going "to be very strong in the third quarter" when the numbers come out, meaning more demand for memory chips. This is on top of statements from Toshiba, one of the top five makers worldwide, that it would cut back drastically on the production of 64-megabit chips and from IBM about getting out of the commercial DRAM business. Hitachi is representative of a trend at Japanese makers to get of out of the mainstream 64-megabit DRAM market. Though the company still makes the 64-megabit variety, it is concentrating on pricey 256-megabit chips that are used in severs, according to Ron Bechtolds, a vice president at Hitachi Semiconductor America.

He has also seen a number of factors conspiring to drive up prices of the standard 64-megabit chips. Just as memory makers began to transition from 64-megabit to 128-megabit, low-cost PC makers upped the amount of memory standard in PCs from 32MB to 64MB, crimping supply, he said. "You have 2X demand now. A desire [by PC makers] to build inventory, plus the existing demand that's out there already."

Dan is het maar te hopen dat er snel wat meer 128-bit chippies op de markt komen, anders zitten we met een toenemende vraag terwijl de produktie achterblijft = dure DIMMetjes.

Hot Hardware heeft een review van de Matrox G400 Max op de site gepoot. In de review vind je weer de bekende EMBM screenshots en zoals gewoonlijk zijn er een aantal Quake2 en 3DMark99 benchmarks. Hier heb je een hap uit de conclusie:

It occured to me, as I was writing this review, that the G400MAX has to be the most underated and overlooked graphics card in the market right now. I was very pleased with its overall performance and the absolute perfection in which it rendered images on my desktop and in games. Environmental Mapped Bump Mapping is not just some marketing hype either. It is a real feature that makes a significant improvement in immersion and image quality. I am sure that others will follow in Matrox's footsteps with this feature and more games will be written with Bump Mapping support. Finally, the raw speed of this card coupled with the added feature of Dual Headed Displays, rounds out the total package nicely.

Het canadese Nortel en het engelse United Utilities zijn gestopt met het plan om internet via het stroomnet mogelijk te maken, zo bericht Techweb:

"The decision was arrived at on commercial grounds, not technical ones -- it performed well in trials," said United Utilities spokesman Alan Price. "The decision was taken in light of the competitive market for broadband access.

[...] "The volumes [of subscribers] were not there compared with xDSL and cable," Thomson said.

[...] "Some months ago, the IEE [Institute of Electrical Engineers] published an article raising concerns about electromagnetic compatibility [EMC] problems -- stuff leaking out of the wires [and interfering with other communications]," said Peter Aknai, senior consultant at telecom consultancy Analysys. "If there are EMC issues, it would add cost burdens to the system. Cable and xDSL don't suffer so much from EMC problems."

Tom heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid over het Intel Developers Forum dat afgelopen week plaats vond. Naast info over Coppermine, Merced, USB 2.0, Geyserville mobile CPU's en Bluetooth heeft-ie ook een stukje over de GeForce 256 (die vorige week door nVidia op het IDF werd geïntroduceerd):

Anyhow, the demonstration went on to give several graphical examples of what the GeForce could do. We were shown models of a tree, fire truck, sports car, bubble of water, boat on a lake and a cyber woman. Most of the models had a with high poly count sample and toggled into an insane poly count version. Each time the changes were so dramatic that it blew my mind. The detail that high poly counts offer is beautiful. The scenes were all gorgeous with fine details on just about everything. However, they claim to be able to sustain a 60 FPS average while using these high poly count scenes and I did NOT see that. I assume that this might be due to several possible reasons (it was being projected, early drivers, overly poly intensive demos) but you can be sure that Tom's Hardware will have the scoop very soon. The reason NVIDIA is able to bring us this insane performance is due to the integrated T+L engine. This makes lighting and transformation VERY fast and allows the graphics card to put mind-boggling amounts of polygons on our screen. The power of a SIMD processor running at 500 MHz might do something like 2 GFLOPs for example while NVIDIA claims that a Cray super computer would do around 38 GFLOPs. The GEFORCE 256 does a whopping 50 GFLOPs.

Mooi, dan hebben wij 50 super computers .

Samsung gaat de produktie van Rambus DRAMmetjes omhoog gooien, zo weet The Register ons te vertellen:

Samsung has set its stall on grabbing 60 per cent of the world's Rambus memory market this year, after saying it's the first company to begin mass-producing RDRAM chips.

The Korean vendor estimated its huge slice of the Rambus cake would draw up to $250 million in sales, rising to $2 billion in the year 2000, according to Korean daily Maeil Business Newspaper.

Samsung, which developed Rambus DRAMs six months before its rivals, will use its Rambus chips for 3D graphics products and use an 0.10 micron design rule.

Earlier this year, Intel invested $100 million in the Korean chip giant, on the condition that Samsung used the money to ramp up production of Rambus Direct DRAM.

Ik kwam bij Voodoo Extreme wat leuke info tegen over de release date van Unreal Tournament. Eerst is er een duitse game site (gxp.de) die beweerd dat de release van UT is uitgesteld naar februari 2000:

GT Interactive told us that the Release of Unreal Turnament will be postponed to February 2000. More info you'll find in our news section on www.gxp.de "News from September, 8th 1999"! It's realy scary and we're shocked !!!

The reason of this decision is simple, GT won't release a final if its not 100% running (no bugs and stable functioning)!! They told us they don't want to have such an update spectacle like they had with Unreal!!! [break] Billy / Voodoo Extreme vuurt daarop een mailtje richting Tim Sweeney / Epic met de vraag of iemand daar iets te veel van het foute spul gesmoked heeft : [/break] *Someone* is definitely smoking crack. That date is nuts; we intend to have the game on store shelves way before then. The information certainly didn't come from us. I don't think that they got that info from our counterparts at GT, because we sure as hell never communicated such a ridiculous and suicidally late release date to our publisher.

We're in the final stages of minor bug fixing and tweaking now. Though we haven't announced a release date, it's not far off. We're certainly not talking "next millenium" here.

This might just be a communication problem with GT's German office; we've had to jump through a lot of hoops with the German government to avoid

being banned there, which might be obfuscating UT's release date in Germany. But as far as I know, UT will ship in all of Europe and the United States simultaneously, and we're on track to make that so.

-Tim

Slecht nieuws voor Amiga fans: Gateway heeft besloten dat er geen nieuwe Amiga computers zullen komen (het wegsturen van twee hoge jopies, twee weken geleden, was al een onheilspellend voorteken). In plaats daarvan gaat Amiga zich richten op de ontwikkeling van een nieuw gebruiksvriendelijke Internet interfeesje:

Amiga's new direction may have been prompted by the input of recently hired high-profile scientists from Apple Computer, Xerox Parc, and Silicon Graphics. They'll work in a new research facility in San Jose, Calif. Further details regarding Amiga's new strategy, its technology partners, and investors in the project will be announced later this month, insiders say.

The primary goal is to develop a powerful and widely disseminated interface that will make it easier for people to access content on the Web. Consider the process of downloading music. Today a user must execute a complicated process to find a Web site and download music to be used on a special player. In contrast, Amiga's new software could be downloaded or embedded onto networked TVs, telephones, or personal digital assistants, and will allow users to get what they want through simple touch-screen or voice commands. "You'll be able to say, 'Show me the news or the weather' and you won't have to wait through the hassles of booting up a PC," one source says. Later, Amiga envisions a business selling software applications over the Internet that will add functionality to Net appliances.

"The idea is to enable an extra layer of processing on top of Sun's standard to connect devices, then license it to manufacturers. It's not a bad idea, but the competition will be a little tough," says David B. Haynie, a former senior designer at Amiga and cofounder of Met@box, a German maker of set-top boxes.

"LIVING ON GARBAGE." For the Amiga faithful, Amiga's new direction will be a disappointment. "We've been living on scraps out of the garbage since Commodore went bust," says Harv Laser, founder of the AmigaZone.com online service. "This hurts."

Intel en AMD houden elkaar lekker bezig, want AMD zal de de prijzen van de K6-2 en K6-3 ook gaan verlagen, tot wel 25 procent. Dit haal ik van ZDNET:

Advanced Micro Devices Inc., keeping the heat on Intel Corp., has reduced prices on certain clock speeds of its desktop K6-2 and K6-III processors by up to 25 percent.

AMD's K6-2 475MHz desktop chip received the largest cut, falling 25 percent from $152 to $114. The K6-2 450MHz was reduced 17 percent from $112 to $93. The price of AMD's K6-2 400MHz chip was also cut by 11 percent, moving it from $82 to $73, company officials said on Friday.

Pricing for the K6-2 500MHz, introduced in late August holds steady at $167. By way of comparison, AMD arch rival Intel Corp. sells its 500MHz desktop Celeron chip for $167. Intel's 500MHz desktop Pentium III chip is priced at $251.

[break]De prijzen van de Athlon blijven echter nog wel even onveranderd:[/break]

Despite the movement on its K6 line of chips, AMD of Sunnyvale, Calif. has also held steady the prices on its high-performance Athlon chips. Athlon chips range from $815 for the 650MHz version of the chip to $249 for the 500MHz Athlon chip.