Techweb, EETimes en The Register hebben meer info over de gevolgen van de aardbeving in Taiwan voor de chip industrie. Voor de duidelijkheid: dit wil dus absoluut niet zeggen dat wij niet denken aan de gevolgen voor de taiwanese bevolking, maar voor die info moet je maar naar het journaal of in de krant kijken - dit is een hardware site.

Techweb verwacht een korte stijging van de chip prijzen:

The massive earthquake that rocked Taiwan overnight was expected to push world chip prices higher, at least in the short term, analysts in Seoul said Tuesday.

[...] Jon said the world spot price for the current mainstay 64-megabit DRAM chips could rise above $15, this year's highest level so far.

[...] "An electricity outage and a water supply problem are very important to the chip-making industry and I don't think they can recover from the damage in the short term," said Suh Do-won, an analyst at LG Securities.

[...] The world 64-Mbit DRAM price is declining moderately these days after hitting the year's highest level of $15, and is trading at around $12 per unit, they said. The recent price upsurge, which analysts attributed to strong PC sales tied to free PC offers, had beaten expectations. The price stood at about $4 from May to June. [break] Verder geeft EETimes nieuws over de situatie bij TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.): [/break] The earthquake that struck Taiwan early Tuesday (Sept. 21) left fabrication facilities on the island without power, but largely intact, according to early reports.

[...] While TSMC's Fab 1 did have power, it was not enough to maintain wafer production, the spokesman said. Taiwan government officials estimate that the combined lost production of the Science Park would be about $156 million, but industry estimates said the figure could be twice as large.

While some buildings were toppled in Taipei and casualties are reported to have topped 1,500, the earthquake-resistant architecture in the country's technology center outside the capital seems to have sustained the quake. "All the buildings at Science Park are structurally sound," said a spokesman for TSMC's U.S. branch in San Jose, Calif. [break] Tenslotte een nieuwsposting van de The Register, waarin gezegd wordt dat de aardbeving voor de chip industrie een verlies van 300 miljoen dollar tot gevolg heeft: [/break] "It's a kind of nightmare for us," said Winbond Electronics assistant vice president, Hander Chang, "just like most companies here we are waiting for power."

"We don’t know when power will be restored," Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) spokesman, Tzeng Jin Haw said. Without power, Mr. Tzeng said, it was difficult to assess damage or losses.

Highly speculative local media reports estimated losses in the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park at between US$150 and US$300 million. Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, Hsinchu’s largest income generator, is predicted to make roughly US$10 billion in revenues this year -- an average of US$27.4 million per day.

HardOCP heeft een korte preview van een Abit BE6-II beta plank (vandaar geen volwaardige review) gepost. De nieuwe features in revisie 2:

First and foremost to me is the fact that the board has a new BIOS that is a bit different from the previous ABIT BIOSes we have seen. There are help screens integrated into the interface that will try to give you some guidance in your use of the BIOS. I like this feature, it still needs to be tweaked and is not up to ABIT standards quite yet.

Second is the addition of the multiple FSBs. Jeez.......these guys really went off this time. Front side bus speeds from 83MHz to 200MHz in integers of "1". I would say this board will keep you going for a while.

Third, they have ripped one of the ISA slots off. Hasta la vista!!!!!!! They could have taken the other one and I would have not cared.

Fourth, since they ripped your ISA slot they have come back in a forgiving nature and awarded us with ATA66 on board.

Overclockers.com heeft een interessant artikeltje in elkaar geknutseld over de altijd terugkerende vraag over de gevolgen van overklokken op de levensduur van een processor. Overclockers.com gooit er een leuke formule tegenaan, die ons antwoord op deze vraag zou moeten verschaffen:

CPU Life = Normal Life Hours / [((273 + New Temp) / (273 + Normal Temp)) ^ M] [break] In het artikeltje vind je een verklaring van deze tover formule, hier alvast de conclusie: [/break] There is a message here - Heat does degrade and in a measurable way. Heat will kill your CPU, and the more heat, the quicker. It should be your objective, overclocking or not, to run your systems at the lowest possible temperature. Whether or not the projected CPU Life coincides with economic life is a decision we each make and obviously impacts what you will tolerate as to how hot your CPU runs.

Komt er dus op neer dat overklokken gezond kan zijn, zolang de CPU op een lagere temperatuur draait dan 'normaal'. Wij verstandige overklokkers geven ons systeem natuurlijk een veel betere koeling dan de gemiddelde Dell of Compaq bak, dus eigenlijk mogen onze CPU'tjes blij zijn dat ze worden overgeklokt .

Okee, dat wisten we al langer, maar het is leuk dat The Register dat ff heeft neergeschreven:

The latest SL3JT 600MHz P3 shares the same stepping, core stepping and tagRAM stepping as the original SL35E 500MHz chip introduced at the beginning of the year. The only difference is an increase in clock multiplier from 5X to 6X and core voltage from 2.0V to 2.05V.

Such a voltage increase is common practice amongst overclockers striving to get maximum performance from a CPU and is needed to achieve reliable operation at higher than designed clock speeds.

This would seem to indicate that the venerable Deschutes core is very close indeed -- if not already beyond -- its designed performance level.

Volgens The Adrenaline Vault zal er binnenkort een officiële aankondiging van 3dfx plaatsvinden, waarin het bekend zal maken dat de Voodoo4 gedelayed is:

3dfx will be issuing a formal announcement regarding reports about the postponement of Voodoo4 this afternoon. As we reported yesterday, potentially disappointing news has emerged that tells of a possible delay in the release of the company’s next graphics accelerator into 2000 due to technical challenges that postponed it reaching manufacturing on schedule.

The news sprung from CEO Greg Ballard Wed., Sept. 15 at the Cowan conference in Boston, where it was mentioned that unanticipated problems that arose right before the chip was scheduled to go to manufacturing could postpone the release. According to a statement Ballard made that a user posted on Silicon Investor's web-based forum, the dilemma was completely unanticipated and due, in large part, to the enormous complexity of the chip. Although the specific problems, which have not been made public, have reportedly been resolved, 3dfx is not prepared to announce the effects of the impasse on the chip’s release date. The card could still be released in Quarter 4, though a delay is possible.

The company was swift, however, in plugging rumors that it has been aware of the problem for several months but not revealed the news to retail investors. In another post made to the same message board, a second user posted additional comments from Ballard that he first mentioned the possible postponement at Cowan and has made subsequent statements to retail investors who have called since then.

Billy "Wicked" Wilson van Voodoo Extreme heeft aan alle bekende Game Designers een e-mail afgevuurd met de vraag wat zei het belangrijkst vonden op korte termijn; een videokaart met een gruwelijk hoge fillrate en full screen anti-aliasing (3dfx Napalm), of een kaart met een lagere fillrate maar met hardware T&L (Geforce & Savage 2000). Voor alle reacties moet je hier zijn.

Maar dit had John Carmack (Doom & Quake series) te melden:

If it was just "fill rate vs triangle rate", the answer would definately be triangle rate (assuming reasonable fill rate to go with it), because you can easily make up for fill rate by just changing your resolution. This gives you scalability all the way from 320*240 to 1600*1200+, a range of 25 to 1. Geometry can't even profitably be scaled by 4 to 1 inside a given game design.

It becomes a lot more complicated when anti-aliasing is added as a feature. The more triangles you add, the more aliasing you will get. Anti-aliasing is a great feature, because it makes EVERYTHING look better.

Note that 2x2 anti-aliasing is not exactly high quality AA, but it will still be an improvement over raw point sampling.

For fast action games, I would still lean towards the T&L solution, because if you are moving fast, you don't tend to notice aliasing. For a slow paced third person game, anti-aliasing would probably be more important.

John Carmack.

[break]En dit vond Ryan Feltrin van Xatrix Entertainment (Kingpin) ervan: [/break]

From a developers perspective, having T&L not only allows us to pump through more polygons, but also leaves the CPU open for more intensive gameplay oriented code (AI, skeletal/IK animation, etc). The advantages of this, is you can display a scene with more polygons, and more complex gameplay elements. To display the same scene on a card without T&L, the performance may drop if the CPU usage is too high when combining the extra gameplay elements, with the higher polygon count, since the CPU must also calculate the geometry.

An obvious advantage of the Non-T&L card is it will scale better as CPU power increases.

The question of which will dominate the other will most likely be answered on a per-game basis.

That being said, since I'm more in favour of scenes with higher polygon counts and more complex gameplay, my preference would have to go to a card with T&L.

Ryan Feltrin

Ga naar Voodoo Extreme voor de rest!

Deze was ik bijna vergeten, Koen van Hardwareinfo.net heeft een review geschreven van de Terratec TerraTV+ kaart. Deze TV-kaart met de BT848 chip heeft erg veel functionaliteit en komt geleverd met een flinke dosis sofware. Check de review hier.

De PCI kaart is volledig bus-mastering compatible, wat in dit geval inhoudt dat de kaart de TV-beelden via de PCI/AGP bus rechtstreeks in het geheugen van de videokaart kan schrijven. Dit heeft als gevolg dat de CPU-belasting van de TV-kaart vrijwel nihil is. De kaart is opgebouwd uit twee belangrijke componenten. Ten eerste zien we bovenaan de enorme Philips TV-tuner. Het tweede belangrijke component is de BT848 chip van Booktree. Deze chip zorgt voor alle videobewerkingen en rekent dus bijvoorbeeld het analoge videosignaal (dat uit de tuner komt) om naar digitale informatie. De BT848 is een zeer bekende chip, die ook terug te vinden is op TV-kaarten van o.a. Hauppage en Miro. Aangezien de chip zeer bekend is, geniet de TerraTV+ kaart gelukkig ook ondersteuning bij wat exotischere besturingssystemen als Linux en BeOS. Over aansluitingen heeft de TerraTV+ kaart niet te klagen. Aan de buitenzijde vinden we naast de aansluiting voor de antenne ook twee video inputs (cinch en S-VHS), een audio-input en een audio-output. Met behulp van bijgeleverd kabeltje kan de audio-output van de TV-kaart worden doorverbonden naar de line-input van de geluidskaart. Bezitters van een geluidskaart met een extra CD-ingang kunnen echter ook de audio-output die intern op de kaart zit gebruiken. Hier wordt helaas geen kabeltje voor meegeleverd. Verder vinden we intern nog een tweede audio-input en een aansluiting voor de ActiveRadio uitbreiding. Door de twee video-inputs is het ook mogelijk om deze kaart te gebruiken als caputure-device voor camcorders, webcams en andere videobronnen. De kenners zullen overigens meteen zien dat ook deze kaart weer is uitgevoerd in de mooie Terratec donkerbruine kleur.

ZDNet NL heeft een klein testje verricht met de Abit BP6 en MSI-6210:

We installeerden eerst twee 500-MHz Pentium III processoren op de MS-6210, en daarna de convertor met twee 466-MHz Celerons. Uit de testresultaten blijkt dat de twee configuraties met dual Celerons aan elkaar gewaagd zijn, en dat de configuratie met dual Pentiums ongeveer tien procent sneller is, zowel op de Dual Processor Test als op Winstone 99.

Verder weinig opwindende info in deze review...

De aardbeving in Taiwan heeft niet alleen gevolgen voor de bevolking aldaar, maar kan ook indirekt een (verdere) prijsstijging van computer chips tot gevolg hebben. Hier een stukje uit een nieuwsbericht van ZDNet NL:

De chipindustrie profiteert waarschijnlijk van de aardbeving die Taiwan heeft getroffen. Analisten verwachten prijsstijgingen, omdat twee van de grootste chipmakers op het eiland, Taiwan Semiconductor en United Micro electronics, schade hebben opgelopen.

De twee bedrijven, die gezamenlijk 12 procent van de wereldmarkt van 64 megabyte geheugenchips (de zogenoemde DRAMs) voorzien, lieten dinsdag weten dat door de aardbeving de elektriciteit was uitgevallen. Ze voegden daaraan toe dat de productielijnen niet zijn aangetast.

Analisten twijfelen aan deze bewering. ,,Productielijnen zijn zeer gevoelig voor trillingen'', aldus Jon Chong-hwa van de zakenbank Salomon Smith Barney KEB Securities. ,,Ik denk dat dit zal leiden tot een nieuwe prijsstijging van de computerchips.''

Volgens ingewijden in de chipindustrie duurt het zeker een of twee maanden voordat chipfabrieken normaal draaien na stroomuitval. Het aanbod van computerchips op de wereldmarkt wordt daardoor even verstoord, hetgeen de prijsstijgingen in hand werkt. [break] Verder heeft ook The Register een nieuwsposting over dit onderwerp: [/break] Taiwan is one of the world's great IT manufacturing centres -- and it is a hugely important source for PC components.

The earthquake will disrupt production and this could lead to shortages and price rises in the PC industry's all-important run-up to Christmas. Don't forget that a black-out in Taiwan in July saw DRAM production fall two per cent worldwide that month, which in turn fuelled price rises in the memory market.

Slecht nieuws voor types zoals onze eigen Roadrunner, die er de voorkeur aan geven om hun aggressie op een onschuldige harddisk te uiten (het WAN-incident ). Seagate heeft voor z'n harddrives namelijk een nieuwe doosje verzonnen, met als bedoeling dat die schijven schokken van boven de 1000G kunnen overleven:

Seagate has developed new packaging technology for its hard drives that would make a cardboard-box blush with inadequacy. Seagate claims that the SeaShell 3D Defence System - which shields the drive from electrostatic discharge during installation - can also withstand 1000 Gs of shock.

The whole system is designed to reduce the number of damaged drives that need returning. As well as the shock and ESD protection, the SeaShell, a thermoformed, shock-ribbed, translucent package, comes with a diagnostic toolbox allowing users to monitor performance after installation.

Seagate estimates that damage from handling accounts for nearly half of all returns. Tests show that the SeaShell can reduce the shock from a 12-in drop by a factor of 10.

Zie The Register voor meer info.

The Register heeft meer info over de "AMD G4's" die wellicht volgend jaar uit AMD's 0,18micron chip bakkerij in Dresden zullen rollen:

What do Motorola and AMD have in common? Neither can make chips quickly enough to satisfy demand.

What’s the difference between Motorola and AMD? In essence it boils down to one thing – money. Motorola has heaps of the stuff, while AMD has very shallow pockets indeed.

But now seems likely that Motorola is going to help out AMD, by taking a stake in its Dresden, Germany fab. By selling 50 per cent of Dresden, AMD could net up to $1 billion.

AMD licenses Motorola's 0.18 micron process with copper connects, so it would be relatively easy for Motorola to take up production at the plant.

Does this mean AMD Dresden will be pumping out G4s sometime next year? Motorola certainly needs some new production capacity and quick -- yesterday, Apple revealed its Q4 results would suffer because of Motorola’s inability to ramp up G4 CPU production.

Dresden represents AMD’s leap into the manufacturing big-time league. It also represents a huge financial millstone, and this will continue to weigh heavily on the company in the near-term, certainly until volume Athlon production kicks off in February next year. The company has searched for a fab partner for months (which may be where those curious Siemens AMD takeover rumours sprang from last week).

Bij Tom's Hardware Guide hebben ze een review gepost van de Diamond Stealth III S540 Xtreme. En Xtreme wil hier zeggen een opgekrikte core/memory clock van 166MHz. Maar helaas, ondanks deze upgrade zijn de prestaties nog steeds niet om vrolijk van te worden. Check de review hier.

For users who primarily use their system for Internet browsing, email, word-processing or the occasional game the Diamond Stealth III S540 Xtreme fits the bill. At 640x480x16 the S540 Xtreme board provides very playable frame rates above 30FPS in all of our tested games. If you are an avid game player who enjoys playing 3D games at resolutions above 640x480x16 and have the cash, then this isn't the board for you, go spend the money on a higher-end more expensive board.

There is plenty of competition in the low-end 3D graphics arena. For a $99 solution (S540 Xtreme will be sold for $129 minus a $30 rebate) it's competition in terms of price/performance will be the VD3 2000, ASUS Magic M64 and ATI Rage 128.

The S540 Xtreme loses to most of its competitors across the board in all our game benchmarks excluding Quake 3 Arena and some of the 32bit tests. But each of these lower-end boards including the Xtreme product provides playable (30FPS or greater) gaming at the lower 640x480x16 resolution. The S540 Xtreme is not going to blow your mind but the board will "put out" at lower resolutions. The only other drawbacks that we've encountered were driver issues in a select few applications. You can check out these issues in our "32 Graphic Card Meltdown - Part Two" article. For some people these issues are bad enough where a petition has been created on the net about it "Petition" . All in all though, we still think the S540 Xtreme has its place for the economy 3D gamer.

Bij Vortex of Sound lees ik dat de Playstation 2 waarschijnlijk A3D 3.0 support zal gaan krijgen voor realistisch 3D geluid. Dit is de info:

How's this for cool news? Aureal was recently approved by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. as a Tool and Middleware Vendor to provide the A3D 3.0 Software Development Kit to Sony "PlayStation II" software developers to aid in the development of advanced audio and advanced 3D positional audio on the "PlayStation II" platform.

Sony announced this information today at the Next Generation PlayStation Software Developer Seminar at the SCEI headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Aureal's A3D 3.0 technology has not yet been formally announced, but most likely will be at their retail launch party this Thursday, 23 September 1999.

We'll be there and will hopefully have some great news for you that night!

Bij The Tech Zone hebben ze een TNT2 Ultra hevig overclocked door er een Xeon heatsink met een Case Fan op de planten, en op de achterkant hebben ze ook een koelertje gezet. Als je klaar bent met knutselen krijg je dit:

De TNT2 hebben ze nu op 185/243MHz core/memory draaien. Maar dat moet nog wel wat hoger kunnen waarschijnlijk. Voor al de info, klik hier.

Without a doubt, the NVIDIA TNT Ultra is one of the best if not the best video card on the market today. The visual quality is great and the card is the fastest card to use when running Quake 3. However, for some of us, fast is never fast enough. If this is you, then there is only one thing to do, wait for the next generation of video card coming this Xmas, or overclock that TNT! Since I'm still waiting for my GeForce 256 to show up, I thought it would be fun to try and push the current TNT Ultra as fast as it will go without the use of expensive peltiers. While this is a TNT overclocking project, this will really work for any video card. Just some of the steps and programs used will be different. As with all overclocking projects, you assume your own risk. Overclocking your video card beyond specs voids your warranty on the spot. The TNT "victim" for this project is the Asus 3800 TNT2 Ultra. It's a very nice card. Comes with pretty much everything one can want in a video card. TNT2 chipset, Video in, Video out, TV out, VR 3D glasses, etc.. Out of the box, it runs at a very fast 150/183. This is a good starting point. Let's push it.

Storage Review heeft een review gebakken van de IBM Deskstar 34GXP, de grootste 7200RPM ATA schijf op deze aardkloot (34.2GB). Hier heb je wat over de performance.

The Deskstar 34GXP begs to be compared with, of course, the WD Expert WD273BA. Such comparison yields virtually indentical results in the Business Disk WinMark 99 run in either Windows 9x or Windows NT. In both cases, the victor "triumphs" by a margin of only 0.3%! The High-End Disk WinMark exhibits more difference, relatively speaking. Here the Deskstar pulls ahead of the Expert by about 3% in either operating system. Yes, a margin ten times as large as the difference in Business WinMark scores, but still hardly something one should expect to perceive.

Also interesting to note are the low-level results turned in for the two drives. Though both units sport nigh-identical transfer rates, the Deskstar consistently finishes with a slightly faster access time. Interesting, especially in the light of the common wisdom that states all things being equal, the drive with the heavier actuator (i.e., more patters) seeks more slowly.

The reigning 7200rpm drive, however, is not the Expert but rather the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 6800. Here the Deskstar edges past the DiamondMax in the Business Disk WinMark run under Windows 9x by 1%. The IBM drive underscores the glaring weakness of the Maxtor, however, when it comes to the High-End WinMark in Win9x. Here the Deskstar whallops the DiamondMax by a margin of 22%! NT, however, allows Maxtor to flex its muscles. Here the Deskstar trails the DiamondMax by 15% and 9% respectively in the Business and High-End Disk WinMarks.

Over bij Tweak3D hebben ze een PC Tweaking artikel online geplant. Nu staat alleen het eerste deel er, de overige 3 gedeeltes volgen pas later. Echt veel nuttige info staat er in deel 1 alleen niet, hier heb je wat over BIOS tweaking:

Speeding up boot time is one of the easiest tweaks that can be done in the BIOS. It's a good idea to make note of any settings before you change them, though, so that if you run into problems, you can change them back. If all else fails, most CMOS programs have a "restore defaults" option.

Begin by finding the QuickBoot setting in the CMOS setup program (sometimes it's called QuickPOST or Quick Power-on Self Test). Enabling this setting should speed up boot times up to a minute on some older systems. Also, disable Boot up Disk to shave off a few seconds.

Some other tweaks that can be performed within the BIOS will change the overall speed of the computer. If the BIOS has a Turbo frequency setting, enabling it should give the system a performance boost of up to 5%. Also, any setting that refers to the computers L1 (internal) or L2 (external) cache should be enabled. It is also recommended to enable Video BIOS and System BIOS shadowing. Shadowing refers to copying BIOS information from the slower BIOS chip to faster system RAM. If the computer's BIOS has the option, caching the Video RAM should also give a performance increase. Make sure to read the manual that was included with your video card because this can cause problems with certain systems.

Klik hier voor de rest.

Ook bij iXBT Labs hebben ze een artikel geschreven over de absurde RAM prijsstijgingen van de laatste weken. Dit is wat ze voor de toekomst voorspellen:

During the coming few months the situation is expected to remain the same as today. There is still some time left before 1 January that's why September and October are very likely to be marked by another price increase on memory chips as well as by a number of problems with other component parts, such as the affordable harddisks shortage, for instance. By December, however, all this buying fever should be over and the tendency we watch today will take an absolutely opposite course.

We will meet the new Year 2000 with those computer companies, which can boast considerable reserves of component parts, and with the manufacturers of these parts, which set the process - mostly 0.19 and 0.18 micron - into full swing in order to combat the growing shortage. However, the demand won't be as huge as today that's why there will be no need to resume the reserves, because everybody, who wanted, have already prepared for the year 2000, and the Christmas time never was the hottest sales period.

As a result, all this should lead to price reduction in December, which will grow into one of the most powerful price wars by spring. This will be a really bloody battle and don't be surprised if you don't see some very familiar and dear names in the market in summer. Similar to the situation with Hayes, SyQuest and Hercules, which are no longer within sight.

Er zal de komende tijd nog wel meer chaos komen, nu Taiwan door die aardbeving is omgespit

De fusie tussen S3 en Diamond lijkt voorlopig niet door te kunnen gaan omdat er aan de kant van Diamond onvoldoende steun kan worden bereikt onder de aandeelhouders. Een deel van hen is van mening dat de Diamond aandelen in deze deal ondergewaardeerd worden:

Sept. 20, 1999--Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. (NasdaqIMD - news) a leader in PC multimedia and Internet connectivity, today announced that the special meeting of shareholders today called to approve the acquisition of Diamond Multimedia by S3 Incorporated (Nasdaq:SIII - news) has been adjourned.

The Diamond meeting has been adjourned until Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999 at 4:00 p.m. (PDT) at Diamond's offices at 2880 Junction Avenue, San Jose, CA 95134. The meeting was adjourned for the purpose of soliciting additional votes for approval of the merger. The approval of the merger requires a vote of a majority of the outstanding shares of Diamond Multimedia. The companies expect to press forward with their plans to integrate their businesses after the merger and do not believe that this postponement will have any material operational or financial impact.

"Due to the logistical challenges of communicating with our widespread investor base, we have not received enough proxy votes by close of business, September 17," said Bill Schroeder, president and chief executive officer of Diamond Multimedia. "Of the votes we have received, a significant majority are in favor of the merger. While we believe that Diamond's shareholders recognize the upside to the merger, we are concerned that many of them may not realize how important their individual votes are to moving this merger forward."

"Given Diamond's current financial constraints, we believe that partnering with S3 is an essential step toward ensuring we have the resources to pursue our long-term strategies," added Schroeder. "We strongly encourage everyone to vote as soon as possible by calling the toll-free number provided in their proxy materials, their broker, or their broker's proxy department. If shareholders have not yet received or have misplaced their proxy, they should call their broker or their broker's proxy department to request the necessary documents."

Volgens The Adrenaline Vault zullen we door GT Interactive binnen twee weken verblijdt worden met de release van Driver:

GT Interactive’s action-adventure Driver, in which gamers go undercover as a wheelman for the mob, was a boon for the publisher when it released the PlayStation version to huge critical and commercial acclaim in June. But GT and developer Reflections did not pull over into the slow lane this summer; instead, the design team ramped up to finish the PC version, complete with 3D accelerated graphics. Although the game has no release date and has not gone gold, GT has told us it should be in manufacturing soon and could speed into stores within the next 14 days. As far as we are concerned the sooner the better, so floor it!

Ondanks een voorspoedige introductie van de PowerMac G4 verwacht ome Steve voor dit kwartaal enigzins tegenvallende winstcijfers. Het probleem zit 'm in een tekort aan G4 procjes:

Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs said the company's fourth quarter earnings are likely to fall below that of the previous quarter because of low shipments of its new G4 system.

[...] Apple, which is set to officially announce its earnings on Oct. 13, said the company was unable to get enough of the processors to fill orders for its new, fast Power Mac G4 desktop systems that were announced at the end of last month.

"Apple has received orders for over 150,000 Power Mac G4s since the product was announced three weeks ago, and we regret that we will not be able to ship them all this quarter,'' said Jobs. "This is a temporary issue, and we hope to catch up early in the coming quarter."

Check Techweb voor het complete verhaaltje.

Labtec heeft een tweetal nieuwe koptelefoons (dacht dat ze alleen in speakers deden) aangekondigd, die ze op wonderbaarlijke wijze speciaal hebben weten te enhancen voor het afspelen van MP3'tjes. Hier wat soep uit de press release:

Labtec today introduced the first headphones designed specifically to enhance the MP3 Internet music and digital audio experience. The MP-340 and the MP-350 are developed from a mid-size form factor that delivers the perfect combination of portability and premium sound quality.

The MP-340 has 34mm Mylar drivers with an-isotropic magnets that provide users with full sound and solid bass. This headphone delivers premium quality sound and was designed with comfort in mind with its adjustable wide headband and six foot cord for freedom and mobility.

The MP-350 promises the highest in audio quality with 40mm Mylar drivers with an-isotropic magnets for clarity and deep bass. The MP-350 provides the user with the ultimate in comfort with its leatherette ear pads and tight ear seal for optimal sound, a padded headband, and a nine foot cord for even greater mobility. Both the MP-350 and MP-340 come with a gold-plated 3.5mm stereo plug to ensure optimal electrical contact with the digital audio source.

Combatsim heeft een interview met Scott Sellers (leuke naam voor een PR mannetje) van 3dfx op z'n site geplaatst. Hier een vraag over hoe Scott denkt over z'n kameraden bij nVidia en S3:

Q) Since the introduction of the GeForce 256, many have questioned how the next generation 3dfx chip will stack up. However, given the specs for the Savage 2000, it appears that S3's chipset is the one that is really leading the pack right now. You have mentioned that you believe the next 3dfx card will be better than GF256 in most games. . .do you feel the same about the Savage 2000?

A: Actually, we try not to judge a potential competitor's product simply based on spec sheets. We can only really comment on our ability to compete against the GeForce 256 because we've seen it in action and Nvidia has pretty much fully disclosed that part.

S3, on the other hand, has not demonstrated their product publicly (at least to my knowledge) and so we really don't know whether their product lives up to the hype or not. All we can go on is S3's track record of delivering products which are compelling for the OEM markets because they are feature rich, but are not particularly successful in the gaming market because of their lackluster performance in real-world games and applications.

As a result, we'll have to wait and see some early reviews on Savage 2000 before we can go in depth of how we intend to dominate that product in the gaming sector. S3 has the experience behind them, so we are keeping a close eye on them.

Net zoals in andere interviews van o.a. Firingsquad blijft 3dfx ook hier benadrukken dat de Voodoo4 goed zal zijn voor de huidige generatie games en dat de Savage2000 en GeForce 256 ongebalanceerde designs zouden zijn.

AMD Zone heeft een lijstje met de Athlon prijsverlagingen die AMD op 4 oktober zal doortrekken:

OEM

- Athlon 500MHz - $205
- Athlon 550MHz - $298
- Athlon 600MHz - $459
- Athlon 650MHz - $603
- Athlon 700MHz - $832

BOXED

- 500MHz - $219
- 550MHz - $312
- 600MHz - $473
- 650MHz - $617
- 700MHz - $849

Original prices for Athlon OEM versions were as follows.

- 500MHz - $249
- 550MHz - $449
- 600MHz - $849
- 650MHz - $849

Creative Labs heeft nieuwe Win9x en NT drivers voor z'n (non-Ultra) 3D Blaster TNT2 kaartje in elkaar getimmerd. Hier de release notes:

3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Windows 9x Driver Update
3DT2-9XWEB-1-US (Revision 1)
This is the latest Windows 95/98 drivers for the 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2. This release includes:
* Virtual Desktop support.
* Additional support for Hebrew and Arabic versions of Windows 98.

Note: This driver is NOT for the 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Ultra.

Ik lees bij Voodoo Extreme dat FullOn3D een interview met een paar ventjes van nVidia heeft gepost. Inmiddels is het interview om onduidelijke reden echter al weer van de server gehaalt ("Sorry interview with nVIDIA pulled for 24 hours. Check back tomorrow."). Gelukkig hebben Voodoo Extreme en AnandTech quotes uit het interview op hun news pagina's staan, die ik hierbij dan ook maar meteen mee jat :

Fullon3d: So how long has the chip been in development?

Chris: About 18 months, but to be honest with you I don’t know exactly. They're done with 'specifying' and 'algorithm stuff' for the part that will ship next year, and I know that we have plans that are 5 years out.

Fullon3d: Is it a new design or just two TNT2s strapped together?

Chris: I think we used that description ourselves to simplify it, but it is actually a completely new design. Some of the technology that we’ve used previously and that was working well we obviously populated across, but stuff like the geometry is of course completely new. Generally we try to stick to the old adage ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’.

Fullon3d: Do you have any comments about your seemingly low texture rate versus your possibly high pixel-rate?

Chris: Well some of the testing that we’ve done has shown vary little difference between 16-bit color and 32-bit color up to resolutions of 1024*768. But everyone wants more fill-rate and that’s one of the things that I wish we could do a lot of. I wish we could provide more fill-rate than anyone will ever need, and as time progresses we’re doing so, but again it comes back to balance. We want to deliver a technology that will be compelling, but at the same time not so complicated that we will miss our design window. That’s a very big challenge and it’s one of the things that nVidia has proved it can do successfully, which is why we’ve come out with a new product every 12 months or so. We map to OEM schedules, so when an OEM is ready to ship a new card we have a new part for them. [break] En van AnandTech Webnews: [/break] Fullon3d: What are your thoughts on T-buffer technology?

Derek: This is what I don’t understand: how many people are actually going to buy stuff like that? I mean we’re selling a product here that everyone wants from the high-end to the low-end. We can deliver great graphics whether you’re a 3D-graphic designer or simply a hard-core gamer playing Q3 all day.

My question to 3dfx is why it will take so many chips to do it? As a card manufacture, if I had the choice between producing a board around a single chip or one around a 3 chip solution, which do you think I would choose?

AMD heeft een kudde nieuwe K6-2-P en K6-III-P mobiele processors aangekondigd. Hier heb je wat onzinnig geblaat uit de press release:

AMD today expanded its mobile processor line with the introduction of new speed grades for both the Mobile AMD-K6(R)-2-P and the Mobile AMD-K6-III-P processor families.

The Mobile AMD-K6-III-P processor is now available in speeds of 450MHz, 433MHz and 400MHz, while the Mobile AMD-K6-2-P is available at 475MHz, 450MHz and 433MHz. AMD continues to offer the only mobile processors that support advanced features such as a 100MHz-frontside bus and 3DNow!(TM) technology.

"AMD has seen a dramatic growth in its portable market share since the introduction of the Mobile AMD-K6-2 family of products earlier this year," said Dana Krelle, vice president of marketing for AMD's Computation Products Group. "The most recent market share numbers from PC Data Inc. show that AMD-K6 processor-based notebooks reached an all-time high U.S. retail market share of 67 percent in July. The addition of these new processor speed grades reflects our commitment to continue introducing leading technology into the notebook market, offering our customers the best performance and value at all system price points."