Speedy 3D heeft een review gepost van de Ultra Thin Exhauster, dat is een harddisk cooler van 3DCool.

Onto the important topics now. Cooling Effect and then the Ratings. The Ultra Thin Exhauster (UTE) cools your hard drive by using the following method. It simply attaches to the bottom of your drive and blows the hot air off the hard drive. By using this method to cool your hard drive the UTE effectively cools the hottest part of your hard drive. I know the following is off topic, but I couldn’t help myself. The UTE is just simply one unique hard drive cooler. To start things off it’s the smallest and thinnest cooler that I have reviewed or ever seen. I’m talking about hard drive coolers just to let you know. After this, it's the easiest and fastest cooler to install that I have ever reviewed. After it does all this, it's specially designed to blow the hot air off the bottom of the drive. A concept that I have not seen before (blowing air off bottom of drive) in hard drive coolers. It also takes up no extra room in your computer case which is a big plus.

Review Zone heeft een review online gezet van Intel's Celeron 500MHz. Voor overklokkers niet zo geweldig interessant, dit sjippie. Hier heb je vast een gedeelte uit de test.

As we mentioned earlier, the performance difference between the Celeron 466 and the Celeron 500 is minimal, yet they have a price barrier of over US$ 50. Also, since the Celeron 466 has both Socket-370 and Slot-1 configurations, you can save same extra dollars on the converter. Is the extra performance worth the price you pay? If you ask us, no. Although some may argue over this, we feel that the Celeron 466 is the way to go if you're concerned about price. That said, the Celeron 500 did overclock up to 563Mhz, which was fairly stable (very nearly 85%). However, in terms of bang per buck, the 466 and the 500MHz Celerons are pretty much neck to neck.

The Pentium III is also out of consideration owing to the fact that it costs much more and the performance you get is really not worth the price you pay. If you can spend around US$ 225-240 for a CPU, we highly recommend the Athlon.

Taking all this into consideration, we came to the conclusion that you should opt for the Celeron 500 only if you're on a budget and want to squeeze out as much as you can for your money. Its performance isn't too hot, but then it wasn't meant to be either. You'll probably be able to overclock up to 563MHz with a reasonably good motherboard or even more, with additional cooling. The P6 core architecture has really started showing it's age and it won't be long before the Celerons go the way of the dodo, but for the here and now ,the Celeron 500 just might be a pretty good option for the poor man's upgrade.

3D Alpha heeft een kleine review in elkaar gezet van de Creative Blaster 6x4x24x cd-rewriter. Hier heb je wat over de performance, de rest vind je hier.

Bear in mind that there are faster drives than this (8x or 1,200kb/sec), but also bear in mind that not everyone buys a CD-R/CD-RW drive that writes faster than 4x. Though let me say one thing before I tell you the performance notes: 6x is simply sweet, and what's better: It's being brought to you by a company who knows what the hell they're doing. Creative has been making dependable computer equipment for some time now, and this drive isn't any exception for performance or stability.

How to test? Well, after installation Nero burning ROM, I took out a few of my CDs that I've been needing to get archive copies of. These CDs were Windows NT WorkStation 4.0, Windows NT Server 4.0, SoulEdge Khan Super Session Album, and StarCraft Broodwar. The results include approximated times by using the principle that approximate times can be figured by using this formula, (CD is full in this example.): 650mb = 665600kb / 900kb/sec = 739 seconds = 12 minutes and 19 seconds.

Bij Hardware One hebben ze een uitgebreide review gepost van versie 4 van Adaptec's Easy CD Creator. Deze nieuwe versie bevat nu een aantal erg handige nieuwe features. Hier heb je een hap uit de review.

Adaptec announced the release of the Easy CD Creator 4 on September 10th, 1999. With its release, host of new features have been added, allowing you to have more fun out of your CD-R drive. Some of the new features include:

MP3 Music Support
DirectCD
Take Two
Music CD Creation Tools
Liquid Music MPlayer
Animated CD Guide
Web Checkup
Access to CDDB Disc Recognition
Improved CD Spin Doctor
MGI PhotoSuite II SE
MGI VideoWave II SE Photo Album Creation
Video Postcard Creation
Jewel Case Creator

Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe goes way beyond the software that came with your CD-Recorder, and all earlier deluxe editions. Now it's easier than ever to create music, photo, video, and data CDs. Access music on the Internet. Fine-tune your music tracks. Edit and enhance photos and videos with a pro's touch. Save and share data with confidence. And, CD Guide™, a new animated character, takes you through the steps of creating your CDs.

With support for MP3 Music Support, all you need to do to create audio CDs is to drag-and-drop the MP3 files onto the CD Layout, skipping the traditional way of converting the MP3s into .WAV format (.WAV is a standard Windows format for sound files) before adding them to the CD Layout. DirectCD is now integrated into Easy CD Creator v4 Deluxe and is your usual software for your CD-RW drive.

One interesting new feature is Take Two. Take Two is a disaster recovery software which lets you safely backup and restore your hard disk in 3 easy steps (more on it later).

Volgens The Register was de release van Windows Millennium beta 1, vorige week, een 'foutje'. Vlak na de release verdween de Beta 1 weer van Microsoft's FTP:

Millennium, the successor to Windows 98 intended to ship next year, looked like it made it

into beta late last week, but was then almost immediately 'disappeared,' leaving nothing but

a few wrong-footed reports and the odd copy of the original press release. The code

Microsoft marketing had referred to as "Beta 1" turned swiftly back into the routine weekly

build.

It's not entirely clear what happened, but the explanation that it was a mistake looks

plausible. The release came and went so fast (but here's a copy Paul Thurrott of WinInfo

grabbed) that it's practically impossible to believe that some huge scary monster reared out

of it and caused a rapid revision of plan. More tellingly the release itself doesn't include the

statutory observations from a clutch of Microsoft rentaquotes saying how great the code is.

So we'd guess this is the boilerplate release waiting for the addition of the right date and the

right boilerplate quotes. It just escaped early.

Meer info over Millennium (de opvolger van Win98, draaiend op DOS en gebaseerd op de brakke Win9x kernel) vind je in dit artikel van The Register.

Volgens Overclockers' Workbench is een groot deel van de PIII-533B CPU's in staat om 600MHz te halen. Probleem is wel dat je dan op 150MHz FSB moet draaien (de 533 draait normaal op 133 en de multiplier is zoals gewoonlijk gelockt) en dat gaat alleen lekker op een VIA plankje (met 1/2 AGP divider) met erg snel SDRAM:

According to our affiliate Sony, almost 100% of the P3-533(133) sold in HK can be overclock to 600MHz, no need add voltage. Experiements show that it's possible to reach 150x4 Mhz with Tekram P6PRO-A+ (VIA 693A chipset)

Overclockers' Workbench heeft de specs gepost van de AOpen AX6C Camino plank:

CPU Intel Pentium II 350~450MHz,Pentium III 450~600MHz, Pentium III 533/600MHz(FSB 133MHz) ASIC Intel 820 Chipset
Architecture 1*AGP slot + 5*PCI slots + 1*AMR slot Max
Main Memory Max.768MB RDRAM for RIMM*3
RIMM Type 64/128/256MB (72/144/288MB w/ ECC)
On Board I/O 2 Serial Ports (UART 16C550 Support)
1 Parallel Port (SPP/EPP/ECP Support)
2 Channel E-IDE (Mode 4 and Bus master Ultra DMA 66 Support)
1 Floppy Drive Connector (1.2/1.44/2.88MB) 2 Channel Universal Serial Bus Ports
1 PS/2 Mouse Port
1 PS/2 Keyboard Port
Game/Midi Port,Speaker-Out,Line-In,Mic-In
Connector CD-Audio,IrDA,Wake-On-Lan
RTC Built in ASIC
Battery 3V Lithium
Battery Green Function YES
BIOS Award PnP Flash ROM BIOS (4MB Firmware Hub)
Board Size 305mm*244mm,ATX form factor

Suppoort 100/133MHz FSB for Intel Pentium II,Pentium III CPU
Jumper-less
AGP 4X/2X/1X
AC-97 2.1 Audio support/Audio Codec onboard
Support Ultra DMA/66 HDD (UDMA/66 Cable included)
Over Current Protection Circuit
CPU Thermal Protection Circuit
System Voltage monitoring
CPU and Housing Fan monitoring
Wake-On-Lan
Zero Voltage Wake-On-Modem
Wake-On-Timer
Wake-On-Keyboard/Wake-On-Mouse
PCI Rev 2.2 Compliant
Resetable Fuse Providing Short Circuit Protection for Keyboard and USB Device
AC Power on Auto Recovery
PC99 Color coded I/O Connector
Suspend to Disk/Suspend to RAM
Multi-lingual BIOS Support
Year 2000 Compliant

Firingsquad heeft een review gepost van de Klipsch Promedia v2. 400 speakers (eerder zagen we een review bij 3D Soundsurge). De subwoofer van het setje heeft een vermogen van 160W en de 4 satellites doen 60Watt. Verder zijn het de eerste multimedia speakers die THX gecertificeerd zijn:

Let's just start out by saying that these speakers can really rock. I was able to achieve volume levels that rivaled my home theater system, this wasn't surprising since the Klipsch speakers are backed by a 400 watt amp. You don't need any SPL meters to tell you that these speakers can play much louder than any other multimedia speaker system. What was most pleasing was that the little satellites were able to soak up this power without maxing out until the insanely loud volumes. By insanely loud, I mean volumes SPL's where you would have to shout into the ear of the person next to you, like at a concert.

Andy van BXBoards heeft een vergelijking tussen de VIA Apollo Pro 133 en Intel BX chipset neer geplakt. Uit de benchmarks blijkt dat de BX chipset zowel op 100 als 133MHz sneller is dan de Apollo Pro. Voordeel van de VIA chipset is echter wel dat je op 133MHz FSB je videokaart niet overgeklokt (dit zou trouwens ook wel eens de reden kunnen zijn voor het kleine snelheidsvoordeel van de BX chipset, aangezien de AGP poort dan op 88 ipv 66MHz loopt):

The choice of whether to go for an VIA Apollo Pro 133Mhz ultimately depends on how badly you want 133Mhz and how much you want to spend. Overclockers trying to run their P3-450s at 4.5 x 133 = 600, who are suffering AGP failures will want to take a close look. However for those of you who can run your AGP card at 133Mhz just fine on BX can rest easy - BX may be old, but it rules the roost for now.

Check de review hier. Reinder is trouwens ook aan het testen met een Chaintech Apollo Pro plank en tot nu toe zijn de indrukken niet echt positief.

Tweak3D heeft een handige Cleanup Guide in elkaar geflanst voor als je Windoos verstopt zit. Het gaat voornamelijk over onnodige DLL's deleten en je register cleanen.

It has been a few months or longer since you last made a clean reinstall of your OS. The overall performance of the computer is beginning to suffer, a product of unused DLL's cluttering up the system folder, and the overall obesity of the registry files which Windows does a terrible job of managing. A feeling of dread is clouding over the workspace in which the computer resides. It's time to reinstall the OS. But wait! That painful process of deleting the Windows directory, reinstalling the operating system, and then having to reload all of the applications and games CAN be averted. What follows is nearly a miracle of nature, a renewal of life into a drooping computer.

Dit was de intro, voor het artikel moet je hier wezen

Over bij Sharky Extreme hebben ze een review gebakken van de Guillemot Maxi Gamer Cougar, een op de Riva TNT2 Model 64 gebaseerd videokaartje. Model 64 wil zeggen dat hij maar een 64-bits geheugen bus heeft, waardoor hij alleen in de lagere resoluties goed presteert. Check de volledige review hier.

Overall, the benchmarks show the Cougar to be a fast card at low resolutions, but when bandwidth needs increase, its 64bit memory bus becomes a serious bottleneck that throttles the Cougar's frame rate. This makes us wonder about one big part of the Cougar's spec list. Why does it have 32MB of RAM? 32MB of RAM is mostly useful when the game is run at a high resolution (it's also useful to for the OEM checklist). Because of the narrow memory bus and its speed limitations, few will be running the Cougar at a resolution where 32MB of memory will make a difference over 16MB. On the other hand, people who buy less expensive video cards like the Cougar will most likely expect to keep their card for a long time. As time goes on, games will be using more and more texture memory, and the 32MB of the Cougar will keep it a bit more future proof than it would be with only 16MB. Frankly, we would prefer to spend a little bit less on the card in exchange for the 16MB of RAM we may never use anyway. With RAM prices on the way up, this move could cut the card's price enough to make it more compelling.

Unreal Universe heeft een vette preview gepost van de volledige demo van Unreal Tournament, die morgen neer te halen is. Naast ondersteuning voor Direct3D en OpenGL (wat al een hele verbetering in graphics gaat opleveren) zijn er nog tig andere verbeteringen aangebracht. Check Unreal Universe voor alle info en screenshots!

The demo has six playable levels, with a new level called DM-Tempest by CliffyB. A large level set in a urban sky-scrapper, it will be a welcome edition for the vast amount of people forced to pack into the smaller maps of the older demo. With a number of powerful weapons and even some mods, the full demo will keep people happy until the Unreal Tournament hits stores this holiday season. One such mod, is the insta-gib mutator. Which turns the game into an orgy of blood and death! Other mods include low gravity, where you can literally fly around with the slick air control. Add rocket launcher arena, where all the weapons of the map are rockets, and shock rifle area- that features all shock rifles and you have a virtual ballet of battle! You can combine mods, like the insta-gib with low gravity, or rocket launcher arena, but not shock rifle and rocket arena at the same time. Something new that's crept into the full demo is the option to turn off all the power-ups, like the quad and superhealth.

Quicker, faster and deadlier Bots, are in the new demo, you can include them in your online battles, or play offline in single player practice mode.

The best feature in the new demo is the OpenGL and Direct3D support, allowing the masses of people without 3dfx cards to play. For people with TNT and TNT2 cards, the difference of Unreal Tournament's OpenGL and D3D performance will blow you away! With not only better image quality, there's a huge rendering speed improvement and much more stable code, Better image quality, faster performace and stable gameplay will soon put to rest the myth that the Unreal engine is designed only with glide in mind. To run the D3D, you'll need DirectX 7.0, you can grab it from the official website. For best results, stick with the D3D, as it's much faster than OpenGL at this point in time.

Lachwekkend nieuwsberichtje bij News.com: een paar personen hebben getracht om mariuana ("Holland's Best" ) te verhandelen op eBay, de site waar alles variërend van overgeklokte Athlon's tot ongeboren baby's wordt aangeboden. eBay zag er de humor niet van in :

The three auctioneers, who appeared in a photograph next to numerous plastic bags filled with what looked like marijuana, claimed in a written description that the drugs were "Holland's Best." Seven people had made bids that had reached $10 million by the time the auction was closed, according to AuctionWatch.com.

"We immediately notified the authorities," Pursglove said. "I can tell you that we will cooperate with law enforcement and help them with prosecution."

This latest incident comes at a time when eBay is striving to take an aggressive approach to barring unlawful sales on its site.

Verder bij Techweb een artikeltje over de aardbeving in Taiwan. Hier wat info over de gevolgen voor de DRAM prijzen:

The initial impact of the Taiwan earthquake in Asian markets was to drive up memory prices. In Beijing's Zhongguancun electronics district, for instance, retail prices for memory modules jumped 20 percent this week after the earthquake struck. Meanwhile, prices for 64-megabit SDRAMs from South Korea jumped $24 on the Beijing retail market to $139. Memory module prices in China had already been climbing after a typhoon struck Hong Kong the previous week.

Japanese products sold in China were slightly cheaper than South Korean chips, according to local vendors. The sudden sharp jump in memory prices has prompted the emerging Chinese semiconductor industry to reassess its production plans. Shanghai Huahong NEC Electronics, the Chinese government's joint venture with Japan's NEC, is set to start up its volume production on its new line beginning this week. The fab had been producing 5,000 wafers a month during trial processing. It will eventually produce 20,000 wafers a month. [break] Door de stijging van de SDRAM prijzen beginnen de Rambus RIMMetjes nu ook interessanter te worden. Onder andere NEC is van plan om z'n SDRAM/Rambus mix bij te stellen van 95/5 naar 90/10. Verder kwamen onze nederlandse vrienden van ASM Lithography ook nog ff voorbij fietsen in dit artikeltje: [/break] ASM Lithography of Veldhoven, Netherlands, flew a six-member team to bolster its two-dozen-strong engineering group in Taiwan and begin to service 300 lithography steppers throughout Hsinchu Science Park. The recalibration, while routinely done in fabs on a weekly or bimonthly basis, still will take days, given the situation, an ASM spokesman said.

"It's just not 'just press reboot on your computer,'" said Mark Bigelow, a spokesman for ASM's U.S. operations in Tempe, Ariz.

Engineers will need to power up the steppers, check software settings, and then run a test wafer on each machine, shooting through an overlay reticle to render an array of alignment marks over the image field. Once that's done, the engineers will run the test wafer under a second stepper and then through a metrology machine to discover how far off the alignments are, Bigelow said.

Alle wafer produktie apparatuur moet dus opnieuw gekalibreerd worden en dat kost tijd. De instabiele stroomtoevoer van Taipower en de naschokken zal dit werk verder vertragen. TSMC, UMC en Winbond hebben trouwens aangekondigd dat ze 16 miljoen dollar weggeven voor humanitaire hulpverlening.

TargetPC heeft een review van de ATi Video Wonder op het net geplakt. Dit video-capturing dingetje heeft vergelijkbare features als de ATi All-in-Wonder, maar dan op een apart PCI add-on kaartje. De grap is dus dat je je 2D/3D beeld niet over hoeft te laten aan een brakke ATi chip, daar kun je gewoon je huidige videokaart voor blijven gebruiken :

This Tv tuner Board is the most advanced on it's category , Im not even sure why I call it a tv tuner card , its more of multimedia board .It features exactly all the features that the All in wonder 128 offers , So if you always Dreamed to get your hands on All in wonder board and didn't want to change your main video card , this is your chance .Also , this card will be around 30% less than the All in wonder 128 16mb series , So I would personally recommend to go with this instead of replacing your existing configuration , off course unless you are planning to upgrade your old card cause it's old fashioned . Final words : Kick ASS .

...sowee, hij noemt iets van ATi 'kick ass', dan moet het toch wel écht goed zijn .

EETimes heeft een artikel in elkaar gedraaid met concrete info over de gevolgen van de aardbeving in Taiwan voor AMD en Athlon moederplank fabrikanten:

The first big tangible fallout from the tragedy hit Advanced Micro Devices: Two out of three of AMD's Taiwan board makers, who were rushing to build boards for AMD's Pentium III-killer Athlon processor, are out of action.

GVC and Microstar have halted production of their Athlon boards in the aftermath of the quake. First International Computer is running at about 60 percent capacity at a Taipei plant, the only one currently making the Athlon boards, said Tom Chang, director of marketing for FIC in Fremont, Calif.

"As of right now it looks like it is only FIC. The others say they will be two or three weeks away from shipping again," said Doug Massa, a channel marketing manager for AMD in Sunnyvale. "This is definitely a speed bump for us. It was an unforeseen problem."

Before the quake, AMD sent a number of engineers to Taiwan to help other motherboard makers including Acer and Asustek ramp up boards that use the fast CPU in hopes a number of other boards will ship by the end of the year. However, the complex design has slowed the pace of uptake, said a senior engineer at NEC's PC group who asked not to be named.

"Athlon is definitely a challenge that has a lot of people burning the midnight oil right now, in part because it uses a fast 200 MHz front side bus," the engineer said. "Also AMD has not yet been able to get out boards that support two-way processors. That would really be competitive against the Intel Xeon line."

Ik kwam bij AMD Zone deze info tegen uit een press release van GamePC, waarin gesteld wordt dat de Coppermine sneller is dan een Athlon. Het gaat om een dual Pentium 600B systeem op 133MHz FSB met een overgeklokte Asus P2B-D BX plank:

GamePC's new 50 Caliber system will be based around these new processors, equipped with two Pentium III 600B processors running in an SMP configuration on top of a Asus P2B-D dual Slot-1 motherboard. Included in the system will be 256MB of EMS PC133+ HSDRAM memory, which has been proven to run at rock-solid levels at and above 133 MHz. Users will also have the freedom to custom configure the systems on GamePC's website to suit their specific needs and wants.

``Intel's Coppermine processors have really surprised us, giving a significant performance advantage over not only current Pentium III's, but also AMD Athlon systems at the same clock speed,'' says Chris Connolly, Head of Web Operations at GamePC. ``Almost every BX motherboard currently produced supports the 133 MHz bus speed, so users won't have to upgrade their motherboards to see significant performance gains.''

Kan op zich zijn dat ze bedoelen dat een dual Coppermine sneller is dan een single Athlon, wat afhankelijk van de applicatie wel kan kloppen. AMD Zone probeert dat te achterhalen, check hun site voor meer info.

Epic's Brandon Reinhart (aka GreenMarine) heeft een .plan update gepost met stuff over vorderingen met de Unreal Tournament Linux server:

Oooh, the Linux server ran all night with some bots running around shooting each other. No memory leaks and it didn't crash. Rock. I did some play testing with it yesterday and it seems ready to go.

I suppose after the final demo is released I'll make the final push to finish the client. (Its a bunch of crappy little boring long painful things to get the performance up. Like figure out why PGCC gives me an internal compiler error. Stuff that is great to procrastinate about!!)

Lijkt erop dat het nu redelijk zeker is dat de Unreal Tournament OpenGL/D3D demo morgen gereleased gaat worden. Dit is de info die Unreal Universe van een GT Interactive PR mannetje binnen kreeg:

In the vernacular of today's business climate, this is known as a "heads-up." GT Interactive's long awaited Unreal Tournament "uber-demo" is slated for release Monday, September 24!

Why "uber?" Because it supports all the major APIs. Good for you, and good for your readers...

En die 24 moet dus 27 zijn, foutje van het PR ventje.

Mirabilis heeft de alpha versie gereleased van ICQ surf, een vergelijkbaar proggie als Gooey, dat een paar maand geleden werd gereleased maar dat tot op heden niet echt populair geworden is. Met ICQ Surf en Gooey kun je chatten met mensen die op dat moment dezelfde site bezoeken. Hier wat info van de ICQ Surf site:

ICQ Surf Alpha version is a remarkable Internet tool that offers an exciting way to browse Web pages on the Internet. Using ICQ Surf Alpha version, you may ramble the vast Internet highways with fellow Internet travelers while enjoying mutually fun and interesting Web browsing adventures. ICQ Surf Alpha version allows you to communicate through public chat and personal instant messages with other ICQ Surf users while simultaneously browsing the same Web page. ICQ Surf Alpha version is therefore, the perfect way to increase your social contacts and generally be among friends. ICQ Surf Alpha version is great for discovering others who share your interests or hobbies. It's the ideal way to share your knowledge and experiences, receive and transfer to other users' tips and ideas as you browse from Web page to Web page soaking up all that the Internet has to offer.

ICQ Surf Alpha version comes with a special Hot Places feature, which allows you to view the most popular Web pages currently visited by other ICQ Surf users. ICQ Surf Alpha version also comes with a special program preference selection to configure and customize a wide array of program settings.

Op zich is het idee achter deze proggies best leuk. Grote kans dat het wél aanslaat nu Mirabilis het gejat heeft. ICQ Surf Alpha kun je hier naar binnen hengelen.

Unreal heeft altijd al bekend gestaan om de slimme AI van z'n botjes en monsters. The Adrenaline Vault vroeg Steve Sponge, Epic's AI programmer, naar de 8 AI niveau's in Unreal Tournament:

Polge told us the eight AI levels are complemented with a continuous range of intermediate levels. Levels zero to three are called "novice" because bots move more slowly than players and their weapons do less damage. Bots between levels four and seven move at the same speed as players and their weapons do the same amount of damage.

Check deze page voor de info.