ViewSonic heeft vandaag een nieuwe 19" aangekondigd. Modelletje PerfectFlat PF790 heeft een ultra platte kijkdoos en trekt op 1280x1024 een refreshrate van maximaal 90Hz (ongeveer ~92KHz). Hier wat geblaat uit de press release bij GA-Source:

ViewSonic Corporation today announced the PF790, a new addition to the Professional Series. This 19 inch (18.0 inch viewable) monitor combines patented PerfectFlat technology, flat from edge-to-edge, and aperture grille to deliver precise images and enhanced color richness. Designed for demanding applications such as desktop publishing, imaging, pre-press, advanced gaming, and Internet design, the PF790 offers users realistically proportioned images and minimal glare. Providing a super fine 0.25-0.27 variable aperture grille pitch and a resolution of 1280 x 1024 at 90Hz, the PF790 displays high resolution at high refresh rates and delivers superior focus for the ultimate picture quality. The PF790 also utilizes super dark flat panel and low 41 percent light transmission rate for high contrast, allowing astonishing and vivid color.

"This monitor is designed to provide all of the quality and performance advantages of a 21 inch monitor, only slightly smaller," said Sally Wang, Product Line Manager, ViewSonic Corporation. "Its PerfectFlat screen design eliminates curved surfaces and reduces light reflection for better picture clarity and minimal eye fatigue."

Also featured is the multi-layer ARAG screen treatment. This coating promises to be more effective than traditional silica coating in producing picture sharpness with optimal antiglare and anti-reflection effect. The PF790 is TCO '99 as well as Energy 2000 certified for low power consumption and environmental friendliness. In addition, the monitor features Plug & Play+, user-friendly OnView Controls, and ViewMatch for accurate color matching.

Offered at a MSRP of $599, the PF790 is compatible with PC, Macintosh, and high-resolution third-party graphics standards. The PF790 is backed by a three-year parts and labor warranty and is eligible for ViewSonic's optional Express Exchange Service, which guarantees a replacement monitor within 48 hours.

Logitech's force feedback mouse is vandaag officieel geïntroduceerd en kan online besteld worden op www.buylogitech.com, zo lees ik bij Tom's Hardware Tech news. Nog ff wachten en dan ligt-ie ook bij Dynabijt en Vobis:

Gamers can feel the pushes, shakes, and shimmies that were once only available in products like joysticks and steering wheels with the WingMan Force Feedback mouse from Logitech. The USB-only device employs a microprocessor that interprets commands from a Windows PC and turns them into tugs, pulls, shakes, or various high- and low-range vibrations. Gamers will be able to feel the recoil of their rifle playing Heavy Gear II or Slave Zero, or the extreme G-forces on sharp turns in games like Star Wars Episode I: Racer. Other games expected to add support for the mouse include an OEM version of Quake III Arena, Solider of Fortune, Nocturne, Need for Speed III, and Darkstone. The mouse will be available later this month for about $99 with full versions of Heavy Gear II, Railroad Tycoon II: Gold Edition, and Gruntz, or can be pre-purchased from Logitech's e-commerce site at www.buylogitech.com.

Zoals je wellicht hebt gemerkt is de nVidia NDA voor de GeForce 256 afgelopen, vandaar de vloedgolf aan GeForce previews vandaag. Michael van AnandTech Webnews heeft ze op een rijtje geplant, schaamteloos door mij gejat:

• Rivaextreme's GeForce DDR Review
• Riva3D's GeForce DDR Review
• Shugashack's GeForce Review
• FiringSquad's GeForce DDR Review
• PlanetRiva's GeForce DDR Review
• FastGraphic's Guillemot 3D Prophet Review
• Ga-Source Guillemot 3D Prophet Review
• 3DGPU's GeForce 256 DDR Review
• 3DHardware.net finally got to put up their GeForce benchmarks
• Computer Games Online GeForce Review

VIA heeft de licht verbeterde Apollo Pro 133A chipset gereleased, met support voor AGP4x, 133MHz FSB en ATA66. Allereerst ruk ik een hap uit de press release van VIA:

VIA Technologies continues it leadership role with today's introduction of the VIA Apollo Pro133A core logic chipset, the first chipset to unite AGP 4x, 133MHz FSB, PC133 memory support and ATA66. The 133MHz Front Side Bus of the VIA Apollo Pro133A optimizes the performance of platforms based on Intel's 133MHz Pentium (tm) III and other next generation processors. PC133 memory support enables the VIA Apollo Pro133A to satisfy AGP 4x's heavy bandwidth requirements and provide the highest mainstream graphics performance. The VIA Apollo Pro133A is available in mass volume now and major OEMs and Motherboard Manufacturers are already shipping Apollo Pro133A-based systems.

"With the release of the VIA Apollo Pro133A, it is evident that VIA is leading the industry in enabling new technologies," said Wenchi Chen, president and CEO, VIA. "AGP 4x, 133MHz FSB and PC133, built on the existing industry infrastructures and available immediately, are the performance standards that the Mainstream PC Market demands and which VIA provides."

[...] Key Features

- 133MHz Front Side Bus
- AGP 4x
- Supports up to 2.0 GB of 100/133MHz SDRAM and
- VCM memory types
- PCI 2.2
- ATA 33/66
- 2-4 Ports USB
- Integrated KBC, RTC
- Advanced system power management with ACPI and OnNow
- North Bridge: 510-pin BGA VT82C694X
- South Bridge: 324-pin BGA VT82C596B [break] Verder heeft The Register een nieuwsartikel over deze happening: [/break] Major OEMs and mobo makers have already started shipping the Via chipset in volume, the company said.

The move is likely to upset Intel because of the further delay it announced to the Camino i820 chipset because of problems with Rambus a couple of weeks back. Just two weeks earlier, Intel was forced to announce it would, in the future, give support to the PC-133 memory standard.

Via had a large part to play in promoting the PC-133 standard, which many Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers favoured over solutions suggested by Intel.

Beschuldigingen dat Intel moederplank fabrikanten chanteert om - onder dreiging van drooglegging van de BX/ZX chipset supply - geen Athlon borden te produceren, worden ontkent door zowel Intel als AMD, zo bericht The Register:

Rana Mainee, AMD's European research director, said: "We do not know of any outright pressure." Market perception as AMD rolled out its Athlon K7 products may have been that there was not enough motherboard support, but, Mainee said, his company was pleased with the way things were going.

He said that all of AMD's original motherboard partners, including Gigabyte, had performed well, while newer partners, such as GVC had moved faster than expected to support the Athlon. Two or three other new partners had also exceeded AMD's expectations, he added.

"On the whole, we've cleared this hurdle from a market perception point of view," he said.

Volgens The Register zal Intel morgen duidelijkheid verschaffen over de problemen met de i820 chipset en Rambus RIMMetjes. Geruchten wijzen erop dat Intel de release van de Camino chipset met minimaal 3 maanden zal uitstellen:

Sources have told The Register that at last week's Microprocessor Forum, Rambus executives were spreading rumours that Intel has isolated and reproduced the near fatal "Camino/Rambus Bug" under a narrow set of circumstances. Now they say Intel must reproduce it with all combinations of motherboards, RIMM vendors, memory capacities and speed grades. [break] Ondertussen neemt de steun voor PC133 en DDR SDRAM verder toe: [/break] There is further evidence that more top OEMs are standing back from Rambus. According to highly reliable sources, because the launch of Camino was such a cockup, many PC manufacturers saw Dell's aggressive pricing for its up-and-coming Rambus-based line. That is pushing them further towards PC-133.

However, the most astonishing news from one of our normally reliable OEM contacts today, is that Intel is actually advising customers to use Via chipsets in the short term. Intel would never publicly admit that.

Another source has told The Register that Micron delivered a DDR SDRAM presentation at the Microprocessor Forum behind closed doors, using its own so-called Samurai chipset for x86 workstations and servers for production next year.

If it succeeds in its cunning plan, we are likely to see graphics controllers in Q1 of the year 2000 supporting DDR memory, while in Q3 there will be UMA desktops. That would give DDR a big push in the bid to establish itself as an industry standard.

Met liefde of met groot kabaal,
Windows gebruiken we allemaal...

Nou ja, de meesten onder ons, en van die windows gebruikers zijn er dan ook veel die 98SE, de jongste telg uit de Win9x serie gebruiken.

Deze versie heeft nu (zoals het ook niet uit kon blijfen) een downloadbare update.

The Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Supplement addresses shutdown issues on systems with specific hardware/software configurations running Windows 98 Second Edition. These issues include systems restarting when selecting shutdown and systems hanging on shutdown.

Microsoft recommends the troubleshooting steps outlined in the KB article How to Troubleshoot Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Problems. If, after following the steps outlined in this article, the system continues to exhibit shutdown problems, then Microsoft suggests applying this update.

Microsoft has also learned that some customers were replacing the Windows 98 Second Edition version of CONFIGMG.VXD with the Windows 98 version to address shutdown issues. Microsoft strongly recommends that users do not do this. This is an untested scenario that could result in blue screens, ACPI errors and hardware failures. This update will check to see if the appropriate version of CONFIGMG.VXD is installed on the system and replace any older versions with the Windows 98 Second Edition version.

System Requirements

Windows 98 Second Edition

Before You Install the Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Supplement

Because the Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Supplement updates your system files and requires you to restart your computer after installation, you should save and close all open documents and close all programs before installing the Update.

How to download and install

Click the Next button at the top or bottom of the page.

Follow the instructions on your screen.

How to use

You don't need to do anything after downloading and installing the update.

How to uninstall

You should save and close all open documents and close all programs before attempting to uninstall this update. Then click on Start/Find/Files or Folders and search for 239887UN.INF. Once this file is displayed, right-click on the file and choose Install. You will need to have your original Windows 98 Second Edition CD available to uninstall this update.

Met dank aan Simba (Stef) die mij hiervan via ICQ op de hoogte bracht.

Techweb bericht dat het huidige tekort aan DRAMs in het vierde kwartaal aan zal houden. Lijkt er dus op dat we voorlopig geen prijsverlagingen hoeven te verwachten:

Micron Technology Inc. last week broke the ice by uttering the "A" word, telling Wall Street investors that it is sold out of DRAM for the fourth quarter. And a number of other DRAM producers have placed OEM customers on allocation following the market's sudden U-turn from the oversupply situation that just this summer fed rivers of low-cost chips into the OEM channel.

[...] Lisa Dreher, memory product manager at Kingston Technology Co., a Fountain Valley, Calif., module maker, said, "DRAM allocation is likely to be short-lived as manufacturers ramp to full capacity and complete die shrinks. However, looking ahead, we may see some real allocation in the DRAM market next year."

[...] Jim Sogas, director of business operations at the DRAM division of Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. in San Jose, said the current DRAM shortage should continue for another month before the industry is in full allocation mode. "But regardless of what you call it, the OEM customers know they're now on allocation," he said. "Every DRAM product across the board is sold out."

Voodoo Extreme heeft een preview van de ATi Rage Fury MAXX online gegooid. Het artikel is geschreven door Ga'ash Soffer, dus er wordt ook wat technische diepere soep gepresenteerd over de werking van deze kaart (simpel gezegd een Rage 128 Pro SLI, maar dan dubbel geplakt op 1 kaart):

Judging from the specs, it looks like Fury Maxx will compete head to head with the GeForce. Unfortunately, GeForce offers equivalent fill-rate plus T&L, all at a lower cost. Bandwidth is a major advantage the Fury Maxx has over the 'vanilla' (SDRAM vs DDRAM) version of the GeForce. This will be helpful in very high resolution gaming. ATI will again have to rely on its 'extras' in order to survive the onslaught. The excellent DVD features and impressive "OEM checklist" will make the Fury Maxx appealing to the hard core techie who does everything from Quake3 to watch movies on his comp. Also, Fury Maxx will probably be incorporated in high-end systems from large manufacturers such as Dell, Compaq, etc, although it will face heavy competition from the GeForce and upcoming Savage 2000; provided T&L makes a fast entrance into the mainstream. (Actually, the OEMs only need to think T&L is the next big thing for T&L products to be favored over the reliable ATI part)

Firingsquad heeft een preview van de GeForce 256 reference kaart met DDR SGRAM gepost. Uiteraard gooide men er ook meteen een blije collectie benchmarks tegenaan, helaas echter maar tot 1024x768 zodat de GeForce DDR niet de kans krijgt om zijn ware potentieel naar buiten te plassen. Desondanks in Quake3 toch wel erg strakke framerates (1024 tegen 100fps!):

eady for this? 1024x768 is now free in fastest! The identical scores for both GeForce cards look a little peculiar. We really don't want to say that it's CPU dependant until we do a little more testing with other processors. Look for an update later this week.

On a whim we decided to try overclocking the AGP bus to see if we could squeeze out any more performance. We increased the AGP bus from 66MHz to 100MHz by changing the AGP clock ratio from 2/3 to 1/1. Most current generation video cards can't handle a 100MHz AGP bus, but the GeForce took it in stride. The increase in AGP bus speed didn't yield any improvements in framerate, so we decided to try upping the FSB.

Linux Today heeft een verslag van de KDE Developers Conference neer gemikt. Voor buitenstaanders is de info nogal droge koek, over object modelling en desktop communication protocollen, maar de ontwikkelingen lijken me (als simpele niet-geïnformeerde Windoos gebruiker) de goede kant op gaan (-> Linux desktop-vriendelijk maken) . Als voorbeeld hier wat plakwerk over aRts:

Stefan Westerfeld demonstrated aRts -- his next generation network multimedia framework. aRts uses a very modular system of CORBA components to achieve nearly limitless potential for multimedia playing and manipulation. KDE 2.0 will use an optimized subset of aRts to handle all audio playing. Future releases of KDE will then use the more advanced video and audio/video manipulation abilities available in aRts. The aRts server is incredible. It's synthesis and filtering abilities are leagues ahead of anything yet found on Unix. It will offer capabilities to KDE that have so far been found only on OSes like Windows, BeOS, etc.

Voor de gefreakte Athlon fanaten heeft AMD een partij Athlon en K6 wallpapers op z'n site geprikt. Hier een paar voorbeelden:

Alleen jammer dat ze maar tot 1024x768 gaan. Ook dank aan hjs voor deze tip.

Voor de gelukkige bezitters van een (dual) Abit BP6 config heeft BP6.com een nieuw BIOS en HPT366 drivertje klaar gezet:

- BP6 Official Beta release LP BIOS + HPT 366 beta BIOS v1.20
- WinNT and W2K ATA66 drivers v1.20 .

Verder lees ik er positieve opmerkingen over de uitwerking van deze driver/BIOS update:

Users are reporting that the new BP6 Bios and ATA66 drivers 1.20 are providing a 20-30% performance increase in ATA66 access. Also NT and Win2K installation is now easier with these updartes.

Meer GeForce DDR benchmarks (de nVidia GeForce NDA liep vandaag af) vinden we bij Bjorn3D, helaas echter zonder betrouwbare vergelijking met een TNT2 Ultra kaart. Een hap uit de conclusie:

As I don't myself have the card it's of course hard for me to give you a good impression of it. Still, from the benchmarks, and from Scott's messages to me I must say that this is one hot card. yeah, I'm disappointed in the 32 bit performance so far but it should be noted that it still seems to kick the TNT2's butt.

Check ook de benchmarks van Riva3D, die hebben wel een vergelijking met een TNT2U.

Ik kreeg van Jean-Pierre Skalamera, de european marketing manager van Abit, bericht dat de problemen met de stroomtoevoer in Taiwan voorbij zijn:

For all of you concerned about the situation in Taiwan, I would like to refer you to following link announcing the end of Power shortages in Taiwan. www.eurotrademag.com/news/99oct11/1011f.htm

Since last Saturday the ABIT factory in Taoyuan also has normal power supply. [break] Uit dat nieuwartikel van Eurotrade: [/break] Due to temporary power relay lines set up by the state-owned Taiwan Power Company, power rationing to subscribers in Northern Taiwan has ended.

For a brief period, it was feared that torrential downpour central part of Taiwan brought on by Typhoon Dan over the weekend would hurt the fragile new lines, but it did not. However, full repair of the island-wide power system is expected to take up to two years.

In view of the industrial losses resulting from the power outage caused by last month's earthquake, the government plans to set up incentives to encourage local manufacturers to install power generating facilities of their own and speed up the lifting of the ban on private-owned power companies.

Nog meer reviews van Hardwareinfo.net, deze is van de Diamond Stealth III S540 Xtreme videokaart. Hieronder heb je een hap uit de test, lees hier verder.

Diamond zelf spreekt bij de Savage 4 Xtreme van "TNT2 snelheden". Dit zou zeker niet verkeerd zijn, zeker als je bedenk dat de Stealth III S540 Xtreme stukken goedkoper is dan de gemiddelde TNT2 videokaart. De richtprijs van het OEM model dat wij toegestuurd kregen is slechts Fl. 299,--: ongeveer 100 gulden minder dan de prijs van Diamonds eigen TNT2 videokaart.

Zoals ik al vaker het vermeld op Hardwareinfo.net zijn de specificaties van de Savage 4 chip absoluut in orde. De Savage 4 kan in principe alles wat een TNT2 ook kan (32-bit color rendering, AGP 4x, 2048x2048 textures, etc.) en heeft in toevoeging daarop S3's eigen S3TC texture compressie systeem. In twee vorige artikelen heb ik al ruime aandacht geschonken aan dit systeem: Onze Savage 4 Preview en de Creative 3D Blaster Savage 4 review. Aangezien het S3TC systeem ook in vrijwel alle komende generatie graphics-chips zit (o.a. de GeForce 256 en de Savage 2000) en het de standaard compressiemethode van DirectX 6 is, wordt S3TC steeds vaker toegepast door game-developers. Op de Dealer Info Dag toonde Hastec mij een speciaal Unreal level dat gebruik maakte van 2048 x 2048 textures en S3TC compressie: dit was werkelijk ongekend mooi om te zien en liep prachtig op de Savage 4 Xtreme. Ook de nieuwe Unreal Tournament demo (die gebruik maakt van gedetailleerde textures) draait als een zonnetje op de Savage 4 Xtreme.

Lees de rest hier.

Koen van hardwareinfo.net heeft beslag weten te leggen op een vet Kryotech Cool Athlon 800MHz systeem. De ingebouwde diepvries combi zorgt ervoor dat het Athlon chippie op zo'n min 40 graden zijn werk kan doen! Uiteraard heeft Koen er een review over in elkaar geknutseld, die vind je hier.

De laatste tijd heb ik op Hardwareinfo.net in een aantal artikelen veel aandacht geschonken aan het fenomeen overklokken. Echte overklokkers weten als geen ander wat goede koeling kan doen voor een computersysteem. Naast de standaard koeling met de CPU- en kastventilatoren zijn er de laatste jaren steeds geavanceerdere koelingsystemen bedacht en ontwikkeld. Dat overklokken niet alleen iets is wat door computerfreaks op verlaten zolderkamertjes wordt uitgevoerd bewijst de firma Kryotech: deze firma maakt zeer high-end koelingsystemen voor in PC's. Van M-Team Systems ontvingen we van Kryotech een Cool Athlon 800 systeem: buiten een PC vonden we in de kast een complete diepvriezer terug, die er voor zorgt dat de CPU altijd op min 40 graden Celsius zijn werk kan doen. Het gevolg: een AMD Athlon processor die op maarliefst 800 MHz geheel stabiel zijn werk kan doen. Uiteraard geeft Kryotech zelf garantie op het systeem en de CPU. Dat Kryotech hiermee het snelste x86 PC-systeem ter wereld op de markt heeft gezet zal niemand verbazen. Uiteraard heb ik niet alleen wat tests uitgevoerd op het Cool Athlon 800 systeem, maar heb ik het systeem ook zo ver mogelijk uit elkaar gedraaid om te kijken hoe het Kryotech koelingsysteem precies werkt. In dit artikel zal ik eerst de achterliggende gedachte van de Kryotech systemen behandelen. Daarna zal de complete werking van het geavanceerde koelingsysteem d.m.v. veel foto's beschreven worden. Op het eind bewijzen enkele benchmarks dat de Cool Athlon 800 verreweg het snelste PC-systeem is dat op dit moment leverbaar is! Na het lezen van dit artikel is er eigenlijk nog maar één reactie mogelijk: COOL!

Klik hier voor de rest van de review!

Riva 3D heeft een GeForce kaart met Double Data Rate SDRAM te pakken weten te krijgen en heeft daar meteen een zooi benchmarks op gedraaid. De resultaten zijn wreed, de GeForce levert bij 16 én 32-bit color bijna een dubbele framerate als de TNT2 Ultra!

Hey buddy...you want some benchmarks? We got your benchmarks. The first thing you'll notice is how much better the GeForce handles higher resolutions. While lower resolutions definitely show a hefty increase in speed over the TNT2 Ultra, the higher resolutions show almost a 100% increase.

Check die benchmarks hier.

Onze russische vrienden van iXBT Labs hebben een review van de AMD Athlon 600 gepost en zoals we van iXBT gewend zijn is het weer een behoorlijk uitgebreid verhaal geworden. Hier een stukje over de door iXBT geteste Athlon borden:

We reviewed only two samples of mainboards designed for AMD Athlon - MSI MS-6167 and Gigabyte GA-7IX. As for those pieces from MSI and Gigabyte they were based on Fester design. MSI turned out very unsophisticated and simply copied the reference design. Gigabyte in its turn handled the matter with greater creativity and even made certain small changes. However, as a result we still have only two mainboards as like as two peas. Microstar MS-6167

Gigabyte GA-7IX Both mainboards are made in ATX-format, based on AMD 750 chipset, support up to 1GHz processors and possess 5 PCI, 2 ISA and 1 AGP and 3 DIMM slots. Of course, they also support UltraDMA/66. System monitoring is carried out by means of W83782D controller. The only visible differences can be detected in BIOS Setup: MS-6167 can boast more memory settings than its competitor, while 7IX appears easier to understand for an unsophisticated user.

In terms of the mainboards performance, they prove almost identical and hence we won't dwell here. It seems to be the best thing if we could wait for the other manufacturers involved in Fester redesigning to launch their mainboards. These boards may turn out not only very speedy ones, but may as well have special options for Athlon overclocking.

Ik kwam via JC bij deze interesante pagina van VLSI Microprocessors, waar men SPEC benchmarks van een flinke zooi high-end CPU's bijeen gebracht heeft. De AMD Athlon-650 slaat wat betreft integer performance zeker geen gek figuur tussen zijn veel duurdere Alpha, HP en MIPS broeders:

Volgens een artikel van EETimes Taiwan (onleesbaar voor ons Neanderthalers) is er een groot tekort aan SRAM (cache) chips ontstaan, wat mogelijk nadelige gevolgen heeft voor de produktie van AMD's Athlon. Ace's Hardware heeft een engelstalige samenvatting:

According to EE Times Taiwan , SRAM has been in serious shortage and is expected to hamper the production of K7 processors unless the problem is ameliorated soon. SRAM shortage is expected to have huge negative impact on Super-7 motherboard productions as well. EE Times comments that motherboard makers may be forced to retire their Super-7 motherboard production lines sooner than expected in the wake of SRAM shortage, since Super-7 motherboards are no longer their main focus. Should this happen, K6-2 sales will feel the heat.

Dean Kent (van RealWorldTech, zelfde ventje als die van de usenet berichten over Intel's chipset marketing strategiën) heeft bij Sharky Extreme het derde deel van z'n Motherboard Guide online gezet. In part 3 wordt uitgelegd hoe je een plank moet installeren (moederkoek in de kast flikkeren en schroefjes dichttimmeren):

If you have never installed a motherboard, you should read this article in its entirety before jumping in to make sure you understand what is involved and have at least a general idea of how you will proceed. You should also review the User's Manual for your board to identify the location of all slots, jumpers, switches and connectors. The manual may also include helpful tips regarding the handling, installing and configuring of the motherboard. Even if you have installed one or two boards in the past, you may find some useful information here.

The tools necessary are fairly minimal - A Philips screwdriver, needle-nose pliers and perhaps some electrician's tape. Before you actually open the case, you should unplug the power supply from the wall and make sure you are properly grounded. Static electricity, even from your body, can seriously damage the components inside the computer if you are not careful. The best way to ground yourself is to use a wrist strap that is connected to the case chassis, but you can achieve the same result by touching the chassis each time before handling a component.

Once you are ready, open the case and get ready to spend about an hour or two under the hood…

Ben je nog niet 'in the known', dan is het wellicht handig om hier verder te lezen.

De voortdurende minimalisatie van silicium transistors zal binnen afzienbare tijd zijn fysieke grenzen bereiken, zo bericht Yahoo! News. Het verhaaltje achter de wet van Moore, die stelt dat de capaciteit van chips ieder 18 maanden verdubbelt, zal niet langer gelden:

Citing an article in the journal Science, the Times reported that Paul Packan, a scientist with Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, said semiconductor engineers have not found ways around basic physical limits beyond the generation of silicon chips that will begin to appear next year.

Packan called the apparent impasse ``the most difficult challenge the semiconductor industry has ever faced.''

``These fundamental issues have not previously limited the scaling of transistors,'' Packan wrote in the Sept. 24 issue of Science. ``There are currently no known solutions to these problems.''

For more than 30 years, the computer industry has relied on a phenomenon known as Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, which was the basic force underlying the computer revolution and the rise of the Internet, the Times said.

[...] Executives at Intel cautioned against seeing the problem as insurmountable, adding they were confident answers could be found. But Dennis Allison, a Silicon Valley physicist and computer designer, told the Times, ``The fact that this warning comes from Intel's process group is really significant. This says that they see actual limits.''

USB Workshop heeft een review gepost van de Hewlett Packard Company DeskJet 895Cse printer. Hieronder een gedeelte over zijn design, lees hier verder.

A traditional U path paper track printer, the HP 895Cse has a low profile and requires only 15" of head room with the print cartridge access door fully ajar. Paper is loaded into the printer from a two-tiered adjustable tray at the front. The paper loads into the lower front tray and the completed document exits into the tray above. To prevent smudging, a dual sided plastic gate mechanism in the exit tray delays the page from dropping too quickly when multiple pages are printed. Like all newer HP DeskJets, the print cartridges center in the access opening when the door is lifted and automatically return to the ready position when the door is closed. The 895Cse is a dual cartridge printer, one black and one tri-color (CMY). This printer uses the same ink cartridges as the very popular HP 722C. The printer comes provided with the new small sized economy black cartridge designed for people who only use their printer occasionally. The 895Cse is a networkable professional printer designed for office use. A full sized black ink cartridge should be included.

Over bij Thresh's FiringSquad hebben ze een guide in elkaar geflanst over de Intel Itanium IA-64 processor (voorheen Merced). Hieronder heb je vast een gedeelte, lees de rest van het verhaaltje hier.

One of the greatest complaints about Intel's 32-bit processors was a lack of registers. Intel calls IA-64 "Massively Resourced", which means they have finally brought their architecture to the level of resources offered by other modern CPU's. The Itaniums will ship with 128 Integer/Multimedia registers, 128 82-bit Floating Point registers, 64 predicate registers, and 8 Branch Registers. The large number of registers have allowed Intel to integrate a dynamic register stack engine, which should greatly increase the performance of multitasking applications.

All multitasking is performed by giving each program a slice of CPU time. When one programs slice is over and another one has begun, it is called a context switch. Most processors are forced to save their registers to memory before allowing the next program access; otherwise, the data used by the previous program will be overwritten. The IA-64 will instead dynamically allocate registers every time there is a context switch. The compiler will add an alloc (allocation) command to each program that asks for a number of registers to use. The CPU will rename a number of its registers and give them for that program to use. When its time for another program to use the processor, instead of saving data to memory, the Itanium renames its registers to offer the next program a clean set. When the first program switches back, the CPU renames the registers again the data is there for use; no slow memory accesses necessary.

Bij de ShugaShack hebben ze een aantal Quake 2 en 3 benchmarks gepost van de GeForce 256, samen met een TNT2 Ultra en een Voodoo3 3500. Vooral Quake3 op high quality settings levert maar een magere FPS toename op. Check alle info hier.