Bij Gamers Depot is nu een review te vinden van de Guillemot Maxi Gamer Cougar. Dit kaartje draagt de TNT2 M64 met zich mee die met zijn 64-bits databus toch wel een stukkie minder presteert dan een normale TNT2. De pijs is echter wel laag gehouden waardoor hij voor de part-time gamer een perfecte keus is. Check de review hier.

The Maxigamer Cougar is the latest (for now) of Guillemot's 3D video cards. What sets it apart a wee bit is that it is based on the TNT/2 64M chipset. This is a somewhat stripped down regular TNT/2. It has all the features, except that it only uses a 64 bit memory bus (vs 128 on the regular TNT/2). The main difference that this makes is that there is a point (in terms of resolution + color depth) where the Cougar is abut as fast as any other regular TNT/2, but as resolution goes up you will hit a point where the Cougar's performance drops off significantly.

The reason you would want to buy this? Well it still is a 32mb card, and if you rarely or never run at higher resolutions (due to monitor size or CPU speed) then this may make the Cougar a valid choice. Lets take a closer look at it to see.

Bij DemoNews hebben ze verder ook nog een review gepost van de AOpen 3D Navigator PA3020G TNT2 Ultra kaart. AOpen heeft het vrolijk voor elkaar gekregen om dit modelletje op 175/233MHz te klokken. De reviewer had blijkbaar minder succes:

As I said before, AOpen managed to overclock this card to 175/233Mhz, and get it stable there. They didn't mention if they had used any extra coolers or cooling tape (but I'm sure they used plenty of it). The card they used is the normal TNT2, 16Mb version. The card I have is the TNT2 Ultra 32Mb card with TV-out features and S-video, and is clocked at 183/150. So, how did my overclocking go? Here're the results from my overclockingresults:

Normal clock rate (150/183):
Quake2, res 640x480, colors 16-bit: 128,8 fps

Clock set on 160/190:
Quake2, res 640x480, colors 16-bit: 131,7 fps

I actually couldn't go any further than that because the machine started to hang too often. The AOpen TNT2 has a small but pretty effective cooler for the mainchip bit it seems as if the card is very sensitive for overclocking. I'm not sure of if the lockups depends on the hot air going out from the Athlon CPU or not but I anyway think that the card is a little bit too sensitive. So the overclocking had to stop.

Bij DemoNews hebben ze een korte review in elkaar geschroefd van de Athlon 650. Als mobo hebben ze de MSI 6167 gebruikt, waarna ze deze combi onder o.a. Quake 2 gebenchmarked hebben. Hieronder heb je een gedeelte.

Not too long ago, AMD was known for their very bad CPU's, atleast I felt it like that when the k5 was compared to Intel's CPU's. But, at some point things started to turn for AMD, they started to give out the K6, K6-II and K6-III series that went quite well for them. That made the competition raise between AMD and Intel, now the K7/Athlon has hit the market and Intel really got something to bite in. Let's see how the CPU makes up to its repurtation.

Today, there are no mainboards available to buy on the market. The board I have is specially sent to me by MSI. This mainboard is the one to be released very soon. FIC, ASUS and probably a bunch more of companies will releases their own K7 mainboards with their own specifications very shortly. I have the opportunity to use the MSI-6167 mainboard.

GA-Source bericht dat er in Duitsland een doorbraak is bereikt bij de ontwikkeling moleculaire computers. Een of andere slimme harrie met de naam James La Clair heeft een molecuul ontwikkeld die aan en uit geswitched kan worden:

James La Clair, formerly with the Scripps Research Institute in California, had developed a molecule that could be switched on and off by nitrogen and carbon dioxide, it said.

[...] Molecular computing could help to solve a major problem facing the technology industry -- the physical limitations of silicon-based transistors. Scientists at Intel have warned of problems with further scaling down of transistors. Computers based on molecules, not on silicon, could make computers in the future much more powerful and compact.

``Molecular circuits could be just a fraction of a nanometer (one thousand-millionth of a meter) wide. Researchers have already created molecular wires, logic gates (a building block of computers) and switches, which may some day be hooked up to make a working computer a fraction of the size of existing machines,'' the magazine said.

Fiets richting GA-Source voor het volledige nieuwsartikel.

ATi heeft een 32Mb versie geïntroduceert van de All-in-wonder 128 video accelerator met video-editing features en TV tuner. Hier de press release, geleend van GA-Source:

ATI Technologies today announced that the All-in-Wonder 128 32MB combination TV, video and graphics board is now shipping, bundled with Digital Immersion Software's Merlin VR for interactive 3D content creation. With the 32MB All-in-Wonder 128 and Merlin VR, home and office users can create animations, architectural walk throughs and even interactive web content.

The All-in-Wonder 128 32 MB version is the ideal PC upgrade that turns the PC into an intelligent TV, providing TV tuning, graphics that support all the most popular games, such as Quake III Arena, video capture, closed captioning save-to-file and TV display for large screen viewing.

In addition to allowing users to watch TV through their PCs, its advanced technology also allows for such applications as still and motion video capture and capturing closed caption transcripts. These functions have been combined to produce the TV Magazine feature, where closed captioning transcripts, along with periodic images from the screen can be saved to file to produce a printed, magazine-format version of the television broadcast.

Hot Words feature lets the PC monitor TV for desired programming. The ability to use the closed captioning stream means the All-in-Wonder 128 can monitor TV for desired programs and content. When the content is broadcast and a pre-programmed Hot Word is detected, All-in- Wonder 128 notifies the user the program is on.

An additional feature of the TV tuner features is scheduled viewing, where the PC turns on the TV for designated programming. Channel Surf gives users the ability to use live TV programming as video wall paper. The All-in-Wonder 128 also supports North America's DBXT stereo TV audio with hardware detection and software notification that the channel is in stereo.

All-in-Wonder 128 includes Digital VCR functionality, where a PC can be programmed to record favorite TV shows just like a regular VCR. Digital VCR leverages the ability of modern CPUs to compress video spontaneously, as it's viewed, rendering dedicated hardware for video compression and decompression obsolete. Also, digitized video from camcorders or VHS tape can be affordably saved to today's recordable CDs and recordable DVD-RAM.

Ik zag op het forum een posting van DaZZle. Die heeft net (als één van de eersten denk ik) een Superweb account gekregen en de eerste indrukken lijken met niet helemaal positief...

Bij elke server waarmee ik probeer te connecten is de kans inmiddels 1/10 geworden dat ik een connectie krijg! ik krijg altijd een timeout! Het is me dus nog niet gelukt om met een irc server te connecten, en op dit forum terug kunnen komen bv. lukt ook al niet meer. Ik snap hoe het kan dat ze alles kunnen betalen voor f35,- in de maand. De enige backbone die ze hebben is een isdnaccountje met planet internet ofzo.... en als je dat met 10.000 mensen moet sharen.... ja dan gaat het fout.

Ik zit hier nu overigens gewoon met mijn originele provider (pi) alleen het eerste berichtje is met superweb gepost.

John E. schrijft: "Jaja, Asus heeft weer eens nieuwe drivers voor de V3800 TNT2 serie op het web losgelaten. Dit keer gebasseerd op de v2.25 Detonators van Nvidia.":

1. Based on NVIDIA's display driver v2.25. 2. Support dual-view, but the TV-out of dual view mode for 3D game is still under development. 3. Improve captured video quality for high-speed moving objects. 4. Fix capture driver bug under Adobe Premiere when the capture is completed. 5. Enhance 3D game performance when VR enabled.

De nieuwe drivers zouden hier neergehaalt moeten kunnen worden, alleen krijg ik het met de grootste moeite van de wereld niet voor elkaar om daar 2.25 drivers te ontdekken.

Ars Technica heeft een review gepost van de Swiftech MC1000 peltier cooler. Het ding verbruikt 72Watt en voegt dus behoorlijk wat warmte aan je systeem toe. In ruil daarvoor krijg je een CPU temperatuur van rond het vriespunt, maar of dat ook hogere kloksnelheden mogelijk maakt?

But there is a caveat: the MC1000 is, in some ways, like any other Peltier. It may cool that CPU down to arctic temperatures, but it's not going to take a CPU where it can't possibly go. Most CPUs are not ridiculously overclockable. Despite what so many websites claim, if you've got, say, a 366MHz Celeron that won't even do 512MHz, a Peltier cooler is not likely to take you to 660MHz. I'm not trying to get people down on Peltiers--not at all! What I want to make clear is that a Peltier can't change the fact that you might have a bum CPU. Most of the mail that Ask Ars! receives about Peltier cooling lacks this fundamental understanding: a CPU that can't overclock worth a damn with conventional cooling is not going to overclock to the celestial heights just because you bought a Peltier.

Hier twee plaatjes uit het archief:

Gamer's Depot heeft een review van het MSI 6167 Athlon moederbord op z'n site neer geplant. Hier een stukje over de stabiliteit van de plank:

After thorough testing, the MSI board, with the latest BIOS proved to be quite the little trooper. I'm sure that most of the remaining "bugs" will be worked out as MSI improves the BIOS. Until then, if you can live with them, you should be fine. As with all Athlon-based motherboards that we know of, you must be running one of the "Recommended Power Supplies" to ensure solid performance. Athlon CPU's are very sensitive about their voltage, especially if you're one of those "hardcore" dudes who like to have everything in their system overclocked to the max. Umm, I sure wouldn't know anyone like that now . If you're unsure about if your power supply meets the requirements, refer to AMD's website for a complete list.

John E. schrijft: "Het is weer zo ver, een review van een TNT2 plank. Oké, denk je dat het weer zo'n duizend in een dozijn review is, nou dan heb je mazzel want het is weer een goeie review van iXBT-Labs en dit keer over een Gigabyte kaart met 0.22um TNT2 Pro chipset:":

So, what do you thing about the advantage Gigabyte provided its offspring with?! As default, the frequencies equal 170/180MHz (in non-Turbo mode they are 150/166MHz correspondingly). In other words, you pay the money for a regular NVIDIA Riva TNT2, but you will get a device, which working frequencies will be higher than even those by NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra! Note that the declared initial frequency for Riva TNT2-A is 143MHz. Well, Gigabyte doesn't seem to have disappointed us with its new Turbo graphics card.

Here we have to point out that the chipset can be overclocked up to 183MHz. At higher frequencies the card proved unstable at work. Besides, to our great disappointment it turned out that this extremely fast memory, which allowed overclocking up to 220MHz when used on Diamond Viper V770, it appeared unable even to overcome the threshold: we overclocked it only to 195MHz.

Het kaartje is weer uitgevoerd in Gigabyte-blauw zoals we dat ook al van eerdere Gigabyte videokaarten kennen. Het zal niet sneller zijn, maar ziet er wel errug kewl uit . Check iXBT voor info, benchmarks en foto's.

Okay, da's op zich geen nieuws, maar News.com heeft wat concrete info over de problemen die als gevolg van de aarbeving zijn ontstaan:

The biggest trouble area is notebooks, which already face display shortages, analysts said.

"You're looking at the equivalence of four to eight weeks of lost production," said Danny Lam, a principal at Fisher-Holstein, a technology consulting firm.

That means supply shortages, starting in early November, of critical chipsets, graphics accelerators, and other components, analysts said.

ATI Technologies and other graphic card makers responded to the shortage by raising prices, which PC makers will have to absorb or pass onto consumers.

CD-ROM drives are another trouble spot, because a controller chip is not available, according to industry bulletins from the Taipei Computer Association, a trade and information group covering the island and the industry.

Taiwan accounts for about 44 percent of CD-ROM production, according to TCA, which anticipates serious drive shortages because of the quake. CD-ROM prices had already spiked 10 percent following the quake.

The quake also affected the availability of CD-R and CD-RW drives, which were already in short supply due to increased demand.

By itself, the Taiwan crisis might be manageable, but an unexpected shortage of DRAM chips complicates an already difficult situation.

C|Net verwacht dat de produktietekorten mogelijk eind dit jaar (tijdens de holiday sales) voor een prijsverhoging (ipv verlaging) van PC's gaan zorgen.

Sowee, Saint Steve is lekker bezig: gooit de performance van de G4's met 50MHz omlaag, zonder de prijs aan te passen. Voel je genaaid... (ohnee, wij kochten geen Macs ). Hier het kwade nieuws van MacInTouch:

Many readers expressed outrage after Apple yesterday reduced performance of its standard Power Mac G4 configurations and cancelled existing orders, making customers re-order their computers at a price hundreds of dollars higher. (Several people questioned the legality of the unilateral cancellation.) In an Apple conference call that followed yesterday's announcement of the company's fiscal results, CFO Fred Anderson answered an analyst's question about the performance reduction, citing a recent rise in memory prices:

[analyst] "Well, if I got a 450-MHz machine at the old price, are you guys going to send me a bill?! [laughter...] I would have expected at least a token price reduction here because you're doing a take away on the consumers."

[Anderson] "...you're correct that there's a 50-MHz lower processor. On the other hand, in the mean time, the DRAM (memory prices have) shot through the roof... We're not getting a windfall here, guys, because of the big increase in memory prices."

As noted last night, Apple's new standard configurations drop 50 MHz in processor speed, while apparently retaining the same architecture - "Yikes" for the low end, "Sawtooth" for the upper two models. All include 1 MB of backside cache, 16 MB of video RAM with a PCI or AGP graphics card, FireWire ports, and an Ultra ATA hard drive.

AGN 3D heeft een page met Realvideootjes van de GeForce 256 demo's neer geknalt.

The following videos are from the tech demos that were included with my GeForce 256 reference board from NVIDIA. All videos were captured with the Sony Hi-8 handicam and encoded onto the computer using the Studio MP10 encoder. After that is was off to the world of Realvideo for a smaller video that you could actually download without taking up half of your lifetime. You can also click on the thumbnail images below for a full size image of the original demo, for an idea to expect what it truly looks like.

Een overzicht van de beschikbare filmpjes vind je hier.

De jongens en meisjes van Sharky Extreme vonden het grappig om een GeForce 256 DDR Guide in elkaar te knutselen (don't ask me waarom ze dit een guide noemen en geen normale p/review). Uit de benchmarks komt wederom naar voren dat de GeForce nog steeds behoorlijk CPU afhankelijk is, hoewel minder dan de TNT2. Snel issie zeker, vooral de DDR versie:

At the end of the day, the DDR board is dead fast. Faster than a speeding bullet? Right now it is, yes. And remember, we do play the likes of Quake 3 and Unreal Tourney a lot. We'll take it and recommend any bloke/lassie with a sugar mummy (or daddy we don't discriminate here at SE) slots one into their gaming machine providing you live and die by frame rates. When using a DDR GeForce 256 on an Athlon 650MHz, you can easily sustain frame rates above 100fps in Quake 3 on the 'NORMAL' setting (impressive), which is of course so important for those multiplayer sessions. 1024x768 in Quake 3 is very playable. With a TNT2 Ultra (the previous best), Quake 3 could get jittery at 1024x768x32 when in the midst of a melee you move from an enclosed environment back to an outdoor one. With the GeForce 256 DDR, there was no 'jerkyvision' and just fluid, fast gameplay. If I were a Quake-champ (more like chimp) I wouldn't leave home without one (for want of a better pun).

Sharky Extreme heeft _massa's_ benchmarks, dus als je daar geïnteresseerd in bent vind je hier het artikel.

Dimec schrijft: "Voor handige tweakers: Benchtest.com heeft een klein artikel geschreven waarin ze uitleggen hoe zij zelf een water cooler voor een C300A gebouwd hebben. Dit zijn de resultaten:":

The difference in water cooling as opposed to an air cooled sink is pretty amazing. Once you try it, going back to air cooled is lacking.

With a 40mm - 52 watt TEC and copper cold plate attached to the cooler, I ran it for a couple weeks at 504 MHz. I decided to try to push it up to 527 MHz. I was amazed when it not only booted into Windows, but ran everything I could throw at it without a hiccup. Pretty good for a processor that I once said would never hit 504.

For a first attempt at a water cooled heat sink, I'm pretty pleased with the results. I was pretty sure that a single 40mm TEC was not going to be enough to handle all of the heat from the processor, but it did keep the Celeroncool enough to hit all the speed that my PC100 ram would allow. This was also the longest I had kept one sink on my Celeron in a long time. With the temperatures only reaching about -2° at the coldest, (usually when I was reading online) I didn't have a problem with condensation.

Ziet er inderdaad wel wreed uit ja .

Harley schrijft: "De dreamcast is vandaag ook in Europa gereleased en meteen is er door een fan op het Sony kantoor een spandoek gehangen met de tekst 'Playstation - houdbaar tot 14-10-1999'":

Hehe, die's cool . Check Total Videogames voor meer info over de Europese release van de Dreamcast.

Dit is weer eens compleet andere koek: Eagleman schrijft: "Omdat Win2K nu eindelijk bijna ge-released lijkt te gaan worden, neemt het ge-ouwehoer over de infameuze Active Directory ook toe. Sinds enige tijd houdt ik Tweakers.net al in de gaten, maar veel inhoudelijke zaken over Directory Services (zoals MAD) ben ik nog niet tegen gekomen. In dit kader is voor de geinteresseerden in deze materie, het artikel wat ik op de site van Business Week tegenkwam wel aardig:":

Microsoft's new operating system for networks, called Windows 2000, will include a so-called Active Directory system that will compete with Novell's Directory.

A close look at the directory market, however, shows that Windows 2000 might not be as potent a threat as some think.

NDS also controls all the other directories on a network, such as the ones that oversee the phone system, control the corporate intranet, and monitor the Internet routers. Thus, one administrator can make a change that will register in every directory on the network. For instance, a new employee will be assigned a server login, an E-mail account, a phone number, and a security badge all in one keystroke.

Novell's genius was to make its Directory platform-independent. Thus it can oversee a network that includes PCs running the Windows NT operating system, a NetWare printer network, and an E-mail system that runs on Unix servers -- all at once. By contrast, the Active Directory in Windows 2000 will only interact with other Microsoft products.

That might make sense for a small business such as a law office. But for large corporations, it represents an infrastructure nightmare. "Windows 2000 won't be a direct competitor," declares Novell corporate strategist Gary Hein. "If anything, Microsoft will elevate people's understanding of why directories are important, and we will benefit from that publicity. We can say to a customer that we will give you a directory that doesn't make you change your E-mail server and your desktop operating system. Microsoft can't say that."

Lees het Business Week artikel voor meer info over deze NDS materie...

Firingsquad heeft een preview gepost van de Coppermine-600 met 256Kb full speed on-die L2 cache en 133MHz busspeed. Uit de benchmarks blijkt dat de nieuwe Pentium III over het algemeen niet veel sneller is dan de oude Katmai. De Athlon huppelt dus nog steeds in z'n uppie voorop...

The 0.18 600MHz Coppermine performs almost the same as the 0.25 Katmai P3-600 processor in most of the benchmarks with the exception of Winbench CPUmark which tests the speed of the entire CPU-memory subsystem. We have to admit that we were expecting the Coppermine to perform slightly better because of the faster L2 cache, but only one of the benchmarks we chose to run had the Coppermine outscore the Katmai by a wide margin. We can't really judge how the Coppermine actually performs just by looking at these synthetic benchmarks.

We have to remember that Intel developed the 0.18 Coppermine in order to be able to manufacture Pentium III processors at 600MHz and higher speeds, not to make the P3 equal the Athlon. Anyone that expects Coppermine to bring the Pentium III up to the Athlon level on a MHz for MHz basis might be disappointed. [break] Voor wie nog hoop had z'n BP6 in de toekomst van twee Coppermine's te kunnen voorzien komt bedrogen uit, want Intel heeft het nieuwe PCPGA package format van de socket370 Coppermine zodanig gesaboteerd dat dit niet mogelijk is : [/break] The Coppermine will also feature PIII SSE, and introduce a new package format, FCPGA. The Flip Chip Pin Grid Array package format was made possible by moving the L2 cache onto the processor core. You may remember that Intel was able to move the Celeron processor to the PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array) package for the same reason. Coppermine processors will first be available in SECC2 format (Slot-1), but will switch to FCPGA. The move to FCPGA will allow Intel to shave about $20 off the cost to produce each processor.

The Coppermine FCPGA format uses the same pin layout as current socket370 Celeron processors. Celerons may be able to work in FCPGA sockets, but Coppermine processors won't work with normal socket370 motherboards.

Samsung is er in geslaagd om een 1 Gigabit dikke flash chip klaar te bakken, zo schrijft The Register. Verwacht wordt dat de markt voor flash memories de komende drie jaar extreem lucratief zal zijn, vooral vanwege de sterke vraag naar flash chippies voor gebruik in MP3 players en digitale camera's:

Korean web site Comtimes is reporting that Samsung has today announced it has managed to create a 1Gb flash memory.

Earlier this year, Japanese firm Toshiba said it had managed to put 256Mb on a flash module.

According to Comtimes, the Samsung process works at 2.5 volts and uses a .15 micron process, so making it suitable for notebook computers. That is, if the price is right.

The Register bericht over geruchten dat Billieboy het zogenaamd revolutionaire Windows Millinium in de trashcan heeft gedumpt. Microsoft ontkent, vanzelfsprekend:

The Register heard it via several beta testers a few days back, while Paul Thurrott of WinInfo heard the rumour at Internet World. But after reporting this (as rumour), Thurrott was deluged by Microsoft denials.

The gist of the rumour is that Microsoft has decided that Millennium, which is now looking very much like a minor rev of Windows 98, isn't a good idea after all, and has decided to can it, and have another crack later with another project under another codename.

This has of course been denied, but you can see the circumstantial evidence that supports it. Millennium was initially talked up by Microsoft as revolutionary and radical, but it became increasingly obvious from the pre-beta code that it wasn't, and once the beta actually came out the word started being spread around that actually it wasn't that much of a big deal, that maybe it would just turn out to be a service pack. You'll recall that Windows 98 SE came from the same kind of process, but running backwards.

Na het kraken van RC5 keys en het zoeken naar losstuiterende marsmannetjes kunnen we nu gaan helpen met het verbeteren van klimaat modellen, zo schrijft kevlar. Deze info komt van BarrysWorld:

Things to do with your PC when you`re not doing anything with it number 3 (huh?). First we had the fairly boring crypto key cracking and then the mildly exciting search for ET, now you could have the chance to do something useful with that spare processing power. The Climate Dynamics folk at the Rutherford Appleton Labs are trying to assess whether or not it would be worthwhile carrying out an exercise similiar to the SETI@Home Experiment. They need help fine tuning their models, particularily the Casino 21 (Climate Simulation of the 21st Century). There`s plenty of information about what they`d like to try and do, so register your interest here and help stop it raining so much ! [break] Hier ook meteen een stukkie copy/paste van die Casino-21 site: [/break] Climate dynamics research at RAL focuses on the use of global observing systems to study the climate system as a single entity. We are specifically interested in the use of observational data to evaluate climate models and diagnose the most serious faults in model-simulated mean climate, internal climate variability and natural and anthropogenic climate change. This work falls into two areas: general development of statistical tools applicable to all model-data comparison problems, stressing the quantitative treatment of uncertainty; and studies of the ocean-atmosphere interface and near-surface ocean using remote sensing data.

Maareuh, ondanks de grijze mannetjes en klimaat simulaties lijkt me het toch een uitstekend idee om de Dutch Power Cows te joinen, grootste RC5 team van Nederland!

Red5 schrijft: "Het lijkt wel alsof er nu toch echt een prijzen oorlog is ontbrand! Dit is lekker voor zowel de Intel als de AMD freaks!":

A fresh round of price cuts from both AMD and Intel is set to benefit consumers shortly but will draw more blood from the protagonists in an increasingly bitter struggle.

Sources said that AMD will drop the price of its top-of-the-range processor, the Athlon 700MHz part, from around $835 to a rather spooky $666 on the 24th of October. There is also likely to be a 750MHz part introduced soon -- AMD has always said it will scale its Athlons quickly.

That large price reduction will be reflected in AMD's other range of processors, and is a clear attempt to distract the market's attention from Intel's introduction of .18 micron (Coppermine) technology for mobile, desktop and Xeon processors, which is set to take place the day after.

AMD hakt er dus lekker in. Van Intel mogen we op 7 november een Celeron prijsverlaging verwachten. Verder kunnen we op 12 december de Pentium II gaan begraven, want dan zal deze proc niet langer geproduceerd worden. Check The Register voor het oorsponkelijke nieuwsartikel.

Naast gratis PC's krijgen we (nouja, voorlopig alleen beschikbaar voor een stel amerikanen) nu ook al gratis 19-inchers. Voorwaarde is dat je voor 36 maanden minimaal 10 uur per maand online gaat. Natuurlijk draait alles weer om advertenties, want wie zich niet stoort aan die dingen kan tegenwoordig alles gratis krijgen (op zich toch niet slecht?):

Broadscape will offer the 19-inch colour monitors to US consumers from March next year, with plans to introduce a similar offer in the UK by the end of 2000.

Using the same principle as US company Free-PC.com, applicants get free kit in return for agreeing to provide personal information to the company.

The monitors will also display customised adverts when users are online. This will consist of an ad messaging frame on the right hand side and bottom of the screen, run by Broadscape's "always on top" software.

When users are not on line the adverts will disappear, leaving the full 19-inch screen.

Check The Register voor het volledige verhaaltje.

hjs schrijft: "Eric van Fastgraphics heeft een aardig systeempje binnen en test gelijk de laatste Guillemot kaart.":

Yesterday I received one of them lovely Kryotech 800 MHz Athlon systems, and I couldn't help but run a few benchmarks with the Guillemot 3DProphet on it. Here are some of the incredible results:

Check de benchmarks bij Fastgraphics, ziet er inderdaad errug leuk uit, hoewel de framerate op hogere resoluties vrijwel gelijk is aan de PIII-600. De lage SDRAM memory bandwidth van de 3D Prophet is duidelijk de bottleneck.

John E. schrijft: "Er is weer eens een interviewtje gepost met een team van Aureal o.a. over de toevoeging van EAX aan de drivers.":

Q: What is the status of the EAX/2 support for Vortex 2 based sound cards ?

Skip: Suneil, you want to answer that?

Suneil: We plan to release EAX/reverb drivers for Vortex-2 in the first week of Nov. Vortex Advantage drivers to follow... More details will become available on A3D.com in the near future.

Moge the force met ons Vortex II bezitters zijn . Ik kan amper geloven dat EAX support dan toch echt werkelijkheid gaat worden... Check die chatlog bij Vortex of Sound voor meer Vortex info, er zit best wel interessant spul tussen.