Hardware Upgrade heeft een review van de nieuwe Abit BF6 neer gemikt. Dit plankje draait op de welbekende 440BX chipset, heeft 6 PCI slots en biedt keuze uit busspeeds tot 200MHz (tussen 83 en 200MHz in stappen van 1MHz):

I think BF6 is one of the best product among Slot 1 motherboards based on Intel 440BX chipset; its high operating stability and its features will make it a product of choice when it will be released in October 1999. Is it an ideal motherboard? No, because it has some gaps, such as the presence of only 3 Slots for DIMM memory modules and the lack of an ATA-66 controller and, particularly, it suffers from the technical limit of the Intel 440BX chipset, above all the fact that you can’t set the 1/2 divisor for AGP bus (very useful if you plan to use bus frequency of 133 MHz without having compatibility problems with the video card).

BF6 is however a step forward in comparison the its competitors thanks to its Soft Menu II menu which includes many options and the clock generator which can support all the frequencies between 83 and 200 MHz, with 1 MHz increase each time.

Mozillazine heeft een artikeltje neer gemikt over de berichtgeving in de pers over het Mozilla project. Volgens de schrijver heeft de pers over het algemeen een nogal negatieve houding en wordt er gedacht dat het project gedoemd is te mislukken, zonder hierbij rekening te houden met de 'false start' (aanvankelijk werd begonnen met de oude Netscape codebase, maar inmiddels is men helemaal vanaf scratch begonnen, wat een jaar ontwikkelingstijd heeft gekost):

The Mozilla architecture has been entirely rewritten from scratch after a false start based on the original Netscape codebase which cost the project, as I understand it, about a year. So if you look at Mozilla as a from-scratch rewrite that started a year late, the picture already begins to look very different. You can't blame the project or the process for how it was managed. The very fact that when the foundation was deemed unworkable it was torn down and rebuilt from scratch correctly shows that indeed the project is bearing fruit.

The layout engine was completely rewritten to be totally standards compliant. The network engine was completely rewritten to be faster, more flexible, and more reliable. The UI code was completely rewritten to be more flexible, extendable, and cross-platform. The mail and news functionalities have been completely rewritten as well. In short, this is a whole new browser. [break] Verder bij Mozillazine een review van Mozilla Milestone 10: [/break] I have not seen any JPEGs drawn incorrectly so far, even while they are still being rendered, as they were in just about every previous build I've tried. Also gone apparently are the problems with flickering scrollbars and strange redraws. Scrolling around seems smoother as well, though that might be due to the fixes to the scrollbars. While scrolling is still nowhere near as smooth as Netscape 4.X, I imagine (in my inexpert opinion) that this could change, as it seems related to GTK redrawing the background of the page before the rest of the page is drawn.

All of the functionality of a web browser seems in perfect order. Pages load and display correctly, the Back, Forward, and Reload buttons work, though the Stop button seems to have some problems still. Bookmarks seem to work just fine for me as well

Nightly builds van Mozilla kun je neerhalen op mozilla.org. Op dit moment is alles nog erg alpha, maar het begint er steeds beter en stabieler uit te zien. De rendering engine is in ieder geval al errug snel!

Opera Software heeft beta 5 van Opera voor BeOS ("Be-Opera") gereleased. De 30 dagen trial kun je hier neerhalen.

Tech Review heeft een Quantum Fireball KX op de testbank gepijnigd en vergeleek deze ATA66 schijf met de 7200rpm collega's van Maxtor en Western Digital:

As you can see, the KX is not the fastest drive on the market, but it holds its own and even out performs the Maxtor DM Plus 6800 under the Windows 98 High End Disk mark. Coming in 18% slower than the Plus 6800 and 11% slower than the Expert under Windows 98 Business Disk mark shows that the KX is limited in this one area, possibly due to its smaller 512k of cache. Coming back to take second under the High End Disk mark in Windows 98 shows an 8% trailing compared to the Expert, and a 4% lead over the Plus 6800.

Taking a look at NT scores reveals that the Quantum has quite a bit of potential, placing second behind the Plus 6800. Under the Business Disk mark the KX leads the Expert by 3% and trails the Plus 6800 by a larger 14% margin. Under the High End Disk mark the KX leads the Expert by 5% and trails the Plus 6800 by 5%.

Check de review voor meer info.

The Register heeft een diep mistige posting waarin ze beweren dat de release van de Intel Willamette met 9 maanden vervroegd wordt. De processor zou volgens deze geruchten op 1,1GHz geïntroduceerd worden en vanaf begin 2000 verkrijgbaar zijn. Wazig, want eerder werd aangenomen dat de Willamette gedelayed zou zijn naar 2001. BDW: dit nieuws komt van The Register, dus er is geen enkele reden om aan te nemen dat het waar is...

US sources say the chip will have a paper launch at the end of December, with product in the shops two months later, although if AMD keeps up the pressure it could be even sooner. Presumably this two month gap is to enable OEMs to shift bucketloads of Coppermine systems before they're rendered unsaleable by the new super chip.

Coppermine arrives next week, but still uses the venerable P6 core that first saw the light of day in the Pentium Pro, albeit at a dinky 0.18 micron process, coupled with on die level 2 cache. It'll be faster than existing Pentium IIIs, but not earth-shatteringly so.

[...] The entirely new 0.18 micron Willamette was originally scheduled to arrive around Q3 2000 at 1100MHz with more than 1MB integrated level 2 cache and Intel performance estimates say it will score around 50 on Winstone98 and 43 on SpecInt95.

Het lijkt me erg onwaarschijnlijk, ook gezien het PIII, Camino en Rambus geklungel van de afgelopen maanden.

Techweb brengt het blije nieuws dat de DRAM prijzen de afgelopen 2 weken met 33% omlaag zijn gevallen:

Both independent distributors NECX and the American IC Exchange said Friday that 8-Mbit x 8 tags had dropped in many cases to $14.50, down nearly 33 percent from the $21 price of just two weeks ago.

Analysts attributed the sharp decline to a lessening of the panic buying that followed last month's earthquake in Taiwan, which they said may now actually crimp PC production because of supply disruptions.

Meanwhile, OEM 8-Mbit x 8 PC100 contract prices, an indicator of the volume DRAM market, have risen to the $9 to $10 level. [break] Trouwens, over die DRAM prijzen staat ook een interessant stukje in het artikel van Dean Kent (zie vorige nieuwsposting): [/break] When the Taiwan earthquake hit, many brokers decided that it was an opportune time to drive up prices. For no other reason than pure opportunism, prices went from about $15 per chip to over $20 for a short period of time. There has been much speculation that the memory manufacturers were the one driving prices, but it has been primarily brokers and manufacturers of peripheral components who made out. When the prices began to rise, manufacturers of devices that require on-board memory (video cards, for example) began to stock up on memory chips, which they then sold for premium prices shortly after the earthquake

De Pricewatch reageert meteen: inmiddels staan de 128Meg DIMMetjes op FL 475,-.

Dean Kent van Real World Technologies heeft een erg interessant artikeltje in elkaar geschroefd, met een update over de ontwikkelingen op moederbord, chipset, processor en DRAM gebied. Hier een hap over Athlon chipsets:

Early on, it appeared that the AMD chipset issues were not a reason for major concern, because VIA was supposed to have their chipset out by October. Since then, the earthquake in Taiwan and the sluggish market demand has caused them to focus on their Slot 1 chipsets. In fact, with the introduction of the Apollo Pro133A chipset early this week, sources close to VIA have reported that resources are being diverted from the KX133 chipset so that VIA can take advantage of the BX chipset shortage. VIA reportedly expects to ship 3 million chipsets in October - which would be a new record for them. The most recent information indicates that the KX133 will probably not happen until Q1 '00

This situation may cause more problems for AMD in the short run. Though AGP 4x and PC133 are mostly marketing hype, rather than real performance enhancements, the lack of these features on the AMD 750 chipset has many manufacturers worried. The fear is that when consumers compare i810E chipset based boards with AMD 750 chipset based boards, they will see the i810E as a higher-end board! AMD has indicated that they will not do 'incremental' improvements to their chipset - which AGP 4x and PC133 are. Instead, they will only make changes when 'major' improvements are necessary, such as adding DDR support. AMD has mentioned SiS as a possible Athlon chipset provider, but so far no official word has been given on this.

On the positive side, if AMD is able to hold on until the KX133 chipset is available, it will not only include the 'marketing' features, but will allow manufacturers to build 4-layer boards, which will reduce the selling price to around $100 (as opposed to about $170 currently). [break] Verder zegt-ie onder andere dat we op de 25ste van deze maand een Athlon 750 mogen verwachten. Een 800MHz exemplaar staat ook voor de deur: [/break] Unofficial word from AMD indicates that an 800MHz Athlon is not a question of 'if', but simply a question of when.

Errug handig info, lees 't hier.

Ik kwam bij Ace's Hardware wat info tegen over de VIA Winchip 5, afkomstig uit een artikel van Digitimes Taiwan (onleesbaar). Erg hoge verwachtingen hoeven we waarschijnlijk niet te hebben van deze low-cost processor, maar de voorlopige specs (Socket370, 0,18micron, 700MHz en 256Kb L1 cache) klinken op zich niet slecht:

According to Digitimes Taiwan , VIA will introduce Winchip-5 as early as Q2 2000. Winchip-5 will be socket-370, 0.18uM, with 256K L1 cache, and will run at 133 Mhz FSB at speeds ranging from 400 to 700 Mhz. IDT originally named this cpu Winchip 2000 and planned it at 600 Mhz with 128K L1 cache for the socket-7 platform. VIA aims to grab 10% of the cpu market next year. In another related Digitimes report , VIA denies the rumor that they favor Centaur's technology over Cyrix's, and cites Winchip-5 as the representation of the group effort of VIA, Cyrix and Centaur.

Ik lees bij onze vriend Peter ("ik zal nooit mee teveel tekst copy/pasten") dat de problemen met de performance van Superweb zijn te wijten aan een slechte IBM router:

Het euvel betreft een router met een te geringe capaciteit. Die is geleverd door IBM, die ook het onderhoud voor zijn rekening neemt. Van Ravensberg: 'We hadden geruime tijd nodig om te ontdekken waar het probleem zich voordeed, daar we direct dachten aan de modembanken. Toen waren er wat problemen om vast te stellen wie er verantwoordelijk was, en vervolgens bleek voor IBM het weekend ook echt een weekend te zijn. Voor ons is dat anders. Uiteindelijk zijn ze aan het sleutelen gegaan, maar gezien de aanhoudende problemen kiezen we nu voor een drastischer oplossing: een radicale uitbreiding van de capaciteit. We hopen er eind van de dag uit te zijn, wellicht al binnen een uur.'

Ook heeft Superweb gezegd dat de eerste 10.000 klanten hun geld terug krijgen. Check het complete verhaaltje bij Planet Multimedia.

Neelix schrijft: "Cnet heeft onder de pompeuze naam "Windows 98 Hacks" een leuk artikeltje gemaakt over allerlei tweaks voor Windoze 98. De meeste ken je waarschijnlijk wel, maar toch handig om dat allemaal eens op een rijtje te zien.":

By now you think you know Windows 98 like the back of your hand. You've shut off the annoying Active Desktop, your underwater desktop theme is gurgling away, and you've even learned to foil snoopers by deleting items from your Documents menu.

But before you declare yourself master of your OS domain, read our tricks, which will make all of those tweaks look like child's play. CNET editors spent a while lurking behind the scenes of our PCs, getting our hands grimy with code. That's right, we're going to show you how to hack Windows 98. By the time we're through, you'll be able to make some real changes to your OS, from tweaking the size of the performance-robbing virtual cache to renaming the Recycle Bin.

What's involved in hacking, you ask? For the most part, it's a matter of editing the system configuration files collectively known as the Registry--an arcane collection of settings called keys and codes, all of which are gibberish to the untrained eye.

Does Microsoft approve of hacking the Windows Registry? Absolutely not. Can hacks damage your system? You betcha. Should that stop you from getting your hands dirty? Not if you're ready to take a bit of a risk for some refreshing changes. Just stick with us; we'll show you how to stay out of trouble.

Ready for a Registry revolution? OK, let's get hacking!

OK je hebt wel zin om effe in je register te wroeten? Check het hele artikel dan hier.

Bij 3D Gaming hebben ze een review gepost van Intel's eigen Camino plank, de Vancouver i820 mobo. Voor de test hebben ze ook gebruik gemaakt van RIMM geheugen, wat toch wel een performance boost oplevert t.o.v. Dimmetjes. Jammer alleen dat het onbetaalbaar is op het moment. Hieronder een hap uit de review, lees de rest hier.

So what's with this new memory that costs more per ounce then Beluga caviar? Well, it's Intel's new standard which they have instituted to obtain more bandwidth and help eliminate some of the bottlenecks of the BX chipset.

Operating at 800MB/s, PC100 memory wouldn't provide enough bandwidth to facilitate the 1.06 GB/s of AGP 4x, and would be a definite bottleneck in a i820 system. PC133 memory up the ante to 1.06GB/s, but Intel had long ago invested in the technology Rambus was going to provide, and wouldn't want to pull out of it. So now we have the PC800 Rambus RIMM, a 400MHz memory system transferring on the rising and falling edges of the clock (like DDR RAM) on a 16-bit wide bus, giving us 1.6GB/s. In more basic terms, we now have a pipeline which will get information where it needs to go much quicker then before.

Bij The Register hebben ze wat info gepost over de aankomende prijsdaling van de Athlon processors. Als het goed is gaan de prijzen eind deze week weer omlaag, volgens dit nieuwsbericht. Onderstaande info geleend van The Register:

AMD is preparing a further stage in its continuing battle to set the pace on prices, rather than follow in Intel's wake.

As we reported here last week, the company will slash the price of its Athlon chips next Sunday in a bid to stymie Intel's introduction of .18 micron (Goldmine) mobile, desktop and Xeon workstation and server chips.

Yesterday we reported that Intel is likely to introduce a 800MHz Coppermine chip, possibly with the rest of its range next week, but in any case not long after that date.

According to reports, the 700MHz Athlon will drop to $664, which is no good. As we reported, $666 is a far better number. The 650 Athlon will fall to $510, the 600MHz part to just over $400, the 550MHz part to $270 and the 500MHz Athlon to $200.

AMD is also expected to introduce a 750MHz Athlon processor -- if not next week then shortly afterwards.

This, as we have pointed out, is very good news for consumers in the run up to Yule, but intensifies the pricing battle between the two chip adversaries. In such a battle, AMD is far more vulnerable than Intel.

Intel will cut Celeron prices again on the 7th of November and Pentium III prices on the 12th of December, as reported here.

Burat schrijft: "Niels de Koning heeft op zijn site een forum ingericht voor de vele duizenden kokende mensen die graag willen zeiken. Dit naar aanleiding van het enorme aantal messages in nl.internet.providers.

Een stukje uit die nieuwsgroep:":

"Internetproviders zijn er al sinds 1993. Er is dus voldoende kennis voor handen voor het opzetten van een goed inbelsysteem en mailsysteem. Gratis internet is er al sinds begin vorig jaar. De cijfers betreffende het aantal klanten dat zich aanmeldt zijn ook bekend. Daar had iedere nieuwe gratis aanbieder gebruik van kunnen maken,"

Dat SuperWeb forum is hier te vinden.

Thresh & Gang hebben een review gepost van de 3D Prophet, de GeForce 256 kaart van Guillemot. Hun exemplaar is een gewone SDRAM versie, geklokt op 120/166MHz. Na wat tweaken konden ze hem echter op 130/180MHz laten draaien. Hieronder heb je vast een gedeelte uit de review.

The Prophet 3D is a nice card. There's no question that it's faster than the TNT2 Ultra, but it might be hard to justify spending $269 on a board when all the cards still haven't been dealt yet. The Savage2000 is less than a month away, and prices for other GeForce cards are falling as I write this review. If S3 can get their OpenGL driver together, the Savage2000 should stack up well against the SDRAM GeForce cards.

If you were to buy a card for the here and now, the TNT Ultra is still a viable option. Onboard T&L is a great feature, but the next generation of video cards will be upon us by the time a significant number of games actually use the extra polygons.

Of course, if you have to have that next generation card right now (and you can't wait for the DDR cards), you won't be disappointed with the performance of the Prophet 3D. You'll probably risk paying too much, but early adopters of new technology are always willing to pay a premium.

Voor meer info en benchmark scores, fiets even naar FiringSquad.

Ga'ash Soffer van Voodoo Extreme heeft een preview in elkaar gedraaid van de Glaze3D super 3D accelerator van Bitboys. Tsja op papier ziet het er wel stoer uit, maar ik wil eerst wel eens een hands-on preview zien eigenlijk... Anyway, of hij er nu komt of niet, hieronder een hap uit de preview.

BitBoys biggest challenge will be releasing the Glaze family of processor in a timely manner (hopefully sometime in Q1/2000) and at a reasonable price (~$200). The Glaze3D/1200 looks set to throttle the competition in terms of fill-rate and image quality. Apparent lack of geometry processing on the mainstream solution may cost the Glaze in the long run, but with hardware changing every six months, by the time the lack of geometry becomes a major drawback, new Glaze solutions w/geometry at reasonable cost will appear. The Glaze/2400 looks to massacre the competition in terms of performance; nothing looks like it can even touch it. Again, lack of geometry and probably a high price (~$350?) may hurt the high-end model. A Glaze3D/1200 w/T&L released in Q1/2000 would be untouchable, especially if it were priced competitively. Whether or not we will see a mainstream Glaze + T&L solution before it's "too late" is hard to tell. For those with fast systems (i.e. good T&L w/out need for onboard solutions), Glaze3D seems almost too good to be true. Bottom line is: cross our fingers and hope that this thing is for real.

Valcon schrijft: "Om Snuffels artikel aan te vullen: op deze site is redelijk gedetailleerd info te vinden over het WinNT.Infis Virus.":

It is a memory resident parasitic WinNT virus. It operates under WinNT only and is not able to infect files under Win9x systems. The virus does not manifest itself in any way and does not any harm to the system. Despite this the virus has a bug in its infection routine and corrupts some files while infecting them, the corrupted files when run cause the standard "is not a valid Windows NT application" error message.

Lees hier verder over dit virus. Trouwens ook errug goede virus scanner, die van AVP

The Register heeft nog wat meer info over de productie van de 1GHz Athlon productie. De eerste 1GHz processors zouden dan begin volgend jaar moeten worden gereleased, zie ook dit bericht.

Sources close to AMD's plans have said that the company is likely to intro a 1GHz Athlon early next year.

(Story: 1GHz copper Athlon production starts next week)

That is likely to throw Intel into near-panic and makes the likelihood of an 800MHz Coppermine, followed by higher clock speeds shortly afterwards, even more likely.

But although AMD will formally open Fab 30 this week, doubts remain about when it will start producing .18 micron copper parts for a hungry gamer's market, even though it's theoretically ready to roll. Production will start in Austin (Fab 25), with the lessons learnt from that replicated in Germany.

Reliable sources say that its copper process is likely to start at Dresden in the middle of Q1 next year. While it could do so earlier, the loan it negotiated to build the state-of-the-art fab is such that there is little sense in shipping from Dresden before then.

Nevertheless, the fact that AMD has executed on its production plans so far flawlessly will send shivers into Intel's CEO's timbers.

Er is dus nog wel wat onduidelijkheid over deze zaak. Van mij mogen ze in ieder geval beginnen

Via JC's PC News'n'Links kwam ik hier terecht waar een handig lijstje hangt van alle Slot A moederborden (handig voor als je een Athlon hebt) die er zijn of binnenkort verschijnen. Er staat ook bij vermeld welke chipset er opzit enzo, vrij handige info. Check het lijstje dus hier.

Idiot van Ace's Hardware meldt dat Intel de presentatie van de Itanium Processor online heeft geplant. Het .pdf-je kun je hier vinden, of lees de mik online.

In deze editie van Investor Insight kijkt GA-Source naar de 3D kaarten industrie. In het artikel lullen ze wat over de toekomst en hoe al de nieuwe technologieën in games moeten worden gestopt. Check het artikel hier.

Card manufacturers have grasped the situation; they have developed strategies to secure cash flow. The big players such as Nvidia and 3DFX know that their new generation products will not be able to sell vast amounts at once. A good strategy has been taken by most actors where they increase the marketing of their present generation cards and lower their price. Building a broad customer base for mid range games while reaping the last profits from their "old" products. If publishers segment the market and divide it into the three parts mentioned above, this will of course ensure a longer life cycle for the present range of cards and thus adding more value to these companies. The high end cards will sell well but this only when the division is made and the developers take full advantage of the features that the new cards enable. There is no middle ground here if you want to make a real profit. The smart 3d card manufacturer will try to force the publishers into this move of division and I hope they succeed for the better of their stocks and customers. Publishers must accept that it is the 3D card manufacturers who are in real power; they are a step ahead and will govern this industry until the CPU manufacturers come up with a way to sidestep the 3d cards.

Bij 3DHardware hebben ze review gepost van de Labtec LCS-2414 speakers met subwoofer. Hieronder heb je wat info over de performance van dit setje, lees de rest hier.

These speakers are small and one must realise that you can't get large sound from a system that only have a total power of 25 Watts. Testing these speakers with various games and different types music I found out that the subwoofer is indeed really excellent for it's small size. Clear bass is being reproduced accurately which is great for music, whilst it does have a slight punch to satisfy the small gamer in every PC user out there. The down-firing design and wood cabinet really works for the subwoofer, as it is amongst the best subwoofers I've come across, for the small size that is. It can't, of course, compete with the larger Labtec speakers such as the APX-4620 as they feature a big 6" subwoofer but the LCS-2414 subwoofer is great for the size it comes in.

The satellite speakers didn't impress us as much as the subwoofer did. The 2" drivers won't give you any disturbingly high sound and work best at low to mid sound levels. The midrange is warm and accurate and the satellites are great with Ambient music. Disappointingly, the high frequencies weren't as good as the mids. In music with a lot of high vocals the speakers tend to sound a bit flat and lifeless. With no tone controls whatsoever there's no chance to tweak the sound except through the mixer for your soundcard. Overall, the LCS-2414 satellite speakers aren't as alive and vivid as of the APX-4620, but they do offer nice sound for the low price they come in.

At high sound volumes the satellite speakers kind of fall apart, not being able to accurately reproduce many of the sounds. As mentioned above, the LCS-2414 should be used at moderate sound levels. The satellite speakers don't have a headphone plug, which is disappointing as it was available on many of the other Labtec models but considering the small size of the LCS-2414 satellites a headphone plug would not be possible.

Snuffel schrijft: "Tja, het houdt ook nooit op lijkt wel.":

We staan aan de vooravond van een grootscheepse aanval op websites verspreid over de hele wereld. De afgelopen dagen zijn al 200 exemplaren onderschept van een trojaans paard, genaamd RingZero, dat even een kijkje komt nemen op commerciële proxyservers (servers die gebruikt worden om de toegang tot het internet in bedrijven te regelen) en de bevindingen doorstuurt naar een andere computer. Wie werkt met zo'n proxyserver doet er verstandig aan te kijken of ergens op zijn netwerk een bestand met de naam "pst.exe" staat. Dat bestand verzamelt namelijk allerlei informatie over IP-nummers en poortadressen, twee zaken die door crackers steevast gebruikt worden om toegang te krijgen tot computers. RingZero bestaat echter ook nog uit een tweede bestand - genaamd "its.exe", dat tracht rechtstreeks bestanden van webservers te plukken. Beide bestanden zijn blijkbaar in staat om onafhankelijk van elkaar te werken. Ook bedrijven zonder proxyserver moeten het uitgaande verkeer op de poorten 8080 en 3128 in de gaten houden. Wie daar vreemd verkeer opmerkt, is hoogstwaarschijnlijk geïnfecteerd met RingZero.

Bij iXBT Labs vonden ze het nog wel een goed plan om een review te posten van de Matrox G400 Max. Volledig in traditie is het weer een uitgebreide lap tekst geworden, die je hier kunt vinden. Hieronder vast een hap uit de test:

So, what can be concluded judging by the following results? First, in 3D Mark99 MAX our graphics card Matrox Millennium G400 MAX performed close to the level of NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra having left 3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV far behind. At 1600x1200 in 16-bit color depth the results seemed to us somewhat strange, however, we have to admit that even the test itself behaves not quite adequately and if repeated the test can show a 50-70% error that is why we provide these results just for you to have an idea of what there can actually be. But in 32-bit color the same test was an absolute success and our graphics card proved just perfect!

In Shogo Matrox Millennium G400 MAX surpassed 3dfx voodoo3 3500TV and remained on the same level with NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra.

But in Expendable the picture quickly changed. At higher resolutions (over 1024x768) Matrox Millennium G400 MAX performed much better than NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra, however, still lost a few points in the competition with 3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV (probably because of a more 3dfx cards friendly multitexturing regime). The way the card's performance depends on the processor frequency gives us every evidence that those who have not very powerful CPUs should better refrain from buying such a cool graphics card. If the performance does not exceed 34, and in some cases even 28fps, you may surely decide on a cheaper graphics card, which will nevertheless provide almost the same performance rates. With the enabled Environment mapped Bump mapping the performance drops not too tragically for us to give up this beauty, but still rather tangibly.

Over bij Gamecenter hebben ze een round-up gepost van 2 Logitech en 2 Microsoft muizen. Van Logitech hebben ze helaas alleen de 'Gaming Mouse' en de 'Wingman Force' getest, (de Cordless MouseMan Wheel is veel cooler). Hieronder in ieder geval de uitslag:

Of the mice in this roundup, the Microsoft IntelliMouse with IntelliEye technology is our favorite, and wins Editors' Choice. We find that the optical technology adds precision to the mouse's movement and allows it to be maneuvered with much less physical stress. We also prefer its shape to that of the IntelliMouse Explorer; we just wish it didn't have its glossy finish.

Extreme high-twitch Quake players may find that Microsoft's IntelliEye technology can't keep up with their quick movements, but we believe that the majority of gamers will see an increase in precision and frag count. At least, that has been our experience with the ball-less mouse.

Second on our list is the Logitech WingMan Gaming Mouse. It's a flawless mouse with excellent click feel and drivers. If only it had a scroll wheel, it would earn Editors' Choice.

Though lefties can use all of the mice in this roundup, none are truly ambidextrous. For southpaws, we would recommend the Logitech USB Wheel Mouse, an excellent general-purpose mouse.

With its high price and limited game support, it's hard to recommend the Logitech WingMan Force. Even in games that do support it, we suspect that most people will find the forces more distracting than fun or immersive.

Check het hele verhaaltje hier.

hjs stuurde deze link naar Rivazone, waar men wat info heeft over de Canopus Spectra 7400 GeForce kaart. De specs van deze kaart werden al eerder bekend, maar ik heb ze toen niet gepost omdat het ding toch niet in Nederland verkrijgbaar zal zijn. Wel interessant zijn de plaatjes die Wazige Japanse site online heeft gezet, die wijzen erop dat Canopus een extra voedings connector op de Spectra 7400 heeft geplakt, om hiermee power problemen zoals bij de Asus TVR kaarten te voorkomen:

I can't really tell what the name of this site (Impress Watch, I guess) is but they snagged some photos of the new Canopus Spectra 7400 GeForce. Canopus has chosen to take additional power directly from the power supply instead of just powering from the AGP slot.

Obviously, the goal here is to provide extra juice to run the fan and insure that certain motherboards will not be excluded from the Canopus line because the AGP port can't get the card enough amperage to sustain higher clock speeds (my guess is that the Canopus card will come out-the-box-overclocked). If you remember, low AGP voltage was a problem for several mobo's with the TNT2 Ultra cards that were default clocked at 175MHz on the core.

Snuffel schrijft: "Voor de betere NT gebruikers onder ons. Helaas geen werkbare link, die is doodgegaan ":

Het Russische virus WinNT.Infis gedraagt zich als een Windows NT systeembestand en is daarom moeilijk te herkennen en te verwijderen. Alleen werkstations met Windows NT 4.0 met Service Packs 2, 3, 4, 5 of 6 zijn vatbaar voor het virus. Het is ook het eerste geheugenresistent virus voor NT dat buiten een laboratoriumomgeving werd gevonden, maar is nog niet in het westen opgedoken.

Als u besmet bent, kunt u dit herkennen doordat programma's als MS Paint, calculator en CD Player niet meer werken. Het virus kan ook andere applicaties onbruikbaar maken. Wanneer een ge?nfecteerd programma wordt gestart verschijnt een standaard foutmelding. WinNT-Infis maakt een bestand met de naam INF.SYS aan in de /WinNT /System32/ Drivers map. Het virus brengt geen grote schade toe, er wordt niets gewist en documenten blijven gewoon toegankelijk. Waarschijnlijk heeft een werknemer van het Russische bedrijf waar WinNT.Infis werd ontdekt bij wijze van grap of wraak het virus geschreven en op de computer gezet.

Bron: Netties nr. 115 deel 2

Valcon schrijft: "Koen van Hardwareinfo.net heeft weer een review klaar, dit maal van een Athlon mobo. Zoals gebruikelijk is de review zeer compleet, en ook leesbaar voor gewone stervelingen ":

Bij de FIC SD-11 kunnen we in principe weer dezelfde conclusie trekken als bij het MSI 6167 moederbord: over de eerste generatie AMD Athlon moederborden valt absoluut niet te klagen. Personen die nu al een AMD Athlon systeem willen aanschaffen - en wie wil dat niet? ;-) - kunnen daarom ook gerust van het FIC SD-11 moederbord op aan. (...) Let er i.i.g. wel op dat als je een systeem koopt met het FIC SD-11 moederbord, dat je een geschikt ATX plaatje krijgt voor de PC-kast. De omgedraaide USB en PS/2 poorten maken het plaatsen in een standaard kast met een standaard ATX-plaatje ietwat ingewikkeld.

[...] Als je echt een AMD Athlon moederbord met speciale snufjes wilt hebben moet je helaas wachten tot de twee generatie moederborden. Tot die tijd is de FIC SD-11 echter absoluut geen slechte keuze.

Gentleman Loser schrijft (heel veel): "Sun Microsystems heeft de broncode van Jakarta nu overgedragen aan de Apache Foundation. Dit betekent dat de code nu onder de "Apache license" valt, en dus niet onder "SCSL" zoals StarOffice.

Wat is Jakarta? Jakarta is een RI(Reference Implementation) van Tomcat&Jasper, twee API's die het mogelijk maken om onder de Apache HTTP server Servlets en JSP pagina's te serveren.

Servlets zijn gecompileerde Java programma's die vergelijkbaar zijn met CGI's. JSP (Java Server Pages) is op een lijn te trekken met PHP en ASP. Het mooie van JSP is dat de pagina bij de allereerste aanroep wordt gecompileerd naar een Servlet, en dus niet elke keer hoeft te worden geinterpreteers (zoals PHP en ASP). PHP4 zal in de toekomst ook een vergelijkbare performance boost bieden middels "Zend", maar het ziet er naar uit dat je daar voor zult moeten dokken. Normaal PHP4 blijft natuurlijk gratis.

Een ander voordeel van Jakarta is dat het mogelijk wordt om alle relevante bestanden van een webapplicatie (eventueel voorgecompileerd) - HTML, JSP, plaatjes, Config files - in een package te stoppen, dat je dan naar elke server, ongeacht platform, kan uploaden. Ok, genoeg getyped... Van de Jakarta homepage :":

Anyone Can Participate The Jakarta Project is composed of members of the current Apache Jserv Project, engineers from major corporations such as Sun and IBM, and serious, committed developers at large. All interested developers are welcome to join and participate.

[...] Tomcat, the Servlet and JavaServer Pages implementation, is currently available in source code only form. It will shortly be available for download in beta form. Based on Servlets 2.2 and JavaServer Pages 1.1, this version is expected to be in final release form by the end of 1999.

Xtreme MHz heeft een socket370 cooler line up bij elkaar geraapt. Onder de geteste heatsinks bevinden zich de Alpha PFH6035MFC en GlobalWin FDP32, alsmede de door ComputerNerd verkochte varianten van deze coolers. Winnaar van de test is de FDP32:

When it comes to performance, the GlobalWin FDP32 seem to lead the crowd with amazing readings. But what is the use of awesome performance when one cannot put it to use--FDP32 being too bulky. Unless you are a lucky user of the Abit BM6, there is virtually no way you can use the FDP32 without any sacrifices (lose a couple of Dimm slots when used with a slotkey). By the way, if you haven't noticed, the FDP32 is actually the same as ComputerNerd's Fac7Beta-H as they are both equipped with the Y.S. Tech fans.

Fiets voor de complete reviews richting Xtreme MHz.

Planet Hardware heeft een review van de Lite-On FS020 in elkaar geknutseld. Qua formaat hangt deze kast met 2 3,5" en 4 5,25" drive bays ergens tussen de full- en mid-towers. Hier een stukje over de koel mogelijkheden:

This brings us to the cooling possibilities for this case, which are fairly nice. There are two grated input ducts on either side of the case. They are both located on the bottom part of the side panels, towards the front of the case itself. These couple excellently with the front intake fans. In the bottom of the front of the case you can place two fan intakes, allowing for 80 cfm fans. In the back portion of the case, behind where the CPU is located, there are another 2 exhaust fan locations. This area also takes 80 cfm (cubic feet per minute) fans. This system makes the airflow within the case very nice, which you'll notice a lot more if you're an overclocking freak.

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van de Diamond Stealth III S540 Xtreme op het net geplakt. Dit Savage4 kaartje draait op 160/166MHz en komt wat betreft kloksnelheden in de buurt van de TNT2 Ultra varianten. De performance blijkt op 640*480 en 800*600 vergelijkbaar te zijn met de vanilla TNT2, op hoge resoluties faalt de S540:

The Xtreme's OpenGL performance is great for a low-end card and handily beats its competition, the TNT2 M64-powered Cougar. In D3D situations we saw mixed results. In Expendable, things do not look so good for the Xtreme, falling well behind the Cougar, but in 3D Mark, it bounces back well ahead of the Cougar. The Xtreme is a fast low-end card with excellent OpenGL performance, but D3D still needs some work to unleash the card's potential. While the performance of the board is overall quite good for the low-end, it does not match the performance of a full 128-bit TNT2 like the GA660. Things will be heating up later on this quarter with further TNT2 skews being added and prices falling further, likely shutting out 64-bit cards from the equation.

The Register heeft een Intel Roadmap bij elkaar geharkt, met daarin info over de Willamette, Coppermine, Cascades en Celeron III. Over Willamette, Intel's laatste revisie van de aloude IA-32 architectuur, heb je hier een stukje:

This IA-32 design was supposed to be in place during 1999 but Intel roadmaps follow the terrain. Last year's disastrous launch of the Celeron forced an infection point on the corporation and it had to do something as smaller players of the like of Cyrix, IDT, AMD et al looked as though they might grab serious market share from the giant.

Anyway, the introduction of Coppermine technology has diverted many people's brains away from Willamette but our information is that Intel is working flat out to demo the first fruits of this secret project at trade shows in January next year. Some have even suggested that Intel may be able to show demonstrations this year, but the only suitable trade show left to do that is Comdex/Fall, which is not an Intel sort of venue anyway. [break] Verder heeft The Register nogal vage info (dit hele artikel is mistig) over een 800Mhz Coppermine: [/break] But Intel has a surprise in for us. Intel loves surprises. Being a bellwether of the entire US stock market, it likes to hit its shareholders with pleasant, rather than unpleasant surprises. So our information is that just two shakes of a lamb's tail after it announces its 733MHz CuMine processors, it will hit us with an 800MHz part. More is promised very soon afterwards. A reaction to AMD? No, say Intel hammers of spin, this was always on the roadmap.

Overclockers' Shootout (deense site) heeft een nogal wazig geschreven review van het AseTek Vapochill koelsysteempje gepost. Dit doe-het-zelf Kryotech alternatief kost circa 1700 gulden en zou vergelijkbare temperaturen van -40C moeten kunnen bereiken:

I got very dissapointed to start with --- I actually didn't get past 140MHz front side bus with the VapoChill - on any of the motherboards... Just the same speed I could achieve on AsusP3BF with a AlphaPIII cooler attached to the CPU !! .. Well - I have experimented with cooling off the bx chipset in the past ... And did something radical ... I mounted a 53watts peltier on the back off the bx chip and a 23 watt peltier on top off it ( limited space under the VapoChill CPU box ) ... Off course I had to cut out a opening in the plate behind the motherboard to mount a 60 mm fan on top off the peltier heatsink.. The fan mounted on the front peltier had to be mounted offcenter - not enough space under the CPU box. I used the AbitBX6.rev2 motherboard flashed with the MW bios. I fired up at 143MHz front side bus / 2.4 core voltage....and after "chill" (Aseteks own program) halted the boot for 60 seconds the system went straight into windows -- 100%stable...644 MHz ... I have been able to adjust this CPU to 644MHz before - in windows / SoftFSB with PIII125S Alpha cooler ... The system was extremely unstable - and went down after a minute or so ...But now I was able to boot from scratch into windows - and 100% stable...Well -- what with 153MHz front side bus... the system beeped at my everytime I tried ... no matter how I adjusted bios settings ... "videocard beeps" In with the 4MB Creative Graphics Blaster ... and voila .... made it into windows ...that is 688.5 MHz with a processor that is designed to run 450MHz

Verder hebben ze een paar CPUMark benchmarks, o.a. van een Celeron 400 die dankzij de Vapochill een snelheid van 672MHz haalt.