Fujitsu doet gezellig mee met de all-in-one trend die door de Apple iMac werd ingezet. De nieuwe MFV DeskPower Pliche 232 lijkt, afgezien van de kleurstelling, ook nog eens errug veel op een AaiMek. Het is te verwachten dat Steve en zijn vrienden hiertegen actie gaan ondernemen, net zoals dat eerder tegen eMachines en Future Power gebeurde. The Register serveert de soep:

Fujistu has become the latest PC vendor to hop onto the iMac bandwagon, with a machine that, like eMachines eOne and Future Power's ePower, apes Apple's all-in-one multi-hued desktop to such an extent that it could land the Japanese giant in court.

[...] Such a similarity between the iMac and PCs from eMachines and Future Power this summer set Apple's lawyers onto both companies in their home territory of Taiwan, in the US and, in eMachines' case, against its Japanese distributor, Sotec.

Subsequently, eMachines modified its machine at Sotec's insistence and eliminated the eOne's blue and white two-tone colour scheme in favour of a uniform gloss-grey look -- a colour scheme that, in some respects, resembles Apple's newest iMac, the high-end iMac DV Special Edition. No wonder Apple Japan is believed to be deciding whether the machine still infringes Apple's trademarks, as the Mac maker claimed the original eOne did.

Perhaps Fujitsu can now expect a similar reaction from Apple.

The Register bericht dat er een timing bug is gevonden in de USB driver van Windows 98 SE, die gaat over z'n kop in systemen met een AMD processor op 350MHz of sneller in combinatie met een VIA USB controller:

People with AMD microprocessors running at clock speeds over 350MHz and who use Windows 98 Second Edition need a workaround if they're using USB devices.

The Microsoft support site, which has a specific page on the problem here, is offering a downloadable file which it claims will solve the problem. According to the site, people with PCs that use a Via USB controller and an AMD processor clocking at 350MHz or faster, could have problems making their USB peripherals works.

The glitch is caused by a timing specific problem in the USB driver, according to Microsoft.

Aah, gisteren wist The Register ons nog te vertellen dat het i820 / Rambus probleem zich alleen voordeed bij Intel planken, vandaag ligt de situatie al weer anders... Het probleem lijkt nu gewoon te liggen in de hoog frequente signalen van de Rambus lijntjes, die krijgen ruzie met elkaar bij gebruik van 3 RIMMetjes:

The i820 and the i840, the latter of which was formally released today, use identical Rambus interface circuitry, he claimed. And there are other mobos rather than Dell (sorry Intel's) that fail with three RIMM modules.

"These failures have to do with multiple back to back pipelined transfers from multiple devices on the bus. The guys at Hard OCP were given accurate information. This is a key feature of a Rambus system, to have multiple devices accessed simultaneously and driving the bus in a pipelined back to back fashion. This is where the only performance advantage for the bus will come from," he says.

And the failures are not just poor board design, with some serious theoretical issues involved -- resonance being the key one. "Buses are running into quarter and half wavelength resonance effects which cause voltage margin and timing margin violations. No re-engineering of the drivers, board, or receivers will fix this problem with three RIMM systems.

"Resonance effects are not limited to three RIMM systems, however, the effect here is much greater. There are reasons to believe that resonance problems can occur with two RIMM systems under extreme circumstances. It would literally take years of simulation time to simulate most of the possiblities," he adds.

However, poorly designed boards will exhibit the problems more frequently than better designed boards, while server and workstation mobos (i840) are designed with more margin, and hence less chance of failure.

Check The Register voor meer info.

MacOS Rumors meldt dat er sterke geruchten gaan dat Steve geleidelijk wil overgaan op een direct-sales model a la Dell:

According to what I have heard from Apple dealers around the country, next week there is a BIG meeting in San Jose. [Rumor has it] Apple is about to axe their Education distributors and go direct with Education sales.

The dealers I have talked to say that this is a "dry" run for pulling a "Dell" and going customer direct *totally* once they have the kinks worked out of the system. It seems to make sense that you would want to start this type of project on a small scale, and work up to a national level once all (or most) of the gremlins have been killed.

Supposedly, this means that what you had reported on earlier - the Apple owned Apple stores - are not as dead as [they might] appear. From what I hear, they will be service centers first and foremost, with the sales coming from web terminals set up in the store, hooked up to the good ol' Apple store.

No sales personnel means a lower overhead, and greater control for Apple. Which is what I think they are angling for now anyway.

AMD heeft de Athlon 700 vandaag officieel geïntroduceerd. Tegelijkertijd heeft het de prijzen van de Athlon lijn verder verlaagd, zo bericht The Register:

AMD introduced its 700MHz Athlon processor today, as expected, and quietly trashed the big surprise Chipzilla was hoping for with the introduction of its Coppermine PIII chips by cutting prices on others in the range.

And AMD scored a further feather in its anti-Intel cap, as chipset company SiS has just announced it will support Athlon processors too.

The top of the range Pentium III killer, the 700MHz Athlon, costs $666 in quantity. The 650MHz part now costs $510, the 600MHz part $406, the 550MHz Athlon $269 and the 500MHz Athlon price remains the same.

AMD is expected to follow its scaleability curve soon with an 800MHz processor, coming very soon.

Sensaura heeft aangekondigd dat de Diamond Monster Sound MX400 gebruik zal maken van de Canyon3D technologie. Dit chippie doet aan 3 dimensionaal gepositioneerde audio en ondersteund zowel EAX 1.0 als EAX 2.0. Hier wat optimistisch geblaat uit de press release bij GA-Source:

Sensaura today announced that the recently unveiled Diamond Monster Sound MX400 audio accelerator, by S3 Incorporated, will provide the complete Sensaura feature set. The MX400 uses the Canyon3D DSP chip, manufactured by ESS Technology Inc and is one of many Sensaura-based items available in the global marketplace. Other Sensaura licensees who, in total, supply in excess of 70 percent of the PC market for audio chips include the Yamaha Corporation and Crystal Cirrus Logic.

"We are delighted that the Monster Sound MX400 will incorporate all of the latest innovations featured in Sensaura 3D Positional Audio technology. Diamond are a recognized industry leader in sound acceleration and the ubiquity of 3D gaming ensures a growing market for their products. We look forward to increasing our co-operation with both Diamond and S3 on future technology products," said David Monteith, Sensaura CEO. The MX400 provides the following Sensaura features:

- MultiDrive for true 3D multi-speaker audio (as opposed to the panning of sound, as offered by many competitors).
- EnvironmentFX for full EAX 1.0 and EAX 2.0 support.
- MarcoFX for the realism of sounds close to the head.
- ZoomFX for the realism of large sounds.
- Full support for the industry standard Microsoft DirectSound3D(DS3D) application program interface (API).
- Full integration of `Interactive 3D Audio Rendering
- Guidelines Level 2.0' (I3DL2)

During the product planning stage of the MX400, Diamond, seeking to identify the most realistic 3D audio technology available, preferred the Sensaura-based Canyon3D chipset ahead of all competing alternatives in `blind testing' experiments.

Sensaura technology is already available on hardware items from companies such as IBM, Dell, Intel, NEC and Guillemot. News that another leading soundcard manufacturer is set to replace it's existing 3D audio brand with Sensaura's technology, is expected very soon.

S3 / Diamond heeft vandaag een nieuw 3D shutter brilletje aangekondigd. De Diamond Monster Shades is vergelijkbaar met 3D shutter brillen van o.a. Elsa en Metabyte en dient middels een verloop kabeltje op de VGA uitgang aangesloten te worden. Hier de press release van Yahoo Finance:

The future's so bright, you've got to wear shades. S3® Incorporated (Nasdaq: SIII - news) today announced the newest addition to its award-winning family of 3D gaming products -- the Diamond Monster Shades(TM) 3D glasses.

Featuring advanced 3D stereoscopic shutter technology and a hip, ergonomic design, Diamond Monster Shades enable PC users to view a 3D game through specially-designed lenses, that take the spatial relationships created from the game, and creates an illusion of depth for immersive 3D gaming. A tethered version of S3's Diamond Monster Shades is scheduled to ship to retail stores nationwide in November for an estimated retail price of $69.95 with a non-tethered version to ship in January 2000.

``Whether the user is a discriminating PC gamer or a novice computer user, S3's new Diamond-branded Monster Shades is a cool, must-have accessory for playing 3D games,'' said Michael Buchanan, Senior Director of Desktop Multimedia Products for S3 Incorporated. ``S3 is always on the cutting-edge, evaluating and developing new technologies that propel PC gamers into the most realistic 3D environment possible. Diamond Monster Shades does just that and is a perfect compliment to our broad line of popular 3D gaming and audio accelerators.''

Out-of-the-Box Compatibility

S3's Diamond Monster Shades are designed for ease-of-use and maximum compatibility, so PC gamers can start enjoying them from the second they open the package. Whether the user likes to play old PC game favorites or the latest 3D masterpiece, Diamond Monster Shades provides support for hundreds of PC titles designed using the DirectX, OpenGL and Glide application programming interfaces (APIs). Diamond Monster Shades is also compatible with all leading 3D game engines, including S3's Savage4, Nvidia's TNT, TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra chips and 3Dfx's Voodoo II, Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo III. Support for S3's Savage(TM)2000 is planned.

Additionally, S3's new Diamond Monster Shades is packaged with hardware, a connector cable, driver CD-ROM and a user guide. A trial version of Electronic Arts'® Need for Speed III(TM) and a full-version of Lucas Arts'® Star Wars®: Shadows of the Empire are also included. S3 also provides a Diamond Monster Shades Mood Kit, featuring snap-on color frame attachments that enable users to customize the color of their Monster Shades to fit their mood.

Installation and System Requirements

Diamond Monster Shades connect to the user's PC via a connector cable to the VGA output on the system's graphics accelerator. The product is compatible with any Intel Pentium II or III, AMD K6-2 or compatible system and requires a CRT monitor capable of a minimum of 120 MHz refresh rate.

Sander Hovestad schrijft: "Altavista is een ware metamorfose ondergaan... ":

Oei, da's toch een schokwekkende verandering in het internet universum (hele generaties zijn opgegroeid met dat oude logootje ).

3D SoundSurge heeft een review gepost van de Intensor LX350 Gaming Chair, een stoeltje met 80 Watt versterker en 5 geïntegreerde speakers. Als je daar een flinke bass tegenaan gooit gaat het zaakje bibberen en dat is cool wanneer je bijv. een rocket launcher op je dak krijgt :

The unit is billed as being more than just a gaming chair as you can use it for movies and music. With respect to games you will get the most enjoyment out of sims and action titles. It's just great with the rumble of an engine, exploding rockets and other bass heavy experiences. Its pretty simple, the less bass heavy the action, the less impact the game will have and if you have a sound card that lets you adjust your bass level you can improve the chair performance somewhat by cranking up the bass. When it comes to movies I prefer a true 5.1 or 4 speaker downmixing experience which as I have noted above, does not work right with the chair as you will only get the tactile feedback when the sound is coming from the front. However, if you are watching movies on a two speaker system then you will probably enjoy the effects of the chair. When it comes to music, while I am certainly not an audio purist by any stretch of the imagination, I don't like the tactile effect with my music. That's not to say you won't, as other reviewers seem to really like it and my 15 year old nephew absolutely loves the chair for listening to his punk!

Voodoo Extreme heeft een Put Your Ass in the Know^TM artikel gepost over filtering methodes en MIP Mapping. Hier een hap over Bilinear Filtering:

Bilinear filtering is commonplace nowadays. All 3D accelerated hardware supports bilinear filtering. The reasons are plenty. Bilinear filtering is a relatively fast way of smoothing out pixelation (previously referred to as blockiness) while scaling an image. Bilinear filtering, like many other graphic algorithms relies on weighted averages. As it applies to 3D rendering, when choosing the texel to display, take a weighted average of the four pixels surrounding the target location. For example, if we needed the texel at (100.3,100.7) , bilinear filtering would return a pixel with colors which are a weighted average of the texels at (100,100),(101,100),(100,101) and (101,101). This helps smooth out images because, unlike with point sampling, pixels which are bordering largely different colors will not reflect that. (This, in part, causes the aforementioned pixelation.) The images below compare bilinear filtering with point sampling.

HardOCP heeft een paar interessante Quake3 benchmarks gedraaid op een dual Celeron box:

The question we really want answered, of course, is how running high-poly settings will affect performance. And, to throw a new twist at the question, how running high-poly settings in a dual-processor setup will affect things. Could it be possible, as I suggested, that a second CPU could be used as a geometry accelerator of sorts? Could an SMP rig run Q3 with the polygon detail settings turned up at about the same speed as a single-CPU rig would run the default settings? In theory, at least, it seems like a possibility, since transformation and lighting happens on the CPU, not on the video card, in almost all the current 3D accelerators, including the Voodoo 3, TNT2, etc. Why not put that second CPU to use processing more polys per scene?

Check de resultaten op de frontpage van HardOCP.com.

Gamers Depot heeft een review in elkaar geflanst van de nieuwe Soundblaster Live! Platinum. Vrij leuk bij deze soundkaart is de bijgeleverde Live! Drive waar de I/O connectors zich bevinden:

Using the exact EMU10K1 that the rest of the SB Live! family uses gives you all the EAX functionality you'd expect. Since, we've all heard the EAX story more times than a presidential scandal, I'd like to mainly focus in on Liveware 3.0, and the Live! Drive. Liveware 3.0 includes all of the upgrades that the previous 2 versions had, plus a whole shootin'-match of utilities and software. The one I think is one of the coolest is the ability to encode MP3's with Environmental Audio, this is a feature that truly makes the SB Live! series unique. I have yet to an Aureal-based sound card be able to keep up with such flexibility and power.

The Live! Drive gives a whole new meaning to the term "flexibility", and defines "ease-of-use" for sound card hook-ups. The front panel has jacks for Midi In, Midi Out, SPDIF In, SPDIF Out, Mic In, and Headphones. If you are a musician looking to compose music on your PC, then this is a must have feature, as you'll never have to do the ole' "reach-around" action anymore. And if you're a gamer, having a front-mounted headphone jack is a dream-come-true as well.

The best part of using the Platinum, in my opinion, is the game support. Some might argue that A3D is better in certain areas, but you cannot argue that A3D isn't as well supported. I'm sure we'll see this change soon, but for now my money is on EAX.

Dell heeft Compaq van de eerste plaatst gezet wat betreft omzet op de Amerikaanse markt, zo bericht News.com:

The so-called direct sales PC manufacturer has stolen the leading role in the world’s largest market away from the longtime front-runner for the first time, according to studies to be released today by market research firms International Data Corporation and Dataquest.

Dell edged out Compaq in the U.S., according to final second-quarter numbers released by IDC last month. But Dell widened the margin in the third quarter, grabbing the top spot for the first time from both market-research firms.

Compaq held on to the No. 1 spot worldwide, but analysts predicted that Dell soon would push its Texas rival aside in that category too.

Firingsquad heeft een review gepost van de Plextor PlexWriter 8/2/20 SCSI CD Rewriter. Die willen we allemaal wel hebben :

The PlexWriter 8/2/20 is one fast burner. We managed to burn entire CDs, audio, data, and PSX, all in 10 minutes or less. Regular 4x and 2x cd-recorders out there take about 20 minutes and 40 minutes respectively to burn full-length discs. Our only complaint is the slow 2x rewrite speed of the Plextor drive. Many other CD-RW drives out there already feature 4x rewrite speeds. The PlexWriter extracts audio superbly, but to get the full performance out of the drive we recommend getting a second Plextor CD-ROM for CD-to-CD duplication.

Remko schrijft: "Ja ja, superweb is online ( voor 15 minuten misschien) er is nu alweer geen doorkomen aan en dat terwijl ze zeggen dat de technische problemen zijn opgelost! Dit is zwaar #$$%#$#%#$@#"

En een half uurtje later...

(alweer) Remko schrijft: "Weer een nieuw lulverhaal van een van de medewerkers van Superweb":

Vandaag zullen opnieuw werkzaamheden aan de router plaats vinden aangezien deze nog steeds niet aan de verwachtingen voldoet.

Verder zal er een herconfiguratie van de webserver plaats vinden, wij vragen U een klein beetje geduld en hopen vanavond het grootste deel van de problemen te hebben opgelost.

Ron Ingenkamp.

Bij Riva 3D is een review te vinden van de Guillemot 3D Prophet GeForce 256 videokaart. Naast de gebruikelijke Quake benchmarks hebben ze de kaart ook getest met de Viewperf benchmark voor OpenGL Workstation performance. De complete review kun je hier lezen.

The introduction of the GeForce has given users an option that's been lacking in earlier 2D/3D cards. Not only is the Guillemot GeForce Prophet a gamer's slice of heaven, it's also a dream come true for CAD users and 3D modelers and animators.

With 3D power that gives you insanely fast frame rates at higher resolutions in 32 bit color, throw in widespread developer support for upcoming transform and lighting with higher polygon counts, and you've got a sure bet that the Guillemot Prophet will be a hot, hot seller.

And don't be surprised when the GeForce becomes a big seller as a workstation add-in, or as an OEM favorite in the workstation marketplace. When you consider the ability of the GeForce Prophet to provide a low-cost, excellent alternative to even the $20,000 workstations, the $250 price tag seems like a bargain. Yes, we finally have a gaming card that doubles as a powerful 3D graphics solution. That makes Guillemot's naming of their GeForce product quite appropriate.

About the only complaint (and it's a minor one) is the lack of a full version game. But with easy installation and rock-solid stability, the GeForce Prophet gets very high marks from RIVA 3D.

Hmm, dit lijkt me een erg handig proggie voor NT/2000 gebruikers met teveel RAM. Ik heb zelf 384Mb en onder Win98 kon je dan mooi je swap file volledig uitzetten. In NT en 2000 is dat niet mogelijk, dus zit je met een bak die het grootste deel van de tijd met 150Meg vrij geheugen staat te niksen. Swap file op RAM drive?

The first beta or RamDiskNT is out, as promised. RamDiskNT is a WinNT/2000 driver that emulates as fully as possible the low-level functionality of a hard disk (up to 2GB!) or a 1.44MB or 2.88MB floppy drive. RamDiskNT will support much larger disks than Microsoft's ramdrive.sys (which is limited to 32MB). RamDiskNT can also be configured to allow the user to select the drive letter.

RamDiskNT v0.1 Beta kun je hier downloaden.

Arjan gaf deze link naar Matrox Users, over een veranderde retail strategie van Matrox die als bedoeling heeft een eind te maken aan de leveringsproblemen van Matrox:

In North America, we have spent the last 12 months dedicating our retail sales efforts to our online store, http://shop.matrox.com, and preparing the transition to a new sales strategy that will make retail products more widely accessible. We will announce this new strategy in the coming weeks; however, for the moment we recommend that our clients purchase retail products at the Matrox online store.

...nog niet echt duidelijk wat men hiermee bedoelt. Het lijkt er wel op dat ze meer nadruk gaan leggen op direkte verkoop via de eigen online shop.

Bij Sharky Extreme hebben ze ook hun Intel Coppermine review online gezet. Ook hier weer veel benchmarks van Coppermines op 600MHz t/m 733MHz, en ter vergelijking hebben ze de scores van een Athlon 700 er ook tussen gezet. Uit de benchmarks blijkt dat meestal alleen een Coppermine 733 uitgerust met PC800 RDRAM het van de AMD Athlon 700 kan winnen.

We highly recommend the Intel Coppermine-based Pentium III CPUs to any user seeking the fastest possible PC performance. We also say definitively that the only way to get the most out of the Coppermine CPU is to outfit it with an i820 mainboard and expensive RDRAM.

No matter what anyone tells you, we, along with DELL, Compaq, and most other major PC OEM system integrators, are believers in both the i820 chipset and RDRAM's performance improvements. We've personally used Intel's new platform for over a month now and we have nothing but positive things to say about it regarding a tangible improvement over both PC-100 SDRAM and the 440BX chipset.

If you're on more of a tight budget however, we do believe that you'll probably be better off opting for a 650MHz or below Athlon CPU/mainboard combo. [break]In de review wordt ook nog even gemeld dat we nu weer geen snellere Athlons dit jaar mogen verwachten:[/break] On the AMD side, although it may seem shocking to some, we have confirmed that there will be no further Athlon CPU introductions in 1999.

As AMD's brand new state-of-the-art Dresden Germany chip fabrication plant begins production of sample .18 micron wafers this week, it begins the lengthy 90-day quality and assurance shake down that all fabs go through on their way to full production. These samples will not be offered to the public.

It makes sense therefore that AMD will likely be able to offer 800MHz+ .18um Athlon chips beginning in late January and early February of next year, on their way to 1.2 - 1.4GHz Copper-based Athlons by mid to late summer 2000. Think July/August.

In the near term AMD hinted to us that it was (is) possible for the Athlon to hit a 750MHz speed using their current .25um process, but that the chip pass/fail rate at that speed could not support the economics or production volume necessary for supporting a full Athlon 750 launch.

Lees Sharky's review hier verder.

Ik kwam via Voodoo Extreme bij deze thread op het forum van Raven Software, over T&L support in Soldier of Fortune (een spel dat IMO best wel hard gaat regeren):

Q: Will SoF take advantage of the GeForce's T&L engine? "Pretty much all GL applications will take minimum advantage of the Transformation portion of the GeForce card. Next generation engines, like Q3A take more advantage of it, because they are designed for this hardware. Older engines aren't designed for it, so just some of the nartual GL transormations are done.

A: SoF does, however, have builtin hardware lighting, so we do take advantage of GeForce's Lighting hardware. Lighting actually looks a little better, as we can throw more lights towards the models, and still render in less time than the software calculations needed to compute the light values (for every other card)."

Ook ome Tom maakt ons blij met een review van de Intel Coppermine. Zoals we van hem gewend zijn weer véél benchmarks, die laten zien dat de Coppermine zowel in office applicaties als games sneller is dan de Athlon. Dat laatste zou trouwens goed kunnen komen door voor SSE geoptimaliseerde GeForce drivers. Tom's conclusie:

I have to congratulate Intel for finally getting the best out of the good old P6-design. Coppermine has got very close to Athlon, it even surpasses it due to SSE and other enhancements in several 3D-games, particularly in Quake3. Coppermine suffers a bit from the delay of i820, but it is still able to show its teeth already. What we shouldn't forget however is that there's a new platform for Athlon due soon as well, which should give this AMD CPU some speed boost too. For workstation users the answer should still be clear, Athlon is the way better choice due to its far superior floating point performance and it will get even more obvious once there are SMP-platforms available for Athlon. Office application users shouldn't look at those CPUs in the first place really, since every office application runs just fine on K6-2, K6-3 or Celeron platforms. The story has changed a bit for gamers. Coppermine is at least as fast as Athlon in games and until the world changes significantly, game developers will help out Intel by optimizing their games for SSE rather than putting any major effort into 3DNow!-enhancements. This is partly AMD's fault, since it would be their job to supply developers with a compiler that optimizes for Athlon. The final decision will be made when you look at the pricing though. Intel hasn't changed much and will take more money for Coppermine than AMD takes for Athlon. AMD will have to get their .18-micron-process going and integrate their L2-cache on-die as well. Then we'll see if Intel has only caught up or if it will overtake AMD again.

De Pentium III Coppermine wordt vandaag officieel gereleased, verwacht dus een truckload aan Coppermine reviews de komende dagen. Ace's Hardware is de eerste met een Coppermine 733 vs Athlon 700 comparison. Dankzij de superieure FPU performance is de Athlon nog steeds sneller in (3D) games, maar de Coppermine gaat de Athlon net voorbij in de applicatie benchmarks:

Intel has done a good job with the Coppermine. The Athlon is still faster in FPU intensive applications, but Intel has regained the crown of the fastest business application processor. Some people might find it dissappointing that the Athlon is not faster in everything. "Is that all a 7-th generation core can do ?". Caches are extremely important now. If you want to determine to which generation a processor belongs, you should not compare cores with different cache configurations. Disable the L1 and the L2 cache of a PIII or Athlon and even a good old pentium (p54) beats them both...

The Athlon has a LOT of headroom. An integrated L2-cache, a 266 MHz EV6- bus and DDR SDRAM might do some wonders for the Athlon's performance.

It is a pity that Intel still abuses their strong position on the market to ask exorbitant prices for the Coppermine. Due to the Coppermine shortage ? Or does it indicates that Intel is still not convinced that it has a real competitor ? Let us hope that AMD proves this vision to be wrong, as it will benefit all customers. Our time with the Coppermine system was very limited. We hope to bring you more in the next weeks...

Fiets richting Ace's Hardware voor de info en benchmarks.

Gamer's Alliance heeft een nieuwe dedicated Savage2000 site geopend: Savage2000.com (of Savage2k.com). Om de opening van de site wat op te vrolijken hebben ze een interview gepost met Paul Ayscough, marketing director van S3:

Q: Will you run in to similar problems as GeForce non_DDR with not having enough memory bandwidth?

A: I didn't know that GeForce had memory bandwidth problems! Savage 2000 should not have significant memory bandwidth problems.

By Christmas there will be about 10 retail titles using between 500 megs and 1 gigabyte of textures in the game. Typically they will have 60 - 90 megs loaded at any one time - using S3TC. The advantages of using S3Tc are numerous:

- The quality is superb!
- it's the only widely supported form of texture compression in it's class,
- it allows for a single CD to ship with up to a GIG of textures - or more
- it uses less hard disc space
- it uses less video card.
- it uses bandwidth more efficiently...

Q: What are the differences between Savage2000 T&L and GeForce T&L?

A: Our T&L engine probably uses fewer gates than GeForce. However, we are able to deliver all 8 lights on at the same time with no slowdown. [Why only 8 lights. Find out here.] I have heard that GeForce slows down if all 8 lights are used at the same time. While I do believe Geforce's T&L engine is more powerful in some aspects, I feel that we have been careful in the number of gates we have used to support the feature. Our engine is able to handle a reasonable number of polygons at one time - more than enough for most games due in the near future. According to our research there will be few titles which will use excessive numbers of polygons [10-20K] in the next few months. We are giving the developer and the user the chance to use hardware T & L, while concentrating more on the key areas for the foreseeable future - namely highest quality rendering with industry leading multitextured fill rate!

Check Savage2000.com voor het complete interview.

Forbes bevestigd eerdere geruchten dat we binnenkort een Athlon 750 mogen verwachten. Een 800MHz staat gepland voor november:

Intel is expected to roll out a 733- and 667-MHz version of its Pentium III chip later this year. These new versions of Pentium III chip use a 100-MHz system bus, and 256KB on-die full-speed L2 Cache. In total about nine new versions of Pentium III are due out this fourth quarter.

While Intel might have the speed crown for the moment, AMD is expected to strike back very shortly. The company recently started production in its state-of-the-art chip-manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany. AMD will soon announce the 750-MHz version of its chip, only to be followed by 800 MHz versions in November 1999.

Linux Today bericht dat ze erin zijn geslaagd om LinuxPPC te booten op een iBookje.

"I've posted a first set of patches with a binary kernel at: http://calvaweb.calvacom.fr/bh40/test.html

This one still contains obvious hacks and my iBook's PMU is shutting down the machine on me way too often, but I managed to boot and use the LinuxPPC Q3 installer with it.

- There are big problems with the PMU. It seems to work with the same basic protocol, but: I get occasional "ack still high" errors, I never get the CB1 interrupt, and it began shutting the machine down on me randomly when probing IDE or USB at boot since this evening. (It worked with no changes from this morning to this evening though). I plan to look into this later tonight.

...beetje wazig technisch geneuzel. Check dit artikel van Linux Today voor meer info.

The Register bericht over wazige connecties tussen de mistige Elbrus E2K (een of andere super processor die de Intel Itanium in z'n broekje doet plassen) en de net zo vage chip waar ze (o.a. Linus Torvalds) bij Transmeta aan zouden werken:

The Russian microprocessor startup firm which claims its E2K chip could give Intel's Merced-Itanium a run for its money, is claiming links with Transmeta, Cygnus, Avant! and Sun.

Boris Babayan, scientific head of Elbrus, used to work for the Soviet Government and claims his team of architects pioneered a number of developments in architecture design. Those claims are hotly disputed by many senior chip architects in the US.

In an interview with Lenin Prize Winner Babayan last year, The Register heard him claim that the Elbrus architectural approach beat Intel's Merced approach hands down on a number of fronts.

And in June this year, Gordon Bell, a top Microsoft boffin, claimed that the Elbrus approach to microprocessor design definitely had a future. The Russian firm claims funding from the Moscow government and from a number of other investors.

But it is also claiming on this Web site, in English, that it has a close relationship with mystery company start up company Transmeta and with arch-Intel rival Sun.

Volgens Wall Street City zijn (naast Motorola) ook Hyundai en Infineon (de halfgeleider divisie van Siemens) geïnteresseerd in het uitbesteden van produktiecapaciteit aan AMD's Fab30 in Dresden:

Last week, Chang Seock Han, senior vice president in the strategic planning office of the semiconductor group of Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd., said he would be traveling to AMD's Dresden opening ceremony to look over the plant and that a deal between Hyundai and AMD was a possibility.

However, Hyundai's situation is complicated by the fact that it has put plans for two wafer fabs in the U.K. on hold. The developments, in Scotland and Wales, stalled when Hyundai and LG Semiconductor, now merged, were hit by the Asian economic crisis in 1998.

Ulrich Schumacher, president and CEO of Infineon, said that because of the improving semiconductor market, building or acquiring a fab in the Dresden area in which to install 300-mm wafer processing equipment was becoming a priority. Of AMD Fab 30 Schumacher said, "If it's cheap enough perhaps we should buy it."

Alex en zijn vriendje Jon van Sharky Extreme hebben een artikel gepost waarin ze een kudde game developers naar hun mening over next generation 3D technologiën vroegen. De eerste ondervraagden zijn Markus Stein en Petri Jarvilehto van Remedy Entertainment, waar men op dit moment het veelbelovende Max Payne in ontwikkeling heeft:

1. Will your upcoming games support hardware transformation and lighting in D3D or other non-OpenGL API's?

MAX-FX, the game engine Max Payne is build upon, will be able to take full advantage of D3D HW T&L. That way we can be sure to perform well on future generations of hardware accelerators.

2. What advantages, disadvantages and issues are there for you as a game developer in doing so?

Most geometry and materials should work very well when rendered with HW T&L. Developers will probably end up with a fallback software pipeline in case they want to use features not supported by HW T&L, or not generally supported by all HW T&L capable hardware. But in the end, letting HW T&L handle all the geometry that it can handle is going to increase overall rendering performance.

3. Will your upcoming games support texture compression, environment bump mapping, T-Buffer, or any other current or upcoming hardware technology that is not widely developed for yet?

We will have support for texture compression. It makes game environments a lot more believable if texture resolutions are higher. And that without the need for additional memory.

2CPU.com heeft een review van de Abit BP6 neer gemikt. Beetje laat, maar kan geen kwaad:

The Abit BP6 has temperature sensors provided by Winbond in the form of their W83781D/W83782D/W83783D chipset. It is accessed through the Winbond hardware doctor in the bios but can be accessed by a number of other hardware monitoring products such as Motherboard Monitor from your desktop. These sensors do not only provide information but also allow the system to slow itself down in times of high stress (defined by the user). This has saved many an overclocker from an untimely hardware failure.

In de review wordt trouwens gezegd dat een dual Celeron op 551MHz een keyrate van 3,08MKeys/sec haalt en een single PII-450 1,58MKeys/sec. Waar in vredesnaam komen ze aan zo'n snelle koe!? (mijn C300A @ 464MHz deed maar 1,28MKeys/sec).

Investor Insight, een wekelijkse column van GA-Source, heeft een artikeltje geschreven over next generation 3D kaarten, met daarin o.a. info over het gebruik van 'Dynamic Level of Detail' (LLOD). Deze techniek moet het mogelijk maken om enerzijds games speelbaar te houden op fossiele PC's en anderzijds de beste beeldkwaliteit te bereiken op snelle bakken met een moderne videokaart:

I agree DLOD is a great technique. But if we consider the actual building of the interior and the in-door world of a game, you will have a very hard time to achieve the effects possible with massive polycounts done "right". With "right" I mean that the artists build the interior as optimized and good-looking as possible with ALL polygons available. This is not the same thing as just making objects rounder or smoother as in Quake3 Arena. The DLOD will have severe problems with such things as reducing the number of visible objects (i.e. enemies) and still keeping the playability and quality of the game intact. It might be possible but for the larger part of the game industry it will be too complex and the artists will be to restrained to be able to create competitive results.

Lijkt erop dat Asus nu zelft durft te erkennen dat het een Athlon plankje in z'n assortiment heeft (echt iets om je voor te schamen...). Deze info heb ik van JC:

Here's a very good sign for the Slot-A side of the world, according to Daiki, Asus has started advertizing their K7M motherboard in some Japanese magazines. This represents the first time Asus is actually acknowledging that they have a Slot-A board on the market (and have had for a while now).