Voodoo Extreme heeft wederom een toevoeging gepost aan hun Fillrate vs T&L artikel. Deze opmerking is afkomstig van Randy Pitchford van Gearbox Software (developers van Opposing Force):

New features like T&L are very nice, but they are widening the gap between low-end and high-end systems. This is not a new problem for software engineers, just a new technology - and a wider gap.

The classic technology dilemma is this: Developers who want their game played by as many people as possible have to consider carefully how to deliver the nicest looking graphics (if only visuals are relevant in a tech discussion like this) to the widest audience who own hardware capable of running the game. Because technology is advancing as rapidly as it is and because more and more "common" users who not are used to upgrading their computers every year are buying systems for the first time, I suspect that the wisest developers will focus on scalability. We are now challenged with the widest gap between consumer level high-end and low-end users since the dawn of this industry. The competition and innovation that is happening in the hardware industry right now suggests that this gap will widen even more over the next couple of years. Typically, scalability solutions involve dynamically dealing with more or less polygons depending on the user machine's capabilities, so I would bet that many engineers who are concerning themselves with scalability will want to support T&L to make their content look as nice as possible on systems that it can.

But, if forced to choose *only* between taking advantage of T&L *or* abusing fill-rate, I'll choose to abuse fill-rate (for now). If I create software that *requires* hardware T&L, I'll be severely limiting my audience (at least for the next couple of years). Abusing fill-rate will only cause the game to run slower on lesser systems, instead of not running at all. I would assume, in this scenario, that we can turn off things like AA for the lesser machines.

Check de complete posting bij VE.

Tjark Verhoeven stuurde deze link naar een thread op het forum van BP6.com. Het is mogelijk om een Coppermine op een BP6 te draaien en nog interessanter: 4xAGP zou op een BX plank geforced kunnen worden door de AGP divider op 1/1/ te zetten bij een busspeed van 133MHz (dan gaat de AGP poort dus twee keer zo hard als normaal):

You CAN run FC-PPGA coppermines on the BP6, I'm doing it right now! all u have to do is soldier a pull up line on the back of the motherboard from one pin to another. so stop yapping about incompatible. All you do is boot with celeron in a socket, go into the bios, set voltage to 1.60v, save and exit, then shut down. Change the chip, (after the mod was made)and your running copper.

All i need to do now is see if SoftFSB will run over 133mhz. Oh, and to force agp 4x, all you need to do is set AGP divider to 1/1 while running 133mhz bus. The BX chipset does run 256k cache. the white paper only list 128k, and 512k, becuase that was all that was out when intel made the 440BX. To prove it go to www.hardocp.com and look in the arcives for Coppermine benches, running on a BX board, or go to www.tomshardware.com and look at his coppermine vs crapalon benches, on a BX board.

BDW: deze posting werd geplaatst door iemand met een mail adres op HardOCP.com (toch wel dé overclockers site).

Ik kwam dit interessante nieuws tegen bij Planet Riva, over een nieuwe DSL variant met een snelheid van 60Mbit/s:

STMicroelectronics and Telia Research AB have demonstrated very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) technology over conventional copper wire using a prototype baseband chip built by STM. The two companies said systems providing an upgrade from asymmetric DSL could be deployed as early as 2001.

The partners started on the Zipper-VDSL technology in June 1998 and now claim to hold the top spot in the application of frequency-division discrete multitone (DMT) technology to next-generation broadband connections over copper. Last week Texas Instruments Inc. unveiled a VDSL transceiver chip and, with Alcatel, announced their intention to pursue the DMT approach to VDSL and perform interoperability tests.

In another European VDSL partnership, Infineon Technologies Inc. (Munich, Germany) plans at this week's DSLcon Europe in Amsterdam to show off its second-generation two-chip VDSL set and to reveal the key role played in both VSDL generations by Israeli startup Savan Communications Ltd. Savan, founded by executives from Orckit Communications Ltd. and Libit Signal Processing Ltd., has focused on system-on-chip designs for VDSL based on quadrature amplitude modulation and frequency-division duplexing.

The VDSL chips designed by Infineon and Savan will reduce all chip support to two devices, bringing a full residential modem down to matchbox size. The transceiver now integrates a host controller core, while the analog front end incorporates a line driver. For its part, telecom service operator Telia has a heightened interest in broadband services because Sweden plans to provide such access to everyone.

VDSL technology has an aggregate capacity of up to 60 Mbits/second over short distances and represents a thousandfold increase in capacity over the 56-kbit/s modems in use today and a tenfold increase in capacity over ADSL, which is starting to be deployed by telephone companies. The Zipper technology provides fine-grained programmability for up to 2,048 carrier channels. This provides a number of benefits, said Gerard Fargere, director of STM's Advanced System Technology Laboratory in Grenoble, France.

"The up and down frequency bands allocation can be done according to operators' [or] customers' needs as well as standardization and future market needs," Fargere said. "Operators can choose between offering fixed or selectable bandwidths and between symmetrical and asymmetrical services."

The use of frequency-division DMT is also important because it provides backward compatibility to ADSL technology and pure voice services on the same copper wire. In theory, voice service could coexist with ADSL and VDSL on the same wire, Fargere said. "This is of great importance to operators who face demands to unbundle services and allow other operators to offer services over the same wire," said Claes Nycander, president of Telia.

"We hope to get a complete commercial solution ready for the end of 2000 with chips and software, so that operator trials could be done in 2001," said Andrea Cuomo, vice president of advanced system technology at STMicroelectronics. "We expect a lot of operators will want to test VDSL and will give us feedback."

Hier nog wat DNF info dat ik gisteren gemist heb. Dit spul is door Voodoo Extreme bij elkaar geraapt van het 3D Realms forum:

On the screenshots: Shots were taken on a Voodoo 3 at 1024x768. All textures are 256x256 and below. Skin sizes on characters are the same as Unreal Tournament (although what we are doing with the same space is quite different... thus squeezing out a *lot* of detail).

The machines the game is being developed on are no different than what most of you hardcore gamers already have. Probably not even as good!

The trick is getting it to run *well* on the guys who are still behind the curve of technology. Which is obviously a goal as that was a large part of what helped Duke be so popular is so many people could play it on their systems.

Charlie Wiederhold

Question: I sorry but the whole duke thing is getting mighty boring for us end users. 1000 duke addons, 1000 console game.. Boring!! Duke might be buttering your bread 3drealms but it's old move on!! Maybe a new and fresh idea would be nice...

There will be plenty of new and fresh ideas (and characters) in DNF. An important design goal with this game is to change things up a lot and redefine the genre in several fun ways, and those ways are not represented in any of these screen shots. Have a little faith. Yes, this game is taking awhile, but it will be worth it. One of our goals is to make DNF the most insanely interactive FPS ever released, and that level of realism and interactively is not easy (note how Tresspasser tried and failed). Look at many of our competitors games and you see very limited interactivity with the levels--most items are in the world just for looks. All these years later Duke 3D is still one of the most intereactive games ever released, and DNF will blow Duke 3D away. BTW, the team here is quite jazzed by all the positive comments. =)

Scott Miller

Question: I'd like to know what the ETA is as well. so when is it going out? Next month? 6 months? Next year?...

DNF will not be out in the immediate future. It is a 2000 game and not Q1, so at least 6+ months out. This was merely a "preview" of things to come for PC Gamer. The good news is that this is also the worst the game will look and it will only get better from here

Unreal wasnt that slow, besides Tim Sweeney said that there going to be releasing another patch for Unreal when they ship UT that should bring D3D performance up to the same level as UT. UT is really fast in Glide. The D3D drivers can likely use some work. But framerate and action are our #1 concern. We don't want to ship a slow slug of a game, as people won't play it.

Q: BTW, is it true that DNF will have location-specific damage, like Soldier of Fortune? A: Yes. Been in a long time. We have per poly hit detection. And once you combine that with motion captured animations, you can then do context sensitive hit/reaction animations that look incredibly real. [break] En van Shuga Shack: [/break] Q: PLEASE Don't release this game until it's finished and is as bug free as is humanly possible. Take as much time as is necessary, and don't bend to outside pressures from Publishers or even the rabid band of nastys on this message board (of which I am included). ;-)

A: We won't. We have zero publisher pressure to ship the game, and have total control of when it does ship. We don't want to release it before it's "fun" and as bug free as possible. We don't want 10 patches after release either, but some are unavoidable with as complex as games are now.

Q: Um, I remember them beginning work on this game right around when Quake 1 was released. I just don't care anymore.

A: You remember wrong. After Duke 3D (May 96), we did the add on called Plutonium Pak. That took us to the end of 1996. In 1997 we brought a game that was originally in production outside of 3DR (Shadow Warrior) in house and finished it up. That took until Sept 1997. Although we licensed the Quake 1 code in May 1997, we didn't officially start the game until about Dec 1997 when we had hired most of the team. We then worked for 3-4 months on the Quake 2 code base and went to E3 1998. Came back and switched to Unreal in July 1998 and that puts us where we are now. A little history for those of you that care

Q: You were talking about motion capture with polygonal specific damage and reaction. Ahh, did you do motion capture on your strippers? Did you nab one of those exotic dancing chicks, slap on the motion capture wiring and let her loose? Heh. Just curious.

A: Yes, we will be motion capturing real-life strippers Yes, we'll just hook em' up to the suit, play some music, dim the lights and capture away, and away, and away...

Nightshad schrijft: "Asus heeft nu eindelijk toegegeven dat ze een Athlon mobo hebben. Ze hebben de laatste 1006 BIOS op hun FTP gedumpt. Nou hopen dat er snel een fix voor het PS/2 probleem komt ":

ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/Slot_A/AMD_Chipset/AMD_751/K7M/
ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUS/mb/slota/

Traagste FTP server op deze aardkloot .

Bij The Tech Zone hebben ze een review gepost van de Vantec Socket 7/370 Peltier Heatsink/Combo. Op papier zou dit ding errug goed moeten zijn, maar volgens deze test verliest het ding zwaar van de Global Win FDP32. Hier wat meer info:

You might be wondering how the Global Win FDP32 ran so much cooler than the Peltier powered Vantec. The answer is, the Vantec heatsink is not big enough to remove all the heat being given off by the Peltier. Because of this, the Peltier heated up and with the rise in temperature on the hot side comes an equal rise in temperature on the cold side. I put my finger on the heatsink and it was burning hot! By comparison, the Global Win wasn't even warm to the touch.

I removed the Vantec fan and put on a YS Tech 60x25mm fan to see if it would help keep the heatsink cool. It help a little but wasn't anywhere near enough. The heatsink is simply too small to remove the heat from a 32 watt Peltier.

The Vantec was able to run the Celeron 366 at 550Mhz without any problem. However I don't like to see my Celeron running at over 45C. 550Mhz was the highest it can go, which is really disappointing as this Celeron can do 577Mhz on the Global Win FDP32.

GA-Source heeft in hun Inverstor Insight column eens aandacht geschonken aan de Microsoft X-Box gameconsole. Het is een vrij lang artikel geworden, maar hieronder heb ik vast wat gercuchten over de specs van het ding geplakt. Meer info vind je hier bij GA-Source.

What are the rumored specs?

The below specs are a mix of rumors and estimates made by both developers and online news agencies but it should put us in the right ball park.

• AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium III CPU
• Nvidia GeForce 256 graphics chip, SIII or TDFX
• 64mb ram
• CD or DVD-ROM
• 56K modem
• 4-6GB hard drive
• Microsoft's OS system

Price estimated to $299 $299 for these specs seems quite sane, but it all depends on the choice and speed of the CPU. To be competitive, the X-box must at least show CPU speeds above 450mhz . As for the 3D cards, Microsoft will most likely chose either Nvidia or S3, not so much for the performance as for the fact that the alternative from 3DFX is based on GLIDE, and Microsoft is most likely to promote the DirectX and D3D prior GLIDE. Maybe 3DFX got an ace up their sleeve to be revealed at the upcoming COMDEX, but the safest bet is on the two others.

De gasten bij GameFan hebben een beta versie ontvangen van Opposing Force, de expansion pack voor Half-Life. Ze hebben nu 25 nieuwe screenshots gemaakt uit de game, die je hier kunt vinden. Hieronder vast een voorproefje:

Bij The Tactical Planet hebben ze review online geplant van Delta Force deeltje 2. Hoewel ik persoonlijk die Voxel technology maar ruk vind is de gameplay van deze game wel erg goed bevonden. Hieronder wat info uit de review:

The gameplay is where DF 2 really shines. Overall fun gameplay, coupled with quasi-realism, makes for an adrenaline-filled (at times), tense gameplay. The missions, you will find, are highly similar to the ones in DF, from hostage rescue, CSAR, convoy destruction, and intelligence, to direct action and VIP protection missions. The campaign mode is also more vowen into a story, but you can also select the quick missions for random missions all over the world.

While the basic gameplay remains the same, Novalogic has added in some new features that make if even more enjoyable. For example, fog and snow make for great atmosphere, but also affect how you play as you have to sneak around, and keep your eyes open for any surprises. Climbing is a new feature as well, and adds a new challenge. The climbing is actually rather tricky, as it is very hard to control, so when assaulting a guard tower for example, you will pop up into the upper part, and will not have enough time to take a look around before you get shot down. I wish that the climbing was made a bit more controllable, rather than just pressing the jump key by a ladder, and soaring up towards the skies. Another really cool feature is the addition of booby traps. There I was, swimming through tall grass and heavy fog in a swamp, when suddenly...I impaled myself on a punji trap. For those of you who don't know what a punji trap is, it's a bunch of sharpened sticks arranged in a hole or as a barrier, so that when someone walks onto it, they stab themselves in multiple parts of their body. I was shocked to see my body squirming on the trap as the enemies ran around me. Totally unexpected, and incredibly cool. And yet another new addition is the ability to fire from stationary weapons emplacements, such as .50 cal heavy machine guns. Really adds to the game! And finally, parachuting. Some missions will start you off in the air, gliding down towards the earth, and your objective. While I found the flight time to be a little too short, it added to the gameplay and the atmosphere. Nothing like soaring miles above the earth and looking down at the rolling hills and valleys, and then spotting your objective nestled in some hiding spot. Breathtaking. Oooh, I can't forget about the new breakable glass, which will let you shoot out windows, and then snipe people inside from a distance. It's also really cool when the glass shatters in front of you from an enemy firing from the inside. Makes you duck for cover in a flash. And also, the ability of bullets to penetrate some structures, most notably the tents. If in doubt, you can now fire a few shots inside the tent, hoping to kill anyone inside. And it works, almost every time I used this tactic, I ended up walking through and empty tent with a dead body or two lying around.

Hier vind je de rest van de review.

Volgens dit nieuwsbericht van TechWeb heeft NEC plannen om hun Packard Bell unit om zeep te helpen. De fabriek in Sacramento zal worden gesloten, 80% van de banen gaan foetsie en het hoger management mag ook vertrekken. Binnenkort ook geen Packard Bell PC's meer in de Harense Smid .

Japan's NEC Corp. plans a restructuring of its U.S. Packard Bell NEC unit which will result in layoffs of about 80 percent of the unit's staff, departure of senior management and its withdrawal from the U.S. retail personal-computer market, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Citing Packard Bell spokesman Ron Fuchs, it said that NEC, together with French partner Groupe Bull, which holds 12 percent of the unit, had wanted Packard Bell NEC to post a loss of no more than $100 million in 1999, but the unit is on track for a loss of $150 million this year.

The report said Packard Bell will close its Sacramento, Calif., manufacturing facility, resulting in a loss of 1,000 jobs. It is also in talks to sell its call center in Magna, Utah, and expects the 600 workers there to be transferred to the new owner, and the unit will cut administrative staff by several hundred.

N0SP4M schrijft: "Wat een stelletje eikels daar bij UPC. Geloof je nu zelf dat ze hun abonnement al wouden opzeggen?! Gelukkig heb ik niet met UPC te maken hier in Zeeland. ":

UPC reageert laconiek op de schorsing door het bestuur van de NLIP, de vereniging van Nederlandse internetaanbieders. "We waren toch al van plan ons lidmaatschap op te zeggen," aldus woordvoerder Ronald van der Aart. "De NLIP is voor UPC een te jonge en te weinig uitgekristalliseerde organisatie om lid van te zijn." Volgens de UPC-woordvoerder ligt de brief waarin het lidmaatschap wordt opgezegd al enkele weken klaar. "Hij is maandag de deur uitgegaan."

Check de rest van het nieuwsbericht hier.

meendering schrijft: "Als je nieuwe harde schijf moet hebben, dan moet je deze even checken! ":

The DiamondMax Plus 6800 is one of Maxtor's newer models. It takes advantage of the ATA/66 technology, which allows for burst transfers up to 66.7 MB/s. In addition, it sports a quick 7200 RPM rotational speed, allowing faster access to all parts of each disk. The drive has an average 9ms seek time, but here's something that might surprise you -- while most current drives have around a 512 KB buffer, the DiamondMax Plus holds 2MB of buffer space, composed of 100 MHz SDRAM. And of course, I didn't forget the storage space. The DiamondMax 6800 that we review here is a huge 27.2 GB model, although smaller ones down to 6.8 GB are available.

Volgens de reviewers is dit een vrij relaxt schijfje. Check hier de rest van de info.

hjs gaf me deze link naar wat info over een nieuwe Guillemot kaart die onder de Hercules naam wordt uitgegeven. Hieronder wat info over deze 3D Prophet DDR-DVI:

Amanda at Guillemot sent me all kinds of info on their next board which they will be selling under the Hercules brand name, the 3D Prophet DDR-DVI. DVI? That's what I thought, too. Here's Amanda with an explanation as to what it's all about (kind of a point form summary):

- DVI means Digital Visual Interface (DVI 1.0(tm)).
- DVI digital technology is the new open standard for digital display.
- DVI is backward compliant with IBM©P&D(tm) and Compaq© DFP(tm) older standards.
- DVI is supported by the main PC manufacturers (Intel, Compaq, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, P.Bell, NEC ...).
- DVI provides high quality digital output.
- DVI allows to plug digital flat panels, digital CRTs and LCD projectors to the "3D Prophet DDR-DVI".
[break]En hieronder een screenie van de doos, met Hercules logo [/break]

marowi schrijft: "ik wilde dit eigenlijk op mijn site posten, maar dit is meer wat voor mijn vrolijke tweak vrienden":

There are many ways to mount your P3 without the backplate. We're going to show you three methods. No one way is better than the next. Some require more work than others but the end results will be the same. You will see a nice drop in the operating temperature of your P3 once that backplate is toasted.

Check de rest van dit artikel (met veel duidelijke screenshots) hier.

Bij NT Compatible staat een fix zodat je onder Windows 2000 ook LiveWare! 3 kunt installen. Je kunt de zip hier neerhalen.

Telefragged heeft een rally game roundup in elkaar gedraaid met een vergelijking van Rally Masters, Rally Championship 2000 en Sega Rally 2 (met daarnaast nog wat korte info over Rally Racing Simulation en Colin McRae 2). Hier een stukje over RC2000:

On top of that all the tracks present in the game are real! Magnetic Field's wanted to make sure the tracks were recreated as perfect as possible, so they took a digital camera around all the tracks taking as many pictures as humanly possible. Also with the aid of an ordnance survey map the results is that all the tracks will have every bump, turn, rock, tree, fence, gate, building, exactly where it should be. There will be all the road surfaces you would imagine, asphalt, gravel, dirt, mud etc, each with its own set of variables that affect the car handling. Also as all the tracks are real, they are VERY long to boot. For example the track featured in the recently released demo - the Welsh clocaenog (yes that is a real place name), takes around 11-14 minutes to haul your ass around, depending on how good you are that is (my best time is 11mins 53 sec's). All will have various weather conditions too - fog, rain, snow etc, well it would have, it is set in Britain after all! Not only that, like the real rallies you get to race at various times of the day, like night time and dawn. So as you can see, Rally Championship is as varied as Rally Masters in the track department.

Twee screenshots: links Rally Masters en rechts RC2000:

GA-Source kreeg van Eidos een aantal gerenderde Lara's opgestuurd:

Check Ga-Source voor de overige pics.

Interessante posting op het forum van JC, waar iemand de cartridge van z'n Athlon 500 heeft weggesloopt en tot de ontdekking kwam dat er feitelijk een Athlon 600 in het doosje huisde:

Cracked open my Athlon 500... a while back, and lo and behold, on the cap of the core, it said "K7600".

Is AMD underbinning their processors now?

The processor makes it up to 650 without any voltage adjustment, and requires a small .1 boost to voltage to run stable at 700 mhz. It won't boot at 750 mhz, though I suspect it has more to do with the shoddy setup I have on it right now or the L2 cache.

Dan's Data heeft een review gepost van het erg wazig vormgegeven Acer Future keyboard:

I'm not in the habit of using friendly, curvy, allegedly ergonomic pieces of hardware. Hard core heavyweight angular American-designed dinosaur-tech is more my style (see here). But now I'm using a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer as my everyday pointing device (because I dig the extra two buttons, not because I'm excited by things that glow), so my old school credentials are already in doubt.

Nonetheless, I was ready to hate the Acer 'board. But oddly, I didn't. It's not actually all that bad. It's in no danger of leading me away from the Cult Of The Clicky Old-Style 'Board, but I'm surprised at how little it annoys me.

The Future Keyboard is not actually a lousy feeling 'board, once you get over the oddness of then split layout. The switches are the usual rubber dome units found in every mid-priced keyboard on the market today, but that makes them quiet and reliable enough for all but the most demanding users.

Da's de reactie van RealNetworks op de verdenking dat hun RealJukebox software ongemerkt privacy gevoelige informatie over gebruikspatronen verzameld:

BBC News is reporting that the company behind the software used by millions for listening to their music CDs on computers has apologized after complaints that its program secretly collected information from millions of its customers. RealNetworks of Seattle, US, also said it would make a software patch available on its website to block the tracking technology.

There are more than 12 million registered users of the free "RealJukebox" software, which puts it among the world's most popular programs for listening to digital music through the internet.

A US security expert, Richard Smith, found that the software secretly transmitted to the company's headquarters details about what music each customer listens to and how many songs are copied. The information sent includes a serial number that could be used to identify an individual.

RealNetworks insisted it never stored the information, which would be valuable for marketing purposes.

"We made a mistake in not being clear enough to our users about what kinds of data were being generated and transmitted," said Rob Glaser, Chairman and CEO of RealNetworks. "We respect and value the privacy of our users, and we deeply apologise for doing anything that suggests otherwise."

The corrective patch can be downloaded immediately from the company's website and will be built into future versions of the software from next week.

Zie GA-Source voor meer info.

De afgelopen maanden is het angstvallig stil geweest rond Prey, de kick-ass (althans, dat was ooit - en nog steeds - de bedoeling) 3D engine die 3D Realms in ontwikkeling heeft. Aangezien de meeste aandacht nu bij Duke Nukem Forever ligt is Prey naar de achtergrond verdwenen. Dood is het spel echter nog niet, zo blijkt uit deze update van GA-Source:

Prey is in heavy re-design. It has gone through several transformations over the last couple of years. 3D Realm's, the game's developer, has chosen to focus the bulk of its resources on Duke Nukem Forever. As any good developer knows, it takes total focus from everyone involved to create a blockbuster like Duke Nukem Forever, and trying to do an equally impressive production like Prey at the same time is not realistic. They have a small team of talented programmers doing Prey R&D on what may end up being the the PC genre's next great engine. The title of the game will most likely change as well. 3D Realm's is a seasoned, highly successful developer, and I think their strategy is a correct one.

Motorola heeft een nieuwe revisie (met o.a. gefixte 500MHz bug) van de G4 processor klaar staan. CPU's met snelheden van 600MHz en hoger staan gepland voor begin 2000, zo bericht MacOS Rumors:

New information from Motorola sources has painted a picture that is far rosier than today's outlook on the G4 processor family.

By all accounts, the Revision 2.8 PowerPC 7400s are nearly ready for production, and should begin to ramp up within a month's time. These updated chips, with the Rev 2.7 "errata" fixed, will raise the performance bar to 550MHz and shortly after the first of the year, to 600MHz. A 650MHz version is expected 8-10 weeks after that.

Then, some time around May 2000, the second-generation G4s will surface. Running at 700-900MHz, these will sport additional processing units, deeper pipelines (allowing higher clock rates), a smaller wiring process, an on-chip 256K L2 cache, and lower-power operation. Current G4s use approximately 11.5 watts -- these will use approximately 8.5. Still too high for portable use, but significantly reduced.

These new G4s will rapidly accelerate in clock speeds, and should reach 1.1GHz during the fourth financial quarter of 2K. With 256K on-chip L2 caches, backside L3 caches up to 4MB, extra Integer and Altivec processing units, and a more streamlined overall design, these chips should offer an up to 120% performance improvement over current G4s at the same clock speed (depending on the task at hand).

While there are still dark days to be weathered for the G4, there is and end in sight -- and by all indications, a bright future beyond it.

Seagate heeft de nieuwe generatie Barracuda en Cheetah drives aangekondigd. Storage Review vat het nieuws kort samen:

Also announced yesterday were the newest Cheetah and Barracuda. Though maintaining a 5.2ms access time, the new Cheetah 36LP doubles the previous generation's areal density to about 6.1 GB/platter. Cache size has also been quadrupled to 4 megs.

The Barracuda 18XL is an interesting beast. It too sports 6.1 GB/platter, apparently the same platters that'll be found in the new Cheetah. This means reduced diameter to aid shaving seek time to 5.9ms. Strangely, the cache size for the Ultra/160m version is 1024k, while the Ultra2 version sports 2048k.

Judging from the trends over the last couple years, it could be quite some time before we see these drives in retail channels though. [break] ...en voor de volledigheid hier een stuk uit de press release van Seagate: [/break] Seagate Technology, Inc. (NYSE: SEG) today unveiled its newest Cheetah and Barracuda disc drives, the world's most trusted Internet storage devices. With drive capacities as high as 73.4 Gbytes, formatted data rates that break the 40 Mbytes/second barrier, and doubled external transfer rates with the new Ultra160 SCSI and 2 Gigabit Fibre Channel interfaces, a single 10,000-rpm Cheetah can store more than 24,000 MP3 songs or more information than 36,000 trees made into paper and printed.

The new Cheetahs, with capacities of 73.4, 36.7, 18.3 and 9.1 Gbytes, and the new Barracuda with capacities of 18.3 and 9.1 Gbytes, are the most reliable Seagate has ever designed and are expected to continue their domination in applications like the Internet, transaction processing, enterprise servers, and video and audio servers.

[...] With a 45 percent improvement in usable data rate and 16 Mbyte auto-configuring cache, the largest cache buffer in the industry, Cheetah is designed and built for transaction processing and large file transfers. Along with reduced acoustics and power requirements, these performance gains make the Cheetah the drive of choice for server applications.

[...] Seagate's version of Ultra160 SCSI introduces "Fairness" technology, which keeps the interface free from bottlenecks by allowing all attached devices equal access to the SCSI bus. Fairness technology negotiates use of the system bus to enable the most efficient allocation of resources, eliminating problems in which some drives are starved for attention from the bus and preventing system hangs that occur when a drive doesn't receive timely arbitration. Seagate's Fairness is a must have feature for server environments. Seagate offers Ultra160 SCSI with the new Barracudas and Cheetahs, and will add the new interface to its currently shipping Cheetah 18LP

2-Gbit Fibre Channel is Seagate's fifth generation FC-AL interface. With sustained data transfer rates reaching 400 Mbytes/second in dual-loop configurations, and Public Loop Support (PLS) providing the capability of connecting more than 16 million drives to a Storage-Networked infrastructure, Seagate is fueling the deployment of Storage Area Networks in the new millennium.

The 7,200-rpm Barracuda 18XL, targeted at the price sensitive entry-level server market, is Seagate's first reduced-diameter media drive in the Barracuda family. Highly leveraged from the Cheetah platform, the Barracuda 18XL boasts an average seek time of 5.9 msec and a 31 percent faster data rate over earlier Barracudas. With SAMS (Seagate's Advanced MultiDrive System), low 7-watt idle power consumption and whisper quiet 3.4 bels acoustics, the Barracuda provides a mainframe class drive for the office environment. The Barracuda reestablishes availability of all current and legacy Ultra SCSI and UltraWide SCSI interfaces.

Seagate's 3D Defense System offers unique "Just in Time" (JIT) seeking, which intelligently controls head movement to be faster, quieter and consume less power. The system also features G-Force Protection to increase drive ruggedness and reliability, data integrity features to predict and prevent potential data errors, unique SeaShell packaging that reduces handling shock tenfold, and a diagnostic toolbox including the exclusive SeaTools software. The 3D Defense System helps make Seagate Enterprise drives the toughest in the industry, with an industry-leading non-operating shock resistance up to 250 Gs.

The Barracuda 18XL, Cheetah 18XL, Cheetah 36LP and Cheetah 73 will be available Q1 2000. Single-unit OEM pricing is expected to be $599, $859, $1,195, and $2,080, respectively. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) may contact their Seagate sales representative for volume pricing. Seagate will demonstrate the new products this month at Comdex in Las Vegas.

Helaas zal-ie nooit in Nederland verkrijgbaar zijn, desondanks blijft dit een leuk GeForce kaartje (vooral die extra voedingsconnector is apart). Wazige Japanse site heeft een paar plaatjes:

Quizmaster schrijft: "Weet niet of jullie het al hebben gehad over de BIOS update van de Asus P3B-F maar er is dus een nieuw BIOS. Nadat ik de BIOS had geflashed kon ik een PIII-450 stabiel laten draaien op 4.5 x 133, dus op 600 Mhz. Ook hebben ze de bus snelheden verhoogd, als ik het goed heb zijn de maximale waarden nu 140 en 150, niet dat ie daar mee opstart, maar het is dus mogelijk...":

De nieuwe P3B-F BIOSsen kun je hier van de Asus site weghalen.