Sake schrijft: "Ik deed net toevallig een search op de Asus site op "K7M" en kreeg vier links gedateerd 18/11 en 19/11. En wat schetste m'n verbazing. Asus K7M in volle glorie op Asus website. Inclusief niet alleen de nieuwste BIOS maar ook andere patches voor Win98 "first edition" en foto's en links."

Hm, maar toch is de K7M nog goed verstopt. Zonder een search kom je er niet makkelijk op, "Slot-A" staat nog niet in het lijstje zag ik .

insane schrijft: "The register meldt dat Intel de prijzen van de Coppermine eerder dan verwacht de prijzen naar beneden gaat halen. Zoals het er nu uitziet gaat het niet echt lekker (zelfs ik denk om een athlon te nemen ). Maar als ik deze pricecuts zie gaat AMD het echt erg moeilijk krijgen. Intel heeft ten slotte het vermogen en kan de klappen van Athlon weerstaan.":

On the 12th of December, Intel will cut prices on its newer Coppermine desktop and Xeon parts, which have only just begun to filter into the channel and machines. It will make a fresh set of cuts in the New Year, to include both .18 micron and .25 micron Pentiums.

In January, Intel will also cut prices on a number of other parts, including Coppermines (again), chips at .25 micron, and existing .25 Xeon parts too. This will make the second price cut on Coppermines within a month.

Intel will also change its prices on mobile processors on the 23rd of January, suggesting that it is, at long last, beginning to ramp up on Pentium III mobiles, which use .18 micron technology. There has been a big shortage of these newer parts, except to select customers.

The news means that Intel is moving its four existing .18 micron fabs to faster production, as it cranks up the process.

The price cuts will apply to both boxed parts and to tray parts, and once again underline that if you buy a PC for Christmas, you may well be sorry.

Hier is de link naar het bericht van The Register.

Bij ZDNet hebben ze een flinke videokaarten round-up online geplant, maar liefst 12 kaarten zijn gereviewed. Alle kaarten zijn vervolgens getest vanuit 3 perspectieven; gaming, entertainment en business performance. De winnaars in dezelfde volgorde zijn de Creative GeForce kaart, de Voodoo3-3500TV en de G400 van Matrox.

There's a fundamental shift occurring in the world of graphics cards. A few years ago, graphics hardware for business was costly, and most advances were developed to speed up business PCs. Consumer PCs -- the few that existed -- used lower-cost graphics hardware. That changed as 3-D functionality began appearing in graphics chips. Now, home PCs are the ones that need the pricier graphics cards, particularly PCs bought or upgraded by hardcore game players. The needs of businesses are more modest, though some business-oriented 3-D applications are beginning to arrive.

The net result is an unprecedented amount of graphics horsepower in both home and business PCs. The power found in the new nVidia GeForce 256 (read how it works) was formerly relegated to high-cost, specialized chip sets for computer-aided design or 3-D modeling. But if you think these cards are for gamers only, you're wrong. All of these cards will prove highly capable for most graphics applications, ranging from standard business applications to graphics editing apps like Photoshop or CorelDraw. Despite the marketing focus on 3-D graphics, all of the new cards have additional features that enhance their usefulness in both business and consumer markets. Accelerated video is now commonplace; many cards even support motion compensation for better DVD playback. And ATI has added hardware-assisted iDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform) capability to aid the MPEG-2 decoding process. The large frame buffers on today's retail cards (16MB and 32MB cards are common now) coupled with higher clock rates make them ideal solutions for image processing and photographic editing. All the new cards now support video overlay as well, which makes them ideal multimedia solutions and excellent digital video editors. Finally, cards like the Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator, with its powerful transform and lighting-speed engine, can do yeoman's work in entry-level 3-D modeling or CAD applications.

Billy van Voodoo Extreme zag dat Bitboys een kleine update gepost heeft over hun 3D superchip, de Glaze3D:

We will start our developer and OEM support program soon and make beta drivers available.

Zal er dan toch iets gaan gebeuren binnenkort?

Ook bij SystemLogic moesten ze hun ei kwijt over de de net aangekondigde Voodoo4/5 van 3dfx met de VSA-100 chip. Hieronder hun conclusie:

The new VSA-100 looks like a promising chip with it's high fill rate, 32-bit support, T-buffer support, and scaleable architecture. 3dfx has provided a good range of products that will fit most any person. However, until I see it in action for myself, I can't really say much about it. With the new boards having faster memory as well as on board T&L, 3dfx may be a little behind. I suppose the super high fill rate makes up for that, but the gigapixel per second is only available on the 6000, which is out of my price range at the moment. Anything can look good on paper, but what really matters is real world performance.

The lack of transform and lighting can probably be overlooked since not many games take advantage of it yet, and you do have a high fill rate, which should be enough for most people. However, in the long run T&L will be very important in future games. Most likely Nvidia will probably have their next card out around the same time 3dfx releases the Voodoo 4 & 5. It will be interesting to see how well the VSA-100 chip performs against the competition. And with the hefty price tag that comes with the high end boards, will consumers actually pay those prices. The pricing may change also as memory prices fluctuate. The success of these boards will depend on lots of factors, and it's too early to tell what's going to happen.

Check de rest hier.

Billy van Voodoo Extreme vroeg aan Tim Sweeney van Epic wat hij vond van de aankondiging van de Voodoo4/5 door 3dfx:

Wow. The announcement really highlights how completely different directions 3dfx and NVidia are taking.

NVidia is focusing on basically a single-chip design with massive transistor counts at fairly reasonable prices, while 3dfx is going with a more brute-force approach scaling between a reasonable-cost configuration to a massively parallel 4-32 chip configuration. NVidia is focusing on geometry rate, while 3dfx is focusing on fill rate. Each one's products will unquestionably win in its one area of focus and unquestionably lose in the other.

NVidia is working superclose with Microsoft on Direct3D evolution while 3dfx seems to be more doing their own thing.

My crystal ball is hazy on this one. It will be an interesting battle to watch!

Greedo stuurde wat informatie in over de Europese release datum van dit kontschoppende spel: "Op de officiele Unreal Tournament site staat nu een waarschijnlijke datum voor de release in Europa.":

Unreal Tournament has gone gold and is in manufacturing right now. We expect it to show up on store shelves soon. According to the official GT Press Release the game will ship in North America on November 22nd. We've been told the European ship date has been revised to December 3rd.

Hm, 3 december dus pas

Ook bij Deez Tech hebben ze een verslag gepost van de Comdex beurs van dit jaar. In dit report o.a. aandacht voor Soyo, AOpen, Abit, Guillemot, Gigabyte en MSI. Hier vast een gedeelte:

Ever wonder why Comdex is a week long? It's freakin' HUGE!!! All of the manufacturers we know and love were there. There was more hardware and software between the two convention sites than you dare imagine. Thats right, TWO convention sites made up Comdex in Vegas this year. If you have ever been to the Las Vegas Convention Center you will know it is big, a north hall, south hall, main floor and meeting rooms. THEN it was a couple miles to the Sands Casino Convention Center, and two of their largest ball rooms as well! I will tell you this, you need at least 3 full days to get to all the booths you want. It is a damn miracle that I got to the amount of booths I did in just one day. I am wiped out! I snapped pix all day, only 13 pulled through. Some of the lighting totally screwed with cameras, hmmm I wonder if that was planned?

One of the spots that pics would have been tops was Elsa. DAMN! I have to say that Elsa goes out of their way to hire some of the finest female associates I have laid eyes on. If you were there, you know exactly what I am talking about, and if not sucks to be you. Here are a couple of pics of crap I really don't know how to categorize. I mean just wierd looking computer's. Here is one that if I caught a DeezTech reader with I would have to royally thrash them!

Nog een review van de Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. Deze is in elkaar geflanst door Tech-Review.

The most obvious advantage of the Explorer is the replacement of the mouse ball! Regular mice with ball mechanics need to be cleaned frequently because of the dust and lint picked up from the tracking surface, which causes the mouse to skip, stick, and alter track movements. This process can completely be forgotten, as there are no more ball mechanics moving around. We noticed that Microsoft claimed that the Explorer contained "No moving parts", but doesn't the middle wheel need some sort of mechanical device to track its movement? In any case, the IntelliEye relieves the stress of cleaning the annoying dirt build up so common in ball based mice.

Another advantage with this mouse is that you can use it on most surfaces without the mousepad. The sensor will detect motion on wood, plastic or even your pant leg. (The IntelliEye however will not function on surfaces without visible detail such as glass or surfaces where it will see its reflection such as mirrors.) So you can feel free to use it on your desktop with no more of that annoying mousepad.

Lastly, the Intellimouse Explorer has two additional buttons on the left side for your thumb access. By default, the two buttons are used for back and forward on your web browser. Thankfully, you can simply program the buttons to access any type of other function you desire with the IntelliPoint 3.0 software.

Er zijn vandaag nog wat meer reviews online verschenen van de Diamond Viper 2 Savage 2000 kaart. Klik hier voor het verhaal van Gamespot, Savage News Daily heeft er ook eentje, die staat hier. Helaas schijnt dit kaartje nog niet helemaal 100% goed te werken:

It's hard to rate this card considering that T&L may or may not be enabled anytime soon. Like I said, it's unforgivable when the box clearly states that it has hardware T&L, but then comes back and says it will be enabled in future drivers. The Viper II's benchmark scores weren't too different from the Stealth III's, mainly because it needs a fast processor in tow to deliver its full performance potential. Still, the stability of the drivers compared to the Stealth III, it's overclockability, and the inclusion of a complete ICD that doesn't rely on a minigl for Quake-engine games is a difinite plus even on my system. If S3 keeps its promise and delivers drivers that enable its T&L hardware, this card would most definitely be the card to beat. But, with no T&L so far, I'd advise you to wait until S3 releases drivers with hardware T&L. Even without it, it should provide owners of fast processors with extremely good performance for the money.

So the bottom line is: If you have a faster processor and want performance comparable to the GeForce for less in today's games, plus T&L on the way , I'd reccommend it. But for owners of slower systems, I'd wait until T&L gets enabled, as S3 is known for taking it's time when fixing things. I'd give it a 6 for it on a slower processor and a 8 for a high end processor. So I decided to balace the 2 and give it a 7/10.

Bij iXBT Labs hebben ze een flinke preview in elkaar geflanst over de ATI Rage Fury MAXX. Dit kaartje heeft twee Rage 128 Pro processors met ieder 32Mb geheugen:

Does MAXX have any future at all? It probably does. It would be very interesting to see two graphics chips with integrated geometric coprocessors working together. Besides, ATI will perhaps continue working on MAXX technology, and one of the possibilities here may be the ideas of T-Buffer technology. Practically MAXX technology allows forming scenes in different frame buffers, so now they need to work out a mechanism to combine the frame buffers content and then to display the result on the monitor. Isn't it a good new solution for special effects realization? Well, these are just our personal suggestions, but maybe...

All we can do now is just patiently wait for the new RAGE FURY MAXX graphics cards to appear in the market in order to finally take a closer look at them. Besides, we should also pay special attention to the drivers quality. And only after we are through we can correctly estimate the marketing prospects for RAGE FURY MAXX and only then we will be able to understand if this product appeared at the right time or if it came too late.

If you belong to the team of ATI dedicated admirers and have a really big monitor, then you can certainly buy a RAGE FURY MAXX. It is most likely that you will remain satisfied with your purchase, its performance and image quality in 32-bit color. However, you should bear in mind that this card may get outdated in 6 months, when new games require a geometric coprocessor. If you have already made your mind to buy a new graphics accelerator and don't know what to choose we would be glad to give you another piece of advice.

Wederom nieuwe bewijzen dat Intel moederplank fabrikanten onder druk zet om geen Athlon borden op de markt te planten. Deze Usenet posting is afkomstig van een Epox reseller:

Greetings all,

As an Epox mainboard reseller, I just received this from the Epox general agent in Sweden. Check it out:

--BEGIN QUOTE--

Dear All,

Based on VIA K7 both south bridge and north bridge, we expect to have a first sample at beginning of Feb 2000 I suggest not to promote this time the reason is :

1.) It takes almost 3 months to release it into the market from EPOX.

2.) Because we are now doing the good relationship with Intel. And AMD is a competitior of Intel and they told us not to release it. Therefore, we don't want to break it just because K7 market but think about how many CPU released in the market now.

3.) As you know, VIA was been accused in 693A chipset (FSB 133MHz) by Intel and because FIC is selling some quantity of K7 M/B now so now they have some trouble in USA when FIC sold VIA 693A M/B. We don't want to become next one, right?

EPOX SALES

--END QUOTE--

Okay, now I don't know if this information is valid, but if it is, I guess you all can figure what it means...

hjs schrijft: "Las net bij CD Media World dat Nero 4.0.8.0 uit is, op de Ahead.de site staat er niks over en op de ftp kan ik niet kijken".

Dat was bij de 4.0.0.7 update geloof ik ook al zo. Effe wachten?..

John Carmack heeft een .plan update gepost met info over de Linux en Mac retail versies van Quake 3 Arena. De masters zullen tegelijkertijd in produktie gaan, maar omdat de Win32 versie het populairst is kan het problematisch worden om een Linux of Mac versie in de winkel op te pikken. Op een later tijdstip (na kerstmis) zal er de mogelijkheid geboden worden om online de extra Mac of Linux binaries neer te halen, maar om te kunnen meten hoe populair de Linux en Mac versies zijn zal dit niet meteen gebeuren:

Some advance warning about something that is sure to stir up some argument:

We should be handing off the masters for all three platforms within a day or two of each other, but they aren't going to show up in stores at the same time. Publishers, distributers, and stores are willing to go out of their way to expedite the arrival of the pc version, but they just won't go to the same amount of trouble for mac and linux boxes.

THE EXECUTABLES FOR ALL PLATFORMS WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD UNTIL AFTER CHRISTMAS. This means that if you want to play on the mac or linux, don't pick up a copy of the pc version and expect to download the other executables.

Our first update to the game will be for all platforms, and will allow any version to be converted into any other, but we intend to hold that off for a little while.

We are doing this at the request of the distributors. The fear is that everyone will just grab a windows version, and the separate boxes will be ignored.

A lot of companies are going to be watching the sales figures for the mac and linux versions of Q3 to see if the platforms are actually worth supporting. If everyone bought a windows version and the other boxes sold like crap in comparison, that would be plenty of evidence for most executives to can any cross platform development.

I know there are a lot of people that play in both windows and linux, and this may be a bit of an inconvenience in the short term, but this is an ideal time to cast a vote as a consumer.

Its all the same to Id (I like hybrid CD's), and our continued support of linux and mac (OS X for the next title) is basically a foregone conclusion, but the results will probably influence other companies.

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van de Sennheiser HD 600 koptelefoon gepost. Tja, is weer eens wat anders, ook gezien de prijs van 350 dollar (yummie)...

At this point, what could possibly keep you from jumping from your chair and snagging a pair of these spectacular headphones? Well, in a word: price. Weighing in at around $350.00, the Sennheiser HD 600s aren't for the faint of heart (or wallet). You definitely get what you pay for though, and for anyone who never wants to have to buy another set of headphones, these are definitely top of the line.

As far as sound quality, comfort, and overall performance are concerned, these headphones can't be beaten. The HD 600s aren't for everyone though. For a strict gaming aficionado, headphones in the ~$50 price range are better suited. If you can't tell the difference between a CD and an MP3, we do not recommend these headphones. However, those of you who are audio enthusiasts will certainly appreciate the accuracy and range the HD 600s provide.

Anand heeft z'n review van de Diamond Viper II op het net gezet. Wederom blijkt dat de Savage2000 achter blijft bij de GeForce SDR, hoewel het verschil op hoge resoluties en bij 32-bit color soms in het voordeel van de Viper II uitvalt:

f the Savage 2000 were months away and this was the current level of performance the product was at, then the solution would be promising. But the reality of the matter is that in less than a week, you'll be able to purchase this very same product on the Diamond Viper II for around $200 and you will be given this level of performance. In OpenGL, the performance isn't bad at all, although it could definitely be improved. Under Direct3D, the performance is truly lack luster and is indicative of poorly written drivers, a problem that has plagued S3 ever since the release of their Savage 3D in 1998.

S3 has really tried hard to make the Savage 2000 a success and in time we're sure that they will be able to improve on the problems we encountered during our testing, but at this time we simply cannot recommend the solution until the drivers have improved.

James Hills, de Linux gaming editor van Gamer's Alliance, heeft een verslag van de Comdex gepost met info over de waren die o.a. Caldera en Corel daar op Linux gebied ten toon stellen. Corel blijkt voor beginnende Linux gebruikers een aantal interessante features aan hun distributie toegevoegd te hebben:

Some features that are extraordinary are the fact that they have placed a splash screen over the initial boot screen similar to the way Windows does. However, it in fact is even BETTER than Windows in that it doesn't just sit there looking pretty, it actually tells the user what is happening in simple terms. Second, they have made significant improvements to the KDE interface and added the ability to share and browse shared folders across a network just like windows does. It supports both NFS and Samba / network neighborhood shares and it doesn't need the user to sit there with a text editor open. Instead, they have a full GUI for it that is every bit as easy to use as Windows. Also of note is the fact that from within KDE the user can change the resolution and color depth of the desktop, again without having to use the archaic utilities found on most other Linux distributions. Again, it had a GUI to change these settings that was almost identical to Windows. So far you are probably seeing a trend here…. " even BETTER than", "just like", "every bit as easy as", "almost identical" to Windows.

This is really what Corel Linux looks as though, it may be the Windows 95 of the Linux world. How it actually performs and works in a real world situation such as the desktop of a Linux Editor / hardcore gamer / student extraordinaire will have to be seen. I am truly looking forward to receiving the review copy and I hope that it is every bit as good as it looks currently.

Een blije dag voor de nVidia aanhangers, want nVidia heeft bekend gemaakt dat het in het derde kwartaal een record winst van 97 miljoen dollar heeft geboekt:

NVIDIA today announced record revenues and earnings for the third quarter of fiscal 2000 and the nine months ended October 31, 1999.

For the third quarter, revenue increased to $97.0 million, compared to $52.3 million for the third quarter of fiscal 1999, an increase of 85 percent. Net income for the third quarter was $10.6 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, compared to $7.1 million or $0.26 per diluted share in the third quarter of fiscal 1999. Fully diluted shares increased to 35.9 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2000 as compared to 27.8 million in the third quarter of fiscal 1999, due primarily to the Company's initial public offering in January 1999.

Ondertussen staan de zaken er bij 3dfx wat minder vrolijk voor, zie daarvoor deze nieuwsposting.

Beyond3D heeft het eerste deel van hun Comdex verslag online gezet, met errug goede info over de 3dfx Voodoo4/5. Zo blijkt het <kuch> super elegante </kuch> design van de Voodoo5 6000 een dikke 60Watt vermogen te gaan gebruiken:

The 6000 is interesting in that it has an independent chip to handle the multiple chips. The chip supplied by Intel, solves issues related to the AGP bus. The purpose of the chip, according to Scott, "is to isolate the AGP bus from the 4 chips on the V5 6000. We need electrical isolation on the design, otherwise we would have too heavily loaded an AGP bus slot. The Intel part serves as a bridge between the AGP bus and the 4 rendering engines..." What is really interesting about this board is how the power problem is worked out. As we know, a dual chip 64 MB board is already required to be connected to the system board supply, but for the 6000 this isn't even enough. The 6000 is going to require 50 - 60 watts of power according to Sellers. Shipping with the it will be a dedicated power supply that can deliver 100 watts, more than enough for what is required. It will be something along the lines of a power supply that laptop computers use and will be called Voodoo Volts. [break] Verder een stukje over de geheugen efficiency en bandwidth van de dual en quad VSA 100 boards: [/break] Well, the first issue that comes to mind is of SLI (Scan-Line Interleave). What 3dfx’s goal was with SLI on the Voodoo5 was to achieve the required memory bandwidth to achieve the high fill-rates needed. By using 4 independent chips, the Voodoo5 6000 has each chip deal with Œ the frame-buffer information. Now, the inherit problem with this is that each chip has dedicated memory (32 MB each in the case of the 6000) and each of these must hold the same textures. It is basically redundant texture memory. Now 3dfx is saying that with texture compression (something they are now strongly evangelizing) and with only dealing holding Œ the frame-buffer data, you’ll still be doing well overall. While this is true to some extent, you’re still waiting memory nonetheless. So, if you have to deal with 20 MB of textures, you’re really storing a total of 80 MBs. Really, a considerable waste, though an effective way of improving bandwidth. [break] Tenslotte nog een leuke quote van Scott Sellers / 3dfx: [/break] "AGP texturing is dead."

Reactor Critical heeft een Quake3 performance vergelijking in elkaar geschroefd. Helaas werden alleen derde generatie kaarten (TNT2, Voodoo3, Savage4, G400 etc.) getest, maar de info is verder wel erg uitgebreid. Verder geven ze ook tips over het optimaliseren van de framerate en beeldkwaliteit:

One of the most intriguing features of the Q3Test is that its graphics can be widely adjusted. While before you only could lower the resolution to get some extra fps, now you have many alternatives. By degrading the visual quality in one way or another you can make your system run faster. Owners of powerful PCs should no more suffer from wretched graphics used just because more complex and lovely graphics can't be handled by less powerful machines.

Nevertheless this article won't give you an algorithm of "how to squeeze 100 fps out of your Quake3". There are lots of instructions of that kind on the net. Any performance "optimization" in the Q3Test is always a quality degradation. Usually disabling some minor features results in only a few extra fps and vice versa the high performance gain can be obtained only with some dramatic changes in visual quality.

Virtually all options in the Q3Test are split into "graphics" and "game" ones. I said "virtually" because not all options can be set via the interface. For instance, shadow settings can be defined as a "game" option and the z-buffer depth - as "graphics" one but those settings are just not present in the interface.

Tjark schrijft: "Vind je de Abit BP6 een cool board? Dan is deze om van te dromen: Een dual P3/PPGA board van Gigabyte met natuurlijk alle toffe features:
- 4 DIMMs
- AGP 4x
- 2x PCI-64 (als een van de eerste)
- Adaptec ultra 160 (!) scsi
- 10/100 Lan
- UDMA33/66
- DualBios (ach ja... vooruit maar)"

biwan@multiweb.nl" rel="external">Obiwan haalt oude (en trage) koeien uit de sloot: "Ik kwam toevallig langs deze page. Pure nostalgie en jeugd sentiment ":

Many times during my little restoration projects I'm given this opportunity to peer into the depths of history, as well as my own soul. When my system dies on me, I sometimes glance over at these ancient dinosaurs of technology. I hearken back to the era of 64k systems. No crashes, no unexplained errors, no problems. Booting up your word processor consisted in plugging in a cartridge and turning on the PC. All this technology? For what? Progress is slowing on the computer front, except for games, and let's not forsake our computer heritage; like our human elders, they can show us the mistakes of the past, and how to best improve the interfaces for the future. Many times I'll mess with one of these "outdated" PCs and their software, and am suprised how many keystrokes, commands and tricks I remember from these programs I haven't ran in 11 or 12 years, but I can't for the life of me remember how to mail merge a document in Word '98. Perhaps I remember them better because I was young and had a greater learning capacity, perhaps it's because today's programs are too complex. I almost prefer these older versions of many of the programs for their lack of options, which don't confuse the user with menus, features, and unexplained bugs; they simply function for the purpose they were designed for. Anybody know how to hook up a HP LaserJet 4 to an Atari 800?

XKB schrijft: "Op 25 november zal SuSe hun nieuwste linux distri releasen. Ook nu weer zal deze distributie uit 6(!) CD's bestaan. Enkele highlights: Yast2, een grafische installatiemanager (net als RH 6.1), de oktober release van GNOME, KDE 1.1.2, een eigen SuSe proxy suite en nog veel meer. Ook hebben ze iets meer spellen bij de distributie gevoegd waaronder een demo van Civ:Call to Power":

Endlich. YaST2 ist da. Das leistungsfahige Setup-Tool gibt es jetzt in zwei Versionen. YaST2 garantiert auch dem Linux-Neuling eine unkomplizierte Neuinstallation. Die automatische Hardwareerkennung fur PCI-Komponenten und die menugesteuerte grafische Oberflache erlauben es dem Einsteiger innerhalb von 20 Minuten ein vollstandiges SuSE Linux inklusive KDE einzurichten. Dem erfahrenen SuSE Linux Anwender steht fur Updates und zur Systemadministration weiterhin das gewohnte YaST1 in vollem Funktionsumfang zur Verfugung.

De Hardware Guys hebben een artikel neer gemikt over hun gemodifiede Athlon 500 van Trinity Micro, die zij na een simpele voltage verhoging op 750MHz kregen! Dat is maar liefst 50% over spec, net zoveel als de populaire Celeron 300A destijds deed:

I got a chance to take a look at a modified Athlon from Mark Sorensen at Trinity Micro. I was pretty excited to have a opportunity to see what an Athlon would really overclock to. Until now to overclock your Athlon you had to take a soldering iron to it. Right!!! Or there is the K7M mother board out now. Overclocking the FSB has worked well with BX chip sets. We overclocked using only FSB because there was no other way to overclock Intel chips. The preferred method would be to use a combination of FSB, CPU clock multiplier, and voltage. With the Athlon modified by Trinity Micro you can adjust all of these, as well as L2 frequency with out even taking the CPU off the mother board. This done by setting DIP switches Mark has installed.

Ga'ash Soffer van Voodoo Extreme heeft een artikel in elkaar gedrukt over de EPIC architectuur achter Intel's IA-64 instructieset. Hier een stukje over hetgeen Intel met EPIC (een kruisting tussen RISC en CISC) hoopt te bereiken: heavy parallism...

The key to performance is how many instructions each processor can process in a given time. Current architectures, such as RISC and CISC use a technique called pipelining. Pipelining is the process of starting instructions before others are finished. This way throughput of a sequence of instructions which take 3 clock cycles will only take 1 cycle each, since one is started every clock and by the time the first one finishes, the next one will pop out 1 clock cycle later. Unfortunately, current processors have to optimize the code on the fly in search of ways to increase pipelining, or what one might call "pipelinability". Another technique used is that of parallelism, where instructions can be exectued in parallel. RISC and CISC processors must also search for optimal ways to employ any form of parallelism built into the code.The EPIC idea suggests employs a scheme where the EPIC processor expects the program to arrive with parallelism instructions built in. Hence the name explicitly parallel. Furthermore, EPIC processors must be capable of handling immense parallelism. For this reason, Itanium, and future EPIC processors will feature wide data paths, many pipelines, and quick access to high bandwidth memory.

3dfx heeft de financiële resultaten van het derde kwartaal, eindigend op 31 oktober, bekend gemaakt. De omzet bedroeg 105,8 miljoen dollar, bij een verlies van $17,6 miljoen. Hier de soep van MS NBC:

Revenues for the third quarter ended October 31, 1999 were $105,856,000, as compared to total revenues of $33,206,000 for the third quarter of fiscal 1998 ended September 30, 1998. Net losses for the third quarter were ($17,618 ,000), or ($.73) per diluted share when 24,131,000 shares were used in the per diluted share calculation. This compares with net income of $3,118,000 or $.20 per diluted share in the third quarter of fiscal 1998 ended September 30, 1998 when 15,819,000 shares were used in the per diluted share calculation. Included in the quarter ended October 31, 1999 is the amortization of goodwill and intangibles in the amount of $3,627,000 and a restructuring charge in the amount of $1,830,000.

Active Hardware heeft een korte review rond de Tekram DC-390U2W Ultra-2 SCSI controller gebouwd. Hier wat info over het kaartje:

The DC-390U2W is a PCI card based around the Symbios Logic SYM53C895 chipset, which controls both the 68-pin Ultra-2 SCSI channel, and its 50-pin Ultra Wide SCSI sibling. The DC-390U2W allows 15 SCSI devices to be chained together. Onboard, there is a 1MB flash-BIOS that can also be reset and updated at need.

The DC-390U2W supports the "LVD" (Low Differential Voltage) standard for noise reduction, increased performance, and the use of longer cables. The DC-390U2W is also supplied with an Ultra 2 SCSI cable, an Ultra Wide SCSI cable, an Ultra-2 SCSI terminator, an internal to external Ultra-2 SCSI connector, a user's manual, and diskettes containing the necessary device drivers.

Nog een Comdex verslag, afkomstig van Tech Report. Aan bod komen Midiland (speakers), Kenwood (62X en 72X CD-ROM drives), Elsa (Quadro plank en 3D Revelator glazen), Creative (Nomad II) en Aureal (speakers). Hier een stukkie copy/paste over laatst genoemden:

Creative has also just announced the Nomad 2, the successor to the very successful Nomad MP3 player. The Nomad 2 features a larger display and upgradeable firmware to support future music standards.

Aureal had their new line of speakers (sub/sat) on display. According to the rep, these were announced in August, but have been delayed as they're still tweaking. These things are pretty serious; the drivers are very high quality and cost a lot more than the drivers in probably any other multimedia speaker out there. A lot of care has gone into choosing the proper crossover points between the subs and satellites; the crossovers actually reside in the subwoofer cabinet so Aureal doesn't have to skimp on them because of size. The satellites themselves are biwired (the midrange and high drivers are wired separately) for better sound. Pricing is yet to be determined, but should be very reasonable for what you're getting.

Ars Technica heeft een verslag gepost van de derde Comdex dag. Hier een stukje over de 3D graphics engine van ArtX, die geïntegreerd zal worden in de ALi Aladdin 7 chipset:

A while back, I reported on ArtX's plans to integrate high-end 3D graphics on a Super7 mobo. (For those of you who don't know, ArtX is providing the 3D mojo for Nintendo's upcoming Dolphin game console.) Anyway, I came across a booth where ArtX was showing off their technology by holding a 4-way Q3 demo deathmatch. Before I talk about the deathmatch, I need to say a word about ArtX's technology. The systems used were K6-based, with the ArtX gfx tech integrated on the north bridge. Now, I don't know if it was the large LCD monitors or the early drivers, but the Q3 demo looked absolutely awful. I'm not kidding when I say I haven't seen graphics that bad since the Atari days. I just couldn't believe my eyes. Q3 on my old Voodoo1 blows away what I saw at the ArtX booth. Not only was the image quality awful, but turning on cg_drawfps revealed that the players were getting FPS scores in the lower 20s. Ouch. I sincerely hope that it was the monitors' or drivers' fault that Q3 looked so bad, because if it wasn't then Nintendo fans are in for a serious disappointment. [break] Ook een interessante opmerking over de beeldkwaliteit van de G400 en GeForce: [/break] From my brief experience with both the Matrox G400 and the GeForce, I'd say that the G400 visual quality is much much better than the GeForce.

In het artikel vind je verder info over Microsoft's ClearType technologie, Guillemot stuurwielen en Creative's Nomad II MP3 player.

3D Wars heeft nieuws vanaf de Comdex, over nieuwe 3D Revelator shutterbrillen van Elsa. De nieuwe glazen hebben verbeterde drivers die op wonderbaarlijke wijze zijn geoptimaliseerd voor T&L:

The new product from Elsa is going to be used by all of their cards. One of the newer features that stands out the most is having the 3D Glasses optimize Transform and Lighting (T&L) features that some video cards support. Now, most video cards don't support hardware T&L (actually, only one comes to mind that does), but Elsa does make that card, so it's not really a big factor here. On the other hand, some companies do very well support software T&L, so it's not a lost cause here. Elsa has been well known to make 3D games come to full life. The glasses really show gamers what 3D actually is. By adding T&L optimization, this is going to make gameplay with the glasses a whole lot nicer.

[...] The sunglasses are going to be the same setup as the previous ones. This will more so be a driver tweak than anything. The glasses will still utilize LCD shutter lenses and have support for DirectX. Resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 x 32 are going to be playable even with the T&L optimization.

JanKees (onze lokale S3 goeroe ) komt met een nieuwe aflevering in het Viper II heeft wel/geen T&L sprookje: "MaximumPC (zoiets als ComputerTotaal voor Amerikaantjes) bevestigt het Gamestop verhaal betreffende de hardware-matige T&L op de Viper2. Dus geen T&L? S3/Diamond moet behalve naar de klant ook eens naar mekaar gaan luisteren, want Paul van S3 vertelt de Savage sites blijkbaar wat anders dan "iemand bij S3" aan de andere (hardware) sites":

S3 confirmed today that the Savage2000-based Viper II will not support hardware transform and lighting. The new card, which is slated to ship this Friday, will instead do T&L through software.

Although S3 attributed this feature drop to the current lack of hardware T&L support in games, they did not address the poor performance issues that have plagued their hardware T&L engine since day one. Interestingly enough the hardware support is still in the chip itself and will make its appearance later in a limited edition Viper II board that will be clocked significantly higher.

S3 didn't say how much the limited edition Viper II would cost, when it will ship, or what the clock speed will be. [break] ...en de reaktie van Savage Daily News: [/break] I can only hope that it WILL have T&L, because I'm holding the box and it clearly states that it has T&L not once, but twice. It's bad enough that it says it has support for it, but has no support out-of-box. [break] Update: Anand heeft ook iets te zeggen: [/break] And to settle the debate, yes, the Savage 2000 does support hardware T&L but no it is not enabled in Direct3D or OpenGL in the current driver release which happens to be the shipping driver release as well.

Hmm...

VR-Zone heeft een handig tabelletje in elkaar geklust waarin de specs van de nVidia GeForce, S3 Savage2000, ATi Rage Fury MAXX en 3dfx Voodoo4/5 worden vergeleken.