3D Chipset meldt dat Creative nieuwe MiniGL drivers klaar heeft voor haar Voodoo2 en Banshee based videokaarten. Gebruikers kunnen hiermee nu ook genieten van 512x512 textures in Quake III Arena.

This is a beta release of an optimized mini-GL driver for both the 3D Blaster Banshee and the 3D Blaster Voodoo2. This release adds support for Quake 3 Test version 1.09.

The creative mini-GL driver has unique support for high-resolution (512x512 pixel) textures, as available in Quake III Test. The 3dfx Voodoo chipset family architecture does not support texture sizes greater than 256x256 in hardware. While support for higher resolution textures is available in more advanced chipsets such as the S3 (3D Blaster Savage 4) and NVIDIA TNT family (Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT and 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Ultra), cards based on the Voodoo family of chipsets are forced to down-sample these high-resolution textures to fit within the 256x256 limitation. We have engineered our mini-GL driver to introduce a technique* that brings support for 512x512 textures to the Creative Voodoo family of cards. This unique enhancement is not available with any other Voodoo OpenGL driver. You will see the benefits of this feature throughout the game by moving the texture detail slider to the high end in the Quake III Test graphics options menu before entering an arena. Also, the quality of the text in the main menu (a 512x512 texture) is enhanced.

Hier kun je downloaden.

Bij Gamers Depot hebben ze een review gepost van de errug heftige Klipsch Promedia 2.04 THX speakers. Dit setje is THX-certified en biedt 400 Watt aan brute power! Hieronder een gedeelte uit de test:

The first time you hear the Quake railgun humming through 160watts or pure sass, you'll be heading out to the local store to pick up your favorite brand of adult diapers. The sheer bass that emits from the Promedia's was enough to send the Midiland 4100's and the DTT2500's scurrying away begging for mercy. I'm being overly descriptive here to make a point. Keep in mind that no review can "prove" to you how well something sounds, or how loud they might be.

But Klipsch also did an excellent job in blending in the satellites. Most sub/satellite speakers on the market, have a tendency to make the mid-bass sound rather muddy. This is because either their crossover point is too high for the sub, or they are using mediocre drivers or both. This is not the case with Klipsch. With every kind of music we could dig up, the Promedia's kept the mid's and lows sounding strong, yet silky.

I was surprised at how well the horn tweeters blended as well. Most typical "horn tweeters" sound harsh and over powering. The "MicroTractix" horn in the Satellites were a perfect match for the midrange driver.

Plaatje uit het archief:

Goed nieuws voor de Abit BP6 bezitters onder ons. Via een bios update en een "socket to socket miniboard converter" zal deze plank geschikt worden voor FCPGA (Pentium IIIE) Coppermine processors. Onderstaande info is afkomstig van hardware-one:

Just received information from a reliable source that the Abit BP6 will be able to support the coming PCPGA Pentium III chips via the following updates, I quote my source saying:

1) A BIOS upgrade
2) a socket to socket miniboard converter

The BIOS upgrade is to upgrade various sundry stuff... the socket to socket miniboard converter, is to upgrade the BP6 motherboard to support VRM 8.4 specification and to create a second reset pin. If you want more information about the differences between FCPGA and Socket 370, please refer to this hyperlink.

Matrox heeft beta Windows 2000 drivers in elkaar geknutseld voor haar Millennium G200 en G400 kaarten. Op deze page kun je downloaden. (3.4MB)

Notes and known issues:
- This is a BETA Windows 2000 driver for Millennium G400 and G200 products. Drivers for other Matrox products are contained within the latest build of Windows 2000.
- Sorry, the release notes are not yet available.
- Send us your feedback on the Win 2000 5.00 BETA driver.

Bij Tech-Review is een review te vinden van de 41GB grote Maxtor DiamondMax, een 5400 RPM harde schijf met 10,2GB per platter. Hieronder een stukkie over zijn performance, waarmee het wel goed zit:

Taking a look at the scores reveals the Maxtor's superior Business Disk mark in both Windows 98 and NT. Surprisingly enough, these benchmarks came out ahead of the Maxtor 27.3 7200 RPM hard drive. We are currently running more tests to find out why this occurred. Our current idea is that tests were run on an empty Diamond Max 40 drive, while the 27.3 GB 7200 RPM drive had the benchmarks located on the drive itself. When running tests on an empty drive, the results may vary from a half full hard drive due to the area of the platter that is being used. Performance varies as you move across the platter, with the outer most data accessed at a faster rate. Nonetheless, the DiamondMax 40 is one heck of a performer by turning in blazing fast benchmark results.

Other performance differences could be attributed to the new ATA-5/UDMA 66 interface that the 40 uses, compared to the ATA-4 interface the 27.3 GB drive uses. Couple this fact with Maxtor's standard 2 MB of SDRAM cache, and the results are splendid.

Ik lees bij Overclockers' Workbench dat er een nieuwe Beta uit is van SoftFSB, (SoftFSB is een handig proggie waarmee je on-the-fly vanuit windoos je busspeed kunt aanpassen). Zoals gezegd kun je deze versie nu ook gebruiken op je MS-6167 en Asus K7M Athlon plank . Klik hier om te downloaden.

Tremor stuurde deze info over Halo, een 'third-person perspective, sci-fi action epic' van Bungie:"Op de screenshots pagina beweren ze dat die screenshots van de 'in-game' engine zijn. Als dat zo is dan wordt het hoog tijd voor die Gigahertz processoren. C&C kan na deze game meteen inpakken":

We showed Halo to the press and they said some good stuff about it. Some real good stuff.

Next Generation:

"With Halo, Bungie's day has come. Bungie—and its Carmackian visionary Jason Jones—has unveiled a game in the works that is not only unrivaled, but doesn't even have near competitors. The game … has the dual distinction of coupling the most beautiful graphics we've ever seen with the most realistic physics. For now, rest assured that when Halo hits the streets in mid-2000, it will be one of the most technologically impressive games ever released." [break] Hier wat meer info uit de press release: [/break] Halo is a third-person perspective, sci-fi action epic that takes place indoors, outdoors, in the sky and beneath the surface of a world of astonishing realism and visual impact. Halo was unveiled this morning in Steve Jobs' keynote address to the Macworld Expo.

With no levels or breaks in gameplay, Halo gives players complete freedom of movement over open terrain. Vast outdoor vistas, complete with flora, fauna, weather and celestial events, are complemented with indoor environments of comparable detail and complexity. A universal physics model and persistent objects make events in this world utterly convincing. In this open environment, gameplay is not linear but unfolds in response to the player's actions.

Like most Bungie games, the Halo engine shines with the highest-end realism technologies: real-time shadows, inverse kinematics, 3D positional and ambient sound effects, multipass texture mapping, scalable polygonal models, deformable terrain mesh. Enemy artificial intelligence operates simultaneously on both individual and squad levels, accounting for morale, with the result that no combat situation plays out the same way twice.

...en de screenshots zien er inderdaad niet slecht uit:

Mark S> (alias VTec) schrijft: "Mooie screenshots van Quake 3 Arena!":

Stomped.com posted a collection of screenshots from the final version of Quake 3 Arena. The new shots are virgin territory for those of you playing the demo, so plan on something new and interesting.

Verder heeft ook Shugashack een zooi screenshots gepost:

Riva Station heeft een tweetal video's gepost van 3DMark 2000, de nieuwe benchmark van Mad Onion (zie ook deze posting van gisteren).

Video 1 (1.6MB)
Video 2 (970kB)

Aanschouw de T&L mogelijkheden in het plaatje rechtsonder

Tremor schrijft dat op CNET wat info staat over Bill's Internet Explorer 5.5. Hieronder de soep:

Microsoft said it would release a trial version of IE 5.5 with improved support for Web standards, including Cascading Style Sheets 1 (CSS) and Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) as well as a Microsoft presentation technology known as DHTML behaviors.

With IE 5.5, Microsoft said it will add a print preview capability and improvements in the speed and reliability of printing.

The next version of Microsoft's consumer operating system, code-named Millennium, includes IE 5.5. That product, released to testers last week, is expected next year.

Microsoft's only significant competition in the browser market, Netscape's Communicator browser, is behind IE by a long shot in standard support and other key technologies. The already late Communicator 5.0 project was further delayed this fall.

Ik kwam bij JC dit erg handige tabelletje tegen met Q3Test benchmarks van de i820 en 440BX chipset:

Chipset FSB Memory fps i820 133 PC800 DRDRAM 105.6 i820 100 PC800 DRDRAM 101 i820 133 PC100 SDRAM 91.8 i820 100 PC100 SDRAM 89.5 440BX 100 PC100 SDRAM 100.1

Hieruit blijkt maar weer eens dat 1) Rambus nauwelijks snelheidsvoordeel levert (nihil bij gelijke bus, 5% bij 133Mhz FSB t.o.v. 440BX met PC100) en dat 2) de i820 chipset met memory translator hub totaal niet met SDRAM overweg kan, de performance dropt dan met 10%.

Snotneus schrijft: "Heb even een mailtje gestuurd naar Activision UK over de release date van Q3A in Europa. Ziehier het resultaat":

The current release date for Europe is the 12th of December

Activision UK
Customer Support
Support@Activision.co.uk

Gamespot heeft een review van het Intel VC820 (i820+RIMM) plankje geplant. Weinig schokwekkende info in deze bespreking: de moederplaat bleek stabiel als een huis, maar verder geen vergelijkende benchmarks met CC820, 440BX of Irongate slot-A borden:

I've had this VC820 now for more than a month. I've thrown all types of hardware at it, including GeForce 256 cards, SCSI host adapters, several different ethernet cards, and a PCI video-capture card. It just hums along, seemingly not caring about the PCI slot configuration or which graphics card is installed. I feel quite strongly that stability is more important than performance, so on the stability side, the VC820 has been rock solid. To be fair, I've not installed any RAMBUS modules in the third memory slot, so the potential problem that Intel uncovered several months back hasn't surfaced.

Extreme Hardware denkt ons blij te maken met deze review van de Matrox Marvel G400-TV, een videokaartje met ingebakken TV-tuner en video capture:

Aside from the Marvel G400-TV’s excellent video capture and TV tuner, it features the powerful 2D/3D G400 16mb core, which offers not only a wealth of 3D features, but respectable 3D performance as well. Since the G400 and its many features were covered at length in our Millennium G400 review, feel free to read the G400 overview onto Pages 1-6 and 20 of the review, if you’re not familiar with the G400.

For all intents and purposes, the Marvel G400-TV’s performance is almost identical to a standard Millennium G400 32mb. To test this, the Marvel G400-TV was benchmarked against a regular G400 on our Athlon 650 testbed. In testing, the Marvel was never more than a few frames per second slower than a regular G400 32mb. Thus, in terms of performance, there is no real noticeable difference between the Millennium G400 32mb and the Marvel G400-TV. The only noteworthy difference is that the Marvel doesn’t support 1280x1024x32 and 1600x1200x32 (in 3D) because it only has 16mb of RAM, not enough to support high resolutions in 32-bit color.

Gamespot heeft 8 nieuwe screenshots van Force Commander (RTS game gebaseerd op het Star Wars universum) op het net geplakt:

To whet the appetites of RTS gamers with a thirst for Star Wars action, LucasArts released eight new screenshots of Star Wars: Force Commander to GameSpot France. The shots show that the game's graphics have definitely improved from its previously muddied look, with sharper textures and more defined gaming models.

The game will be based on the popular Star Wars universe depicted in the films in the second trilogy - Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Worlds that will be included in the game when it releases sometime during the first quarter of 2000 include Hoth, Tatooine, Corellia, Yavin 4, and others.

AGN Hardware heeft een review gepost van de dikke 21" Nokia 445X Pro monitor. De dot pitch is .22mm en de maximale resolutie bedraagt 1800x1440 bij 80Hz. Hieronder wat meer info:

After looking over the specifications you will notice that the monitor isn't a flat screen (my only disappointment). You will also notice this monitor is a beast weighing in at 68lbs and depth of almost 22". This monitor is not going to set on some small computer desk shelf, it needs some real estate.

The viewable area of the monitor is 20" with a maximum desktop area of 1800 x 1440 @ 80 Hz. The dot pitch is .22mm horizontal and provides a nice clean picture. The monitor has dual inputs, a VGA D-Sub connector and a set of BNC inputs. The connector being used can de switched at the front of the monitor by a push of the button. The monitor comes with the D-Sub connector cable but you can call Nokia at the number listed on your warranty card and they will send you a BNC cable for free! A nice bonus as these cables sell for $20-$40 a set.

Bij BXBoards hebben ze een paar dagen geleden een review gepost rondom de MSI 6163 Pro BX moederplaat van Micro-star. Eerdere reviews van dit plankje waren al erg positief, bij BXBoards zijn ze er ook wel erg te spreken over. Hieronder wat over zijn overclocking mogelijkheden:

Overclocking is the name of the game for this MSI board. The MSI board seems to have good stability at overclocked buses. Using my P3 450, I was able to overclock to 607mHz (135mHz bus) at 2.0V (granted its a really good core!). The BIOS used is the standard Award affair. Version 4.51G (slightly older than similarly configured motherboards) graces us with easily customized the BIOS settings. Oddly this motherboard does not have the 103mHz bus, while it is not a major beef of mine some other people may want to get every mHz out of their CPU (i.e. a 300a at 450 which does not go to 504, 464 might be possible, or 496 (110mHz FSB) or 474 (105mHz FSB)). There are several bus speeds in the range of 66-90mHz are good for those that have higher end celerons (a paradox in itself that do not do the jive on the 100mHz FSB. Speeds between 100mHz and 124mHz are well covered as well.

26 Bus speeds are great! The 155mHz bus is extremely high, so only high quality RAM and well selected components can withstand it! Unfortunately stability with several DIMMS at 133mHz or above is rather sketchy, so I would recommend one DIMM for the most insane overclocking success. With my P3 450, I had individually tested a 64MB Micron 8E DIMM all the way up to 142mHz. A 128MB Micron 8C module liked 142 as well. At the 133mHz bus Windows would freeze, but with either DIMM Windows would load fine!

The AGP divider cannot be chosen by the user, it is automatically adjusted (depending on what bus is used). The PCI divider of 4 does not kick in until the 124 Mhz bus. At this FSB speed the PCI is either 41mHz, which is fairly high or some peripherals or 31 mHz which is under the PCI spec of 33.3mHz. Many settings are only available with Spread Spectrum Modulation enabled as well, which is generally not helpful to overclocked stability, as this causes the bus speed to modulate around the chosen frequency. Nevertheless, with Andy's PC133 tests, the board proved as rock solid at high bus speeds as its illustrious predecessor.

Robkeuh schrijft: "Koen Crijns, van Hardwareinfo.net, heeft een review gemaakt van nog een Athlon plaat, de Biostar M7MKA. Deze is al geruime tijd beschikbaar maar heeft tot nu toe nog niet veel aandacht gehad. Maar daar zal nu ongetwijfeld verandering in komen.":

Net als de AMD Fester maakt ook de Biostar M7MKA gebruik van de gehele AMD 750 chipset: de AMD 751 als North-Bridge en de AMD 756 als South-Bridge.

Net als de meeste andere AMD Athlon moederbord biedt de M7MKA: 1 AGP-slot, 5 PCI-sloten, 2 ISA-sloten, 3 DIMM-sloten voor PC100 DIMM's en 2 IDE-poorten voor Ultra ATA/66 harddisks. Waar Biostar gelukkig wel over nagedacht heeft (en de concurrentie niet) is een kleine speaker op het moederbord. Hoewel dit uiterst onbenullig lijkt, vind ik dit zelf erg handig. Ook de M7MKA heeft naast de 2 standaard USB poorten nog een aansluiting voor 2 extra USB poorten die in het front van de PC-kast kunnen zijn verwerkt. Naast het eerste PCI-slot zien we de gebruikelijke Wake-on-LAN en Wake-on-Ring connectors terug.

Het is over duidelijk dat Biostar bij de M7MKA voor 100% stabiliteit gaat en niet voor het meest geavanceerde AMD Athlon moederbord. Voor deze visie is zeker wat te zeggen bij de eerste generatie AMD Athlon moederborden. Zoals ik al vaker heb gezegd is de aanwezigheid van stabiele AMD Athlon moederborden een van de vereisten voor het slagen van de nieuwe CPU. Een voorbeeld van de insteek van Biostar zijn de ongekend grote koelribben op de spanningsstabilisatoren.

Radforce vond hier het bericht dat morgen Unreal Tournament hier in de Benelux in de winkels zou moeten liggen. Dit schijnt door GT bevestigt te zijn:

"GT confirms that Unreal Tournament is on schedule to be released in stores in the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Benelux this Friday December 3rd. Shipments to some retailers have started already. I'm still checking on other countries but one can assume deliveries to all major European countries will be this week."

GamePC heeft een vergelijking rond 4 full towers in elkaar geknutseld. Getest werden de Addtronic 7890a, Élan Vital T15, INWIN Q500a en ProCase 768a. Hier een stuk over de InWin tower, die ook hier in Nederland redelijk goed verkrijgbaar is:

The Q500a can be considered like the A500 but on steroids. If you didn’t read the about the A500 from the first round up, it was basically a very short and sturdy case. But what the A500 lacked was convenience for future upgrades. Now with this Q500a it solves all those problems. The outer shell of the case is basically three-piece deal. Held in by a few screws on the backside of the case, it takes less then a minute to access the inside of the case. The motherboard rests on a removable tray so the first and future motherboard upgrades should be painless ordeal. This case now has the power supply in a different location from where it was in the A500 case. Reason for this was the A500 had the power supply right next to the CPU, which actually made it hard to swap the CPU in/out or just work with other components around it that general location. The case also has shaved edges like the T15 and T10. Internal drive expansion is probably one of the better things in this case, it supports up to five internal 3 œ drives. Not only that, but it also has one exposed 3œ and five 5Œ slots for use. As for cooling, there are two fans, one on the front and one on the back of the case. Again, not the best in the word, with the correct fans and the neatness case wiring (no spaghetti wiring), airflow should be good enough for any type of setup. The standard Power, HD activity and Turbo led is on the front of the case along with the reset and power on switch. Also like the Élan Vital T15, this case too has security pad lock option that.

Elsa heeft een nieuwe versie van het 3D Revelator shutter brilletje vrijgelaten, lees ik bij The Adrenaline Vault:

New 3D glasses are available from Elsa that are designed to support almost any Direct 3D-based game on the PC. The 3D Revelator lightweight glasses feature an LCD shutter operating at a speed of 100-140 Hz and covers the full field of vision with high translucence and dimming. Optional settings include vertical refresh rates and a choice of resolutions that allow an adjustment to the system according to the user’s monitor and individual games. Two versions are offered--cordless infrared or cable-tethered. The compact, infrared transmitter is attached with an adhesive strip to the side of a monitor.

The 3D Revelator is compatible with ERazor II and ERazor III graphics boards from Elza. Non-Elsa graphics boards with at least 16MB and an Riva TNT, TNT2 or TNT2 Ultra chipset can also be used.

The 3D glasses cost $99 for the infrared version and $69 for the cable-tethered version. The device is sold separately and comes bundled with Elsa graphics boards at major retailers. For more information, visit the product's official website.

Nugget heeft zonet een .plan update gepost met positief nieuws over de healing van de zieke RC5 statsbox. De oorzaak van het probleem is gevonden:

Well, this is most excellent news. We've isolated the slowdown to a single php page on the stats site, and a single change made to the code on that php page.

We had recently made a modification to the /rc5-64/psearch.php queries that pulled the search data from a different table than it normally pulls from. For some reason, this is running much, much slower than it should and is causing the incredible slowdown while stats are up and available.

When we remove access to this one page (rc5-64/psearch) stats seems to run just fine and dandy. So, at this point, the worst-case scenario we're looking at is not being able to do a participant search while the daily processing is running. At least until we can figure out why the query is running so slowly.

I've already rebuilt the relevant indexes and that hasn't helped any, so there's still more debugging we need to do. The good news is that since we know what has to happen to repair the performance, I can go ahead and start catching up the rc5-64 data to bring it current.

More details as the situation progresses.

ZDNet heeft een artikel gepost over magische 1GHz barrière, die naar alle waarschijnlijkheid het eerst door AMD doorbroken zal worden. Moraal van het verhaal is dat AMD in principe al vrij snel een 1GHz Athlon zou kunnen introduceren, maar dat het daarmee wacht totdat de markt er 'klaar' voor is:

Indeed, AMD says an enhanced version of Athlon, based on a new processor core, will reach the 1GHz level by the second part of next year. Analysts say AMD may be sandbagging. The company presently has an 800MHz chip scheduled for release in the first quarter while a 900MHz Athlon is also in the works.

"AMD could clearly jump out now with an 800MHz part. However, what does it get them to be that much ahead of Intel?" Brookwood said.

For its part, AMD is playing it coy. A spokesman said it wasn't so much as a matter of introducing a 1GHz part. "It's whether there's sufficient demand that warrants a product launch," said the spokesman.

In het artikel wordt gezegd dat de Coppermine headroom heeft tot ongeveer 900MHz, maar dat 1GHz ook denkbaar is.

Kyle van HardOCP ondernam een poging om een review rond de Voodoo3-3000 PCI te bouwen...

De rest van het verhaaltje moge duidelijk zijn :

The Overclocking of the card did give up some pretty good increases in my opinion. The over 5 frame spread on the 675Mhz Fastest setting is damn impressive. You see how we finally get an increase with the OC at 675MHz on the HQ setting. This shows us that the V3 is sitting around waiting for information from the CPU in the other two benches but the Pentium is not quite up to delivering. Q3A is NO DOUBT a ball buster when it comes to stressing the CPU. I did some quick comparisons again a TNT2 Ultra in house and the 3dfx beat it in FPS even with the TNT2 at a faster CPU speed. I will however say that the GeForce card would have surpassed the V3 3000 PCI. But then again, it damn well better for how much it costs.

Verder heeft-ie een aantal leuke benchmarks die de performance van de AGP en PCI versies van de V3-3000 vergelijken. Het voordeel van AGP blijkt dus gewoon keihard 0 te zijn .

Tech-Review.com heeft een review gepost van de Soyo SY-6BA+IV (fijne naam ) slot-1 moederplank met BX chipset, 4 DIMM slots, onboard ATA66 controller en 27 FSB settings:

The wide assortment of front side bus speeds is still present with 27 available FSB options of 66/ 75/ 81/ 83/ 90/ 95/ 100/ 105/ 110/ 112/ 113/ 115/ 117/ 118/ 120/ 122/ 124/ 126/ 133/ 135/ 137/ 138/ 140/ 142/ 144/ 150/ 155MHz. For those that are not quite sure what effect this has, front side bus speeds are used to determine the MHz at which a CPU operates. With the fact that Intel locks what they refer to as the 'clock multiplier', changing the FSB allows one to overclock their computer. For example, when you have a 550 MHz CPU it has a 5.5 clock multiplier and runs on a 100 MHz bus speed. In order for it to know that it is supposed to run at 550 MHz, the CPU takes its clock multiplier setting of 5.5 and multiplies that with the bus speed of 100 MHz. This results in the CPU running at 550 MHz (5.5 x 100 = 550 MHz). Since the clock multiplier value of 5.5 is locked, we must use the bus speed to overclock the CPU. Changing the bus speed to 110 MHz results in the CPU running at 605 MHz (5.5 x 110 = 605). The SY-6BA+IV allows you to change this bus speed easily from the BIOS menu, and provides an excellent assortment of available settings.

Volgens The Register zullen de eerste Gateway systemen met Athlon proc deze week naar de klant wandelen. Voor AMD betekend dit een belangrijke overwinning in de strijd om meer marktaandeel:

We have now received information from highly placed sources within Gateway confirming that it will sell PCs using AMD's Athlon processors.

According to our source, the first sample machines using the Athlon processor will start shipping during the course of this week. [break] AMD Zone weet het bestaan van de Gateway Athlon's te bevestigen: [/break] I have also received confirmation from a source that has been down on Gateway's manufacturing floor, and seen Athlon systems being assembled.

Hmm, Eric van Fastgraphics heeft wat lopen tweaken aan z'n Asus V6600 Deluxe: 155/210Mhz, da's helemaal niet verkeerd!

Playing a little more with this card I found out that it rocks around the clock.. Without any additional cooling I can get this card up to 155 / 210 !!!! That's almost better than what I got with the normal V6600 and a peltier cooler. I will certainly arrange a meeting between the V6600 Deluxe and my peltier cooler one of these days, so stay tuned.

Volgens America Online heeft ICQ inmiddels meer dan 50 miljoen gebruikers, waarvan 2/3 buiten de VS:

The service's subscriber base has quadrupled since AOL bought the company in June 1998. More than two-thirds of those users are based outside the United States. ICQ also said that it has signed $100m (£61m) worth of e-commerce and marketing agreements.