id Software heeft de laatste versie van de Quake 3 Arena demo op het net geplant, zo meldt Voodoo Extreme. Hieronder wat mirrors:

• Quake3Arena.com
• AVault
• 3D Files
• 3D Action Gamers
• Fileplanet

Als deze niet zo snel zijn, probeer hem dan ook eens van Clanbase neer te halen.

Superweb heeft een kort geding tegen Eneco aangespannen, omdat deze gebrekkige capaciteit zou hebben geleverd:

Eneco kan zich niet houden aan de belofte dat ze capaciteit naar behoefte levert aan Superweb. die kan nu ruim 500 abonnees tegelijk bedienen, maar heeft drie keer zoveel capaciteit nodig.

De onderneming in Rotterdam telt ruim 20.000 abonnees, maar heeft de helft nog maar een aansluiting kunnen geven, die echter in veel gevallen niet waargemaakt kan worden.

Eneco zou op zijn beurt weer te weinig capaciteit van KPN hebben gekregen. Meer daarover lees je bij Planet Multimedia.

Brid bracht me bij dit artikel van The Register, over de kanshebbers op de 1GHz Trofee. Het is waarschijnlijk dat AMD als eerste de 1000MHz barrière zal doorbreken, eerder dan Intel en Compaq:

The fabrication of the processor has gone more smoothly than anyone could have anticipated, and the only reason for holding back on producing a 1GHz Athlon early next year is that AMD can maximise its profits by gradually rolling scaled processors out of its fabs.

Compaq, meanwhile, is unlikely to produce a 1GHz Alpha before the middle of next year, according to analyst Terry Shannon.

Although Intel will demonstrate a 1GHz IA-32 chip at a conference in early February, its roadmap shows that the highest clock speed on the Coppermine track is likely to be an 866MHz Pentium III at the end of Q1, 2000.

De voorspoedige overgang naar 0,18micron is ook positief nieuws voor de overklokkers, want dit zou kunnen betekenen dat de Athlon's veel speelspace hebben (gezien de goede resultaten in de CPU database van overclockers.com is dit ook zo).

Thresh's FiringSquad heeft een review online gezet van de Asus V6600 Geforce 256 kaart. Er wordt onder andere de extra's, stabiliteit, en software besproken die deze kaart met zich meedraagt. Er zijn een aantal benchmarcs geplaats, en er wordt gepraat over de overklokbaarheid van deze kaart, die schijnbaar erg goed is. Met het 5ns geheugen op de kaart is het mogelijk het geheugen op 200Mhz te laten lopen. Helaas gaat het bijgeleverde tweak utility niet hoger dan 195Mhz. Deze tweakutility zat ook al bij de TNT2 kaarten van Asus.

ASUS has chosen to add value to its GeForce card through extra features and software. We've already mentioned the 3D VR glasses, but ASUS has also included several other features the average GeForce boards don't have. First, not many video cards out there have a video input in addition to video outputs. Yes, the Deluxe ASUS card has video capture capabilities. ASUS includes Ulead's Video Studio 3.0 for all your video editing and MPEG-2 encoding needs. The Deluxe model also has a special VideoSecurity feature that uses a video capture device to detect intrusions into your personal space. It sounds like a good tool for catching those people that try to mess with your Quake 3 settings.

Fiets richtinig Thresh's FiringSquad voor de complete review.

Twee reviews vandaag van de Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo geluidskaart. Zowel Thresh's FiringSquad als Tech-Review heeft er eentje. Hieronder wat info over kaart (uit de review van Tech-Review):

Guillemot made some wise decisions when laying out the Fortissimo feature set. The main features to analyze are the DSP and different audio platforms that the card supports. Guillemot chose the Yamaha YMF744 audio processor, which suprisingly combines support for EAX, A3D 1.0, DirectSound, and Sensaura positioning. This greatly increases the appeal that the Fortissimo has when combined with its low cost. For those of you with Dolby Digital receivers or speaker sets, the Fortissimo also includes a useful S/PDIF digital output with optical connector.

As expected from all new generation sound cards, the Fortissimo provides four speaker support with one front channel output and one rear channel output. When using a four speaker system, the rear channel output defaults to duplicate the front channels when no surround code is identified. The built GM and GS handlers enable you to hookup and use a MIDI device such as a synthesizer for some instrumental support.

Extreme Hardware heeft een review online gezet van de Logitech WingMan Gamepad Extreme. Deze controller heeft de motion control funtie aan boord, dus hij reageert op de bewegingen die je ermee maakt. Hieronder wat info:

With many products loudly proclaiming a multitude of features, I’m always on the lookout for a hidden catch. After rigorously testing the WingMan Gamepad Extreme, I have yet to find one and have come to the decision that it really does perform as advertised. The Gamepad Extreme is truly a multi-function device, and comes without the usual tradeoffs you'll find with these products. At a price of $39.95, you’re getting a whole lot of hardware for a price that’s competitive with some standard gamepads. The Gamepad Extreme’s USB connection is complemented by basic gameport support, allowing for Windows 95 and 98 users to get into the action. For these reasons and many more, we’re awarding the Logitech WingMan Gamepad Extreme with our Extreme Hardware Editor’s Choice award, signifying overall gaming hardware excellence.

Bij SlotA.com hebben ze eens gekeken naar de bekende FIC SD11 Athlon mobo. Hieronder een gedeelte uit de review.

The board is ATX, and that's all you will be getting for the time being for the Slot A interface. It fit with plenty of room to spare in my massive CS 802PX. I hooked up the connecters, put in all of the components, and was ready to boot. Power on, bios screen, all was good. I went into the AMI bios setup, and poked around for features. Now FIC has made an attempt in over clocking via fsb settings in the bios. They were in there at 124 and 133MHz memory bus settings. All reports I have received were that they did not work. Well they don't. They are just too high. I would love to see FIC put in some lower settings. I'm certain that they could pull it off. I flashed to the latest bios, and as had been reported, the higher settings are removed in the latest version. Damn. Ok, clean install of Windows 98, install the AGP drivers, and the Via 686A drivers, and I was ready to go.

Stability was one of the major concerns with the Athlon boards. Some Super 7 users may be a bit gun shy from AGP, PCI sound card, and ethernet compatibility problems. No so with the AMD 750 chipset. I tested with the TNT 2, Voodoo 3, MX300, Soundblaster Live, 3Com 905BTX, and the Netgear FA310TX. Now in the past the TNT 2, 3Com 905BTX, and MX300 have given me some troubles when coupled with a super 7 board. I experienced no such problems with the 7IX. Even my Logitech USB mouse worked. I spent a couple of weeks with this board as my main system. That means heavy net use, plenty of office applications, 24/7 RC5 cracking, and a lot of Quake Arena. The board was solid. Of course I was prepared, using a 350 watt power supply and quality PC133 SDRAM for most of the testing. Trust me, spend a little extra on the power supply and ram, and you will be happy.

De eerste review van Quake III Arena is op het net gekwakt door Stomped. Het verhaal is erg uitgebreid (12 pages) en geeft je meteen een goed beeld van de laatste build van Q3A. Hieronder vast een gedeelte voor je:

The graphics in Quake 3 are nothing less than stunning. They are better than any first person shooter on the market without exception. Sometimes they make you want to stop and stare in awe at the beauty. The curved surfaces really do add to the game's atmosphere and give it a more natural feel. Various shader and mirror effects are small but nice touches in the levels. 32-bit graphics is a must for the person that cares how the game looks. Players will miss out on a lot of the details in 16-bit color unfortunately. As nice as the graphics are, they only show a glimmer of the potential for the Quake III graphics engine. Deathmatch needs to be high framerate and fast paced so id could not take it to the max but some other games I've seen using the Quake III engine will make jaws drop.

Along these lines, id realizes there is a wide variety of machines that are the target audience. The minimum is a Pentium 233MHz. Even these lowly machines can get a decent game from Quake III Arena because of the different graphics options settings in the menu. There are Normal, High Quality, Fast, and Fastest settings to cover any type of machine. People with slower machines may not be able to see all the pretty effects but they can still have fun fragging with their friends. On the advanced tech side, the game supports SMP (Dual CPUs) under Windows NT to allow the power users to get better performance. There are also nice new features such as stencil buffer shadows and lens flare effects.

Bij 3D Spotlight hebben ze een artikel in het leven geroepen over hoe je je LAN kunt configuren voor best performance. Meer info voor het opzetten van een netwerk vind je trouwens hier bij Thresh's Firingsquad.

Begin by downloading & installing the latest driver/update for your card from the manufacturer. This may fix any problem/compatibility issues with the card & generally give better performance.

Open up Network properties in the Control panel, selecting the appropriate adapter. Then go into the adapters Properties.

Select the Driver type tab, selecting Enhanced mode (32bit and 16bit) NDIS driver.

Under the Bindings tab, select only TCP/IP. Select others only if required to do so, this will give you the optimal speed.

Under the Advanced tab select the best choice that the LAN is capable of, e.g. if you (& the LAN) can support Full-duplex operation, then choose so accordingly.

Zoals je misschien al weet heeft Microsoft alvast een "Platform Preview" gereleased van Internet Explorer 5.5. Hieronder wat info geleend van Beta News.

Unfortunate for those on slower connections, Internet Explorer 5.5 is much larger than previous releases because it will eventually add many user interface enhancements to Windows, as well as browser updates. This Platform Preview will be the first public beta of the upcoming browser.

Technology wise, version 5.5 features an enhanced HTML component that supports custom DHTML tags and ViewLink, a way to create custom controls in HTML documents without the use of ActiveX. It also supports more cascading style sheets (CSS) and HTML+TIME, which adds timing and media synchronization to HTML pages. A new print preview feature allows users to preview HTML documents before printing, directly in Internet Explorer. This release also gives users more control over scroll bars, frames, pop-up windows, menus, and adds an interesting new feature - vertical text.

Als je vast met deze versie van IE5.5 aan de slag wilt gaan, hier kun je de active setup neerhalen...

Zoiets mag je concluderen uit deze benchmarks van OpperTom:

Chipset Memory fps i820 PC100 SDRAM 86,6 i820 PC800 DRDRAM 98,8 440BX PC100 SDRAM 98.1 VIA Apollo Pro 133 PC133 VCSDRAM 97,5

What good does a 133MHz FSB and 4X AGP give you when the main memory can't keep up? It's obvious that the 82805 (MCH) was an afterthought from Intel. Just a patch to allow the system integrators a vehicle to push i820 based platforms combined with the Coppermine processors at a reasonable price.

The best bang for the buck, as far as Intel platforms go, is with a VIA Apollo Pro 133 or Intel 440BX platform. Both of these clearly outperform the CC820 (SDRAM) and keep pace with the VC820 (RDRAM). The price of RDRAM will have to come way down before i820-based platforms become a competitor with VIA, 440BX or Athlon based platforms.

Lees het hele artikel hier.

La Onda schrijft: "De lang verwachte trailer van Warcraft III, één van de beste die ik ooit heb gezien. Oordeel zelf":

In the face of an even greater invasion from the Burning Legion, the reunited Orcish Horde and the Human armies of Azeroth have shifted their focus from conquest, and betrayal to basic survival. Catch a glimpse of the chaos to come in this cinematic teaser for Warcraft III that was shown at ECTS. The file is self-contained and ready to play on any Windows system with DirectX.

Download for PC - Mirror Site 01

Download for PC - Mirror Site 02

Download for PC - Mirror Site 03

Download for PC - Blizzard

Note that the file is a little over 25 MB, and will take approximately 2.5 hours to download with a 28.8k modem.

Hier twee leuke plaatjes uit de art gallery:

sambal stuurde een link naar dit artikel van Webwereld. XS4All heeft dus gewonnen en mag vrolijk blijven adverteren met citaten uit de algemene voorwaarden van Wanadoo en NokNok:

XS4ALL kraait victorie, vooral ook omdat een tegenvordering tegen Wanadoo is toegewezen. De Euronet-dochter moet onmiddellijk stoppen met advertenties waarin zij garandeert dat er geen gebruik door derden wordt gemaakt van door consumenten verstrekte gegevens.

Woordvoerders van Wanadoo en NokNok melden 'teleurgesteld te zijn en zich te buigen over de consequenties van de uitspraak'.

Ik kwam bij JC wat vage info tegen over AMD's slot-A chipset met PC133 support:

Interesting. I'm told by a reseller up north that spoke to some AMD reps personally. Interesting info? AMD has a "KX133 comparable chipset done" and in production currently for the Slot-A platform. I'm presuming this means a 200MT/s chipset with support for PC133 SDRAM. I wish they'd support VC133 (133MHz Virtual Channel SDRAM), but I'm not holding my breath. Oh, it's bound to have AGP4x and such, for anyone who cares.

You can read some older AMD chipset info from HotChips in August to get an idea what vague direction they were going those many months ago.

Oh, BTW, the rep allegedly confirmed (isn't that an absolutely delicious oxymoron?) that Gateway's coming, and added that Dell is expected to be in the bag for Athlon in the new year.

CNN bericht dat het amerikaanse Justice Department een stel adviseurs van Greenhill & Co. onderzoek laat verrichten naar de gevolgen van een mogelijke Microsoft breakup. Deze actie is volgens analysten een sterke indicatie dat de DoJ een Microsoft-hack 'n slash party overweegt:

he Justice Department has retained a New York investment firm to help analyze the financial effect of possible remedies against Microsoft Corp. - including a break-up of the software powerhouse, as the two sides await a final decision in their long-running antitrust trial.

The move lends greater credence to the possibility that the government will seek a breakup of the software powerhouse if the two sides don’t reach a settlement before a federal judge hands down his final decision.

In a brief statement issued Thursday, the Justice Department said Greenhill & Co. would act as "financial advisor to assist the [antitrust] division in analyzing financial aspects of the full range of potential remedies in U.S. v. Microsoft, including conduct and structural relief."

William Kovacic, an antitrust professor at George Washington University Law School, said the Justice Department’s move is a strong indication that it is seriously considering a breakup of the company. "This is exactly the kind of thing you do if you’re thinking about a breakup,” he said.

Bij 3DHardware.net hebben ze de Aureal SuperQuad 2500 tegenover de Sound Blaster Live! Player 1024 gezet. Bij dit soort testjes blijft het naturlijk altijd een A3D vs. EAX verhaal, waarbij deze reviewer de voorkeur geeft aan de Aureal kaart.

Over all, the chips are very equal, when supported features are compared. Both these chips were designed to last a while (nothing like the graphics chips we see today), and are far superior to what powered a sound card only a few years ago. Looking at the head-to head table for the main features, we can see one thing, though, Aureal seems to suffer little from the lower processing power of the Vortex2. Fact is, that it not only performs at par with the Live!, but surpasses it, in games.

If the Vortex2 just about edges the EMU10K1 out in games, the Creative Labs chip does the same when it comes to music. The drivers Creative Labs have been releasing lately have done incredible stuff with present hardware, making an SB Live! Support up to 1024 MIDI voices. These are, of course, not all hardware-processed voices, both chips can only handle 64 MIDI voices in hardware, but if you're OK with the MIDI munching away on your CPU time, you could fit an entire orchestra, with their families tinkering away on instruments into a MIDI song.

There are more downsides to the software MIDI voices though, the most important is that you can't use SoundFonts (the replaceable wavetable sample format) with more than the hardware-supported 64 voices.

Klik hier voor de rest van het verhaaltje.

Bij C|NET hebben ze een round-up gepost van 4 DVD-Ram drives, zijnde de Hitachi GF-1050, de Panasonic LF-D103U, de externe Pinnacle Micro Flex Cinema en de Toshiba SD-W1111. De Hitachi blijkt het beste van het stel.

Flying from the Windows desktop, the Hitachi felt just like another removable media volume. Pop in a media cartridge (one is included); if it's formatted, the volume is instantly available for use. Like other drives of this type, the Hitachi DVD-RAM should be equally comfortable reading nearly any other type of optical media, from CD-ROM to audio CD to CD-RW to DVD-ROM.

At $600 and with a double-sided DVD-RAM cartridge included (roughly 2.3GB per side, formatted), the Hitachi requires a larger up-front investment than other archival formats. Also, it's not truly fast enough for hard-core shuffling of large multimedia files. Although the GF-1050 can read a wide range of formats, you can write only DVD-RAM discs--you can't burn CD-ROMs or audio CDs. Finally, if you want to hand off your data, your intended recipient needs a DVD-RAM drive in order to read the disc. Even with these caveats, the Hitachi drive is an attractive option for large-capacity, long-term storage.

Active Hardware heeft een review in elkaar gezet van de Transcend TS-AVD1. Dit plankje is gebaseerd op de VIA Apollo Pro133 chipset en behaalt met een reepje PC133 geheugen en een getweakte busspeed vrij aardige resultaten.

The Transcend TS-AVD1 struck me as a well designed board that was only lacking of some finish. Pleasant to use, this board truly came off as a good product. These days, though, it takes a few extra tricks to get noticed and take the market, as competition is increasingly fierce among motherboard manufacturers. As well, if this board had been complemented by a more generous set of software utilities, a more robust choice in clock frequencies, options for voltage adjustments, some nice features such as Power Failure Resume, Suspend to Disk, and/or Suspend to RAM, and finally some miscellaneous bits such as a thermal sensor - it would have made a much greater impression... However, It seems that Transcend is on the right track, and this company can truly move several places forward if the marketing execs take note and re-adjust their shots...

jurrien stuurde me naar dit artikel van Linux.com waarin gemeld wordt dat de Linux versie van Quake III Arena de dag na Kerst (27 dec.) in de winkels zal liggen.

Tustin, CA. -- December 2, 1999 -- Loki Entertainment Software, the leader in bringing best-selling PC games to Linux, today announces an exclusive agreement with id Software to publish, package and distribute worldwide Quake III Arena for Linux.

Through this agreement, Loki will publish the highly-anticipated Quake III Area for Linux on December 27, near-simultaneously with the Windows and Macintosh versions.

[...] The Linux version of Quake III Arena will be packaged in a limited edition collector's tin box. Loki will also include the Linux operating system, SuSE Linux 6.3, so that new users can try Linux and the game. Quake III Arena for Linux has a suggested retail price of $49.95 (U.S. Dollars).

Hmm, best wel stevig nieuws bij EETimes: IBM heeft een 0,18micron fabricageproces ontwikkelt dat middels een combinatie van silicium germanium transistors en koper-interconnects de produktie van chips met kloksnelheden tot 90GHz mogelijk maakt:

The company will present details of the technology here next week at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM). Other IBM papers have discussed the company's work with SiGe during the past 18 months, much of which has been kept secret by IBM's customers.

Perhaps the most intriguing fact about IBM's results is that the SiGe-copper parts can be produced on the company's standard CMOS manufacturing line in Burlington, Vt., using equipment already in place.

"We run the same process steps as CMOS on the same tools in the same factory," said Greg Freeman, the IBM senior engineer who will deliver the IEDM paper on the SiGe-copper technology.

The hybrid SiGe-copper devices, which were first produced a year ago by IBM researchers, are entering the sampling phase and have been turned over to OEMs for consideration in future products, said Bernie Meyerson, IBM director and general manager for telecommunications products. Meyerson and other officials declined to comment on when those products — or the SiGe-copper devices — would become widely available. [break] De San Francisco Gate heeft tevens een artikel over dit nieuws gepost: [/break] IBM is set to unveil a series of advances in chip design and materials that it said will keep ``Moore's law'' on the books for at least another decade.

[...] The technique is likely to appear in a year or two, he said, in specialized chips used in hubs and routers and for high-speed graphics, but later it will make its way into the processors used in desktop PCs. In 5 to 10 years, he said, it could make a possible a dramatic simplification in processor design, which in turn would cut costs and improve performance still further.

De release van DVD Audio produkten is met een half jaar vertraagd vanwege gebakkelij rond de te gebruiken copy protection methode, zo schrijft CNN. De platen maffia heeft geen trek in verglijkbaar fiasco als bij de gehackte DVD Video beveiliging en heeft daarom een nieuw systeem met betere beveiliging voorgesteld:

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which is better known by its Panasonic brand name, expects a six-month delay in the launch of DVD Audio products as the format's developers scramble to find a new copyright protection system.

DVD Audio was to use CSS2, a newer version of the content scrambling system (CSS) employed on DVD Video. Those plans are now in disarray after the CSS system was hacked a month ago, the company said Wednesday (see "DVD encryption hacked," link below).

"Because of the hacking on DVD Video, industry people are worried about the possible hacking on DVD Audio, and so people are talking about much stronger protection," said Yoshihiro Kitadeya, a spokesman for Matsushita Electric. "Matsushita will propose a new system of copy protection with a much stronger key and completely new encoding system."

Graeme Devine van id Software heeft een .plan update gepost met wat stof over de Quake III final demo en de retail master servers:

In preparation for the full release.

The motd/master/auth servers run on ports 27950, 27951, 27952. The default game server is on port 27960. If you’re firewalled against these ports you’ll need to get unfirewalled to play the game. If we work on the servers from now on we’ll notify the community and schedule the maintenance for the slowest period of the day (currently around 6am Dallas time).

We have what we consider a “gold” build of the demo. We’re putting it through the final push of QA at Activision before releasing it since this build is going to be more or less prevalent throughout the known universe.

De release van de Gateway Athlon systemen, oorspronkelijk gepland voor de 29ste van november, heeft om onduidelijke reden (nouja, Intel?) vertraging opgelopen. Onderstaande reaktie komt van AMD Zone en is afkomstig van iemand die voor Gateway werkt:

I work for Gateway. I saw the ZDNet Holiday Guide listing but the system is not even up on our salesperson configuration pages. The only thing I can say is that they recieved early evaluation info from us. To be honest, the Athlons were supposed to launch 11/29, but were delayed for some unknown reason- latest word is that they OUGHT to be out by the end of the year, but that the exact date has not been determined. My unfounded suspicion is that there is ALOT of wrangling between Gateway and Intel at a very high level right now, Intel, with its recent screw-ups, doesn't need a top tier OEM putting out solid Athlon systems on the streets.