Thresh en Kornuiten hebben eens een review in elkaar getimmerd van de bekende Abit BE6-II moederplaat. Het SoftMenu geeft je nu de keuze uit maar liefst 120 busspeeds, en het is nu ook mogelijk om het I/O voltage te tweaken. Hieronder wat overclocking results van het bord:

When it comes to overclocking options, the BE6-II (and BF6 for that matter) is in a class of its own. With bus speeds of 66, 75, and 83-200MHz in 1MHz increments the BE6-II offers 120 different settings for the front side bus speed! In our BF6 review we mentioned the need for bus speed options between 75 and 83MHz.

You see, for CPU's with higher multipliers, you need as many options as possible for the front side bus. In the case of our Celeron 500, it ran fine on the 75MHz bus, but once we raised the bus to the next highest setting (83MHz) the system became unstable. With the Celeron 500's fixed 7.5 multiplier those 117 additional bus speeds may be completely unusable, which in our opinion is a shame.

In any case, we decided to throw our reference Pentium III 600 on the BE6-II to see how high we could clock it. After success at 110MHz bus, we decided to up the frequency 2MHz. With the front side bus at 112MHz and the fixed 6.0 multiplier, our Pentium III ran flawlessly at 672MHz.

Hoping to clock the CPU a bit higher we next raised the bus to 114MHz. After locking up shortly in Windows we adjusted the voltage all the way to 2.3V but couldn't get the system to run stable. In fact, no matter what we tried we couldn't get the system to run stable beyond 672MHz.

With better cooling, we probably could have run the system stable at 678MHz (6x113) or 684 (6x114) but we just couldn't get the CPU below 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bij CTNews hebben ze een review online gezet van de Logitech Cordless MouseMan Wheel. Deze draadloze muis ziet er errug cool uit, en werkt ook nog eens perfect:

This is probably one of the weirdest shaped mice I've seen. The first thing that came into my mind was, "Oh boy, here comes CTS (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome)". But when I got my hands on it, the mouse actually felt pretty comfortable. The rubber mounted on the sides of the mouse makes it very easy to control and the button on the side doesn't get into the way.

Another thing that turned I turned attention to was size of the mouse. It's fairly large. For me, it was the perfect. I finally found a mouse in which my fingers can't touch the mousepad while in normal use. I asked a person with small hands to use the product and I found that she would not let go of it because she wanted to keep it! So having small hands will not be too much of a problem.

When in use, the mouse responded fairly well. There were absolutely no problems between the mouse and receiver. Those Logitech people did an excellent job, because everything ran smoothly. The box says this can go up to six feet, but I tested it 20 feet, and it still worked!

Nog een mouse review - dit maal bij Dan's Data, waar men een review van de Razer Boomslang 2000 heeft gepost. Dan vergelijkt de Boomslang met de welbekende Intellimouse Explorer van Microsoft:

In the resolution stakes, it's hard to compare the Explorer with the Boomslang, because the Explorer doesn't have a mechanical encoder. Its little camera takes 1,500 images per second of whatever the Explorer's sitting on, and so its resolution relates to the camera's resolution, or as much of the camera's resolution as makes it through the digital signal processing the Explorer does, anyway.

Set to its maximum Windows speed, the Explorer is quite a lot less sensitive than the Boomslang, but has still run out of encoder resolution. The pointer moves in little hops, not smoothly pixel-by-pixel. At this speed, though, I have a hard time using the mouse anyway, and greater smoothness wouldn't help me much. I guess I'm just not worthy of super-resolution mouses.

Zie deze nieuwsposting van eerder vandaag voor meer muis gerelateerde info.

Ars Technica vergelijkt de InWin Q500 met z'n nieuwere Q500N broeder, die vooral voor overklokkers een aantal interessante verbeteringen met zich meebrengt:

From the front, the Q500N hasn't changed from the good old Q500. When we get to the back of the case though, things start to get interesting. The original Q500 has room for one 80mm fan in the front, and two in the back. The problem is that the two in the back are in the top. This is kinda worthless for cooling the CPU, which sits much lower in the case and gets absolutely no benefit from the two fans. To make matters worse, the one fan in the front doesn't get much air into the case due to the poorly designed front panel.

With the "N" series the 80mm fan in the rear has been relocated to sit right next to the CPU. This is a much better design, and it made a huge difference in the stability of my machine when switching cases. There is now only room for a single 80mm fan at the top of the case, which is how I thought it should have been in the first place. Finally, the Q500N has been redesigned to have the vent holes running up and down the sides, as opposed to the old Q500 where they ran front to back along the bottom.

Gamespot neemt een exclusief kijkje naar Micron's Samurai chipset met DDR SDRAM support. Uit de benchmark resultaten blijkt dat de Samurai DDR over het algemeen vergelijkbare prestaties levert als de Intel i820 met Rambus. Niet slecht gezien het feit dat de chipset op dit moment nog in rauw beta stadium verkeert:

We then loaded up 3D WinBench 2000 and all the GameGauge 2.0 game titles and compared them with an identically configured system using an Intel VC820 motherboard and 128MB of PC800 RDRAM. The results were quite intriguing. As you can see from the numbers, in most cases, the DDR motherboard in the 16-bit GameGauge tests were essentially dead even. Given that other Pentium III solution (VIA Apollo 133a, 440BX and 820 with SDRAM) are all quite a bit slower, this is significant. Remember, this is alpha silicon. As the 3D WinBench 2000 Processor test indicates, the actual CPU speed didn't vary, so there was no difference in CPU.

AMD Zone heeft een aantal Quake III Arena en Distributed.net benchmarks van de Kryotech Super G (Athlon op brute 1.000.000KHz ) online gezet:

Both are with Windows 98. The retail version of Quake Arena is used with low quality sound and the regular graphics mode. The 600MHz scores use a TNT 2 ultra, the 1GHz uses the Nvidia Quadro with 64 megs of ram. I'll add a few 800MHz marks tomorrow.

De duitse provider KDT gaat vanaf februari in de omgeving van Wupertal voor 150 Mark per maand een draadloze internetverbinding aanbieden. Het systeem werkt op frequenties van 2,4GHz en haalt snelheden van 2 tot 5Mbit per seconde:

Der Provider KDT will in Wuppertal ab Februar eine Funk-basierte Internet-Standleitung mit bis zu 5 MBit/s Bandbreite für 150 Mark im Monat anbieten. Auch die einmalige Einrichtungsgebühr fällt mit 300 Mark moderat aus.

Die Hardware-Ausrüstung wird vermietet und besteht aus einer 30-cm-Stabantenne, den benötigten Kabeln sowie einer PC-Card nebst eines ISA-Adapters für den Betrieb in einem Desktop-PC. Treiberunterstützung gibt es für Windows- und Linux-Rechner. KDT nutzt das ISM-Band ab 2,4 GHz und erreicht symmetrische Übertragungsraten zwischen 2 bis 5 MBit/s -- die Geschwindigkeit ist von der Entfernung zum Kunden abhängig.

Meer info vind je in dit nieuwsbericht van Heise Online.

BAPco heeft een nieuwe versie van de SysMark 2000 applicatie benchmark aangekondigd:

The Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo), a non-profit consortium of leading computer industry publications, independent testing labs, PC hardware manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers and software publishers announces the release of SYSmarkÒ 2000. SYSmark 2000 will extend BAPCo's leadership in industry standard benchmarks by providing an application-based benchmark that reflects today's leading edge software applications for Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity. SYSmark 2000 will support all Microsoft® Windows® operating systems: Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, and Windows 95. SYSmark 2000 is the first product being introduced under the newly formed strategic alliance between BAPCo and MadOnion.com. MadOnion.com, a leading provider of web services and e-commerce solutions, will provide marketing support and distribution for SYSmark 2000.

The SYSmark 2000 incorporates the following leading edge Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity applications:

INTERNET CONTENT CREATION

MetaCreations Bryce® 4, Avid* Elastic Reality® 3.1,

Adobe Photoshop® 5.5,

Adobe Premiere® 5.1, and Microsoft Windows Media

Encoder 4.0.

OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY

Corel CorelDRAW® 9.0, Microsoft Excel 2000, Dragon

NaturallySpeaking® Preferred 4.0,

Netscape Communicator® 4.61, Corel Paradox® 9.0,

Microsoft PowerPoint® 2000, and

Microsoft Word 2000.

Raadpleeg de press release voor meer optimistisch geblaat. De suite kun je voor 99 dollar aanschaffen op MadOnion.com (yup, dezelfde tent die ook de 3DMark benchmarks heeft ontwikkeld).

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van het Elsa 3D Revelator shutter brilletje gepost. Hier een hap:

The disappointing thing is that there is no OpenGL support, so you can't use the Revelator with Tribes or Quake. However, Elsa has told us that they're working on a Quake 3 Arena driver and it should be out within the next week or so. Also, there is a noticeable speed hit from using the Revelator due to the computer having to render two separate viewpoints, so if you're really pushing your hardware to play at a high resolution, you may have to drop one resolution to keep the same performance. But if the specific game gets a good boost from the Revelator, the speed hit is absolutely worth it. In fact, twice the speed hit would still be worth it. Also, no GeForce based card other than the Erazor X and Erazor X^2 are listed as being supported, so if you have another GeForce, contact Elsa to make sure your card is compatible.

XS Reality stopte zes knaagdieren (Microsoft Intellimouse USB, Intellimouse Pro, Intellimouse Explorer, Razer Boomslang 2000, Logitech Mouseman+ USB en Logitech Pilot USB) in een hokje en kwam tot de conclusie dat de gamers er goed aan doen om een Logitech Mouseman+ in huis te halen. Op de tweede plaats eindigt de wazig vormgegeven Razer Boomslang 2000:

Having used a whole load of mice over the last 3 years, I can safely say the following: for smoothness, nothing can match the Logitech Mouseman+, especially when used with a 3M Precise Mousing Surface. This makes it, in my opinion, the best 'shafting' mouse (that is, using the Lightning Gun in Quake 3). Its bulk makes it awkward for fast moves, which really lets it down in several situations. The Razer Boomslang 2000 offers the best of both worlds - it's weight and smoothness make it great for steady aiming, and it's high precision makes it great for fast moves too. The biggest drawbacks are the high cost ($100 + shipping), and the time taken to get used to the mouse. I recieved word from Razer that they are in the process of establishing a European distributor, so all you European readers will be able to get the BoomSlang without having to pay the high shipping costs. The Razer is definitely my pick as the current champion of mice.

Check onze eigen review voor een vergelijking tussen de Logitech Mouseman cordless en Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer.

CPU Review heeft een artikel over de i840 chipset in elkaar gedouwd. Hier een stukje over de dual-channel Rambus interface:

Unlike the i820, the i840 has TWO Rambus channels; allowing for a theoretical maximum bandwidth of almost 3.2Gb/sec; which is significantly higher than what a conventional motherboard using PC100 or PC133 memory can expect (approx. 0.8Gb/sec and 1Gb/sec respectively).

With a 133Mhz FSB, the P3 is only capable of a bit less than 1.06Gb/sec main memory bandwidth (133Mhz * 8 bytes / clock cycle; ignoring latency).

So why bother using a 3.2Gb/sec capable memory subsystem?

Because Intel is positioning the i840 chipset as a server chipset; and this makes a great deal of sense given the memory bandwidth limitation of P3 CPU's.

Hmm, da's inderdaad wel interessant. Met een 133MHz FSB blijft de maximale bandwidth tussen CPU en geheugen beperkt tot 1,08Gb/sec. Dual channel Rambus lijkt dan behoorlijk zinloos. Uiteraard kan de AGP poort in theorie een hogere performance halen, omdat het niet meer met de CPU heeft te kampen om geheugen bandwidth, maar aangezien AGP Texturing toch suckt (en daarom nauwelijks gebruikt wordt) zal dit in de praktijk weinig voordeel opleveren. De i820+Rambus game benchmarks die we gezien hebben lijken deze rederingen te ondersteunen.

Verder kunnen DMA devices gebruik maken van de extra bandwidth, wat eigenlijk vooral leuk is in server configuraties met 64-bit / 66MHz PCI slots. Een Athlon zal met z'n 200MHz EV6 bus in ieder geval efficiënter om kunnen gaan met de bandbreedte van Rambus of DDR SDRAM geheugens.

Voor bikkels met teveel geld heeft 3D Alpha een review geschreven van de Adaptech AAA-131U2, een U2W SCSI RAID controller met 3 kanalen die het mogelijk maken om maximaal 45 devices aan te sluiten. Ondersteund worden de RAID levels 0, 1, 0/1 en 5:

The first thing I wanted to look at was the card itself. I had never seen, held, or used a RAID controller in my life before, and I was curious. One thing I noted on the AAA-131U2 card is that is has a slot for a RAM DIMM, so the memory on the card is upgradable. Memory does come with this card, but it's only two megabytes of DIMM memory to work with, although it can support up to a 64 megabyte DIMM. (DIMM Compatibility List for Adaptec RAID cards.) The AAA-131U2 card fits in a half-length 32-bit PCI slot, and it has three channels of SCSI output: One channel is an Ultra2 Wide 68-pin SCSI connector, a standard Ultra SCSI 50-pin connector, and the last one is an external Ultra2 Wide 68-pin connector. You can also daisy-chain several external Ultra2 devices, so long as you terminate the last one. You can even use the external connector to connect an entire array enclosure to the RAID card. Also, if you're planning on using your SCSI drives more often than your IDE drives (Or entirely over your IDE drives.) You can take the LED connector off your motherboard and attach it to the AAA-131U2 card. Though, attaching a cable to the RAID card is completely optional, but it could be quite useful if you feel it necessary for your LEDs to indicate SCSI activity.

Helaas in de review geen harde benchmarks die de performance van een RAID config met een single SCSI of ATA66 schijf vergelijken.

Het volk achter T-Break.com heeft een review van Creative's GeForce DDR kaartje online gezet. Met een maximale core/mem clock van 130/345MHz blijkt het op de Annihilator Pro gebruikte Infineon DDR SGRAM redelijk goed overklokbaar te zijn:

The original Creative Labs GeForce board I reviewed was set to a default speed of 120MHz for the core and 150MHz for the memory. I was able to overclock it upto 135MHz core and 183MHz memory. The core speed in the GeForce PRO unfortunately didn't reach 135. Anything above 130 started producing random spots all over the screen. However, I was able to overclock the memory to an amazing 345MHz! Check out the results on the left with an Overclocked speed of 130MHz core and 345MHz memory.

Step Thermodynamics zal binnenkort een Athlon Gold Finger Device gaan verkopen voor de schamele prijs van 15 dollar! (thanks JL voor de tip):

Coming Soon!!! Due to overwhelming customer demand, we will soon be offering our own Athlon STEP-UP Card to allow users to custom set their Athlon CPU's to virtually any Multiplier and VCore setting they choose, by simply plugging the card into their Athlon CPU.

Naturally, our Card will be the best built Card on the market, built to ISO 9001 standards, and will sell for roughly $15.00 to our customers. Look for it in January, 2000...