Volgens een test van CRN Test Center is Windows 2000 Advanced Sterver stabieler - maar in sommige gevallen ook trager - dan NT4:

Performance tests at the CRN Test Center showed therelease-to-manufacturing version of Microsoft Windows2000 Advanced Server throttles back CPU and memory use to increase stability, at the sacrifice of throughput for Web applications.

That lets the network operating system scale up better in enterprise environments, keeping the server up and running under torturous loads. Tweaks can be made to enhance throughput if the reseller so chooses.

Tests show CPU utilization drops about 58 percent when compared with Win NT 4.0. Throughput for Web services also dropped by approximately 18 percent, and memory usage dropped by about 10 percent.

Zie dit artikel van Techweb voor meer info.

Zoals in dit nieuwsbericht al gesuggereerd werd zijn de geruchten rond het mogelijk aanwezig zijn van hardware-versnelde Transform & Lighting hevig de kop op gestoken:

Here's what Khong Jye Liew author of MGA Tweak had to say.

All right, guys. Rather than debating on such matter, why don't we refer to the chip specification. This is what it says: "...These are the 64 multi-purpose WARP registers (WR0, WR1,...., WR63). They can represent an IEEE single precision floating point number, a fixed point 32-bit integer, two 16-bit words or four bytes. It is up to the software to define what to put in these registers and how the microcode will interpret them..."

At first, I was rather confused when I first saw this. The WARP engine is meant for triangle setup which is integer intensive, but Matrox actually built it with floating point capabilities. And, the WARP is FULLY PROGRAMMABLE.

I am no 3D programmer, I don't know whether single precision IEEE FP will be sufficient for T&L. I have long been suspecting the capability of G200/G400 to do T&L if the WARP can be programmed to do so. Well, it still depends on whether the whole WARP architecture is optimized for T&L processing. If Matrox only do T&L in the so-called new "G450", then probably they are optimizing the WARP for T&L processing.

The really interesting upshot of all this speculation at least is that is adds weight to the rumour that the new G450 chip will come with some form of T&L. It brought a smile to my face that after posting a rather tongue in cheek comment in the forums about "knowing the G450 would support T&L" I was very quickly contacted by Matrox wanting to know where I had obtained the information, what more proof do we need that it is fact

Check M.U.R.C. voor de details.

DOS schrijft: "Libertel en Ericsson starten een pilotproject op het Gigaport-netwerk. De bedrijven gaan onderzoeken of een mobiel GPRS-netwerk levensvatbaar is. GPRS is de opvolger van GSM, bedoeld om grotere pakketten data te versturen. In 2002 dient twintig procent van de Surfnet-doelgroep (hogescholen, universiteiten en onderzoeksinstituten) een twee megabit mobiele verbinding te hebben. ":

[...] Via het GPRS-systeem moet mobiel e-mailen en Internetten mogelijk worden. De proef zal een jaar lang lopen op het Gigaport-netwerk. [...] Libertel en Ericsson hebben het partnership verworven via een openbare aanbesteding door GigaPort. De partijen is gevraagd op basis van de nieuwste technologie GPRS-diensten te leveren aan het GigaPort-Netwerk. Als onderdeel van het partnership wordt het GigaPort-Netwerk aan het Libertel GSM-netwerk gekoppeld en worden nieuwe diensten ontwikkeld zoals mobiel e-mail, mobiel LAN en ander mobiel Internetgebruik.

De op dit moment nog erg blije gebruikers van een A2000 Power abo zijn bang dat ze met de overgang naar Chello in snelheid achteruit zullen gaan, schrijft Planet Multimedia:

Met name de snelheid die ze bij A2000 genieten om bestanden te versturen naar Internet, zou omlaag gaan volgens gebruikersclub AGVK: 'Chello heeft namelijk volgens onze bronnen concrete plannen om de upstream snelheid van de Intergebruikers te verlagen naar 128 kilobit/seconde. De AGVK is het hier niet mee eens. De verlaging zal het interactieve karakter van Internet niet ten goede komen....Het valt hierdoor niet uit te sluiten dat individuele abonnees naar de rechter zullen stappen wegen wanprestatie/contractbreuk. Ook de AGVK sluit een gang naar de rechter niet uit.' De bestuursleden waren niet bereikbaar om te vertellen wat de upstream-snelheid momenteel is.

De gebruikers kunnen meer dan klagen. Ze schrijven: 'Er zijn ook enige lichtpuntjes te melden. Ondanks de schaarste die er heerst poogt UPC/Chello de huidige bandbreedte die zij tot haar beschikking heeft op het internet te vergroten.

Hieronder nog een paar links naar wat Athlon reviews die vandaag op het net verschenen zijn:

[break]Gamers Depot reviewt de Athlon 750 voor ons.[/break]While we here at Gamers Depot are always glad to see progress in computer hardware, we are bummed out that seems while AMD may have taken one step forward, they took 1 1/2 steps backwards. This is definitely a chip that is totally targeted at the OEM, and more of a "bragging rights" chip over Intel, then it is a chip that will be targeted at the hardcore gamers.

Once AMD gets rolling with the 800Mhz with full speed L2 Cache, then we'll see something to get more excited about. In the mean time if you already own an Athlon, and have been thinking about upgrading, then wait a little longer. If you're on a budget, and looking for the best bang for the buck, then consider a slower Athlon like the 650 or 700.[break]Ace's Hardware heeft er eentje van de Athlon op 800MHz:[/break]The Athlon 800 does surprisingly well in most benchmarks. I personally expected that it would suffer more from the fact that the L2-cache only runs at 325 MHz and that the SDRAM runs 8 times slower. Nevertheless, the Athlon will never be able to show its true potential without an on-die L2-cache. A seventh generation CPU should not be limited by a sixth generation L2-cache.

The PIII 800 will show better performance in quite a few business applications, but our first impression is that the Athlon 800 packs a punch in the applications where CPU power really counts: CAD, Simulators, etc. We will do our best to give you more insight in those two CPU's later, it is too early to publish a final judgement.

Overclockers will appreciate the slower, but much cheaper brothers of the Athlon 800. I can tell you that there aren't many .18 µ CPU's out there that don't reach 750 MHz (are there any?), if you catch my drift. Now if only somebody would find a convenient way to use this overclocking potential.[break]The Tech Report heeft ook wat testjes gedaan met een Athlon 800:[/break]If there's a theme to these test results, it'd have to be "diminishing returns." We suspect that, as systems approach the magic 1GHz mark at a rather feverish pace (with Intel and AMD going great guns for the MHz title), upgraders will want to keep in mind that the rest of the components in their systems will have to get faster to feed their processors properly.

Hopefully, our attempts at overclocking the 800 will bear fruit later this week, as I'm anxious to see how the curve for the .4 divider chips extends as the speeds get higher. Overall, I'd have to say that the 800 looks to be a much stronger chip than the 750, since the increase in clock speed helps to offset the slower cache that made the difference between the 700 and 750 very small.

As far as purchasing an 800 with the hope of getting more out of it through the use of a "Golden Fingers" overclocking card, the jury is still out. I will say, based on my limited overclocking tests so far, that I wouldn't look for near the same kinds of gains as we've seen recently from a 500, for example. My 500 will do 700 MHz at stock voltage; when I tried to get the 800 to 900 MHz at stock voltage (the only combination I've tried so far), it wouldn't even boot Win98. As I said, I hope to have more information on overclocking later in the week, but I wanted to get these results out there for you. See you later in the week…

Wapzer is blij want: "Versie 4.02 van het populaire progje Windows Commander is uit!"

Uit de mail van Ghisler.com:

The new release adds a few new features like user defined hotkeys and more operations in the background. Windows Commander is Year 2000 (y2k) compliant since version 3.53, so if you have an older version you should update now!

The update is FREE for all registered users. Simply download the new (Shareware) version, unzip it to an empty directory, and install it to the same directory as the registered version.

Kijk hier voor meer info

3DGPU meldt dat nVidia een aantal fraaie nieuwe demo's heeft gereleased. Hieronder de info & links:
(ps. demo's draaien ook op non-nVidia kaarten)

• GL_Bump
A great demo of bump mapping in OpenGL sent in by Diego Tartara. Thanks!

• BenMark5
13 million is a lot of triangles per second.

• SphereMark
Here's a GeForce 256 performance test that uses hardware Transform and Lighting

• Grass
The sample demonstrates an extremely fast and accurate way to display realtime 3D grass. It displays thousands of dynamically lit, Z-correct, filtered blades using 5 quads and one texture map.

• Volumetric Explosion Example
Taking a step beyond ordinary bilboarded explosions, this DX6 example uses texture projections to fill out the explosion texture.

Thanks Rubenpruim voor de tip.

Riva 3D heeft een review in elkaar getimmerd van de PCI versie van de Voodoo3 3000. Ideaal om een ouder AGP-loos systeem wat 3D kracht te geven:

If you're thinking system upgrade, but don't have the bucks for motherboard with AGP and a new AGP card, then the Voodoo 3 3000 PCI may very well be the ticket to the performance you're looking for. And with many games still supporting GLIDE and the recent opening of 3DFX's GLIDE API to use by other chipsets, one can assume that GLIDE has a bit more life left in it for the time being.

The 3000 PCI does have a very nice software bundle, which includes the full version of Unreal, a coupon for a free copy of Unreal Tournament, and Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, which is a very, very fun AND challenging racing game (DUH!).

If you're looking for the above and solid D3D performance, then you won't be disappointed under most circumstances. But with most of the newer games being released with enhanced D3D support, high poly counts and multiple lighting sources, then you may be better off upgrading your motherboard and saving up for a new AGP card at a later date. Of course, you always have the option of turning off or lowering various features in games in order to get good framerates at a tradeoff in visual quality.

The only other potential drawback is the V3's limits to 256x256 textures. Many new games can utilize much higher textures resulting in dramatic increases in visual quality. It's not a huge issue at this point, but will undoubtedly be so in the future.

So, we can say that the V3 3000 PCI is definitely a good investment for those with lower end systems looking for an inexpensive upgrade, but it should be obvious to all that the investment has a limited lifespan since every motherboard currently in production has an AGP slot. It's a fact of life that in order to keep up with today's games, a motherboard upgrade and consequently, an AGP card, is inevitable.

Bij Computer Gamers Online is een review te vinden rondom ATi's dual Rage Fury Pro setup, de ATi Rage Fury MAXX. Hieronder een plak:

The card we tested was definitely a beta product. Image quality was usually pretty good and the card was generally stable, but some textures in Unreal Tournament popped in and out and there were similar problems with 3DMark 2000. Other programs, like Quake III Arena, ran flawlessly. There is still plenty of time for ATI to tweak and improve the performance and stability of their drivers, and of course, for their competition to do the same. When the card is released January, ATI will have to contend with similarly-priced GeForce cards using faster DDR memory, which might close the performance gap between the two cards at high resolutions in 32bit color. From what we've seen so far, ATI is providing power-gamers with an excellent product with the Rage Fury MAXX. It's definitely not a card for the casual gamer with a slower computer, but it should provide those with fast machines with some of the fastest frame rates and best image quality around. Even if it doesn't end up leading the pack, it won't be far behind.

Het volk van 3D Spotlight heeft een review gebakken van de Abit BF6 mobo. Dit plankje draait op de BX chipset, heeft 6 PCI slots en biedt keuze uit 120 FSB settings. Hieronder wat overclocking resultaten:

If overclocking is an art then Abit makes the drawing board to create the perfect masterpiece. Ever since Abit introduced the BH6 and Intel happened to have the very overclockable Celeron 300; people have known Abit for their great overclocking boards.

The BF6 uses the same voltage tweak that previous motherboards have used. It can set the voltage from 1.3V to 2.1V in .5V increments and 2.2V. The BF6 has the 1/3 and Œ PCI multipliers and also has the 1/1 and œ AGP multipliers.

The AGP multipliers may become a problem for those who wish to use the 133MHz FSB on up. From what I’m hearing, a lot of the new video cards allow you to use high AGP speeds. My GeForce will run on AGP speeds up to 100MHz without problems. My TNT2, on the other hand, refuses to run on AGP speeds above 86MHz.

Now came the time to use the new SoftMenu III on my shiny new Pentium III 450. I began by setting the FSB to 133MHz with my RAM set to CAS/RAS 3. The computer operated fine at 600MHz with the default 2.0 volts.

Next, I set the FSB to 140MHz and was amazed that it was running at a stable 630MHz while still using the default 2.0 volts. Then, I knew I had a lucky CPU on my hand. I set the FSB to 145MHz with 2.0 volts and it ran fine for a while at 653MHz, but then locked up. I then gave it more voltage and it worked perfectly at 653MHz with 2.1 volts.

As of right now, the CPU is running at a completely stable 657MHz with only 2.1 volts. It will run fine at 666MHz with 2.2 volts, but decided against it since I want my CPU to last a long time.

With the new Abit SoftMenu III, I can back down 1 or 2 MHz, and it won’t affect performance much. This shows that the BF6 is a good overclocking board for CPUs originally designed to run on the 100MHz FSB, but for the Celerons with the 66MHz bus speed, tweaking with the new SoftMenu III may be a little harder, since they don’t have FSB increments for those lower settings.

3D GameForce heeft een uitgebreide review het net op gegooid van de dikke 10.000rpm Quantum Atlas 10K Ultra160/m SCSI schijf:

All in all this drive ran very very fast and stable! It moves data faster then any other drive on the market (as of this writing) and without hesitations. So, who is this aimed for? Is the Atlas 10k for you? I'd have to say if your looking for the best out of your system and your hungry for top notice performance with greater Stability, Upgradability, already own a Ultra 2 SCSI adapter, need to add more devices and or, want a new hard drive for Christmas... it's a BIG YES! Also, If you have multiple users accessing a server on your network and they can't afford to waste any time pushing data, your standard ATA33/66 drives just wont cut it. The Atlas 10k is made for this and will work even harder so you don't have to!

If your pockets are small, or if all you do is play a few board games, write a few letters once in a while and surf the net, you would see a difference, but you would probably just as well benefit from your standard ATA33/66 drive. If your a Hard Core Gamer and looking for faster Frames Per Second, look elsewhere, such as a Video card or faster CPU. This drive will not give you that, but will definitely cut your load times and installations in half! Like I said, this drive has much more to offer and is advertised for fast Server/Workstation & Subsystem environments, heavy data transfers and graphics work. So if your into this, you will benefit tremendously from the Atlas 10k!

Overclockin'.com heeft een review online geketst van de Alpha P3125 heatsink, waarmee het hun is gelukt een P3-450 op 675MHz te laten lopen op 2.3 Volt. Hieronder een stukkie:

Once again, Alpha proves that they produce some of the best heatsinks on the market. The innovative copper insert in the heatsink and their already impressive design add up to make this a very nice heatsink. There are a couple of things that keep the Alpha from being perfect. The size of the heatsink may be a problem on some motherboards. Obviously, part of the reason the heatsink performs so well is its size, so just keep it in mind if you are thinking about buying one. The only other thing is it's cost. The average cost of this heatsink (including the fans) is in the $45-50 range. This is pretty expensive for a heatsink. You can get a decent heatsink for $20-25. However, a decent heatsink may not allow you to get the most out of your processor and it certainly won't keep the processor as cool as the Alpha will. This Alpha P3125 heatsink allowed me to run my PIII 450 SL35D processor a full 28MHz faster than the other heatsinks I tested it with and kept it cooler in the process.

If you are in the market for the best air-cooled heatsink available for your PIII processor look no further. This is a highly recommended product. Once again, I have awarded an Alpha heatsink the Overclockin' Choice Award!!

Niels de Koning schrijft: " Wij (Steven Loodewijk en ik) hebben een nieuwe website opgezet, die juist de positieve kant van Superweb belicht, en niet(zoals velen andere website's) de negatieve.

Het doel van onze website is het laten merken aan de media, dat er wel degelijk tevreden Superweb gebruikers zijn. Ook is er een nieuws-sectie op de website.

De website is te vinden op http://superweb.nielsonline.nl"

Natrat schrijft dat Demon Internet een gratis online gaming service aanbiedt, genaamd 'The DOG'. Hieronder wat meer info geplukt uit het persbericht:

Demon Internet biedt vanaf vandaag een speciaal inbelnummer voor haar Games service; the Demon Online Gamer, ofwel 'The DOG'. Via deze telefoonlijnen kunnen gamers tegen lokaal tarief de snelste en meest directe toegang krijgen tot onze nieuwe games-servers, waarop populaire spellen draaien als Quake 3 en Unreal Tournament.

Daarnaast is er de speciale website van 'The Dog', waar van alles is te vinden over gamen bij Demon, zoals b.v. bestanden om te downloaden, beschrijvingen van de verschillende spellen en een berichtenforum waar gamers met elkaar kunnen discussieren en afspreken. Op http://www.demon.nl/games is meer informatie te vinden over The Dog.

Het nieuwe inbelnummer biedt toegang tot The Dog games servers, The Dog website en tot de Demon FTP server. In principe kan elk willekeurig IP-gebaseerd spel op deze manier online worden gespeeld (dus ook spellen die niet op de server zelf draaien). Twee gamers die via het speciale inbelnummer online zijn, hebben een optimale verbinding met elkaar, het verkeer loopt immers niet via Internet. Overige internettoepassingen, zoals bijvoorbeeld het WWW zelf of e-mail en nieuwstoegang, zijn niet mogelijk via het games nummer. Ook de externe links op The Dog website zullen dan ook niet werken.

Het inbelnummer is te gebruiken door iedereen, dus ook door niet-demon klanten. Bovendien is het nummer in heel Nederland tegen lokaal tarief bereikbaar. Er kan worden ingebeld met een modem tot 56K (V90) of via ISDN (64K). Kijk op The Dog Website; http://www.demon.nl/games/gamingdialup.html, om het lokale inbelnummer voor uw regio op te zoeken. Ook vindt u hier de inlognaam en het bijbehorende wachtwoord.

Voorlopig bieden we The Dog aan als test. Bij overweldigende populariteit kan het zijn dat de dienst moeilijk bereikbaar is.

De website van dit project vind je hier.

Naast Sharky Extreme heeft ook AnandTech net zijn reviews van de Intel P3-750 en P3-800 online gezet, alsmede een test van de AMD Athlon 800MHz. Erg jammer voor AMD, maar op deze snelheden begint Intel weer langzaam de overhand te krijgen in sommige typen benchmarks. Dit als gevolg van de L2 cache divider van 2/5 voor de snellere Athlons, en de gedwongen AGP 1x mode waarmee de Athlon het moet doen in combinatie met GeForce videokaarten. Hieronder een gedeelte uit de conclusie van de Athlon 800 review:

The Athlon 700 was the last Athlon to feature the 1/2 speed L2 cache and it will most likely be a fairly expensive part to pick up even after the 750 and 800MHz parts make their way into the retail channels. The Athlon 800 is just another step in the Athlon line, for AMD, it's purpose is to offer a clock speed competitor to Intel's Pentium III 800, but it's main purpose for most of you will be to drive the prices of the other Athlon processors down which is never a bad thing.

The Athlon 800 will make its official shipping introduction sometime in January, hopefully by then the Athlon 750 will begin to surface around the net as well. It won't be much longer until we begin to hear more about AMD's Thunderbird and Spitfire based Athlon processors featuring a likely 512KB of full speed on-die L2 cache, until then, if you are in the market for an Athlon, the 500 - 600MHz chips are pretty affordable and very high performing solutions. If you must have the best then there will always be the 800, but be warned, the performance gain going from 700 to 800 isn't as great as we'd hope it would be courtesy of the 2/5 L2 cache divider.

All of this makes you wonder, who will be the first to break 800MHz?

Craig Campanaro van Sharky Extreme heeft een review in elkaar getimmerd van de Intel P3-750, P3-800 en P3-800B Coppermine processors, waarbij alleen de 800B gebruik maakt van een 133MHz busspeed. Zoals we van Craig verwacht zijn komt Intel erg positief uit de bus, mede dankzij het i820 / RDRAM platform.

First off, let's clear up any confusion about what Intel has introduced today.

All three of the new CPUs are Pentium IIIs, each manufactured using Intel's new .18 micron manufacturing process, and each offering the integrated L2 cache and other improvements of the Coppermine core.

They differ only in their raw MHz level, and the system bus they're intended to utilize.

CPU Bus Speed P3-750 100MHz only P3-800 100MHz only P3-800B 133MHz only

You may be wondering why Intel continues to produce CPUs that operate at just the 100MHz bus speed, and your answer lies in the millions of established 440BX mainboards Intel has sold over the past two years.

Add in the newly designed, yet economic i810 mainboards, which also utilize a 100MHz system bus, and the reasoning for keeping the slower bus speed alive is clear.

For i820 or i840-based mainboard owners the upgrade path is simple, as Intel CPUs using either 100 or 133MHz system bus speeds can be utilized.

Aside from the bus speed differences, all three of these new CPUs are true-blue .18 micron Coppermine CPUs.

Lees hier de rest van zijn verhaaltje, met vergelijkings benchmarks met de AMD Athlon.

CyberJunk86 schrijft: "Zeer interressant voor de mensen die goedkope pceetjes voor de thuisgebruikert willenbouwen. Ook leuk als je vast een basis systeempje wil hebben om later op te sieren met een G400 ofzo !"

SUMMARY: This is a nice board if you're looking for a Celeron "All-in-One" solution. The optional on-board video and audio are not "bleeding edge" nor high-performance compared to what's available, but certainly adequate. I would recommend this board to anyone looking to build an inexpensive Celeron "back-up" system, an office computer or one for Mom to write letters.

I noticed this board at a computer show and was struck by 1, the location of the power connector (top of board) and 2, the size of the capacitors near the socket. I hate power connectors that get in the way, and this one is great - does not interfere with anything and easy to get to. The capacitors (see pic below) are huge - these coke-can sized caps say a lot about the stability designed into this board.

Nog een paar specs:

DMA 33 and Ultra DMA 66 Synchronous and Asynchronous CPU/RAM Speeds
SIS 620 2X AGP Set with On-Board Graphics
Three DIMM sockets supporting up to 768 MB RAM
Wake-on-Lan and Wake-on-Ring (Modem) Connectors
Three Fan Connectors
Infra-Red Module Connector
Optional On-Board Audio
Optional TV Out
Optional LCD Output
CPU Temp Monitoring
Voltage Increases of 0.1 v to CPU , 0.1 to 0.2 v to RAM, chipset, AGP and CPU IO buffer

Dit zijn allemaal extra features, de volledige lijst met specs vind je hier. Een van de concurrenten van de ME99 is de Abit BE6-II.
Surf naar Overclockers.com voor de review.