VHware en vsmb@superweb.nl" rel="external">ovs stuurden beide een link richting Ace's Hardware, waar men nieuws heeft over de AMD 760 chipset. De verwachte release moet ergens in het derde kwartaal van 2000 plaatsvinden, tergelijkertijd met de introductie van de Mustang. Onder de features bevinden zich support voor 266MHz FSB en ondersteuning van DDR SDRAM:

The VIA KX133 chipset DOES NOT support a 266 Mhz (133 MHz DDR) Front Side Bus (as some sources indicated) but the AMD 760 chipset will.

Our best industry sources have told us that the AMD 760 will appear in Q3 of 2000 together with the Athlon Mustang. AMD wants to make sure that the Mustang launch will be backed up with a stable 266 MHz FSB chipset. Just in case VIA doesn't get its 266 MHz FSB chipset ready by then, as it is quite difficult to make the chipset/bus work at such high speeds. The AMD 760 chipset will have the same features as the VIA KX133 (besides 266 MHz bus).

BXBoards heeft een review van de MSI 6167 Athlon plank online gezet. Zoals bekend een nogal kaal plankje, waarmee voor de overklokkers weinig eer te behalen valt (daarvoor moet je een GFD in huis halen). Afgezien van de beperkte featureset blijkt het een goeie plank te zijn, stabieler dan de SD11 en K7M:

In my first experiences with a Athlon motherboard was SD-11, which was a very good exercise in frustration. See I had the luck of buying one of the infamous bad lot that was released, but was taken cared of by the vendor that I bought it from with a new board and after a few bios upgrades I was up and running, (which I find the SD-11 a good board for those who use the MONSTER heatsinks). I can say for a fact that after that experience the 6167 was a breath of fresh air, not one problem with setup and or stability during my use of it, Only unstable period of use was when I tried using the Geforce without the Athlon Detonator Drives. For those who are really wanting a board NOW!!! And can't wait I'd would really take a good look at this one or Gigabytes, not as many problems as with the SD-11 and K7M, and can be found for around 130.00 on pricewatch, but If you have any will power at all WAIT!!!, cause as Andy and I have mention a New version of the AMD 750 chipset, and also what I've been waiting for months for, the KX133 boards are going to be released in Feb, even thou I bet they will show up sooner, cause the products are already out in Hong Kong. So IMHO wait.

Joop stuurde dit artikel van Discovery, met een rangschikking van de landen die het beste/slechts zijn voorbereid op het milleniumprobleem. Nederland blijkt zich te bevinden in het groepje landen met de beste voorbereiding:

International Monitoring (IM), a technology consulting group based in Britain, has ranked nations around the world according to their preparedness for Y2K.

[...] The rankings:

Best prepared (least at risk): Bermuda, Chile, Canada, United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, Israel.

Better prepared: Benin, South Africa, Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, Fiji, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Syria.

De rest van de ranking vind je hier.

Dans Data onderging helse ervaringen tijdens het reviewen van de AOpen Artist PA50, een graphics decellerator met SiS 6326 chipset:

To get a general idea of the comparative 3D speeds of the SiS card and a current hot board like a TNT2 Ultra or Voodoo 3 (don't even START thinking GeForce), visualise, in your mind, Stonehenge. That's the hot board's results. Now visualise a housebrick standing next to each stone. There you go. [break] LOL . En over de 2D performance: [/break] I'm prone to saying that every card on the shelves these days has more than adequate 2D speed, and you can't tell the difference. Well, this is the card that proves me wrong; I could tell the difference between this card and one of the much faster ones in normal Windows operations. But only now and then; when dragging out a crop box in Photoshop, for instance, the SiS is quite sluggish as it struggles to draw all of those "ants" crawling around the edge of the selection area. It's still not horrible to use, but the difference is marked.

Het volk Bij Computing Pros heeft een review gepost van de Thrustmaster Nascar Charger Racing Wheel, een stuurwiel dat voor de verandering niet met terugkoppelende krachten is uitgevoerd:

Well now comes the fun part! Before I begin discussing its "performance" as a racing wheel, I like to address the wheel's layout and features. Remembering that this is the lowend model, there isn't any force feedback. The layout of the buttons on the wheel are placed well within reach of my thumbs. The four red buttons in the front can be configured to be anything you want them to be. They have quite a strong bounceback after you press them so they're not the mushy kind. In the back there are also 2 flap like levers on both the right and left side of the wheel. They serve as a gas and brake if you don't like using the pedals. I find the levers hard to control/reach during actual driving. If they were perhaps placed even closer that actually might make them better. When you turn the wheel they actually provide resistence the more you turn them in both directions. While the wheel is simple and designed well, the pedals, on the other hand is not. The actual pedals are just too short for any average size individual so there's not much room to really control foot pressure well. What makes it worse is that the base for the pedals is just not heavy enough to give the rubber feet underneath the base any traction to prevent it from sliding. I had placed the pedals on a carpetted floor which should've provided good friction to prevent sliding, but it still slid around substantially.

3D Soundsurge heeft een review gepost van de Videologic Sirocco Crossfire 4.1 speakerset. Het systeem heeft een vermogen van 80Watt (RMS) en wordt geleverd met versterker, echter zonder AC-3 decoder:

If we start to look beyond the audio quality, the Crossfire has the most complete feature list of any 4-speaker system I’ve tested or even read about. It has all the volume controls you need, amplified headphone out, the option to connect 3 different sources and easily switch between them, 4-speaker mode for stereo sources and finally a LFE input which gives you more options if you ever want to buy an external Dolby Digital and/or DTS decoder for the best movie experience. One thing missing though if you intend to use it with an external decoder is the center channel, but as mentioned, a phantom center channel works well enough that this isn’t a significant issue and you can always connect the center channel to another speaker like the one in your TV.

Anand heeft in zijn nieuwste artikel eens gekeken naar de overklokbaarheid van de FC-PGA 500E/550E Pentium III Coppermine processors. Het resultaat is vrij positief, door de CPU's via een Iwill Slocket-II adapter op een Abit BE6 met 124MHz FSB te zetten draaiden beide P3's op respectievelijk 620 en 682MHz volledig stabiel. Het was zelfs mogelijk om de zaak op 133MHz busspeed te draaien, alleen dan is het niet mogelijk om 3D games / applicaties te draaien vanwege de te hoge AGP snelheid. Hieronder een gedeelte uit Anand's verhaal:

We took two OEM FC-PGA Pentium III 500E CPUs, ran them at their default core voltage of 1.60v and used a Foxconn Socket-370 heatsink/fan combo all on an Iwill Slocket-II adapter to see how far we could push the chips. The first test was on an ABIT BE6 using the 124MHz FSB setting, and both chips passed all of our stability tests conducted over a 48 hour period consisting of looped runs of SYSMark 2000 and Content Creation Winstone 2000. The resulting 500 to 620MHz overclock was a success without even increasing the core voltage or using extreme cooling methods. While the Foxconn heatsink/fan combo was an exceptionally well made unit, it's definitely far from overkill and shouldn't set you back more than $15 at most.

Our BE6 even allowed us to increase the FSB frequency to 133MHz resulting in a 33% overclock to 667MHz, and although our TNT2 Ultra and GeForce test cards would not run at the increased AGP frequency in any 3D applications/games, the system was otherwise completely stable. Once again, this was at the default 1.60v core voltage and using the same Foxconn heatsink/fan combo.

We took a similar approach to the 550E processor and repeated the same tests, only this time, using two 550E CPUs. The one thing you have to understand is that the 500E and 550E CPUs are virtually the same; Intel's yields are already incredibly high on their 0.18-micron process and as a result there is very little difference between a CPU that's rated at 500MHz and one that's rated 550MHz, so their overclocking potential should be basically the same. Using the same 124MHz FSB setting, the 550Es had no problem making it up to 682MHz using the exact same heatsink/fan combo. Unfortunately, the Iwill Slocket-II does not connect the pin required for the BE6's Winbond hardware monitoring chip to read from the thermal diode of the processor, so we could not accurately report the temperatures of the CPU.

Once again we pushed the limits of our BE6 test bed and increased the FSB to 133MHz, and the 550E had no problem running at the new 733MHz setting. Keep in mind that this is a $340 CPU running at 733MHz without any added cooling or core voltage tweaks. As with the first 133MHz FSB tests we ran on the BE6, the 550E at 733MHz was no different in that the TNT2 and GeForce cards we tossed at it would lock up during any games or other 3D applications.

Shuriken schrijft: "Een nieuwe versie van een van de beste Glide Wrappers. Ik heb zelf slechte ervaringen met Glide Wrappers maar deze is echt goed. Het lukte me om op m'n TNT2 Ultra, in een window van 640x480 Unreal Tournament te spelen. En dan zag het er nog goed uit ook (op een paar kleine artifacts na) en een redelijke framerate. Probeer maar eens":

OpenGLide is back again, now, version 0.04.

This version has a lot of OpenGL extensions implemented and at least for NVidia users, a faster and better version. It is not especific for NVidia, but i implemented the extensions that are found on the 3.x driver of NVidia.

ALL feedback is welcome, the more i have, the more compatible it will be. Please, make sure to give your opinion to: Fabio Barros

Many thanks to everyone that helped, please read the README file included in the Zip package.

Haal de zip hier naar beneden.

OpenGL.org meldt dat er beta OpenGL drivertjes voor de Elsa 3D Revelator zijn gereleased:

If you have an ELSA Erazor III board then you can use the beta OpenGL driver, to get stereo OpenGL support with 3D Revelator stereo glasses. This driver supports fullscreen OpenGL games in stereo mode with ELSA's 3D Revelator and has been tested with Quake II and Quake III in stereo mode. For Erazor II and non ELSA accelerator boards, you can use a Glide wrapper.

19-inch monitoren zijn wel lachen, maar 21-inch is nog veel cooler . 32BitsOnline heeft daarom voor ons de Sony GDM-F500 eens getest. De maximale resolutie van 2046 x 1536 @ 60Hz en een dot pich van .22 mm zijn verantwoordelijk voor een perfecte beeldkwaliteit:

The F500 has incredibly brilliant color reproduction. Until the reviewer used this monitor, the only other monitor that compared was the Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 17", but most trinitron/diamondtron colors have great colors and are famous for it. In addition to the great colors, the screen is very bright, and it is one of the few monitors that I've not had to turn the brightness up to maximum to reach the level I desired. Text is very readable, even at high resolutions (this review is being done at 1600x1200 resolution). In terms of geometry, I never once experienced a resolution and refresh rate where the corners weren't perfect or that the sides weren't straight, so there are no complaints about geometry.

The published specs on the F500 (listed on page 1) do not do the monitor justice. The top two resolutions are not even listed in the monitor manual, but are the best I could get on a Voodoo3 3000 - a better 2D card like a Matrox G400 should give you better rates. Also, the Hz are also not the maximum - I was able to get 160Hz at 800x600 and 640x480, 120Hz at 1024x768, and 100Hz at 1280x1024, so anyone should be able to make their eyes happy. When using some of the higher resolutions, a BNC cable results in a slightly better picture, for those who want to get the best picture possible.

Alex "Sharky" Ross heeft het zesde deel van zijn Private Eye series online geplant. In deze editie o.a. een top 10 van producten die iedereen wel onder de kerstboom wil zien liggen, een update over Bill's mysterieuze X-Box, wat issues over Coppermine processors en Abit mobo's, en een interview met Scott Sellers van 3dfx. Hieronder wat voorspellen voor het jaar 2000 door paragnost Sharky:

• 1GHz CPUs will see the light of day in the mainstream by Q4 with Intel's 1GHz Willamette going toe to toe with AMD's 1GHz Athlon. Will it never end? Probably not..
• Daikatana will be out in the US & Europe (i.e. not out this year)
• Creative will walk down the aisle with NVIDIA
• Matrox will announce the successor to the G400 chip
• Matrox will also unveil a new "Turbo" G400 AGP 4X version of the G400. This chip will most likely be manufactured on a .18micron process but will it harbor T&L? Now that's the question…
• RAMBUS will still charge way too much per megabyte
• 3dfx' VSA-100 chip will be released to go head-to-head with NVIDIA's "spring refresh". Hand bags at six paces, that sort of stuff…
• The Microsoft X-Box will be delayed until the end of 2001.
• ATI's Rage Fury MAXX will hit the shelves in Q1. It'll compete well with SDRAM based GeForce's but struggle against the DDR boards and the 'spring refresh' from NVIDIA.
• The Y2K bug will bite those annoying TV "I know it all and think I'm trendy because I use OS/2 Warp on a 286" journalists on the rear.
• Gigapixel and Bitboys Oy will go toe to toe with press releases announcing 5Gigapixel fill rates.
• Adults that are seen hopping skipping, jumping and generally acting like Sonic the Hedgehog during rush hours across the globe will be blamed on video games by the mass media.
• The Playstation 2 will become a roaring success and sell well over 500,000 units in its first two months of life.
• Jon Simon will finally quit his Tribes addiction in favor of Tribes 2. That's the plan anyway…

UPC neemt de Franse kabelexploitant Intercomm over, zo melde Planet Multimedia:

UPC neemt de Franse kabelexploitant Intercomm over. Het Amerikaanse kabelbedrijf in Europa maakt ook bekend dat ze de grens van 50.000 abonnees voor telefonie heeft overschreden. En dat de schorsing van UPC-dochter A2000 bij de internetbond NLIP voorbij is.

Het hele bericht vindt je op planet.nl

Dan's Data heeft een review gepost van de InClose BayCooler II harddisk cooler. Hieronder wat info over het ding, en een screenie:

InClose Design's BayCooler 2 is a classy implementation of this basic idea. Instead of the separate mounting rail and plastic faceplate design of most such coolers, it's all one piece, with the mounting chassis made of sturdy steel plate. This makes it easier to install and move - it's all of a piece with the drive, when assembled - and also may provide somewhat better cooling, thanks to the larger heat sink and contact area of the steel frame.

The BayCooler retails for a quite reasonable $US29. This is substantially more than you'll pay for a superficially similar separate-rails cooler, but it's still very cheap compared with the monster drives many users will be pointing it at. Some cheaper coolers don't come with a dust filter, either; filling your computer with air-gunk isn't actually as bad as you might think, and hard drives have their own filters that keep crud out very effectively, but a filter is still a nice thing to have.

Cheaper filters may also have very dodgy fans in them. They pretty much all use 40mm slimline fans, and so does the BayCooler 2, but at least it's got three nice sculpted-fin units, which should move a reasonable amount of air.

Hot Hardware heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid over hun Athlon 500 overclocking resultaten met The Outside Loops 'Afterburner' device. Met dit apparaatje is het aanpassen van de multiplier en voltage settings zo gepiept. Resultaat: een Athlon 500 loopt als een zonnetje op 800MHz

Needless to say, you have some headroom for growth here. You can dial in dozens of different Voltages and Frequency selections by simply lining up your ABCs and 123s. It doesn't get any easier than this folks. To install the Afterburner you need to remove the outer plastic casing of your Athlon leaving in tact the metal heat transfer plate that is attached to the CPU circuit board. This procedure is relatively easy to perform and there is no need to remove the CPU totally from its transfer plate, which is usually the tough part of decapsulating an Athlon CPU. You then simply plug the Afterburner's Edge Connector Socket onto the Athlon's "Gold Fingers" mini edge card on the top of the CPU PCB. The spacer and sticky pad on the back of the Afterburner's PCB, keeps the Afterburner balanced and mounted correctly on the Athlon card edge. You almost don't even need the sticky pad but it is there for extra security. Once the Afterburner is installed on your CPU, it is also very easy to change settings while it is plugged into your motherboard inside your case. You do this with the power off, of course.

Bij The Register lees ik dat S3 door nVidia voor de rechter is gesleept. Het is niet bekend wat precies de reden is, maar het heeft weer met patenten te maken. Hieronder de soep:

S3 and Nvidia are at each others' throats today, following the launch of legal action against its rival by Nvidia for alleged patent infringement.

The suit was filed last week with the US District Court for Northern California in San Francisco and assigned to Judge Vaughn R Walker -- the judge who presided over Apple's 1988 GUI copyright infringement case against Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, and ruled in the defendants' favour.

This time, Nvidia is asking for a jury to adjudicate.

Nvidia wouldn't say why it had launched the action -- "You'll have to call S3," said a company spokesman -- or reveal its grounds for claiming S3 has violated its intellectual property.

We did, but no one from S3 was available for comment as we went to press, which isn't surprising since the company has still digesting details of its decision to buy 3D graphics specialist Number Nine.

We suspect -- and given the silence from both parties it is just a suspicion -- that the case may centre on S3's transform and lighting engine, a key part of its Savage 2000 chip. Nvidia's own top-end graphics processor, the GeForce 256, also contains a transform and lighting engine, to improve game performance by taking complex geometry set-up operations off the host CPU.

That said, of Nvidia's 27 patents, none specifically refer to T&L engines, so it could be anything.

Lizard schrijft: "Voor alle coders die denken dat ze John Carmack kunnen verbeteren is hier hun kans: De Quake 1 sourcecode is beschikbaar gesteld.

De source zelf staat op de site van ID soft."

Ik zag via /. dat Bill een how-to in elkaar heeft geknutseld waarin hij uitlegt hoe je een Linux installatie van je bak kunt trashen en kunt vervangen met Win2000 of WinNT. Die handleiding zelf is nogal droge koek, daarom deze reaktie van Slashdot:

I did technical supervision for a number of techs for a large computer company for some years. You'd be surprised how the numbers of customers calling in for help removing Linux (if they even could pronounce it correctly *tear*) skyrocketed over the last year. Most clients hear the benefits of Linux but find themselves terribly ill prepared to work in such an OS.

I think it's a bit of a long jump to assume that a single M$ support doc reinforces Linux's competitive value against M$ products, and is somehow an attack on Linux. We also had to develop a support doc for our (less capable) techs to help the increasing # of customers who wanted to go back to Windows. Our more experienced techs assisted clients in dual booting so they could experiment in Linux, but keep the computer productive until they had things going in Linux.

I think it does provide a good sign that Linux indeed is getting allot of good attention from people who are willing to move to a new OS, but find current distributions too difficult to begin with. Perhaps if newer distributions were easier to use, customers would be more willing to stay. Many of them want to learn how to use Linux, but do not have the resources (or time) necessary to switch without a massive amount of bother.

In the meantime, the calls keep coming.

OpperTom keert op aarde terug om zijn onderdanen te zegenen met een review van de Asus V6600 Deluxe, een GeForce 256 kaartje met 5ns SGRAM en video-in/out. Het exemplaar van Tom bleek bijzonder goed overklokbaar te zijn:

I was able to clock our V6600 to 155 MHz core and 215 MHz memory speed. The card ran flawlessly over a 24-hour period of testing and looping of game demos overnight. I was surprised to say the least. In the test results I have included the performance runs with the V6600 at this speed. The numbers it produces are very impressive.

flamerz 'r us stuurde een link naar dit artikel over de russische ultra-nationalist Zhirinovsky, die nu op het idiote idee is gekomen om met zijn club van randdebielen westerse computers te gaan hacken... en dan beweren dat ze daar niet teveel zuipen:

MOSCOW, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Russia's maverick politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose ultra-nationalist bloc looks set to do well in a parliamentary election, said on Monday he would celebrate by hacking into Western computers.

``No. No way, we Russians don't drink any more. We now work on computers, we use computers to send viruses to the West and then we poach your money.''

``We have the best hackers in the world. We do not need to drink or smoke...We do not drink, smoke, have drugs and we don't have AIDS, that's what you have got in the West.''

MadCatJo schrijft: "Na Breda zou Delft de volgende gemeente zijn die de mogelijkheid krijgt om met Com21 modems aan de slag te gaan. Voor Casema gebruikers zou dit een forse snelheidswinst op moeten gaan leveren. Natuurlijk betaal je dan wel FL 120,- voor 160 kilogram aan bits per seconde, maar alla, daar moet je het toch mee doen (for the record: er zijn meerdere snelheden/bedragen te krijgen van Cable Wanadoo maar dit pakket luistert naar de illustere naam Cable Wanadoo Premium).

Nu zouden volgens Casema de Com21 modems begin december al worden aangeleverd aan een lokale dealer (JW-systems). Maar ook zij zeggen dat casema steeds de datum opschuift. Na een vraag aan de aardige verkoper van JW systems over wanneer er iets meer bekend zou worden zei een diepe zucht van wederzijdse herkenning voldoende: "Bel iedere week maar terug en hoop dat het modem er volgende keer is..."

Daarnaast hoorde ik indirect van een medewerker van het verkoopteam bij Casema dat het netwerk van Delft er geheel niet klaar voor is om over te stappen op de Com21's. Op een logische vraag van 'wanneer dan?' wwam het standaard antwoord: "Dat kan nog wel even duren, in de tussentijd worden de Calbe Wanadoo pakketten wel aan de mensen aangeboden".

Conclusie van deze tocht door het Delfland: voordat Casema hier de Com21 modems heeft uitgeleverd zit half Nederland al aan de ADSL".

Tevens bij Ace's Hardware een aantal uit c't geripte benchmarks van de PIII-500 en G4-450. In Altivec geoptimaliseerde proggies blijkt de G4 een flinkt stuk vooruit te hollen, in andere gevallen is het snelheidsvoordeel van de G4 minder dramatisch:

Benchmark G4 450 (Altivec) PIII-500 Photoshop (Open File) 33 seconds 41 seconds Photoshop Blur 11 29 (3D Render) Cinema 4D 3D (No Altivec) 127 k triangles/s 92 k triangles/s Cinema 4D CPU (No Altivec) 6.01 4.84

Wow! Altivec packs some heavy punch: the blur test shows that the G450 + Altivec is about 2.36 times (!) faster than the PIII 500 with ISSE. Congratulations to the designers of Altivec.

That doesn't mean that pc's are slower than Mac's however: the other benchmarks show that the G450 is about 25-36% faster than the PIII. I don't think that is enough to beat an Athlon 700 or PIII 700, which I think should be more or less in the same price category (It is probably more like an 750). (A 450MHz PowerPC G4 system with a G4 450 1MB backside cache, 256MB SDRAM, 27GB HD and DVD-RAM, Zip drive, 10/100 Ethernet, Mac OS 9 costs 3399$!!)

And gaming performance is also nothing to write home about: the Quake 2 timedemo counted only 37.8 frames. No, IMHO Apple will have to offer higher clockspeeds and lower prices to compete with x86 PC's !

Ace's wist een aantal onbevestigde geruchten bijeen te harken over de 64-bit uitbreidingen die AMD met de Sledgehammer over de fossiele x86 instructieset wil petsen:

Information is probably not the best terminology to use here, but "strong indications" nonetheless. Talking with some sources close to AMD about the company's upcoming x86-64 extensions, it is likely that x86-64 will include additional integer registers, and extra processor mode to use the registers, 32 and 64-bit instructions for those registers, and potentially some form of multithreading (SMT seems to be becoming rather popular) and/or multi-core dies. A friend of mine had this to say about it:

"x86-64 processors will look a lot like a fast-decodable RISC job with some kind of instruction compression -- basically, retaining the x86 characteristic of being stingy on memory consumption and bandwidth, but making things easily decodable/generatable (by a compiler, that is) and easing the tremendous register pressure in the architecture."

I must admit I was quite hesitant early on to even *want* to consider an additional extension to the already over-sized and aging x86 ISA, but this could be interesting...

Onze Russische kameraden van iXBT Labs hebben een review rond de Chaintech 6WEX2 in elkaar getimmerd. Dit plankje is voorzien van de el cheapo i810E chipset met 3D graphics decellerator, en mag dus met recht een 'modderbord' genoemd worden. Minder geschikt voor Q3 of UT, maar je kunt er wel leuk patience op spelen. Zelfs overklokken mag:

Chaintech 6WEX2's overclocking capabilities are far from being extraordinary. The range of supported FSB frequencies is limited to the following: 66, 68, 75, 100, 112, 117, 124, 129, 133, 138 and 150MHz. In addition there's no voltage control for the processor.

The lack of the popular FSB frequency of 83MHz can be explained by the mere fact that PCI frequency then becomes 42MHz, which is much more than normal 33MHz. And despite the fact that almost all the present-day PCI-devices can stand such a frequency, FWH, being one out of the i810E set of cards as well as of the other chipsets of the 800 family, refuses to work at such a high frequency.

As for the operation of PCI-devices at the system bus frequency of 133MHz, everything here runs smoothly. 133MHz is a standard frequency for i810E, which is why the PCI bus receives the same 33MHz in this mode too.

On the whole, one might state the following: it is possible to overclock processors on Chaintech 6WEX2, but without the comfort and the effect we get on overlocker's favorite ABIT boards.

Ninja Micro heeft eindelijke foto's gepost van hun FreeSpeed Pro Athlon Gold Finger Device. Het apparaatje zal in Nederland door CompTechWorld worden aangeboden, dus het is niet nodig om 'm aan de overkant van de sloot te bestellen. De prijs is wel vrij heftig: FL 141,26:

Onze vrienden van Planet GeForce babbelden met Markus Mäki van MadOnion (in een vaag verleden bekend onder de naam FutureMark) wat heen en weer over koetjes, kalfjes en 3DMark 2000:

G: It seems that despite the fact that a rather large number of game developers (list at NVIDIA's site) are gearing up to produce T & L (Transformation and Lighting) ready games, a few people are downplaying the importance of this technology. As a developer what are your thoughts on the significance of T & L?

MM: First and foremost, the most important thing to consider is how many of these games just use HW T&L, but don’t really take full advantage of it - adding some level of DirectX 7 HW T&L support is not difficult, but making a game that fully scales from low end to high end (and takes advantage of the level of content a GeForce can handle) is probably something most game developers are not ready to do just yet.

We've also seen with 3DMark2000, that if the effort is put into developing a software T&L implementation, CPUs can be almost as fast as HW T&L.

Meer stuff in het interview.

Gamers Depot heeft een review van de Kenwood 72X CD-ROM drive neer gestuiterd. De extreem hoge 72-voudige leessnelheid dankt deze drive aan de TrueX technologie van Zen Research, waarmee 7 datastreams tegelijkertijd gelezen kunnen worden:

Like it's predecessors before it, the Kenwood 72x drive performed with results that were very close to it's actual rating. One look at the benchmarks and you'll see that it killed both of the other drives we tested.

In all actuality, unless you absolutely need the low CPU overhead of SCSI, there is not a faster drive around period. One thing I have a hard time understanding is why other companies haven't started using the Zen technology, as it's obvious that it yields superior results.

News.com meldt dat we waarschijnlijk in februari een Palm met kleuren display mogen verwachten. De naam van het beestje wordt Palm IIIc:

The move could present challenges for Palm. The color-display release presents a new set of thorny issues for the company, which has so far predicated its marketing and development strategy on a so-called Zen of Palm principle, which mandates keeping devices as simple as possible, even at the expense of cooler features. By their very nature, color displays are exceedingly complex to implement, which raises questions about whether Palm is unwisely veering from its tried-and-true strategy.

"I think they're probably just slamming it in there because everyone told them they have to do it," said Ken Dulaney of Gartner Group. "People think [Palm is] kind of brain dead because they can't do color--they give the explanations, but no one listens to that, so they have to throw things in there and see what happens."

[...] By adding color displays to its product mix, Palm has negated the one technical advantage of Microsoft's scaled-down Windows CE operating system. Palm may also be walking into the same problems Microsoft has grappled with over the last year, including clumsy designs and unacceptable battery life.

"One of the reasons the Palm battery lasts so long is that people don't use them the way people use Windows CE devices," Nelson said. "They're on the cusp of running into some of the problems that Microsoft has already solved."

Analisten verwachten een gelukkig 2000 voor de DRAM fabrikanten. Dankzij de release van Windows 2000 zal de vraag naar DRAM chips het aanbod blijven overstijgen. Geheugen prijzen zullen blijven dalen, maar niet als pudding ineen storten (zoals dit jaar het geval was):

A bright future is being predicted for Taiwan's DRAM makers as the industry emerges from a three year slump.

"Next year will be very good for the DRAM business, simply because demand will be much higher than supply," said Hander Chang, assistant vice president and spokesman for Winbond Electronics. Winbond, Taiwan's largest DRAM maker, holds roughly 5 per cent of the global market.

[...] "I expect the DRAM industry to see significant growth for the next three years," commented industry analyst Eric Wang of ABN Amro, Taipei. "All the producers will benefit from an upturn in the cycle. In the short term, however, in the next three months I see a lot of pressure on the price."

[...] The release of Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, expected early in 2000, will help drive DRAM sales. "Windows 2000 will have positive influence," said Chang, "you need more DRAM to support all its features." Microsoft will probably recommend a minimum of 128 Megabytes of memory for PCs which use Windows 2000.

[...] Taiwan's DRAM makers will benefit next year because, unlike Samsung and others, most have steered clear of the troubled Rambus memory format.

Zie The Register voor meer info.

Nullsoft, de makers van de popi WinAMP MP3 player, hebben een facelift over hun site gekieperd. Als we de press release mogen geloven is WinAMP.com nu keigoed & geweldig:

AOL's Nullsoft Winamp, creators of the Winamp audio player and SHOUTcast, today announced the launch of its redesigned Internet music site, www.winamp.com. Completely redesigned from the bottom up, Winamp.com includes a host of new features, along with a streamlined user interface, that allows easier interaction between the site and the Winamp audio player. Beginning with a cleaner and simplified appearance, the new site offers easier navigation and user-friendly tools not available on previous versions of the site.

For the first time, visitors to Winamp.com are able to download music directly from the site to their Winamp audio player. The new site will feature music from download partners Mjuice.com, Audiosoft and Riffage.com and a new music directory powered by Listen.com. Now, more than 100 music selections from different genres are available for download on the Winamp site each day. The tracks are updated daily, weekly, and monthly with each of the ten genres updated every day. In addition, daily-featured selections on the Winamp site will spotlight hot, new downloads as selected by Winamp's team of music experts.

Downloading and learning to use the Winamp player is also easier than ever through a "Walkthrough" tutorial that offers step-by-step instructions on the Winamp audio player's features. Now with the new Winamp.com, those downloading the player for the first time can enjoy quality downloadable music within minutes of accessing the site.

Winamp.com also features improved tools that allow users more options in customizing their individual Winamp audio player. Hundreds of additional custom appearances or "skins", as well as visualization and audio effect "plug-ins" have been added and are available for download. In accepting user created material, Winamp has developed streamlined user administration pages to allow "plug-in" or "skin" developers to publish their work through an easy-to-use system. Creators can add, update, or remove work from the database through accessing their own personal web based account.

Op computable.nl las ik het volgende bericht over de Intel pentium III processor..

Intel kondigde gisteren zijn nieuwste Pentium III-processoren aan die draaien op een kloksnelheid van 750 en 800 MHz. De lancering van deze chips werd opgeluisterd door de vrijgave van nieuwe systemen van bekende PC-fabrikanten. Dell, Hewlett-Packard en Gateway bevinden zich onder die reeks Intel-klanten.

Het hele bericht is hier te vinden.