Overclockers Australia (ja kinderen, aan de onderkant van onze aardkloot leven ook overklokkers ) mailden me dat zij een review van de RDJD K602 "no, I hadn't
heard of it before either" cooler online gegooid hebben:

The K602 is quite an interesting looking unit. RDJD's heatsinks all seem to operate around a fairly simple theme - lots of very thin folded aluminium fins. Their aim seems to be to get the maximum cooling for a low cost of manufacture - sounds like a sensible idea to me. Tom expects to be selling this unit for about $25.00 which puts it pretty low in the decent passive cooler price range. The unit doesn't feel incredibly strong, you can twist the chassis fairly easily. Also, the fan is a 52mm JMC unit, which moves 16cfm - not spectacular by any means. However, compared to a lot of the "monster" coolers, the K602 is quite tiny. It's only slightly larger than the Socket370 itself and not very tall - it blocks no memory slots on the Soyo SY-6VBA-133 motherboard which is narrower than most - the FDP-32 blocks 2 RAM slots completely and usually rests against the third DIMM. Even the CPM25603-32 rests against the end DIMM, which restricts airflow to the fan.

Kenny Mccormick schrijft: "Ome Bill zal het tijdens de introductie van Windows 2000 waarschijnlijk met minder journalisten moeten doen dan hij in eerste instantie zou verwachten. Op 17 februari komt niet alleen de 'nieuwste' Windows op de markt, ook Linux 2.4 krijgt dan z'n officiële release. Wie zich de Comdex laatste herinnert, zal de humor daarvan wel inzien. Linus T. trok toen een veel groter publiek dan Ome Bill. (En zo hoort het ook). Dat het artikel enigszins newbie aandoet, zal te maken hebben met het feit dat het afkomstig is van een gewoon Iers dagblad. Toch wel een leuk stukje!":

For almost the first time in its history, Microsoft is to face a competitive challenge when it launches the next version of its Windows operating system. Called Windows 2000, the new OS (which controls the way personal computers work) is scheduled to launch on February 17 the same date when a rival OS, Linux, might steal its thunder by releasing an upgraded version.

Hehe, die Linux rakkers hebben humor .

Turkije is er lekker vroeg bij. Iemand kwam er op het idee om tijdens de eeuwwisseling de PC's op de beurs eens te testen op Y2K-compatibiliteit. Niet geheel onverstandig .

Om problemen met de millenniumbug te voorkomen heeft het Turkse ministerie van handel besloten de beurs tot drie januari te sluiten. Ondertussen kunnen er werkzaamheden aan de computers plaatsvinden zodat Turkije zonder problemen de nieuwe eeuw in zal stappen. Zo zullen er testtransacties worden gedaan om de veiligheid van het handelssysteem uit te testen. Ook de Turkse goudmarkten zullen tot drie januari gesloten zijn .

Volgens Ace's Hardware zal de Asus K7V (VIA KX133 Athlon plank) over een paar dagen al in de winkels liggen:

Just a few days ago, Wim of the Wim's Bios page mailed that he has contacted a large Belgian distributor, Cloetens about the Asus K7V (Based on the VIA KX-133 (AGP 4x, 133 MHz FSB). They told him that they would have the ASUS K7V in stock in the first days of January!

Nou, als dat ding België in de verkoop komt, dan zal dat zeker ook in de bewoonde wereld gebeuren . Voor specs van de K7V borden kun je trouwens terecht in deze nieuwsposting van anderhalve week geleden.

Akiba's PC Hotline heeft foto's gepost van de Asus DIMM riser card, waarmee je SDRAM DIMMs in een i820 Rambus plank kunt prikken. Zo te zien moet je je 3,5" drive bays dan wel wegslopen, want dit ding heeft veel ruimte nodig:

Overclockers' Workbench heeft een screenshot gepost van een PIII-750 op 1286 met een voltage van 1,9V:

This is a photo taken picture of a WCPUID, perhaps the speed is high to be captured by any screen capturing software This is currently the highest overclocking record in terms of Mhz ever attain by anybody. This Jap has overclocked his PIII 750 to 1286Mhz!!

With a clock multiplier of 7.5 and VCore at 1.95V, he get his FSB speed running at a impressive 172Mhz!! He is not using the newest board but an Asus P2B-B board to overclock. To get this speed, of course special cooling is needed, in this case, Liquid Nitrogen is used to cool his hot PIII 750.

AGN Hardware heeft meer speculaties over de Matrox G450. Matrox zou op dit moment werken aan een standalone T&L engine, waarvan er maximaal 8 op een kaart met 1 of 2 G400 cores geplakt kunnen worden:

Another interesting rumour is that Matrox is currently working on a standalone hardware T&L engine so that they can create a board with up to two G400 (texture units like 3dfx) chips and use up to 8 (yes, 8 for the high-end) T&L engines on one card. Also, Matrox might release new graphics cards that are upgradeable, the first such thing in PC graphics.

AnandTech heeft een review van de Monsoon MM-700 flat panels online gekegeld. Deze speakers blijken uitermate geschikt te zijn voor weergave van 3D positionele audio:

The overall quality of the sound was excellent, with crisp highs and full mid range thanks to the planar focus satellites. As noted previously, planar focus technology is very directional. Half the sound seems to disappear if you turn the satellites 90 degrees. Just make sure the satellites are pointed at your ears - a feat that can sometimes be tricky with the non-adjustable stands.

However, this directionality helps considerably with A3D positional audio. In fact, directional effects in A3D have never sounded better from a single pair of speakers (excluding the MM-1000's). The directionality of the speakers minimize reflections and eliminate crosstalk, enhancing the positional effects of A3D.

De afgelopen dagen zien we van alle kanten reviews oppoppen van de Videologic Sirocco Crossfire speakers. 3DHardware.net doet gezellig mee, hier een hap uit hun bespreking:

Having 80 Watts (RMS) of power definitely comes in handy when you want to play loud and compared to other 4-point speaker systems the Crossfire ranks amongst the most powerful. For comparison the Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 have 48 Watts (RMS) and the Klipsch ProMedia comes at 400 Watt (RMS). Many people tend to associate sound quality and sound level with the amount of wattage the system can deliver and this is not true as speaker efficiency and other factors are also playing a deciding role in sound reproduction.

When it comes to distortion, the Crossfire specifications states that the THD (Total Harmonic Distorition) is 0.01% at nominal output. Basically this means that at moderate to high sound volume there will be virtually no distortion - which I pleasantly experienced. If you would push the Crossfire to it's maximum distortion is bound to appear but it isn't a big problem, the sound quality maintains a very high quality and depending on what you are listening to you might not even hear a degredation in quality.

De aanpassingen, die NASA space kabouters de afgelopen dagen aan de Hubble telescoop hebben verricht, betreffen o.a. een CPU upgrade. Hubble draait nu op een snelle 486!:

The Space Shuttle machine that will end later on today has achieved one of its prime objectives and upgraded the microprocessor that is the "brains" of the high tech device.

Astronauts Steve Smith and John Grunsfeld successfully upgraded the 386 chip that was driving the telescope to a 486 processor over the last few days.

GamePC heeft een review gepost van de Midiland S4/7100 speakers. Het setje bestaat uit een 50Watt subwoofer, 5 10Watt satellites (2 front speakers, 2 rear speakers en een center speaker) en is daarmee geschikt voor Dolbi Digital en Dolbi Pro Logic, hoewel een decoder niet wordt meegeleverd:

Overall, the speakers sound great. Highs and Mids are both incredible, and they live up to the Midiland name. Unfortunately, the more compact and eye pleasing subwoofer is the one area where this set is lacking. While the older Midiland sets were known for their incredibly large overkill subwoofers, the S4's subwoofer produces little bass, even at full bass volume, very disappointing. At standard volumes, most of the time we couldn't even tell if the subwoofer was on or not, without looking at the power indicator. Still, even without a ton of bass, the satellites sound absolutely magnificent.

Het bestaan van deze plank werd tot voor kort nog door Abit ontkend, maar nu is-ie dus officieel aangekondigd: de VA6, Abit's eerste moederbord met de Apollo Pro 133 chipset van VIA. Voor overklokkers kan dit bord interessant zijn vanwege support voor AGP dividers lager dan 2/3:

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. December 24th, 1999—Described as “The most efficient PC133 solution available” by ABIT marketing specialist Eric Boeing, the ABIT VA6 is a combination of ABIT's sophisticated technology and VIA's Apollo Pro 133 chipset (VT82C693A and VT82C686A). The VA6 features a 133 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB), supporting PC133 SDRAM directly and is equipped with 5 PCI, 2 ISA slots, and 1 AGP slot, and with the added feature of UDMA 66 and 4 USB ports.

“The CPU support on this board is really wide” notes ABIT's Boeing, it supports Intel Pentium® III 450 ~ 733 MHz processor cartridges based on 100 & 133 MHz FSB, Intel Pentium® II 233 ~ 450 MHz processor cartridges based on 66 & 100 MHz FSB, and Intel Celeron® 266 ~ 533 MHz processors based on 66 MHz FSB. It also has reserve support for future Intel Pentium® III processors.

The VA6 has memory capacity of three 168-pin DIMM sockets supporting SDRAM modules for up to 768 MB MAX. (8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256MB SDRAM) as well as having ECC support. The VA6 features integrated audio with AC'97 Digital Audio controller integrated and AC'97 Audio CODEC on board and audio connectors (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, and Game Port) with audio drivers included. SoftMenu™

ABIT, now famous for its patented SoftMenu™ technology has implemented this feature into the BIOS of the VA6 as well. Explains ABIT's Boeing, “Where the real beauty of the ABIT VA6 comes out is in the BIOS” The System BIOS features ABIT's SoftMenu™ II as well as Award's Plug and Play setup and it support APM and DMI.

SoftMenu™ II, ABIT's patented technology, increases future compatibility and gives the power user a convenient way to adjust CPU settings in the BIOS, with external clock options of: 66MHz, 100MHz, 75MHz, 83MHz, 112MHz, 103MHz, 124MHz, 133MHz, 150MHz, 140MHz, 105MHz, 110MHz, 115MHz, 120MHz and multiplier factors of: 2/2.5/3/3.5/4/4.5/5/5.5/6/6.5/7/7.5/8 and a core voltage range between: 1.3 - 3.5V. Accordingly the VA6 has broke through the PC 100 limitation, elevating the PC front side bus speed to 133 MHz, and providing excellent system performance by integrating VIA's Apollo Pro 133 chipset.

UDMA/66

Take advantage of the latest UDMA 66 technology to improve HDD performance the VA6 has full native support and provides 2 UDMA 66 channels, supporting up to 4 UDMA 66 devices. The VA6 bundles a high quality UDMA 66 cable, providing the most effective IDE solution and it is fully backward compatible to existing UDMA 33 devices.

VIA Hardware Monitoring

VIA Hardware Monitoring System is a self-diagnostic system for PCs and must be used with VIA chipsets. It protects PC hardware by monitoring several critical items including power supply voltages, CPU & system fan speeds, and CPU and system temperatures. Once any item is out of its normal range, a warning window will pop up and remind the user to take proper measures. It will protect PC hardware by monitoring the most critical items. These items are important for the operation of the system, as errors may result in permanent damage of the PC.

The VA6 has a built-in IrDA TX/RX header, built-in Wake up on LAN header, on board USB header for Two extra USB channels and PC99 Color connectors. As with all ABIT boards the VA6 is also approved by outside test labs. The VA6 has been approved by:

VIA Lab
CE Lab : EMI/EMC/EMS
FCC Lab
WHQL : Year 2000 Compatible

Chick's Hardware UK (CHUK) heeft een review van de Hercules 3D Prophet DDR-DVI neer geknalt. Zoals je wellicht weet is dit de DDR SDRAM versie van de Guillemot 3D Prophet, die ik samen met de Creative Labs Annihilator Pro hier heb gereviewed. Het door CHUK geteste exemplaar kon behoorlijk goed overgeklokt worden: 160MHz core, dezelfde snelheid die ik met mijn 3D Prophet behaalde!

Well, there you go. Guillemot are shipping their cards clocked at 125/300. Interesting. The RAM used on the Prophet is 6ns Infineon DDR SDRAM. Which should be able to be clocked up to 166Mhz [333Mhz!]. The PowerStrip GX program doesn't seem to like changing the Memory Clock speed, which is strange. So I got myself a copy of the full PowerStrip program, this managed to clock the card at 160Mhz Core Clock and 350 Memory Clock speed. However it doesn't seem to improve the performance very much. Only a 5 fps increase in Q3 at 1024x768 High Quality.

Mike Andrawes van AnandTech schreef een review van de Abit BF6, de nieuwste BX plank van Abit met 6 PCI slots, echter zonder ATA66 controller. Verder zijn alle features die we op een Abit bord mogen verwachten aanwezig, inclusief het nieuwe Softmenu III:

When SoftMenu is enabled, as is the default, its immediately apparent that things have changed. This time around, ABIT has some new tricks to combat the competition in the form of SoftMenu III. After losing the title of most FSB settings to Soyo, ABIT decided to go all out and now provides a total of 120 FSB speeds. These include the standard 66 / 75 / 83 settings plus speeds from 84 - 200 in 1MHz increments. Of course, there is still support for adjusting the PCI ratio (1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 of the FSB speed), AGP ratio (2/3 or 1/1 of the FSB speed), and CPU core voltage (default +/- 0.3V). SoftMenu III now offers the ability to adjust the I/O voltage of the PCI / AGP bus and SDRAM to 3.2 - 3.9V in 0.1 V steps (default is 3.3V) as well as some options for L2 cache latency, all in an effort maximize overclocking potential. The defaults for all these settings are clearly labeled, so causing serious damage will take a bit of work. Without a doubt, ABIT has regained the title of overclocking king with SoftMenu III.

Dan's Data heeft een review gepost van de Justin Cooler notebook, slot en monitor fans. Hieronder een stukje over de MC-100 monitor cooler, waarvan Dan zich afvraagt of het uberhaupt zinvol is om een monitor te koelen...

Computer monitors do fail, and I dare say some of these failures are a result of overheated components. But monitors are made to endure high temperatures for long periods - just look at the trouble-free years of service that most monitors, even low cost ones, deliver. Unless you live somewhere really, really hot, I'm unconvinced that the MC-100 will actually deliver significantly longer service than plain old convection cooling. I'm writing this in sunny Sydney, Australia, and we don't have monitors dropping like flies because of thermal failure. It might help if your monitor is sitting in direct sunlight and thus really offensively overheated as a matter of course, but in a situation like that you're likely to have a hard time seeing the picture on the screen.

Sure, get an MC-100 if you like. It's not like it's expensive, or anything, and unless you've already got a computer full of fans the extra load on the PSU's 12 volt line should be insignificant. But if you don't bother, I don't think you'll be missing much.

The Cable Store heeft in een press release aangekondigd dat het een Athlon versie van de erg brute Arctic Circle cooler in z'n assortiment opgenomen.

The Cable Store (TCS) proudly announces the latest addition to its product line, The Arctic Circle for AMD Athlon. Responding to customer requests and recognizing the need for a Premium level CPU Cooler for AMD's Athlon processor that will not interfere with the motherboard ATX power connector or DIMM slots, TCS accelerated its R&D efforts, bringing the latest version of The Arctic Circle to market in less than three weeks from the first request.

Joining its sister cooler, The Arctic Circle for PII/PIII SECC2 Processors, the Athlon version is the most efficient CPU cooler currently available for AMD's latest stable of power house processors. Once again, TCS's design began with the published technical specifications and drawings for the processor. Using specialized tooling and holding machining tolerances to less than 0.002", TCS delivers the best CPU to heat sink interface available anywhere.

All currently available Athlon CPU coolers attach with clip-type mechanisms to the integrated aluminum thermal plate (a la Pentium II SECC cartridges). Choosing The Arctic Circle allows the user to remove the thermal plate (eliminating one thermal interface and its accompanying thermal impedance) and mount the cooler directly to the CPU's core. In addition, The Arctic Circle for Athlon package includes cache memory cooling components that, combined with the cooler's unique dual-vortex airflow, will cool the cache chips more efficiently than the existing thermal plate and gap filling thermal compound while avoiding the introduction of the cache memory's dissipated heat into the CPU core's cooling system.

Finally, The Arctic Circle package includes the necessary hardware to mount the cooler to the processor either with or without the Athlon's black plastic back case. With minor modifications, the black plastic back case can be maintained in the assembly to utilize its cartridge retention capabilities.

Voor al dit geweld wordt een prijs van 32,95 dollar gevraagd, valt op zich mee.

Via Ace's Hardware kwam ik bij dit AMD Roadmap artikel van Tomshardware.de. Volgens dit artikel zal de Spitfire (low-end Athlon) waarschijnlijk met 128 of 256Kb on-die L2 cache uitgerust worden. De Thunderbird (high-end Athlon) zal voorzien zijn van 256 tot 512Kb on-die L2 cache. Top model Mustang staat voor de tweede helft van 2000 gepland en krijgt een verbeterde core met maximaal 2Mb L2 cache, 266MHz frontside bus en support voor AGP Pro:

AMDs 32-Bit-Ära soll der Mustang ausklingen lassen. Über den Mustang sind wenige Details bekannt. AMD hält sich die Ausführung offen. So soll der Mustang Features für den mobilen Einsatz (Notebooks) besitzen. Anderseits sind Billigvarianten für den Sockel A geplant. Für den Highend- und Serverbereich soll die sogenannte "Enhanced Core" bis zu 2 MB Cache unterstützen. Am Schluss des neuen Jahrtausends soll sich der 266-MHz-Front-Side-Bus sowie 4X AGP Pro durchgesetzt haben. Das Pro bei 4X AGP bedeutet, dass der Steckplatz eine verbesserte Stromversorgung für stromfressende Grafikkarten bereitstellt.

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van de 500 en 550MHz FC-PGA PIII's. Hier een stukje over de overklokbaarheid van de 550E:

Taking the 550E (5.5x100) to the 133 MHz FSB was the next order of business, and coincidentally equaled the same 733 MHz (5.5x133) speed of the Pentium III 733 Coppermine. This is the real litmus test, and again the CPU passed the testing with flying colors. Further overclock testing demonstrated that while 733 MHz was achievable, reaching higher speeds was a bit more difficult. Moving the FSB up to 137 MHz (754 MHz core) was also successful, and I decided to press my luck and make an attempt at 770 MHz (140x5.5). Initially, the 770 MHz core speed was successful and the game tests completed without a hitch. When unzipping a large archive file, the process would error out right at the end. There were no crashes or other Win 98 anomalies, just that small instability with extracting the large archive. This did not seem to be a CPU heat issue, and other than the Zip extraction test, performance was exemplary. I can only surmise that 770 MHz was just a little past the physical limitation of the CPU cache.

Brian Neal van Ace's Hardware heeft een artikel geschreven over het bouwen van server parsed dynamische websites mbv van bijv. PHP, ASP of Cold Fusion:

As mentioned earlier, instructions may be passed not only to the client, but the webserver as well. The previous code segment is an example of one of the simplest form of server-parsed documents, known as server-side html, or SSI. Documents containing server-side html are typically stored with a ".shtml" extension, to allow the webserver to differentiate between files it should parse internally and files it should copy blindly to the client. Beyond server-side includes lie more complex and capable solutions, such as Active Server Pages (ASP), PHP, Cold Fusion, etc. Not only do these languages provide support includes and other obvious HTML aids, they are also full fledged languages. PHP, for example, is quite similar to both PERL and C++, while ASP is essentially Visual BASIC. Obviously, these web-based languages provide functionality that separates them from more general languages like C/C++. The real power to be gained from the use of these tools is when they are combined with databases, as we will see later on.

There are many different forms of server-side documents and programs. The most predominate are the ones mentioned above (ASP, PHP, CFM), though Common Gateway Interface (CGI), often used in conjunction with PERL, is additionally a common solution. However, there are some very important differences associated with CGI.

PHP is een redelijke simpele taal waarmee je eenvoudig en snel resultaat kunt bereiken (Tweakers.net draait op PHP en MySQL).

VHware stuurde: een link naar dit artikel van TargetPC, over de RioRed dual PowerPC plank van Silicon Fruit. Het bord is gebaseerd op het PowerPC Open Platform reference design van IBM en biedt ruimte aan twee G4-450 processors met elk 2Mb backside cache op 200MHz. De north bridge is afkomstig van IBM en als south bridge wordt de AMD Viper gebruikt, dezelfde chipset die we ook op Athlon borden tegenkomen:

For now, Silicon Fruit has two products in development, with the workstation product code-named the RioRed (named after the Red Grapefruit, which is the Texas State Fruit that is generally grown near the Rio Grande river), and a rack-mount server to follow at a later date. The RioRed is a next generation PowerPC-based computing platform; as it is legacy-free, and it almost did not even have PS/2 ports.

The RioRed also has many high-end and innovative features aimed at making it a successful platform for workstation environments. It has double 450 MHz PowerPC 7400 (G4) processors, each with their own 2 Meg cache running at 200 MHz. It also has two 66 MHz, 64 Bit PCI slots, a technology that has only been found on very high-end products, often used for RAID storage applications. Also of unique interest is the north bridge of the motherboard, which is the Avignon (IBM CPC710) chip. The Avignon also supports standard 100 MHz SDRAM at up to 2 Gigabytes total. However, the Avignon could be replaced by the IBM PowerPC 440 embedded processor that runs at 550 MHz, and by doing so, the platform will become even more impressive for vertical applications, all while being produced at lower cost.

De 'Metanium' workstations met dit bord zullen in eerste instantie geschikt zijn voor Linux, op een later tijdstip komt er mogelijk BeOS support. In dit verband is het ook interessant om deze nieuwsposting van 15 augustus in herinnering te roepen. Zo te zien is er nu dan toch eindelijk iemand die iets met met IBM's PowerPC reference design van plan is...

Volgens Ace's Hardware heeft AMD besloten om het voltage van de Athlon 850 en 900 te verhogen naar 1,7V. Dit maakt het mogelijk om de 850 en 900 versies sneller te introduceren. Eerder zagen we dit voltage trucje ook al toegepast worden door Intel, in de PIII-600 (Katmai) (thanks vsmb@superweb.nl" rel="external">ovs voor de link):

To increase the yields of the K75 (Athlon .18 µ core), AMD management has decided to increase the voltage of the higher clocked Athlons from 1.6V to 1.7V. That way, almost any .18µ Athlon should reach 800 MHz and it is possible that the 850 and 900 MHz Athlon will be introduced much sooner. It is clear that AMD is feeling the pressure of Intel too and wants to stay ahead in the race.

If you already got a Slot A motherboard, you shouldn't worry: the Athlon core regulate voltages internally. AMD representatives reassured us that it is "plug and play" : ).

On a different note: .18 µ Athlons do not need 300W power supplies like their older .25 µ brothers do. So before you better try before you ditch your older 235W supply.