Dankzij de goede verkoop van Athlon processors verwacht Salomon Smith Barney dat AMD voor het eerst sinds tijden weer winst gaat boeken. De winstverwachting voor het vierde kwartaal hebben zij bijgesteld van break-even naar $0,11 per aandeel:

Given the promising outlook for AMD's Athlon processor and a continuing strong Flash memory market, we are raising our Q4 EPS estimate from $0.00 to $0.11 and 2000 from $1.50 to $2.00. We are also raising our price target slightly from $32 to $35.

We now believe AMD shipped as many as 1.1 million Athlons in the quarter, higher than our earlier estimate of 950,000 units. We raised our 2000 forecast from 9 million to 12.5 million units. In addition, Flash demand remains very strong. Flash should present some upside to our present Q1 forecast of $224 million, up 15% sequentially.

Ik zie dat het volk van WinMag.com een review online hebben gezet van Windows 2000. Hieronder een hap uit de intro:

After all the waiting, the beta-testing, the revising, rethinking, and re-engineering, Windows 2000 is done. Microsoft delivered finished "Gold" code to Winmag.com a couple of weeks ago, and we've been testing it ever since. Cut to the chase: Win2000 was worth the wait. There's a lot to like, and also a lot to get to know, because this is a very different version of Windows. And it's not for everyone. Still, it might surprise you how well it could work for you.

Windows 2000's Welcome screen is just one of many small features designed to make those new to computers feel comfortable with it.

Originally conceived to be "NT 5.0," Windows 2000 is clearly an evolutionary upgrade of NT 4.0. But in the process it adds important functionality Win95 and Win98 users have taken for granted for years, such as direct plug and play support for all kinds of devices, as well as support for USB and 1394/FireWire. Even so, you can't always expect that the latest peripheral you might pick up down at the local computer superstore will run perfectly under the new operating system. Microsoft focused first on drivers for business hardware, as opposed to those for consumer-oriented hardware.

Windows 2000 also adds tons of new features that until now haven't appeared anywhere in the Windows family -- some on the desktop side, some on the server side, and some in both places. Many are designed to make day-to-day use and manageability of servers far easier. What's more, on comparable hardware, Win2000 is faster than Win98 and about as fast as NT 4.0.

Planet Internet heeft een Millennium Bug Report page online gemieterd. Hiermee kun millennium bug(jes) lezen die door bezoekers zelf kunnen worden ingezonden. VorteX stuurde me trouwens een link naar de Nederlandse Netscape site, waar hun klokkie ook vrolijk het jaartal 19100 aangeeft .

Voor Athlon gebruikers die AGP2x willen enablen in de nieuwste nVidia Detonator drivers kreeg Voodoo Extreme deze handige tip toegestuurd:

I recently wrote Nick Triantos at nVIDIA about getting AGP 2x working in the new drivers. I have an Asus K7M mainboard, and an Athlon 600. I also have an Asus V6600 GeForce card. I have not been having problems with this card under the 3.53 drivers, and so when the newer drivers came out with AGP 2x disabled, I was not happy. I asked him for a fix, and he wrote me back with one! Put the following lines in your registry, and you will once again have AGP 2x support! I am running the 3.65 drivers, but this should work in drivers from 3.56 to 3.65 and hopefully up. I also asked him to look into putting a check box in the NVTweak program. Hopefully they will.

If you want GeForce Compatibility with an Athlon board what better combo than a video card, and mainboard made by the same people?

-------------------------------
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\System]

"EnableIrongate2x"=dword:00000001
-------------------------------

For those of us with no AGP problems, here ya go! By the way, I verified this through the WCPUID program.

Sideband Addressing is still disabled however, but supposedly Creative labs is coming out with a fix for this. It's disabled for both P3 systems, and Athlons.

Uncle Tom heeft een review van de ATI Rage Fury MAXX aan z'n hardware guide toegevoegd. Met een geheugen bandwidth van 4,96Gbyte/sec en een maximale fillrate van 540Mpix/sec is deze kaart in theorie sneller dan een GeForce DDR. Uit de Shogo, Descent, Quake III en 3D Mark2000 benchmarks van Tom blijkt echter dat de performance over het algemeen duidelijk achter blijft bij de GeForce DDR:

A this point in time, ATI must deal with some incredible competition especially at the price they're selling the MAXX for. Not only are they deep into the SDR GeForce price range, but also nestled right before the DDR GeForce based boards. This means that the MAXX better offer high fill-rates, T&L or something compelling to make the consumer want to go with the ATI Rage Fury MAXX over the GeForce. ATI has many faithful customers and I'm sure the initial shipment will sell well due to that fact but to continue selling boards I feel that they must decrease the price of the board and pump up those drivers to match if not beat that of the SDR based GeForce.

My final verdict on this card is that there are better choices at and below the price of which you'll pay to have this product. If you want something a tad bit expensive, you can go with one of a few boards based on the GeForce DDR solution and you'll be very happy. If you are a starving student who cares about the price, then you're better off saving your lunch money for purchasing a TNT2 Ultra or SDR GeForce card. The MAXX comes up a little too short at a little too much money for me to give it my blessing.

AMD Zone heeft een utility online gezet waarmee je kunt detecteren of je Athlon moederplank is voorzien van de AMD 751 Revisie C chipset, die dankzij een verbeterde communicatie tussen northbridge en geheugen circa 5% sneller is dan oudere revisies (meer daarover lees je in de review van Ome Tom).

insane is met trots de eerste nieuws submitter van het nieuwe millennium: "2 The Max biedt een moederbord aan gebaseerd op de VIA Kx133 chipset. Volgens AMD Zone is deze plank niets anders dan de Epox K7VA in een ander jasje:

Firingsquad heeft een artikel neer gemikt waarin ze de prestaties van de Dreamcast vergelijken met de PC. Ik zal geen uitspraken doen over dit bijzonder gevoelige onderwerp (console sucks ), dus hier maar gewoon een stukkie copy/paste uit de conclusie:

n this first part of the Dreamcast v.s. PC comparison, we've seen that although the latest graphics technology on the PC is faster than the Dreamcast. Nonetheless, thanks to the uniformity of the console environment, the Dreamcast is able to keep up with the latest technology offerings from the PC. However, that is the most important fact in this article. The Dreamcast can only keep up with the PC; it's not surpassing it. The victor of this battle will thus be decided tomorrow, when we look at the winner and loser for each gaming genre. In this hardware comparison, the Dreamcast has been able to draw upon a few tricks to compete on equal footing with a high-end PC. Not only that, but by the very nature of consoles, one never needs to worry about having to upgrade a system in order to play a game and so it is as if every game is designed with a high-end PC as the minimum system requirements. Quake3 can still be played on a 233MMX with an 8MB video card.

Frits Letteboer meldt dat Amino Development de Amiga naam heeft overgekocht van Gateway, die de merknaam sinds 1997 in bezit heeft. Sindsdien is er vrijwel niets op het Amiga front gebeurd. Het is voor de Amiga fans te hopen dat er nu eindelijk echt plannen op tafel komen:

Amino Development Corp., a privately held company based in Maple Valley, WA, has purchased from Gateway (NYSE: GTW) the Amiga trademarks and Amiga computer systems. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Peter Ashkin, Gateway senior vice president, said that the company elected to sell the name after deciding to fold Amiga's software engineering function into Gateway's product development activity as part of Gateway's overall strategy to develop and market the coming generation of Internet appliances.

"Amiga, as a personal computer brand, has a loyal following of fans around the world," Ashkin said. "Under Gateway's wing, Amiga morphed into a software development company working on a new Internet appliance operating environment software. Now that we're bringing that development work into Gateway product development, it made sense to find a buyer for Amiga."

"Yee-haw " said Bill McEwen, president and CEO of Amino. "This is a very exciting day, and now an even more exciting tomorrow. Now we can finish the job that was started 15 years ago."

The transaction, which is effective immediately, includes the transfer of all Internet domain names related to Amiga that were held by Gateway. Gateway will retain ownership of all patents acquired when it bought Amiga in 1997.