Tom's Hardware Guide is weer eens van een update voorzien, ditmaal met een review van de Elsa Erazor X SDR en de Absolute Multimedia Outrageous 3D DDR GeForce kaart. Laatstgenoemde is nog vrij onbekend, hieronder wat meer info erover:

The O3D by Absolute Multimedia is a DDR GeForce board that follows the reference design. The card does provide for a TV-out option on the back and appears to be of decent quality, as I didn't experience any problems during my testing. The package is shipping in two varieties that vary only by the number of free software titles you may choose from but you do get the standard software DVD player either way so you at least get the basics. The choices of software that are currently available are: Superme Snowboarding, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Driver, UEFA Champions League 1998-1999, Unreal Tournament, Colin McRae Rally, Sin, TOCA 2, Space Invaders, Rollcage, Heretic II and Astroids.

Check Tom's Hardware Guide voor de rest.

Tech-Review maakt ons blij met een review van de Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Theater 5.1 DTT2500 Digital, een speakerset met 5x7Watt satellites, een dikke 20W subwoofer en een Dolby Digital decoder. Hieronder een stukkie:

As you may know if you have read any of our previous Cambridge Soundworks reviews, the satellites are known for their great sound output. Consisting of a 2.5" long-throw driver powered by 7 watts each, the satellites produce crisp and clean highs with great mids. The center channel really puts out clear vocals, with the front and rear satellites supporting the overall ambience of the music or movie.

Hotel California by the Eagles came in with amazing clarity. The guitar solo came through with the feeling as if you were right there, feeling each cord being struck. The sound from the bass guitar was reproduced very nicely via the subwoofer, for a well-balanced surrounding sound field.

3D imaging was also very involving and accurate. System Shock 2 has a very well put together imaging scheme, that directs the sound from exactly where it should, and the DTT2500 produces the effect seamlessly.

JumpStart schrijft: "De luitjes bij HardOCP hebben een aantal benchmarks op een niet nader genoemde GeForce kaart los gelaten. Software T&L blijkt in 3DMark 2000 sneller te zijn dan hardware T&L. Op de vraag waarom dat zo is heeft de auteur op dit moment nog geen antwoord":

When we turn OFF the T&L and dump the load back onto the PIII processor, you see the AMAZING difference in the count. Even with 8 lights used the count is almost as high as when the T&L is utilized under ONE LIGHT.

Now what I am wondering here is this. nVidia has totally hyped the T&L for the GeForce card, but it seems to me that the T&L could possibly be the downfall of the card WHEN AND IF it is utilized with newer games to be announced, if they in fact use more than one light. Right now I don't know of any games that utilize all these lights EXTENSIVELY (so it really does not mean dick right now) but I know the Max-FX engine by Remedy is used by Mad Onion for the 3D Mark2000 set of tests.

[...] Also I was lucky enough to catch Alex "Sharky" Ross of Sharky Extreme at home yesterday and discuss this issue with him. While I am not going to try to paraphrase his words here they are going to look into it further. Honestly, as I mentioned above, the mechanics of this are a bit beyond me and what I understand about it. Sharky Extreme does has a REAL Doctor over at their site that will hopefully help us figure some of this out. They will surely give us a heads up on what they find. I have enough trust in those guys' expertise to either validate what we think or to tell us we are full of BS. Either way will will give you a heads up on what is found out.

Zoals verwacht verlaagden Intel en AMD vandaag de prijskaartjes van hun Coppermine en Athlon processors. Beide kemphanen hebben behoorlijk in de prijzen zitten hakken, de kortingen bedragen soms wel 50%. Hier een overzicht, samengesteld uit dit artikel van The Register:

chaos schrijft: "AMD wist in de pre-Athlon tijd vooral z'n hoofd boven water te houden door hun zeer goede flash geheugens. Nu dat de naam van AMD steeds meer in aanzien stijgt lijkt het erop dat ze daar nu nog meer voordeel uit gaan trekken: met een enorme flash geheugen levering aan Samsung. Ik had in april vorig jaar AMD aandelen moeten kopen! .":

SUNNYVALE, CA--JANUARY 24, 2000--AMD, a leading flash memory devices manufacturer, announced today an agreement with Samsung Electronic Co., Ltd.- Wireless Terminal Division (Samsung WTD) to supply the company with a significant portion of its flash memory product requirements for the next three years. Under the agreement, beginning January 1, 2000, AMD will provide Samsung WTD with approximately $400 million dollars worth of flash memory devices to support its increasing customer demand.

"We are pleased to enter into this agreement with Samsung WTD which affords the increased supply Samsung WTD believes is necessary for its critical flash memory product needs," said Walid Maghribi, group vice president of AMD's Memory Group. "By aligning our strength in flash memory products with Samsung WTD's Code Division Multiple Access cellular phone handset leadership, AMD can participate in a cellular phone standard which we believe is being adopted worldwide."

Bron: AMD.com.

Eric van Fast Graphics heeft een doos benchmarks op zijn site geplakt van een Kryotech SuperG draaiend met GeForce SDR en DDR kaarten, een nVidia Quadro en een ATi Rage Fury Maxx. Beetje lullig om het tabelletje te jatten, dus klik hier even voor de resultaten! Binnenkort volgt de complete review. (Thanks hjs voor de tip).

Bij nV News lees ik dat Gamestop de Voodoo5 5500 met 64MB al op pre-order heeft staan. Het kaartje gaat je $299 dollar kosten en wordt 1 mei bezorgd. Nou, wie durft?

The Voodoo5 5500 AGP from 3dfx is the next stage in the evolution of ultra-high resolution gaming. Utilizing a revolutionary scalable architecture, the Voodoo5 5500 AGP features dual 3dfx VSA-100! chips for more 3D horsepower. Working in parallel, these processors produce over 667 Megatexels per second to create extraordinary 3D worlds in vivid 32-bit color. Boasting state-of-the-art Real-Time Full-Scene HW Anti-Aliasing, the exclusive T-Buffer!" Digital Cinematic Effects engine, 64MB of graphics memory for top performance and support for 2D resolutions as high as 2048x1536, the Voodoo5 5500 AGP gives today's PC gamers the raw 3D power and premium 2D performance they crave.

Special Features

Fully-integrated 128-bit 2D/3D Video Accelerator

667-733 Megapixels/second

64 MB of Graphic Memory

32-bit color rendering

Real-Time Full-Scene HW Anti-Aliasing

Exclusive T-buffer Digital Cinematic Effects

3dfx FXT1 and DirectX Texture Compression

2K x 2K Textures

AGP with full sideband support

350 MHz RAMDAC for resolutions up to 2048 x 1536

Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, Windows 2000 drivers

Fully software-compatible with 3dfx Voodoo3

Got Apex heeft een review klaarliggen van het AOpen AX6C moederbord gebaseerd op Intel's i820 chipset. Overklokkers kunnen kiezen uit 15 verschillende FSB instellingen tussen 100 en 160MHz. Vreemd is alleen dat de beloofde voltage tweaks ontbraken:

Overall, I was very pleased with this motherboard. A very fine product from AOPen. I didn't once run into any problems that could be pointed at the board, and it ran beautifully throughout all my tests. It was beautiful to see my TnT run when the board had a 160 mhz fsb, and it auto-detected AGP 4x when I plopped in a GeForce. One thing that I did not stress through the article is just how fast this board is when paired with an 814 mhz processor and Rambus. Win 98 loaded very quickly, the BIOS flew by VERY quickly, and any task I threw at it were taken in stride by this zippy machine.

The main problem, as I previously stated, was that this board does not have the promised voltage adjustments. Hopefully, AOpen will fix this in a bios update, but currently there is no way to change the voltage through the bios. This board also felt very tight, with limited room between the cpu, AGP, and ram slots. Trace lengths are definitely shorter and should produce a quicker, more stable board, but excess cooling on the AGP card and cpu has to be cut down to make everything fit.

Onze Russische vrienden van iXBT Hardware brengen ons een preview van Transmeta's VLIW processor, de Crusoe. Hieronder wat meer technische info over de werking van deze CPU:

To begin with, we should say a few words about the processor's logical structure. Crusoe core consists of 5 modules of four different types: 2 integer units, 1 floating point unit, 1 memory transfer unit and 1 branch unit. So, every VLIW instruction, called a molecule, can be 64 bits or 128 bits long and contain up to four RISC-like instructions, called atoms. All atoms within a molecule are executed in parallel, each by a separate module. Molecules are executed in order, one by one, unlike most today's superscalar x86 processors with complex out-of-order hardware. This greatly simplifies the processor interior allowing to give up some complicated functional modules (such as a decoder of numerous x86 instructions). Just try to compare the die size of the mobile 0.18 micron Coppermine with the total cache of 288KB and the die size of TM5400 with the total cache of 384KB: it will be 106 sq.mm against 73. These results directly tell on the level of heat dissipation as well as on the power consumption.

Extreme Hardware heeft een review online gemikt van de bekende Asus V6600 GeForce kaart in Pure uitvoering. Hieronder een hap uit de conclusie:

The Asus V6600 Pure is the best GeForce SDRAM card that I’ve seen to date. Offering top framerates (thanks in part to frequent driver updates), a low price (in comparison with other GeForce 256 cards), and a good software bundle, the V6600 Pure is hard to beat. Compared to other GeForce SDRAM cards, it currently has the best price/performance ratio.

The GeForce 256 SDRAM is a great chip, especially now that its prices are falling closer to $200. Despite its 32-bit color rendering issues, it is still the fastest card available and does offer hardware T&L support, which will come in handy as more T&L games hit the market this year. If you’re in the market for a high-end ($200+), no-frills 3D video card, the V6600 is the ticket.

De jongens en meisjes van Thresh's FiringSquad brengen ons een roundup van een aantal low-cost 17" monitoren. In de test zijn o.a. opgenomen de Acer 77e, NEC Accusync 70, de Sony CPD-200ES en de Viewsonic E771, die door FS als winnaar werd bekroond. Hieronder een gedeelte, check FiringSquad voor meer info.

We gamers are simple folk. We don't need the latest and greatest in cutting edge monitor technology to get in some eye-pleasing fragging, but at the same time, we don't want to be staring at a low-res, blurry mess of gibs either. We want our gibs looking sharp and red, and we want it without totally breaking our (or our parents') bank account.

There is no one simple answer to which CRT is good for you, because the choice that will fit your needs is probably going to be different from the best choice for someone else. As I said, we gamers are simple people. We aren't doing brain surgery here, so those super expensive LCD displays are more or less overkill for our needs (not to mention that they're terrible for FPS games). At the same time, you want to shoot at an opponent larger than your thumb, and want gib trails that come out nice and clean.

Many monitor polls have pointed out that 17" is the most popular size, so I'm going to focus mostly on monitors of this screen size. I am also going to attempt to stay under $300 as well as sticking to well known brands. Since this is supposed to be a "low cost" guide, you won't find any uber models with huge price tags here. We are going to focus on brand name, good quality 17" monitors.

Target PC schreef een review van de Palo Alto PA-600 ATX kast. Dit model heeft een uniek mechanisme waardoor je je moederbord met 1 schroefje in je kast kan hangen:

I am very partial to this case. I would have liked to see another full bay available but that is a somewhat minor point since Palo Alto designs their cases to accommodate the needs of OEMs and large system integrators. Obviously there isn’t enough interest in a layout with more full bays from the OEMs to cause Palo Alto to lose sleep over the layout of the PA-600. I feel that the vast majority of people will not use more than 2 full bays for their components, and considering the good ventilation the PA-600 can accommodate, the extra air space in the case is not missed. Keep in mind that the PA-600 can still mount a satisfactory amount of 3.5" drives inside the case and the loss of one full bay becomes even less important. I recommend this case to anyone who is concerned with the quality of construction in their case and/or someone that is looking for a mid-tower and doesn’t need more than 2 full bays. For a case of its size it accommodates impressive cooling if you purchase a 92 mm and an 80 mm fan to mount in your case as I did with the tested configuration. The PA-600 retails for $95, including shipping, at the Palo Alto website.You can find it for less with a little diligence from one of their authorized resellers.

Kees bezorgde ons een linkje naar Webwereld, die schrijft dat MP3.com de compleet idiote claim van 67,5 miljard dollar aan zijn broekje geplakt heeft gekregen. De RIAA (gathering van platenmafiosi) laat duidelijk geen gras groeien over de aanklacht die het eerder tegen MP3.com indiende:

MP3.com heeft zich de woede van tien platenmaatschappijen op de hals gehaald. Het internetbedrijf zou met twee pas geïntroduceerde diensten de rechten van de labels schenden.

De platenmaatschappijen, verenigd in de Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), eisen een schadevergoeding die kan oplopen tot 67,5 miljard dollar. Volgens de RIAA bestaat een database van MP3.com uit illegale kopieën van 45.000 cd's.

MP3.com gebruikt die database voor Beam-it en de Instant Listening Service, twee diensten die sinds de lancering op 12 januari al controversieel zijn. Volgens de platenmaatschappijen schendt MP3.com op 'brute wijze' de copyrightwetten.

AMD Site Zone (wazige Italiaanse site) heeft een aantal CPUMark 99 benchmarks online gezet van een Athlon op kloksnelheden van 750 tot 824MHz met 1/2 en 1/3 L2 cache divider. Uit de resultaten blijkt dat een Athlon op 824MHz met 275MHz L2 cache (1/3) trager is dan een Athlon op 750Mhz met 375Mhz cache. Of CPUMark representatief is voor de real world prestaties valt te betwijfelen, desondanks best wel een interessant grafiekje.

AMD advocaten hebben ComputerNerd geboden om te stoppen met de verkoop van gemodificeerde Athlons, die door ComputerNerd worden aangeboden onder de naam 'Nerdlon'. Of het om een simpele trademark kwestie gaat, of dat AMD een verbod wil op de verkoop van alle overgeklokte Athlons, is niet helemaal duidelijk. Hier de info van de ComputerNerd.com.

We have been contacted by the law firm of Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson who specialize in:

"Litigation and Counseling in the areas of Domestic and International Trademarks, Unfair Competition, Copyright, and Technology and Computer Law, including Licensing, Franchising, Advertising and Promotions, Right of Publicity, Counterfeiting and Trade Secrets"

and who have Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) as one of their clients.

[...] Be that as it may, Mr. Geraldson, a partner with the firm, communicated very clearly to us by telephone on January 19th that their client has instructed them to advise us that we are violating AMD's trademarks by reselling modified Athlon® processors and that we must immediately cease and desist or be prepared for a lawsuit against us by AMD.

[...] We are taking action to attempt to persuade AMD to drop this request, but in the meantime, it looks like we may have to discontinue these sales, not because we believe AMD's action is consistent with the law, but because we do not have the resources to wage a legal battle against them. Accordingly, as soon as our attorney has received and had an opportunity to evaluate the formal brief from AMD, we expect to have to remove these items from our website.

We believe there is a definite possibility that the next move by AMD may be to use similar tactics to try to stop sales of our POW!er Boost overclocking controller for the Athlon® and similar "Golden Fingers" Devices from other vendors.

Taken together, such an outcome would significantly restrict the options available for overclockers interested in realizing the full potential of the Athlon® processor. And we fear that if AMD is successful in this, Intel may be encouraged to try the same thing.

Lost Circuits heeft een review van de FreeSpeed Pro Athlon multiplier & voltage tweaker neer gemikt. Het 65 dollar kostende printplaatje bleek zijn functie probleemloos uit te oefenen:

From looking at the overclocking scores, the price performance ratio of the FreeSpeed Pro, even at US$ 65 looks very good. Surely there will be cheaper devices in the future. Please keep in mind, though that overclocking is partially also a matter of luck so the results can vary On the other hand, the current street price is equivalent to about 1 speed grade which, contrary to the FreeSpeed Pro does not include the kick we all get out of overclocking.

The missing feature right now is a tool to adjust L2 cache speed, if that previously mentioned software utility comes out it will be possible to reach even higher for all those going to be limited in L2-speed. The Pro of the FreeSpeed Pro is its relatively low price compared to some competitors while it still is both well made and has all the capabilities a GFD should have.

Nog geen twee week na de voltooing van de giga fusie tussen Time Warner en America Online slaan Warner Music en EMI de handen ineen. Warner EMI Music, zoals de joint-venture zal heten, brengt artiesten als Madonna, de Spijsmeisjes en Robbie Williams tezamen:

The merged company will be called Warner EMI Music and will have sales of £5bn ($8bn) a year, with 2,500 artists under contract. It will be worth about £12bn ($20bn). But up to 3,000 jobs could go in the next three years, the company says.

The deal follows the recent merger of Time Warner with the world's biggest internet company, AOL to create a $300bn media giant. One of the objectives of that merger was to increase sales of music on the internet.

There may be someone who still wants to spoil the party. German media group Bertelsmann has ruled itself out, but Sony and Universal Music may decide to put in a higher bid.

Voor meer info kun je terecht bij onze overzeese vrienden van BBC News.

Ace's Hardware bracht een Diamond Viper II, ATi Rage Fury MAXX, GeForce DDR (3x), GeForce SDR (5x), Matrox G400Max, TNT2 Ultra, TNT2 Model64 en Voodoo3-3000 tezamen om een collectieve benchmark beproefing te ondergaan. De martelingen, bestaande uit enkele intensieve Quake III, Unreal Tournament en Dagoth Moore timedemo's, werden zoals voorspelbaar door de GeForce DDR als beste doorstaan:

If you bought a TNT card a year ago and you have no money to burn, you can relax. Overclock that card and buy a new CPU.

The Savage 2000 performs very well in openGL games, but fails to convince us in DirectX. It is however a very cheap card (+/- $170) and if you don't mind installing better drivers from time to time, it offers a lot of bang for your buck! It is cheaper than the Matrox G400 Max ($200), which is very expensive if you are planning to use this card solely for gaming.

The ATI Rage Fury Maxx is a fast card, but the price is high (around $280) right now. Wait and see. The Geforce DDR cards are the best in almost every test, but are pretty expensive too ($270).

nV News deed onderzoek naar de kwaliteiten van de draadloze iTouch tikplank van Logitech. Dit klavier is uitgevoerd in een normale niet-gespleten layout en geeft gebruikers de beschikking over een emmer met handige extra functietoetsen:

So, what makes the iTouch a cyber-blessing? Well, for one it has (gasp) useful rubberized buttons that don't rattle when you type. Buttons such as Play, Pause, Stop, Fast Forward, Rewind, Volume Up/Down, and Mute. Now, you're asking, "Why the heck should I want VCR controls on my keyboard when I can buy a Compaq Presario covered in the same useless buttons?". Well, two things. One, you can control just about any kind of media: DVD playback, MP3 audio players, PC sound card output, and Audio CD playback. Multimedia Buttons

Secondly, Compaq has the misguided concept that these buttons should be placed on the monitor or chassis. Now, why the heck should I lean forward to the display or down/across to the PC's case to adjust an often-accessed control? Logitech was wise to place them on a wireless device – imagine that; watching a DVD movie and leaning back in your leather office chair with the Cordless iTouch in your lap. Heck, a late-night chat on ICQ leaning back, with your 21" monitor set to 640x480 so you can type ten feet away.

I must admit, there have been countless other keyboards with similar controls on them, but none have been wireless nor have had less than twelve buttons.

Ga'ash Soffer van Voodoo Extreme heeft een artikeltje over de toekomst van hardware en software 3D acceleratie online geplant. Heel toevallig sluit dit artikel nauw aan op de de uitspraken die Tim Sweeney gisteren deed in een interview met Hardnews.org. Ga'ash noemt grote flexibiliteit als één van de voordelen van software rendering:

With so much power at developers' disposal, they are going to want to try unique things, new things. For example, CPUs may be powerful enough so that certain objects can be rendered realistically with raycasting techniques; or curves (real curves, not triangle approximated). If the 3D hardware does not have options to do this, developers will use software rendering. A developer may want to perform exotic per pixel effects, or geometry effects which are not well suited for hardware because they may be dependent on lots of different variables which cannot be fed to the hardware. This developer will use software rendering. Software rendering provides ultimate flexibility. Every little operation is controlled; the developer not only tells the computer what to do, but how to do it. Hardware rendering (of today) allows the developer to tell it what to do, not how. If the how in hardware isn't good enough, they'll use software. Remember, we're talking several years in the future, when CPUs will be capable of high quality 3D rendering.

Sharky Extreme heeft eens een review van de Diamond Viper II gepost. In eerdere reviews hebben we al kunnen lezen dat S3 en Diamond weer eens niet zo netjes te werk zijn gegaan bij het schrijven van de Savage2000 drivers: OpenGL presteert prima, terwijl de Direct3D performance glashard faalt vergeleken met videochips als de nVidia GeForce en ATi Rage Fury MAXX. Naast de matige performance bleken de drivers in DirectX vreemde bijeffecten, zoals vliegende bomen, te fantaseren :

Emboss bump mapping also proved to be a problem for the Savage 2000. While in theory the hardware should be able to bump map in a single pass, the Viper II required three passes to correctly render the scene. However, none of this concerned us as much as our final issue.

First, take a look at the following screenshots. Notice the floating trees and flooded dock. All shots were taken from the 3D Mark 2000 demo.

So who needs motion-blur effects when you can have flying trees? Also worth mentioning are the streets that run into walls. We feel this would be a safety hazard and takes away from the realism of the demo (sorry folks, couldn't help ourselves).

On a more serious note, the issues present in 3D Mark are indicative of drivers that aren't yet mature. Remember, this is a shipping product and, while it may be more common for redesigned hardware to include buggy drivers nowadays (think early Rage 128), we feel that consumers should not be paying for something that isn't really ready for shipping.

Wonderboy Anand heeft een zeer uitgebreide Athlon Overclocking Guide op zijn site geplaatst. Naast het verhogen van de FSB wordt het gebruik van de zogenaamde Gold Finger Devices (waarmee je de clock multiplier kan instellen) ook behandeld. Anand testte de Afterburner van Outside Loop, de K7 Overclock Card, de Ninja Micros FreeSpeed Pro en de Northwind GFD. Om het helemaal compleet af te maken is ook WCPUA2 gebruikt, het gisteren uitgebrachte programma van H.Oda waarme je de L2 cache divider kan verstellen.

The Athlon 500, 550, and 600 are all very cost effective overclocking contenders. With the success rate of getting each of these CPUs up to the 650 – 750MHz range increasing very rapidly, the investment in an overclocking card seems to be definitely worth it.

As more motherboards are released with overclocked FSB settings, the combination of that and Athlon overclocking devices will take overclocking and tweaking the Athlon to a new level. While the Athlon is still not as overclockable as Intel’s FC-PGA, it comes pretty close. As time goes on, the yields on the Athlon CPUs will continue to increase and the overclocking potential of these CPUs will definitely go up.

The advent of H. Oda’s WCPUA2 software that adjusts the L2 cache divider on the fly has made overclocking the Athlon even better, and if the rumors of being able to control the clock multiplier through software are true, then this could definitely take overclocking the Athlon to the next level. Unfortunately, there is a downside to all of this progress with overclocking on the Athlon platform.

The inevitable truth is that AMD will most likely have to pursue some sort of anti-remarking tactics in order to prevent remarked processors from being sold to consumers that aren’t aware of their overclocked state. Whether this comes in the form of multiplier locking or something else cannot be predicted, but in the end, something has to be done. Until then, let’s enjoy our finally overclockable Athlon CPUs.

H.Oda heeft een nieuwe versie van WCPUID in elkaar gefriemeld, een handige util die gedetaileerde info over je processor laat zien. Nieuw in versie 2.7b is:

Ver.2.7b Fixed: Intel i820 Check.

Test: VIA Apollo KX133 Check.

Je kunt WCPUID 2.7b hier downloaden (74kB). (Thanks gdew voor de tip!)

insane kwam een linkje brengen naar Maximum3D waar een kleine review te vinden is van de Elsa Erazor X GeForce kaart. Hieronder wat info over ChipGuard, SmartRefresh en SmartResolution, 3 utils die bij de Erazor gebundeld worden.

Three Elsa-only utilities which they tout are ChipGuard, SmartRefresh, and SmartResolution. ChipGuard is basically a small icon placed in your taskbar. The icon is not clickable to anything....it just sits there. It is a monitor to measure the temperature of the GPU, through monitoring of the temperature and fan RPM. It is normally green. It changes color when the chip starts to overheat and notifies the user. If the safety margins are grossly surpassed, the utility will actually restore all settings to default and reboot. This a good idea, but not something I would trust my whole video card to. Chances are you will begin to experience video problems before this thing reacts, but I'm not going to go trying it....I don't feel like frying my Erazor X today. One thing I thought really sucked is that Elsa did not include this utility with any updated drivers on the internet. Only the shipping drivers have it, which means I had it once, then when I updated the drivers, I didn't. Very annoying.

SmartRefresh and SmartResolution are kinda neat little gimmicks. Basically, using these, you are able to adjust either your refresh rate or your resolution in very small increments. You can change the refresh rate incrementally and adjust the resolution in 32 pixel increments.

AnandTech heeft een review gepost van de Supermicro PIIISED, een simpel i810E kantoorplankje met 6 PCI, 2 DIMM en zero ISA slots. Hardcore gamers houden zich het liefst zover mogelijk van dit bord verwijdert, want door de belabberde prestaties van de geïntegreerde video chip blijft dit vooral een plank voor typemachines. Typejuffen met teveel vrije werktijd kunnen zich eventueel vermaken met de 15 aanwezige busspeed settings:

With six 1000uF capacitors and one 1500uF capacitor surrounding the CPU slot, Supermicro obtained the usual high stability in our tests. While some motherboard manufacturers do not focus on designing an optimal layout, Supermicro has noticed the importance that cost-cutting should not affect stability. There were few crashes in the test period, both at 733MHz and when overclocked to 770MHz.

Overclocking options are more numerous than on most Supermicro boards. There are 15 different FSB speeds to select from: 66 / 72 / 75 / 83 / 100 / 107 / 112 / 117 / 125 / 133 / 137 / 140 / 146 / 150 / 153. The board is practically jumperless, with a set of jumpers to set 66/100/133 MHz or auto. The clock multiplier can be set in the BIOS from 2.5x - 6.0x; however, with all Intel CPUs multiplier locked, clock multiplier flexibility is no longer a big issue.

De DPC Hitparade Top 10 van 23 januari 2000

1. Katsov(22, Gisteren:12,523, Totaal:235,041)
2. Lies(80, Gisteren:8,200, Totaal:91,660)
3. DPC-sub st'wold(199, Gisteren:7,508, Totaal:33,266)
4. RubZie!(40, Gisteren:4,617, Totaal:168,045)
5. sienema(2, Gisteren:4,226, Totaal:904,064)
6. Sueno(115, Gisteren:3,682, Totaal:66,531)
7. Witsflow(89, Gisteren:2,743, Totaal:82,694)
8. HarryB(14, Gisteren:2,593, Totaal:346,689)
9. misser(47, Gisteren:2,578, Totaal:153,132)
10. hugo.plaisier(288, Gisteren:2,551, Totaal:16,600)

En de kanshebbers:

11. milner(86, Gisteren:2,317, Totaal:85,165)
12. Nasty(9, Gisteren:2,211, Totaal:495,781)
13. Richard Zuidhof(32, Gisteren:2,110, Totaal:180,063)
14. obiwan(18, Gisteren:2,072, Totaal:263,352)
15. MisterJ(56, Gisteren:1,987, Totaal:137,179)
16. King's Crew(101, Gisteren:1,983, Totaal:71,552)
17. roellies(237, Gisteren:1,919, Totaal:23,508)
18. femme(10, Gisteren:1,889, Totaal:473,092)
19. Eddict(39, Gisteren:1,565, Totaal:168,924)
20. alexC(513, Gisteren:1,527, Totaal:4,690)

De Top 5 teams van 23 januari 2000

1.( 13) Japan Linux Users Group (906,943)
2.( 1) Slashdot.org (626,433)
3.( 1) AnandTech (560,517)
4.( 1) Russian Team (472,988)
5.( 1) #DeathMatch (458,442)
16.( 1) Dutch power cows (159,915)
53.( 1) HIT2000 Linux, Hack & Crack event of 1999, the Netherlands (54,702)
68.( 1) The #koffie Team (45,499)

Teams om ons heen(total stats):
33.( ) BOFH@Chalmers (Tot:35,062,173, Gis:61,919)
34.( ) Winbiff Users Group (Tot:33,358,220, Gis:63,354)
35.( ) Michigan State University (MSU Spartans) (Tot:32,527,349, Gis:104,267)
36.( ) The #koffie Team (Tot:32,088,780, Gis:45,499)
37.( ) Dutch power cows (Tot:31,066,775, Gis:159,915)
38.( ) Team HP (Tot:29,829,623)
39.( ) Japan Celeron Users Group (Tot:29,822,510, Gis:63,348)
40.( ) Texas Longhorns (Tot:28,637,164, Gis:56,447)
41.( ) Wonder Monkeys (Tot:27,211,934, Gis:40,059)
(Teams waarvan de score van gisteren ontbreekt, hadden geen score in de top 100!)

Dutch power cows is vandaag 16e en heeft een kans van een op 197 om de sleutel te vinden!

Om de moraal van onze koeien hoog te houden hier een plaatje van Flamez: