SlotA.com heeft de eerste betrouwbare benchmarks van de VIA KX133 chipset gepost. Onderstaande resultaten zijn afkomstig van een systeem met Athlon 600, 128MB PC133 SDRAM en Diamond TNT2 Ultra:

Een verschil van 0,7 punten in Winstone is helemaal niet slecht voor een chipset. Voor meer informatie zul je moeten wachten tot de complete review vannacht online gaat.

Jorrit schrijft: "Het blijkt dat Seagate een klein probleempje heeft. Seagate heeft namelijk floppydrives geproduceerd zonder dat ze er ooit rechten voor hebben betaald. Een een of ander bedrijfje genaamd Rodime dat ooit in een ver verleden ooit van die dingen heeft geproduceert claimt namelijk dat ze de 3.5" floppydrive hebben uitgevonden. Er was al eerder een rechtzaak geweest, maar deze was geseponeerd. In een hoger beroep hebben ze wel gewonnen en een dikke buit van een slordige 45 miljoen dollar gekregen!":

Disk drive giant Seagate has coughed up $45 million (£27 million) to settle a seven-year-long row over patent infringements with one-time drive maker Rodime.

Rodime claims it pioneered the development of the 3.5in drive in 1983 and that Seagate had used it without paying royalties. A Californian District Court dismissed the case in 1997 but an Appeal resurrected the claims.

Despite issuing denials that it had infringed any patents, Seagate settled out of court yesterday after the Supreme Court rejected a petition to quash the case.

Throughout the case Rodime has been running as a shell company with four employees living off intellectual property, patent incomes and a $34 million overdraft. The company said they would invest some of the money in pursuit of its digital servo patents.

Casema pleit voor een onafhankelijke geschillencommissie voor de hele internetbranche. Volgens de kabelexploitant is dat nodig gezien de groei van het aantal internetgebruikers. Volgens de Vecai zal deze commissie er op korte termijn wel komen. (Thanks Frenzy voor de link.)

Casema wil nu de branche-organisatie van kabelexploitanten Vecai en de Vereniging van Nederlandse Internetproviders vragen om voor de zomer met een voorstel te komen. Casema heeft de problemen aan den lijve ondervonden: "We hebben, evenals andere providers, de groei van het aantal internetabonnees onderschat."

Door die onderschatting kwamen er technische problemen op Casema af. Zo ontstonden er files op het kabelnet, waardoor verbindingen traag werden. "We hebben veel gepraat met de Wanadoo Internet Gebruikers Groep", aldus een woordvoerder. "Er zijn altijd wel zaken waar we met z'n tweeën niet uitkomen. Op zo'n moment is er een onpartijdige instantie nodig wiens uitspraak bindend is." Casema heeft 42.000 internetgebruikers.

De Vecai zegt bezig te zijn zo'n commissie te vormen. Het is echter niet bekend wanneer die er komt. "Wel op korte termijn, maar pin ons niet vast op een datum", aldus een woordvoerder. Ook de Consumentenbond voelt wel wat voor een dergelijke instantie.

Lees meer info bij Nu.nl.

S3 heeft een setje nieuwe drivers in elkaar geknutseld voor de Diamond Viper II gebaseerd op de S3 Savage 2000. Helaas nog geen T&L support . Anyway, check deze page om ze te downloaden. (Thanks GaMeOvEr voor de tip.)

BassaB kwam een linkje afgeven richting The Register alwaar wordt verteld dat Intel de Pentium III 933 in mei wil gaan releasen. Dit zal dan gelijk de laatste P3 Coppermine worden voor de release van de Willamette. Hieronder de soep:

Sources close to Intel's plans say that it has now included a 933MHz Pentium III processor on its roadmap.

This is an iteration of the 133MHz bus speed, with a multiplier of seven.

The 933MHz part is likely to be the last of the Pentium III Coppermine series, with Intel, on its official roadmap at least, scheduled to introduce the Willamette IA-32 architecture in the second half of this year.

That, as we reported elsewhere today, may change as a response to increased competition from AMD with its Athlon microprocessor.

Intel will not comment on unannounced products. ®

Smart Zeiky schrijft: "Ars Technica heeft De Kast voor overklokkers gevonden. Deze kast is speciaal ontworpen om te koelen. Hij is zelfs van aluminium zodat de kast zelf ook nog eens zoveel mogelijk warmte door de 'huid' kwijt raakt. Het komt allemaal wel voor een stevige prijs, maar wat verwacht je anders voor de Cadilac van de computerkasten . Hopelijk komt deze kast ook snel onze riching op! Zal wel weer eens niet "

Deze kast ziet er inderdaad errug stoer uit! Hieronder een gedeelte, lees hier meer.

In the end, the question is: does the aluminum casing, the thing that makes this case sooo expensive, really make that much of a difference? Unfortunately, there's no easy way to tell. What we do know, in the end, is that the ATC-200 is cool but expensive. The price of the case puts it into the server-class, but it has neither the space nor housings to hold the hot-swappable RAID arrays or redundant power supplies of server-class machines. And it's hard to overlook the case of the FK-603. At nearly $200 less, many consumers are going to opt for 5º F more, and put the extra money into something else.

Of course, this case just hit the market, and it would be short-sighted to call CoolerMaster out on the price just yet. We'll keep an eye on it, and on a server-sized version of it that's coming out soon. And, even at $280, there are going to be a good number of people who consider that 5º worth the price. I bet you can guess what case will probably end up in the God Box before too long? We owe a congratulations to CoolerMaster on an excellent debut.

The final verdict is that this case is as cool as anything we've tested thus far that didn't undergo modification; it's certainly quiet, particularly strong, and curiously light. If money is no object, I suggest you order this case. If it is, think hard. I wasn't too far off when I called this thing a Cadillac. It's all in how you calculate value.

Naast AnandTech heeft FiringSquad ook eens lopen babbelen met de mannen van Bitboys, die momenteel de Glaze3D chip in ontwikkeling hebben. Het complete interview is hier te vinden. Hieronder wat meer speculaties over de performance die hij zou gaan moeten leveren:

Whenever a new high-end video card is released, we like to talk about what resolutions and settings become "free" i.e. little or no framerate hit for higher resolutions and/or settings. The GeForce 256 DDR was able to make the 1024x768 Fastest and 800x600 High Quality settings "free" in Quake 3. What settings will become "free" with the Glaze3D?

1024x768 will definitely be "free", as will 1280x1024, and 1600x1280 is fast becoming within our reach. We can of course go up to HDTV resolutions.

True 32-bit color, 32-bit textures, and 32-Bit Z-buffer will also become free, as well as Anti-Aliasing with the XBA architecture. (Petri)

Does Glaze3D completely remove rasterization/memory bandwidth from the bottleneck? What resolution and framerate do you envision for 3D games by the end of 2000?

The frame rate is a constant, 75 Hz. Although you could have more, it doesn't make that much sense. Same goes for resolution when we have 1280x1024 and true color and 1600x1200. Monitors have to improve before users have a need to go up from there. What people sometime forget is that peak fillrate requirements can spike as games go from a depth complexity of 4 in general use to as high as 20 due to effects such as explosions, light maps, etc. This causes the 3D engine to either be able to handle the peak needs or drop frames. XBA allows us to meet the demands of even the most complex game fillrate requirements and still deliver consistent frame rates at killer resolutions and color depths.

We will definitely have even more bandwidth in our next generation so saying that the bandwidth bottleneck is complete eliminated would be wrong. But for the time being, 12 Gigabytes for the 1200 and 20 Gigabytes+ for the 2400 is enough. To give you an idea of our current bandwidth lead, the newly announced 3dfx VSA-100 chip, which is the basis for Voodoo5 has less than 3 Gigabytes of bandwidth. (Shane)

Sander Prinsen schrijft: "Webgate is vandaag gestart met haar internetdiensten, waaronder een dienst zonder telefoonkosten. Ze hebben het iets anders aangepakt dan was gepland, om misbruik te voorkomen. Zo zijn de abonnementkosten 50 piek per maand, 25 piek inschrijfkosten en fl. 0,33 per gesprek én heb je een tijdslimiet van 120 uur per maand. Later deze maand komen nog een heavy en een very heavy user account, waar de limieten (en natuurlijk de abokosten) hoger zullen liggen. Als ik het kon, zou ik een stukje quoten, maar om een of andere reden werkt de site van hier niet (ik zit op school met Netscape, thuis met IE 5 werkte de site wel...)."

De site blijkt inderdaad niet veel te doen onder Netscape. Het is dus vanaf nu mogelijk om je in te schrijven voor het 'normal' account zoals die hierboven beschreven is. Meer info bij www.webgate.nl.

Osiris bezorgde ons een link naar Dan's Data waar nog een review te vinden is van de bekende Aureal SQ2500 Vortex II based geluidskaart. Hieronder wat meer info over zijn performance:

A Vortex 2 is a Vortex 2, as far as sound quality and 3D performance go. The Revision B chip is a tad faster, but sounds no better. Not that it needs to sound much better - A3D 2.0 is superb in most of the many games that support it. Sounds really do seem to come from distinct, 3-D locations, especially when you're using headphones.

All of the non-3D sound capabilities of the SQ2500 are well up to scratch, too; its inputs and outputs are very low noise, its recording quality is superb, and of course its digital S/PDIF output, being digital, is noise-free.

The very low noise design makes the SQ2500 perfectly suitable for studio work, provided of course that you can make do with just one external input jack. Make up cables for the internal CD and AUX IN jacks as well, though, and you could use a standard Vortex 2 card as a three channel stereo mixer without much trouble.

The SQ2500's MIDI output has an outrageous number of possible simultaneous voices (64 hardware, up to 512 more with software mixing), but the standard 4Mb instrument set is merely OK. It sounds acceptable, especially with the two simultaneous configurable effects you can layer on top of the music. But if you want something better, a whole different instrument set is only a download away - compatible DLS 1.0 sample sets can be had from various sites, like this one.

Via NV News kwam ik terecht bij Riva Station waar gemeld wordt dat Elsa een PCI GeForce videokaart op de markt gaat zetten. Helaas op het moment nog geen links of nadere info van Elsa. In de lente zouden ze leverbaar moeten worden.

Riva Extreme bouwde een review over de Guillemot 3D Prophet GeForce videokaart met standaard SDRAM geheugen dat maximaal 190MHz wilde trekken. De core speed bleef steken op een vrij teleurstellende 135MHz. Check hier de review voor meer info.

The Guillemot 3D Prophet is certainly a rockin' performer, and anyone would be happy to have it as a new addition to their system. However, you must decide if it's the right card for you - although it's performance is up with the best of the GeForce SDR cards, it doesn't compare to the DDR cards in speed. Also, it doesn't sport any options besides a TV-out - so features can't weigh in on this decision.

The one thing that is quite appealing, however, is the price of the 3D Prophet. I was able to find it for a measly $169 online and $199 for the retail box version. If you are someone who is looking to get a great quality GeForce card on the serious cheap tip, grab the 3D Prophet. It will provide you with an awesome piece of hardware to smoke your online friends with, and you won't have to whine to your parents/boss/spouse for video card $ for a great while.

Bij Sharky Extreme is een review te vinden van de Gigabyte GA-MG400, een gekloonde Matrox G400 kaart met 16MB geheugen. Om te voorkomen dat Gigabyte van het Matrox' marktaandeel gaat snoepen werkt dit kaartje alleen op bepaalde Gigabyte moederborden alwaar het bios van de videokaart verstopt is. Vanwege de oude drivers en geen TurboGL ondersteuning is het duidelijk dat dit kaartje geen aanrader is voor Gamers.

So is the GA-MG400 a good value? Consider the evidence: Though it is not yet out in the US, we were told it will carry approximately a $90 price tag. Gigabyte plans on bundling the GA-MG400 with certain of their motherboards, which one/s not yet disclosed, and they state on their web site that buying the GA-MG400 along with a motherboard will yield you a 10% discount over buying them separately. And don't forget the excellent games bundle. The four games bought individually, even at value prices, would cost almost as much as the games bundled with the card. As long as the games appeal to you, it's a fantastic value. But if the games don't float your boat, the value is not so good and you might want to look elsewhere. The closest comparable card to is a white box Matrox Millenium G400 16MB single-head (essentially the same hardware at the GA-MG400), which goes for about $100 without a game bundle but with the ability to work with any AGP capable mainboard.

BetaNews maakt ons gelukkig met het nieuws dat er een nieuwe bios beschikbaar is voor Asus P3B-F bezitters. Beta 5 kun je hier downloaden.

3dfx heeft nieuwe NT4 drivers (versie 3.02.02) in elkaar getimmerd voor haar Voodoo2 kaarten. Hieronder de info:

1.Fixed issue, which caused some Glide apps to hang when changing from 640x480 to 800x600.
2.Fixed issue with the control panel. Incorrect memory configurations were getting reported.
3.Fixed issue with pulsating circles around edges of jump pads and lighting around skull being corrupted with Q3 test.
4.Fixed issue with fog not correctly displayed on Q3 Test.
5.Fixed issue with Quake 3's brightness control being grayed out.
6.Updated OpenGL with miscellaneous bug fixes.

Hier kun je ze naar beneden laden. (Bedankt 504 voor de tip).

Volgens dit artikel van PC World gaat Intel binnenkort een Pentium III Coppermine met een snelheid van 1000MHz demonstreren. Ditmaal echter geen supercooling toestanden zoals Kryotech, het exemplaar in kwestie zal gewoon op kamertemperatuur werken.

Intel claims that a Pentium III processor can achieve a clock speed of 1 GHz while running at room temperature, and will present a paper at a closely watched technical conference next month to describe the process, an Intel spokesperson said on Friday.

Intel has demonstrated a 1-GHz processor in the past using special cooling equipment. Producing a chip that can operate at that speed in real-world conditions will allow Intel to sell the part commercially for use in desktop PCs, the Intel spokesperson says.

[...] The processor Intel will describe next month, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, will be a Pentium III manufactured with its advanced 0.18-micron process. Such chips were formerly code-named Coppermine.

Figuring a way to make a processor that runs at 1 GHz at room temperature is only part of the battle, notes Keith Diefendorff, a senior analyst with research and publishing firm MicroDesign Resources.

"Anyone who manufactures an 800-MHz chip probably has a few in their lab that run at 1 GHz. The challenge is whether you can manufacture enough to make it a commercial product," Diefendorff says.

Wonderboy Anand heeft een review geschreven van het ons allen bekende K7M moederbordje van Asus. Vandaar hieronder maar meteen de conclusie:

The K7M is one of the best Athlon motherboards on the market, however there is room for improvement. If you're looking for a good Athlon motherboard for overclocking then the K7M is probably your best bet right about now. Even with motherboards based on VIA's KX133 chipset coming out over the next few weeks, you can expect the K7M to hold its own in the Athlon motherboard market for at least a bit longer.

Unfortunately one of the factors counting against the K7M is its availability. With the FIC SD11 arguably the most widely available Athlon motherboard on the market, the K7M has quite a distance to travel before it can boast that same claim to fame, something which is very unlikely to happen.

The K7M is a very good solution, but in the end, ASUS began publicly promoting the board entirely too late for it to be able to be as successful as it could have been had they pushed the product early on like FIC did with the SD11. Hopefully ASUS has learned their lesson and will be on top of the promotion of their upcoming KX133 product.

Mike Andrawes, bekend van AnandTech, heeft een interessant interview afgenomen met Shane Long, president en CEO van Bitboys Inc. Uiteraard veel info over hun Glaze3D superchip, die in het derde kwartaal in massaproductie zou moeten gaan. Hieronder vast een paar vragen:

[Q] Tell us a little about the Glaze3D and what makes it so special.

[A] We have designed a completely new approach to 3D acceleration, Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture. XBA technology was invented during the design of our current 3D-graphics architecture. XBA consists of the eight-texel/four-pixel rendering pipeline, extremely wide 512-bit memory bus and our memory management logic. The memory management logic works as a highway system tying together the embedded DRAM memory, the external SDRAM memory, AGP memory and all units, which want access to the memory. A lot of the XBA inventions are behind this memory system, which handles 768 bits of data (eDRAM+AGP+SDRAM) every clock cycle, resulting in the massive bandwidth of 12.5 GB/s.

This huge bandwidth enables us to do everything in true color; we are not really interested in any 16-bit performance and dithered images. The bandwidth also allows us to do full-scene Anti-Aliasing with real supersampling. Although rendering game graphics at 1024x768 true-color resolutions requires around 2.5 GB/s of memory bandwidth, doing this with anti-alias enabled requires 10 GB/s of memory bandwidth! To say this in another way, products equipped with only external SDR or DDR memory are not able to do full-scene anti-aliasing at realistic speeds. The XBA architecture based products are really the first chips capable of improving the image quality with Anti-Aliasing.

[Q] The Glaze3D originally sounded great on paper when it was announced long ago, but by the time it's actually available, 3dfx should have their Voodoo 4 & 5 products, while NVIDIA will be looking to NV11 & NV15 to keep them going. How do you see the Glaze3D stacking up in such a competitive market?

[A] We feel that the part will be very competitive and with extraordinary performance due to the only 8-texel engine and the memory bandwidth to actually achieve huge filtrates. In terms of texel fill rate, 3dfx will need the V5 6000 four-chip solution to even stay close and Nvidia will still only be half of the Glaze3D 1200 product. The Glaze3D 2400 being double again that performance level at over two gigatexels will clearly be the market leader in fill rate. We do believe that our architecture is superior.

Net als 3dfx mikt Bitboys met de Glaze3D meer op gigantische fillrates dan onboard T&L oplossingen, zoals nVidia op dit moment doet. In ieder geval, als videokaarten gebaseerd op de Glaze3D echt in september verkrijgbaar zijn is de NV20 van nVidia ook alweer bijna klaar. Ik ben benieuwd hoe dit gaat aflopen .

Mozillazine heeft een artikel gepost met een overzicht van de coolste features die in Mozilla 5.0 (Netscape Communicator 5.0) geïntroduceerd zullen worden (thanks H@@S voor de tip):

Mozilla, the open-source Web browser project upon which Netscape Communications (now a subsidiary of America Online) is building Communicator 5.0, has so far gotten a pretty bad rap in the press. Being a long-time follower and advocate of the project, I am still unclear how this could be the case. After all, Mozilla is now in alpha, with beta status for Mozilla to follow hopefully by March. And consider a few of Mozilla's coolest features:

* Mozilla is the first Web browser fully compliant with years-old Web standards like HTML 4.0, CSS1 (cascading style sheets level 1), XML1 (extensive markup language level 1), and DOM1 (document object level 1). With current browsers, including the current version of Communicator, Web site developers must develop time-consuming "work-arounds" to get their Web pages to display properly, and even then browsers on different operating systems still interpret Web pages differently.

* Mozilla relies on extensible user interface language (XUL, pronounce "zool," as in the multi-planar deity from Ghostbusters) to define its interface. XUL is a derivative of extensible markup language, or XML, and allows Web designers to completely redefine the interface for Mozilla merely by choosing colors, patterns, and plugging in hyperlinks. (XUL works by downloading images from the Internet to create a user interface, storing the data in a secondary cache.)

* Mozilla's integrated e-mail client allows users to check Web-based IMAP e-mail clients (such as Yahoo mail, Netscape's Webmail, and Microsoft's Hotmail) and POP3-based e-mail (Internet service providers such as AOL, Earthlink, and AT&T Worldnet use the POP3 standard), and multiple accounts of each type, all from the same user profile. The current version of Communicator allows users to keep only 1 POP3-based e-mail client or 4 IMAP-based e-mail clients under one profile.

* Mozilla's powerful new search client takes a cue from the venerable Dogpile.com, allowing users to search all major search engines simultaneously, sorting the results first by search engine and then by relevance.

En zo zijn er nog veel meer toffe features...

Phoenix heeft bekend gemaakt dat 2 jaar geheime samenwerking met Transmeta heeft geresulteerd in een BIOS versie voor de Transmeta Crusoe processor. Dit Phoenix BIOS zal gebruikt worden in het Crusoe reference design:

Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (NasdaqTEC) - the global leader in system-enabling software solutions for PCs and connected digital devices - today announced that PhoenixBIOS™ will be used in Transmeta Crusoe processor reference designs for a new category of Mobile Internet Computers. Transmeta's use of PhoenixBIOS™ is the result of a close relationship between the two companies that began more than two years ago.

"Phoenix is the unquestioned leader in mobile BIOS and power management," said Jim Chapman, vice president of Sales and Marketing for Transmeta. "Additionally, Phoenix provided an international engineering team, with thorough industry knowledge, who willingly worked within our secrecy constraints."

"Enabling Internet access is a critical component of our strategy and we believe the Crusoe family of processors will accelerate the growth of new mobile Internet computers," said Al Sisto, president and CEO of Phoenix. "Phoenix understands the power and performance requirements of the Internet mobile market. Our unique position with silicon providers, operating system vendors, battery manufacturers and PC developers make us a natural partner in assisting Transmeta with introducing its processor in the Internet mobile marketplace."

EBN Online meldt dat NEC is begonnen met het samplen van de eerste 128Mbit Virtual Channel SDRAMs. Massa produktie van de VCM SDRAM chips staat gepland voor april:

NEC Corp. today said it has begun sampling a 128-Mbit SDRAM using a Virtual Channel Memory core architecture, the highest density yet for the company's new chip design.

Volume production of the 128-Mbit VCM version will begin in April. NEC introduced the virtual-channel concept in 1997, tapping temporary channels between memory cells and I/O pins to read and write data in parallel with other SDRAM chip operations.

To date, Hyundai MicroElectronics and Infineon Technologies AG have licensed NEC's VCM design. The 128-Mbit version will be available in both PC100 and PC133 SDRAM devices in a two-bank configuration. Pricing was not disclosed.

DaMJone schrijft: "Intel kan komende maand geen Pentium III meer ophoesten. Het gat wat Intel daarbij achter laat zal met open armen door concurent AMD ontvangen worden":

The shortage of Pentium III microprocessors is set to hit system builders worldwide, as more distributors report their February backlog of box processors is being slashed and burnt.

Last week, we reported that a major European distributor complained bitterly that it had been told 13,000 boxed units of Pentium IIIs that it expected in February had been cut.

And now further confirmation has come from the US, which reports that giant distie Avnet had said supplies of Pentium IIIs will be tight during the entire quarter, according to US publication Electronic Buyers' News.

Aldus The Register, die hiermee eerdere berichten van vorige week bevestigd.

Be Inc. heeft meer details bekend gemaakt over de gratis versie van BeOS 5 die het vanaf midden februari aan zal bieden. BeOS 5 zal vanaf een file op een FAT32 partitie gemount kunnen worden, zonder dat de harddisk hierbij opnieuw gepartioneerd hoeft te worden:

Version 5 will bring the Be operating system to users without the need to partition the hard drive. While the free version will not contain all components of the enhanced version that can be purchased from the Be Store, it will be fully functional with no time restrictions.

The entire operating system will be contained in a single FAT32 file within Windows, and double-clicking on it will make the system exit Windows, and load BeOS directly from the Windows file structure. To uninstall the operating system, users will simply have to drag it to the recycle bin.

[...] The major new features in Version 5 include firewire and DV support, and enhanced USB support. The Media Kit has also made some improvements with the addition of new drivers and nodes such as the multi-channel audio node that will make it easier to work with multiple sound cards.

Check voor meer info dit artikel van Betanews en deze nieuwsposting van twee week geleden.

Snoopy Sun maakt melding van het nieuws dat Asus verse Win9x drivers voor de V6600 heeft gaar gebakken. De drivertjes zijn gebaseerd op de v3.68 Detonator reference drivers en kunnen hier naar binnen getankt worden.

Nexus schrijft: "Voor iedereen die zijn Linux servertje maar saai en standaard vindt heeft KYZO een Linux intranet server in een echte Pizza Hut-doos gebouwd . Inmiddels zou je er hier genoeg van opgestapeld moeten hebben, dus pak de schaar en plakband ":

Fuji heeft drie nieuwe digitale camera's voorgesteld. Top model is de FinePix S1 Professional, deze spiegelreflex beschikt over een 6,1 Megapixel (3040 * 2016px) CCD en heeft een adviesprijs van maar liefst 4000 dollar. Iets minder heftig is de FinePix 4700 Zoom, een 4,3 Megapixel camera met 16MB Smartmedia card. Voor de financieel minder bedeelden is er de FinePix 1400 Zoom die met een 1,3 Megapixel CCD altijd nog goed is voor een maximale resolutie van 1280 * 960px. Steves Digicams heeft een overzicht met de volledige specificaties van deze drie nieuwe Fuji camera's.

EBN Online heeft een interessant artikel gepost over de nieuwe bus die Intel in ontwikkeling heeft voor de Foster (Xeon versie van Willamette) en McKinley (opvolger van Itanium) processors. Deze nieuwe bus draait op (slechts) 100MHz, maar haalt dankzij 'quad pumping' een datarate van 400Mhz. Wat dat quad pumping precies in mag houden is me niet helemaal duidelijk: het busje is 128-bit breed en maakt gebruik van double data rate technologie en dan kom je vergeleken met de huidige GTL+ bus inderdaad op een snelheidsverschil van een faktor 4.

Net als bij de huidige GTL+ bus wordt het buslijntje in multiprocessor configuraties gedeeld over alle processors, dit in tegenstelling tot de theoretisch veel snellere point-to-point EV6 bus van de Athlon en Alpha. Een point-to-point bus vereist meer signaallijnen, wat de produktie van moederborden met een dergelijke bus bemoeilijkt en duurder maakt.

De 'quad pumping' bus zal voor het eerste gebruikt worden in de Colusa chipset. Deze chipset zal ondersteuning bieden voor PC2100 DDR SDRAM:

Intel Corp. is developing a new "quad-pumped" processor bus that is expected to reach a clock speed of 400 MHz when running in Intel's next-generation Foster and McKinley server microprocessors, according to industry sources.

[...] McKinley will debut next year as the full-production version of Intel's IA-64 architecture, after Itanium, which was formerly known as the Merced processor, is rolled out late this year. The new 128-bit bus will have double the width of Intel's highest current processor FSB, sources said.

The platform's basic bus speed will be 100 MHz, which actually is slower than Intel's 133-MHz FSB for the Pentium III. However, Intel will use new technology called "double pumping" to achieve a 200-MHz speed on the bus line, or "quad pumping" to reach a clock speed of 400 MHz, sources close to the company's development efforts said. The technique either doubles or quadruples the number of instructions issued at any one time, effectively allowing two or four times the total data speed on the line.

[...] Intel is dovetailing its pumping technique with its multiprocessor-server architecture, which will connect up to four Foster or McKinley chips on a common bus line. Sources said the common bus will handle instructions concurrently from up to four processors without one of the chips waiting for execution of its instruction and creating delays on the bus line.

Jeff Lee van GamePC schreef een review van de dikke Sony G500 21-incher. Dit beeldkanon maakt - uiteraard - gebruik van een Trinitron beeldbuis en heeft een 0,24mm aperture grille. De maximale resolutie bedraagt 2048 * 1536px bij een refreshrate van 75Hz:

As you all know, anything with a brand name, especially something like Sony, a certain price will need to be paid. Now I'm not saying it's overpriced because you do get what you pay for with this monitor. It just depends on what you use the monitor for. If a G500 does make it into your budget, I personally would suggest squeezing out a few more bucks for a BNC cable to get the most of it. All in all, the G500 is a great monitor that offers features no other competitors have or come even close to beating. After all it's a Sony and the G500 is a perfect example of why one company can represent so much; quality, performance and innovation. I for one must say the G500 takes my vote in the on going 21" monitor war, rock on Sony!

National Semiconductor maakt trots melding van het feit dat het als eerste fabrikant een Ethernet chip op de markt brengt die compatible is met zowel 10, 100 als 1000Mbps Ethernet:

National Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:NSM - news) today announced the industry's first single-chip 10/100/1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet transceiver, the only chip that is backward compatible to existing Ethernet infrastructures.

National's DP83891 Gig PHYTER(TM) combines three speeds of Ethernet operation on a single chip, allowing manufacturers to install it in applications such as switches, workgroups, uplinks, workstations and node cards. Since the triple-speed Gig PHYTER operates over the Category 5 unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) copper wiring that already exists in most office buildings, network administrators are able to upgrade their Ethernet easily and inexpensively.

About Gig PHYTER

The DP83891 is a full-feature physical layer transceiver with integrated PMD sublayers to support 10BASE-TX, 100BASE-TX and 1000BASE-T Ethernet protocols, and is compliant with IEEE 802.3 specifications, including: IEEE 802.3ab, IEEE 802.3u, IEEE 802.3 compliant Auto-Negotiation, IEEE 802.3u MII and IEEE 802.3z GMII.

Gig PHYTER is designed for easy implementation of 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet LANs. It uses standard single Quad TX-Transformer interface and performs error-free operations at over 140 meters, 40 meters greater than IEEE specifications. This robust operation ensures successful deployment of the Gigabit technology within an existing 10/100M environment using CAT5 cabling.

Other features of the Gig PHYTER include fully IEEE 802.3u -compliant Auto-negotiation at all three speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps. In addition, Gig PHYTER possesses an Auto-MDIX that automatically detects and corrects wiring problems such as MDI crossover, swapped pairs and reverse polarity. These features provide intelligence within the chip to correct most common wiring problems.

Gig PHYTER combines National's analog and digital signal processing (DSP) expertise to provide the next technological development in the Ethernet arena. Gig PHYTER uses a variety of on-chip circuits to minimize the total cost of the system while increasing the performance. The on-chip circuitry includes Adaptive Equalization, echo cancellation, cross-talk cancellation, precision Analog to Digital converters, forward error correction and others that allow robust and error-free operation.

Gig PHYTER's digital signal processor (DSP) core is based on National's proven Physical Layer technology used in the Mac PHYTER(TM) and Ds PHYTER(TM) transceivers.

Price and Availability

The DP83891 Gig PHYTER single 10/100/1000 Ethernet transceiver is now available and priced at $95 for volume quantities of 1,000.

Seagate heeft een nieuwe serie Barracuda ATA66 harddrives aangekondigd. De Barracuda ATA II beschikt net zoals andere high-end ATA66 schijven over 2MB cache en een 7200rpm toerental. Volgens Seagate heeft de drive een toegangstijd van 8,2ms en halen de platters een maximale throughput van 45,4MByte per seconde. Volume produktie van de Barracuda ATA II staat gepland voor volgende maand:

Seagate Technology, Inc. (NYSE: SEG - news) today unveiled the Barracuda ATA II, the newest addition to the most popular line of PC disc drives in the world. Protected by Seagate's 3D Defense System, Barracuda ATA II is the world's most rugged 7,200-rpm hard disc drive and can withstand 300 Gs non-operating shock. With up to 30.6 Gbytes of capacity, the Barracuda ATA II is Seagate's third-generation 7,200-rpm ATA disc drive targeted at the value performance and commercial desktop systems. It features the fastest seek time and data transfer rates in its class, an improved platform with new electronics, a four-fold increase in cache, and fifty percent higher capacity per disc, for up to 15 percent better performance over all previous ATA hard drives.

The new drive expands upon the award-winning legacy of Seagate's acclaimed Barracuda ATA drive family. Worldwide, industry press said the Barracuda ATA ``overwhelmed other drives in product performance in the WinBench 99 tests'' (PC Korea), offers ``fast access speed (and) low cost per megabyte'' (Computer Shopper), ``absolutely provides the most bang for your buck'' (3D Alpha), and ``certainly is one heck of a drive'' (StorageReview.com). Maximum PC Magazine was ``faced with another record-breaking score,'' as the Barracuda ATA went on to win the ``ReviewBoard Select Award'' (ReviewBoard Magazine), ``3D Alpha Reviewer's Choice Award'' (3D Alpha), ``Editor's Choice'' (Nikkei WinPC, Japan), ``Best SOHO Hard Drive'' (PC User, Australia), ``Fastest Hard Drive in Category'' (PC Welt, Germany), ``Editor's Choice'' (PC Office, Taiwan), and many more awards.

With its superior performance and high capacity, Barracuda ATA II offers unprecedented price/performance to new applications supported by ATA RAID systems, as small business owners look to ever-speedier ATA drives to perform jobs traditionally handled by SCSI technology. ATA RAID lets users tie many disc drives together into a single, virtual storage unit with super-fast performance and ultra-high capacity; users can also mirror the data between two drives for instantaneous and continuous data backup.

``Because Barracuda ATA II performs up to 15 percent faster, it will literally move information faster and help PC users work faster and more effectively to get the job done,'' said Henry Fabian, Seagate director of product marketing for the Personal Storage Group. ``With leading performance in a PC workstation drive and the comprehensive 3D Defense System for the world's toughest disc drive, the Barracuda ATA II truly lets users access, manipulate and protect their information the way they want it.''

Seagate once again brings the world's most rugged disc drive to our customers. All Seagate disc drives feature the 3D Defense System, the industry's best and most comprehensive drive, data and diagnostic protection package. With G-Force Protection (GFP), Barracuda ATA II withstands the most nonoperating shock of any 7,200-rpm drive. Seagate's proprietary SeaShield protects the drive's sensitive PCB, and the exclusive SeaShell packaging protects drives through the entire integration process from over 1,000 Gs of shock. Seagate's unique Safe Sparing feature, plus the S.M.A.R.T. system and Error Correction Code, defend user data against corruption. When a PC system experiences trouble, SeaTools graphical diagnostic software positively identifies whether a disc drive is functioning properly, and if so, points the user to alternate solutions. This saves the customer from needing to remove the drive, thereby reducing the risk of lost data, and helps speed the diagnosis of system problems. SeaTools has been shown to reduce the incorrect diagnosis of disc drives by as much as 30 percent, reducing handling costs and increasing efficiency for Seagate's OEM, distributor and reseller customers.

Barracuda ATA II is Seagate's highest-capacity ATA-interface drive ever. The drive is available in popular capacities of 30.6, 20.4, 15.3 and 10.2-Gbytes. The drive's 8.2 msec average seek time is faster than any other drive in this class. Data flies off the drive's platters at up to 45.5 Mbytes per second, beating all competitors, and the drive can output cached data at the industry's fastest rate of up to 66.6 Mbytes/second via the Ultra ATA/66 interface. The expanded 2-Mbyte cache -- a four-fold increase over earlier products -- gives users quicker access to the specific information they need. Barracuda ATA II also features better acoustics than any other 7,200-rpm drive, ensuring a quiet user experience.

Barracuda ATA II offers leveraged technology for quick qualifications with PC makers. Customer evaluation units are shipping now, and volume production is scheduled for next month.

Hot Hardware maakt ons blij met een review van de 8-speed Plextor PlexWriter 8x4x32 IDE burner. Negatieve kritieken hebben we tot op heden niet gehoord over deze drive en Hot Hardware brengt daar geen verandering in:

The Plextor Plexwriter 8/4/32 CD-RW Drive is a great new workhorse from a company long known for its quality and performance in the CD Drive arena. Its read speed is decent although somewhat uninspiring. However, its Write and Re-Write capabilities typify a new level of performance in CD Recording. Plextor also goes the distance with a nice complement of software tools.

All told the PlexWriter 8/4/32 delivers a solid offering of features and performance augmented by top end CD recording. If you measure this drive on its write performance alone, it is top notch. As a total package, it should still satisfy even the performance enthusiast.

Hip Hardware heeft een review van de GlobalWin FKK50 neer geplant. Deze heatsink heeft twee 50mm fans en is geschikt voor Athlon en SECC procs:

GlobalWin produces impressive CPU coolers for the money. The FKK50 is no exception. Even with smaller fans than it's big brother, the FKK32, which has two 60 mm fans connected to the heatsink, the FKK50 is outstanding in every aspect. From it's ease of installation in most motherboards, included extras like heatsink compound and "Y" connector for the fans, and impressive cooling power, you can't go wrong with this CPU cooler. You can find this cooler on internet sites for under $20, which doesn't include shipping and handling. The FKK50 offers the peace of mind that average computer users are looking for and the outstanding performance required for those who wish to push their processors to their limits by overclocking.