Volgens The Register mogen we onze Socket 7 bordjes weer uit het vet halen. "Bronnen" zeggen namelijk dat er al technici van Intel bezig zijn om de mogelijkheden te onderzoeken. Hieronder het complete bericht. (Thanks Bleh! voor de tip.)

Sources at a Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer said today that Intel engineers are working on a subset of the Socket Seven market.

If true, and Intel could not be contacted at press time, for a confirm or deny, this means that the company has completely reversed out of its Slot One strategy only to drive back into its old Socket Seven strategy. This may well be a question of competitive market forces.

Socket Seven was abandoned by Intel apparently because it could not support high clock speeds. It so happened at the time that its competitors AMD, Cyrix and IDT had Socket Seven solutions.

According to the reports, the low-end Intel Socket Seven market will compete with offerings from AMD on the K6-2 and the K6-2+ front.

Intel originally developed the Socket Seven design but has been through some changes since then.

Crazyhorse bracht me naar deze nieuwe Blurb van Ome Tom, waarin hij dit keer een verhaal vertelt over de andere kant van AMD. Volgens Tom is AMD namelijk helemaal niet zo'n lievertje zoals velen denken. Gebruikers werden volgens Tom niet genoeg op de hoogte gesteld van de Irongate / GeForce bug. Daarnaast zou AMD "Super Bypass" als een nieuwe feature introduceren, terwijl het eigenlijk gewoon een bugfix is. Intel is daarentegen veel opener, die vindt het helemaal niet erg om haar blunders en fouten openbaar te verkondigen .

Now as if this wasn't ridiculous enough already, AMD is leaving all retail-buyers of Athlon-processors and Irongate-boards out in the rain. The two large OEMs that are shipping significant quantities of Athlon-systems (you may guess their names, it's not exactly difficult) are of course aware of the Irongate/GeForce-issue and they actually like GeForce as well. Obviously they disagree with AMD's above opinion and intend on running GeForce at AGP2x, just as it is supposed to be. What is the result? Those two OEM's are using some custom made motherboards that don't have the AGP2x-bug and so they can offer their Athlon-systems with a GeForce -card that is actually working at AGP2x and thus under the specifications that AMD claims on its website. Of course nobody of the poor retail-customers is supposed to know about it, because it could blemish Athlon's and thus AMD's reputation. Maybe we should ask AMD if they agree with Michael Dell at least on some part of what he recently said in an interview. Dell claimed that everyone who exchanges parts inside his PC (as the retail-buyer obviously does) is at the 'lunatic fringe'. Obviously AMD doesn't feel like caring too much for us lunatics and so we may continue to buy motherboards that don't fully live up to AMD's AGP2x-specifications, although AMD is aware that there is a fix for that problem. The OEM's get that fix, but of course they are more important. Money talks, and the money of retail buyers is just as good as the money of the obviously more demanding and less lunatic OEM-customers. So why not take it? Officially the problem is played down by subtly putting NVIDIA at fault and claiming that AMD's marvelous 'internal testing' proved that it doesn't matter anyway. Back where I come from we call this 'sweeping something under the rug'. I wonder what you think.

Bij Nu.nl lees ik dat Clinton zich persoonlijk gaat bemoeien met de recente Denial of Service aanvallen op o.a. ZDNet en Yahoo!. Volgende week gaat hij met een aantal vertegenwoordigers van grote internetbedrijven rond te tafel zitten om te bespreken welke maatregel er genomen kunnen geworden. Hieronder een gedeelte uit dit artikel.

Ook president Clinton heeft zich gemengd in de cyberoorlog. Volgende week ontmoet hij vertegenwoordigers van de belangrijkste Amerikaanse internetbedrijven om te inventariseren welke maatregelingen getroffen moeten worden om dit soort aanvallen in de toekomst te voorkomen.

De internetpiraterij van deze week is gek genoeg voor president Clinton een geluk bij een ongeluk. Hij kan nu waarschijnlijk op meer steun van het parlement rekenen voor zijn plannen voor een systeem dat een waarschuwing afgeeft als een computernetwerk wordt aangevallen.

Er viel net een e-mail van Hirogen Hunter in mijn mailbox, die me informeerde over zijn nieuwe Peltier & Watercooling site. De site staat vol met info en beschrijvingen over hoe je zelf een Peltier & watergekoelde installatie in je case hangt. Een erg goed initiatief dus! Hieronder vast een paar pics zoals je die hier meer vindt.

Voor de gevorderde doe-het-zelf tweaker die dit ook wel aan durft zeker het lezen waard.

Oke, het was al bekend dat 3dfx haar nieuwe Voodoo kaarten ging demonstreren op de CeBit beurs, maar nog niet dat de Nederlandse Lara Croft (Lara Weller) deze zal gaan presenteren! Hm, echt goed in wiskunde ben ik niet, maaruh: Lara Weller + Voodoo56000 = een hele hete CeBit beurs!

I received a mail from the people who handles 3dfx in Sweden. It appears that 3dfx will have their first showing of the Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 at this year's CeBit (held in Hannover 24 Feb to 1 March).

I won't translate the whole press-release as it contains the usual PR-talk but something that should interest some of you is that Lara Croft (!) will be presenting the Voodoo4 and 5 at the stand . Lara is currently being played by the Dutch model Lara Weller (click for some pics). Lara will be at the stand after 14.00 the 25 Feb. Ok Ok, here's another picture

The press-release ends with 3dfx saying that the Voodoo4 4500, Voodoo5 5000 and Voodoo5 5500 will be out sometime this spring. No word about the V5 6000 though ....

Helsie informeert ons over Odigo, een ICQ-compatible chat programma. Hieronder zijn bevindingen:

Ik zag op één of ander forum (nee, niet t.net ) iemand een alternatief geven voor ICQ. Dit gebeuren heet Odigo en is naadloos met ICQ contactlijsten te integereren. Maar het biedt meer: je kunt zien wie op dat moment op dezelfde site zijn als jij (en er dan ook meteen mee communiceren), je kunt zien wat de populairste sites zijn en natuurlijk ook gewoon chatten en een contactlijstje in standhouden en dergelijke.

Natuurlijk impliceert dit wel dat ze bij Odigo zelf je surfgedrag dus op de één of andere wijze registreren. Persoonlijk heb ik daar niet veel moeite mee, maar een hoop mensen zullen dat wel hebben (en die gaan hier natuurlijk dan ook allemaal mee te koop lopen... niet doen!).

Ik heb het zojuist thuis geïnstalleerd en het lijkt te werken. Op het moment dat je een site bezoekt waar niemand online is, krijg je automatisch een button (Waar normaal je mede-odigo'ers staan) waarmee je mensen per email naar die site (en naar Odigo ofcourz) kunt inviten. Het programmaatje is snel, ziet er gelikt uit en voor mijzelf was de grootste factor om het te gebruiken: de ICQ integratie... Je hoeft niet eens aan te geven waar het geïnstalleerd staat, hij haalt zelf je lijstje binnen (als je wil), je kunt terwijl je odigo connected bent ICQ connecten of disconnecten, etc. Dit zou wel eens een belangrijke concurrent voor ICQ kunnen worden...

Als je Odigo ook eens wilt proberen, fiets dan even naar hun website.

Hardware News Net heeft een informatief artikel gepost waarin ze de overclocking resultaten bespreken van vier P3-500E en twee P3-550E processors. In het stuk worden de problemen van een aantal gebruikers naar voren gebracht en wordt uitgelegd hoe ze het zaakie uiteindelijk stabiel aan de praat hebben gekregen. Hieronder vast een voorbeeld:

Dylan Thomas passed along his results and a solution that worked for him. His system consisted of a PIII 550E, an AOpen X63 pro with the rev 52 latest BIOS for coppermine support, a Quantum KX 15GB UATA66 hard drive, Panasonic 10X DVD, Creative Labs GeForce DDR with the memory overclocked to 330Mhz and the core at 130Mhz.

His system originally had a PIII 500 (Katmai) runing at 600Mhz with a FSB speed of 120Mhz for weeks without a single lockup. After noticing a local reseller with some returned PIII 550Es, he bought one along with an Iwill Slocket II and "went for it."

His new system would boot at 733Mhz, but would lockup or give corrupt data file messages when he tried to run 3DMark 2000. Scan registry would also occasionally detect problems on Windows bootup. Even at 115Mhz on the FSB 3DMark 2000 would not run. However, running actual games would not produce any problems.

After trying to diagnose the problem for hours, he finally noticed that at the start of the benchmark it would freeze on the transfer from the hard drive to RAM. After using a utility from Quantum's web site, he was able to set his hard drive to act as a UDMA33 drive and not a UDMA66 drive. This allowed him to run rock solid at 852Mhz. To make sure the hard drive change was the fix, he renabled the UDMA66 and the system locked again.

Klik hier voor de rest van dit artikel.

AMD heeft vandaag officeel de Athlon 850 d.m.v deze press release aangekondigd. Hieronder vast een klein gedeelte:

SUNNYVALE, CA -- February 11, 2000 --AMD today sent out an early Valentine's Day greeting to computer lovers everywhere, unveiling an 850MHz version of its award-winning AMD Athlon™ processor.

Many computer manufacturers plan to offer systems featuring the 850MHz AMD Athlon processor, including Compaq, IBM, Gateway, Pionex and CyberMax. Those systems will provide users exceptional performance for commercial and consumer applications, such as 3D modeling, image compression, CAD/CAM, and voice recognition, as well as near theatre quality visual images, rich audio and an enhanced Internet experience.

"With the 850MHz AMD Athlon processor, AMD continues to demonstrate the capabilities of the processor's architecture, delivering supreme performance for computer users who demand the best," said Larry Hollatz, group vice president of Computation Products at AMD.

"As the AMD Athlon processor maintains its speed leadership, AMD's penetration of the commercial arena should accelerate. The 850MHz AMD Athlon processor provides another superb tool for business users seeking outstanding performance in their high­end desktops, workstations and servers. On the consumer forefront, the 850MHz AMD Athlon processor is designed to deliver compelling power for high-performance PC users," said Dana Krelle, vice president of Marketing of Computation Products at AMD.

Het volk achter The Pulpit levert een erg uitgebreide review af van een professionele nVidia Quadro DDR reference design videokaart. In de review kom je echter geen Spec of Indy3D resultaten tegen, enkel 3D benchmarks zoals Quake III, Unreal Tournament en 3DMark. Hieronder een hap uit de conclusie:

That said, you could say that this board is reviewed in the wrong context - it's meant and (will be) priced at the professional market, although I would not expect a USD$850 price tag to be expensive for a "professional board". As a "consumer" gaming card, this price is obviously too high. It is also a fact that the card reviewed here cannot be had for any kind of money right now - at least not in retail. There are quite a few of these cards smoking some developers' and reviewers' machines but they are all reference cards by nVidia. I had asked an nVidia representative if he knows of anyone making 64MB DDR Quadros and he said, "Yes, I believe Elsa is doing it..." so if he is to be believed (at least I believe him) then it's up to you to decide if you want to part with your dollars when they do debut. Again, Quadros are not meant nor made for gaming but then again...I'm not letting this one escape my AGP slot...not until something better comes along, of course

Bedankt aan KillerBob die dit nieuwtje ook instuurde.

Van Smith van Tom's Hardware Guide heeft een column geschreven waarin hij de mogelijke afgang van Intel in de desktop processor markt voorspelt. De hele mikmeuk aan foute beslissingen en inschattingen van Intel komt langs fietsen, van het i820 Rambus fiasco tot een mogelijk falen van de Itanium tot een slechte werksfeer bij Intel, waardoor top engineers vertrekken naar concurrenten zoals AMD en Compaq. Hoewel het artikel in sommige aspecten een wat overdreven donker beeld geeft, is het zeker interessant om te lezen. Voor de tweakers met sympathie voor AMD is het ronduit amusant (thanks afterburn voor de tip):

You might be wondering what could be driving Intel to heights of ineptitude that make the Three Stooges look like Shakespearean masters. The immediate answer is panic.

Panic triggered by the Athlon, AMD's sophisticated and powerful seventh generation x86 microprocessor. Universally acclaimed as being far superior to Intel's current PentiumIII (PIII), the Athlon's 32-bit architecture has enough headroom for growth to carry it forward for several years. In contrast, the tweaks Intel applied to the latest "Coppermine" (despite its name, the Coppermine does not have copper interconnects) version of the PIII represent what is very likely the end of the road for this geriatric design introduced with the ancient PentiumPro. Willamette, Intel's true answer to the Athlon, will not be rolled out until as late as October.

By that time the Athlon will have matured into three different lines supporting the low-end, mid-range and high-end/server/multi-processing markets at top clock speeds of at least 1.2 GHz. By the time the Willamette appears, the Athlon will have displaced Intel's Celeron, PIII, and Xeon offerings in all three major markets. Even the 64-bit Itanium, if available, will be trumped by faster, more flexible 32-bit Athlon multi-processing servers.

Johan De Gelas van Ace's Hardware heeft het tweede deel van zijn Ultimate 3D Video Deathmatch online geketst. In dit deel worden zaken als overclocking, image quality en DVD playback _zeer_ uitgebreid besproken met betrekking tot alle momenteel populaire 3D versnellers. Zeker een must-read voor iedereen die van plan is een nieuwe videokaart in huis te nemen! Hieronder want over DVD playback:

As 3DFx and Nvidia were and are still very popular, people have been led to believe that the omission of hardware support for Motion Compensation is no real problem for watching DVDs on your PC. A PII-400 was supposed to be capable of carrying the burden of those huge DVD streams alone. Wrong! Most people who have watched DVDs on their PCs can say that a PII-400 is simply not enough.

Tests by C't, the reputable German IT magazine, have clearly shown that even a PIII-500 drops a frame now and then. No, if you want smooth DVD on your PC, a video card with hardware DVD playback is greatly needed. Only the cards from ATI, S3, and the GeForces support Motion Compensation in hardware. With such a card you only need a PII-350 to watch DVDs without dropping frames. ATI's Videocards, namely the ATI Rage Pro, and Maxx, incorporate iDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform) as well, making DVD a pleasant experience even on a PII-266/300 (or K6-2 350).

En bedankt D3ton4tor die dit aan ons kwam vertellen.

Bij 3D Rant lees ik wat over een handige utility die AGP 2x en sidebanding aanzet voor mensen met een GeForce / Athlon combo. Deze versie werkt tot en met de 3.72 detonator drivers en komt ook met een handige overclock optie.

With my Athlon blown, I have been working on a little program for the Geforce and Athlon owners out there. It isn't much but it gets the job done. This program is for the people that want the AGP 2x and sidebanding enabled on the Geforce + Athlon setup. It will also enable the overclocking utility. This is just for the reference drivers only and up to version 3.72 only. I made this because it is hard to find the regkeys and for people that are intimidated by the registry and don't want to go in there. So some of you will find it of no use. But for the ones that like it and use it, thank you. This is my first ever program in VB. I could not have don't it with out the help of Jay though. Grab it here and happy higher frame rates.

3dfx heeft nieuwe Windows 9x drivers in elkaar getimmerd voor haar Voodoo Banshee videokaartjes. Hieronder de waslijst met veranderingen aangebracht in versie 1.04.00:

1. Driver updated to support General Format mode Timings
2. Fixed issue with possible Deer Hunter 2 hanging at main menu.
3. Fixed issue which caused a slowdown with some Glide and OpenGL applications.
4. Fixed issue with Unreal not running with OpenGL.
5. Fixed issue with the control panel not allowing the selection of 800x600 when the machine was used with a non-PNP monitor.
6. Fixed issue with Quake 3's brightness control being grayed out.
7. Fixed issue with Flight Sim 98 and 2000 missing point lights during night scenes on right of screen.
8. Fixed issue with desktop corruption occurring when changing form a 16bit mode to 8bit mode on certain motherboard/processor combinations.
9. Fixed issue with Moto Racer2 crashing to the desktop when attempting to load.
10. Fixed issue with System Shock 2. Players could lose weapon overlay, depending on position.
11. Fixed issue with Jane's USAF, Textures beyond plane visible through the plane.
12. Fixed issue with Deer Hunter 3, Terrain behind buildings visible through the building.
13. Updated OpenGL with miscellaneous bug fixes
14. Fixed issue with Organic Art screen saver causing screen corruption and/or system lock when running with power management enabled.
15. Fixed issue with pulsating circles around edges of jump pads and lighting around skull being corrupted with Q3 test.
16. Fixed issue with fog not correctly displayed on Q3 Test.
17. Fixed issue with Motor cross Madness: Menu distortion.
18. Fixed issue with Screen failing to update (freezing) after exiting Zoran SoftDVD when TV out only enabled
19. Fixed issue with 3DMark99 locking up during transition from Game Test#2
20. Fixed issue with 3DMark2000GM game Test#1 freezes and locking Windows
21. Fixed issue with Quake 3 Smoke trails and other alpha blended effects that caused frame rate to slow to near zero a

Je kunt de drivers hier naar binnen lepelen.

The Adrenaline Vault heeft een artikel gepost over de anti-piracy maatregelen waar Microsoft zich momenteel mee bezig houdt. Zo zal er een "Internet monitoring program" gestart worden die 24 uur per dag illegale download sites moet opsporen. Nieuwe Office 2000 versies krijgen verder een nieuw installatie en registratie systeem mee, en de Windows 2000 pakketten worden van unieke hologram beelden voorzien. Hieronder wat meer info:

Microsoft will include a variety of new anti-piracy features in retail and OEM versions of Windows 2000 Professional and the next service release of Office 2000. The company will ship these products with a hologram that covers the entire surface of the software. When tilted in the light, the hologram displays the product name and product-specific graphics. The graphics etched into the CD identify the appropriate Windows 2000-specific products, including Server, Advanced Server, Professional and Data Center. The visual also identifies the sales channel method, such as OEM, Retail Upgrade, Full Product or Academic.

Windows 2000 software distributed with new computers will also include a certificate of authenticity label. Retail versions of Windows 2000 will include a different version of the label on the spine of the retail box. Security features on the label include: a copper, holographic thread revealing the words "Microsoft" and "Genuine"; the product-specific name printed on the center of the label; a unique product code in the center of the label; and the Microsoft logo, which changes color between gold and silver when tilted in the light.

The Microsoft Office Registration Wizard will be included in the next service release of retail versions of Office 2000 in the U.S. to help prevent illegal installations of the software. Customers need to provide the name of the country in which they reside to receive an installation number that confirms registration. No personal information is required. If a customer prefers, he or she can register via e-mail, the Internet, postal mail, fax or telephone. This technology will not impact customers with a volume license agreement.

Matrox heeft zowel voor haar G200 als G400 videokaarten nieuwe Win9x, NT4 en Win2000 beta drivers klaar liggen. Dank aan el fretto voor de tip.

Sharky Extreme brengt ons een review van de AMD Athlon 850 processor. Net als zijn voorganger wordt de 850MHz nog steeds met off-die L2 cache geleverd met een divider van 2/5, waardoor hij normaal scaled t.o.v. van de 750 en de 800MHz Athlons. Hieronder een hap uit de conclusie:

AMD should be congratulated for being the first out with an 850MHz processor, however we are more excited about what the future holds. Handicapped by the Pluto 2.5 cache divider, the Athlon 850 is merely the next logical step in what is to come.

For those who are in the market right now, the Athlon 850 will certainly deliver stunning speed and, for at least a few days, you'll be able to claim to own the fastest CPU around. If you're into overclocking and are comfortable exposing a processor's innards, one of the popular Gold Finger modifications may be viable. In this case a less expensive 650 or 750MHz Athlon may be better suited. Now that AMD has demonstrated a 1.1GHz CPU, we can rest assured processors with the coveted on-die cache are coming soon.

At any rate, we are happy to see Athlon prices dropping with each new CPU release, and performance on the high end increasing at a similar rate. If you are willing to wait, it looks as if patience will once again prove to be a virtue.

crazyhorse schrijft dat AnandTech een review klaar heeft van een nieuwe GeForce SDR videokaart, de Gigabyte GA-GF2560. Overklokkers zullen erg tevreden zijn met de prestaties van de GA-GF2560: de kaart liep uiterst stabiel op een core-speed van 160MHz. Het 5.5ns SDRAM geheugen behaalde maar liefst 204MHz, een volle 38MHz boven de standaard snelheid. Al met al een erg snel kaartje dus, die straks erg interessant kan zijn voor de budget gamer.

Gigabyte seems to have done a good job on the GA-GF2560 card itself. While it does use the generic reference design, a few features set the GA-GF2560 apart. First is the high overclocked speed that the card is able to reach. While the fan and heatsink may seem like an old model CPU cooler, it does an excellent job at keeping the GPU at optimal temperatures and thus provides a very high overclocked speed. The extremely high memory clock speed that the card was able to reach was also exemplary. It is quite astounding to find memory that performs this well on any SDR GeForce card. Whether this is a function of a great RAM batch or of the card itself remains to be unanswered, but the card performed like a champion.