ZDNet UK heeft het tweede deel van hun interview met het opperhoofd van AMD online gezet. In het interview praat Jerry Sanders over het huidige succes van de Athlon, de toekomst van AMD en de concurrentie van Intel. Laatstgenoemde probeerde 2 week geleden indruk te wekken met de demonstratie van een 1,5GHz Willamette (thanks Sake voor de tip):

Intel has already demonstrated its 1.5GHz Willamette processor in what is seen as a bit of a game. Are you going to continue playing that game?

If the game means we can produce high-volume production of competitive performance processors like Intel, then the answer is yes. If the game is announcing or demonstrating a leading-edge product a year ahead of introduction, I don't know if I want to even play that game. Intel can put more engineers on marketing and promoting, but let's look at mid-year. Let's see which company has delivered more GHz-based machines -- AMD or Intel? Let's take a look at that, not who will, at some distant point in the future, have a 1.5GHz processor. We believe in doubling performance every 18 months. We can do that. [break] Verder in het interview wordt Microsoft door Sanders vergeleken met God en alles wat goed is: [/break] 95% of PCs built today use the Microsoft operating system. Microsoft and AMD have a great relationship. We love Microsoft. We work very closely with Microsoft. Microsoft is God. OK?

Beyond 3D brengt ons een interview met Nick Caddick van S3, die o.a. meldt dat Savage 2000 bezitters pas volgende maand kunnen rekenen op drivers met T&L support. Hieronder wat meer info:

B3D:
When can we expect to see T&L enabled in the drivers?
S3:
T&L will be enabled in April, with full support for both OpenGL and DirectX.> >

B3D:
So what else has S3 planned in the graphics industry?
S3:
There are no new products planned soon. There will be big announcements very soon (although if this will be in the 3D market is to be seen...) and you will the first one to hear the news.> >

B3D:
Is there really no news about the Savage2000?
S3:
Well actually we have closed a deal with VIA to build an integrated chipset with video in it. Of course the video part will be a Savage2000 chip. S3 feels that is where the big money is to be made. In the sub $1000 market, that is. To make these kind of PC's you will have main boards with sound, graphics integrated. The world is going for affordable PC's and other online capable devices.

Mozilla.org heeft de tweede alpha release van de Mozilla browser uitgebracht. Wat er nieuw is in Milestone 14 is me niet helemaal duidelijk, maar we mogen verwachten dat er weer een flink aantal bugs zijn gefixt (thanks GraveR):

Release Notes

Macintosh, Windows, and i386 Linux users, please get a Fullcircle build. These builds help engineers debug crash bugs.

Win32

Zipfile with Fullcircle (6.3 MB)

Installer .exe (4.9 MB)

Zipfile (6.2 MB)

MacOS 8.5 (Requires StuffIT expander 4.5 or better)

.bin with Fullcircle (8.3 MB)

.bin (7.9 MB)

Linux

i386 tar.gz format with Fullcircle (6.6 MB)

i386 tar.gz format (5.8 MB)

weedty wilde even kwijt dat Sharky Extreme een review heeft van de Kensington TurboBall, een leuke trackball met USB aansluiting. Het ding bleek errug geschikt om in UT hoofden weg te maaien met de Sniper Rifle :

But can you game with it? I admit, I was a bit skeptical about how well the TurboBall would do with gaming. Sure, Marble Madness would be great with it, but Quake would be painful. After pulling off three head-shots with the sniper rifle in Unreal Tournament, my skepticism left the building.

The TurboBall's response is quick and smooth in first-person shooters. The feels is comparable to any mid-range mouse. If you've only played with mice before, it probably will take you a little bit to reach your old level of proficiency, but that's just a matter of what you're used to. The TurboBall is accurate, quick and makes a great gaming controller. Though whether or not you'll like it for games is a matter of personal preference.

djAzEtE schrijft: "Vandaag weer fijn dan toch eindelijk post van de UPC. Dit keer met de mededeling dat we toch nog ff moesten wachten op de migratie naar Chello. Lees hieronder wat de reden hiervoor zou zijn... Helaas voor ons allemaal. Wie weet nu dan toch rond april . Ik ben diep teleurgesteld":

Door onvoorziene omstandigheden heeft het migratieproces echter enige vertraging opgelopen en zullen in maart de eerste standaard abonnees worden gemigreerd naar de volledige chello service. Na afronding van de migratie van de standaard abonnees zal medio april worden begonnen met de migratie van de budget abonnees.

Volgens dit exclusieve bericht bij ZDNet staat AMD klaar om deze maand nog een 900, 950 en 1GHz Athlon te releasen, dit als antwoord op de aankondiging van Intel om alvast beperkt 1GHz P3's aan OEMs te shippen.

900MHz, 950MHz and 1GHz chips are set to hit the streets soon, making for possible PR win over Intel AMD is set to deliver a "one-two-three" punch to Intel "imminently" with the simultaneous release of its 900MHz, 950MHz and 1GHz Athlon processors, ZDNet UK has learned. According to sources, AMD will toss out the usual procedure of releasing one clock speed at a time in a move designed to humiliate its gargantuan rival Intel in an ongoing PR war. If AMD pulls the move off, and the source warns that "this is the goal, but these things can change in a minute", it will also make AMD's 850MHz Athlon -- currently the fastest processor available in full production volumes -- only the fourth-fastest on the chip maker's roster. Its 850MHz chip was introduced on 11 February. [...] The 1GHz Athlon wasn't originally due until the second quarter, but its simultaneous launch with the other Athlon speeds means that it's likely it will arrive a bit sooner -- even later this month. If, as AMD has promised, the 1GHz Athlon is available in full production quantities when it is introduced, the chip will be widely available well before the equivalent Pentium III. Intel has made it clear that the 1GHz PIII will be available only in limited quantities for the first half of the year.

Thanks livE liveD voor de tip!

Tommie Boy heeft zijn Motherboard Guide aangevuld met een showdown tussen de i820 + RDRAM, i820 + SDRAM en de VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset. Tom's conclusie is duidelijk en simpel: 133MHz FSB Coppermine bezitters moeten gewoon bij de Apollo Pro 133A chipset zijn. De performance ligt maar net onder die van een i820 / Rambus combo maar is tegelijk wel tig keer cheaper.

People who think that i820 with PC100 SDRAM is worth its money must be a lot closer to the 'lunatic fringe' than any PC-hobbyist. Maybe Mr. Dell should consider that before offering Dell-systems with this crazy constellation. Firstly i820-motherboards are rather expensive anyhow. Then you need to pay extra for the 'MTH' 'memory translator hub' chip that enables i820 to use the cheaper SDRAM instead of RDRAM. Now you can add PC100 SDRAM at a reasonable price, but look at the above results to see what horrible performance you get in return!

The CLEAR winner in this competition is VIA's VT82C694X or 'Apollo Pro 133A'. This chipset offers almost the same performance as i820 with RDRAM and it scores even identically to the expensive competition from Intel under office applications. For a most significantly lower price you get a product that scores slightly worse than i820/RDRAM in 3D-games and some 10% worse in professional OpenGL applications. For a normal consumer there's no alternative to it, for a workstation guy the story might look a bit different. I was honestly impressed with VIA once more. After the good Apollo KX133 for AMD's Athlon, which only had to beat AMD's aging 750-chipset, VIA has now shown that it can take on Intel just as well. Congratulations!

My last words are for system integrators and OEMs that offer i820 plus SDRAM. Please do us all a favor and get lost with this sorry combination! Your customers deserve better.

Lees hier het hele verhaal.

hjs schrijft dat Bjorn 3D wat meer info heeft over de S3 Texture Compression support die in de nieuwe Detonator drivers zullen worden geïmplementeerd, vanaf versie 5.08. Een nVidia developer stuurde wat benchmarks op waaruit blijkt dat de performance met S3TC enabled ongeveer even snel is als in standaard 16-bit. Aan de bijgeleverde Quake III screenshot hebben we weinig omdat die niet geschoten is van S3TC enhanced textures.

"Hi Bjorn!

Here is couple screenshots from Q3 demo using pre-release GeForce drivers that have s3tc enabled in opengl.Resolution of these textures are same but I drawed couple arrows to point the difference between normal and s3tc textures. To me it looksgreat, not much detail lost and frame rate seems to be increased.Sky texture is mayby only texture that suffers when using s3tc..

PS. I am registered developer (NVIDIA) so I won't spread drivers aroundbut you can publish these pictures and comments, but to be safe, I wouldlike to remain anonymous :-)"

I quickly mailed back to him to get him to do some benchmarkings at the higher resolutions to see how much it helps:

"I did quick test with 1600*1200 (P2-400, AsusV6600 120/150, detonator 5.08)

32bit screen, 32bit texture(w/o s3tc): 8.0fps
32bit screen, 16bit texture(w/o s3tc): 14.6.0fps
32bit screen, 16&32bit texture( s3tc): 16.1fps

So, speedwice s3tc is about 16bit level,.."

Thresh's FiringSquad dacht ons een plezier te doen met een review van de Asus V6800 Deluxe, een zeer compleet uitgeruste GeForce kaart met DDR SGRAM, TV-out, S-Video input, S-Video output, composite output en support voor 3D shutterbrilletjes. Hieronder een hap uit de conclusie:

In terms of the gaming, this card meets all the requirements. That's where the problem comes in. This card isn't meant for just the lean mean gaming machine. The Deluxe has so much more potential that many of us won't even bother to use, should we decide to sell our unborn children to pay for it. Price and performance are the life-blood of the gamer. This card satisfies one of those requirements, but, at $330, this card is a hard sell. If what you are looking for is video editing with great gaming ability, the ASUS AGP-V6800 Deluxe won't disappoint you. If you only need a fast card for gaming and don't need the extra features, save some money and get a plain vanilla DDR board.

De mannen van iXBT-Hardware hebben een review klaar liggen van de Tyan S1854 Trinity 400 moederbord. Dit plankje is gebaseerd op de VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset en bleek erg goed te presteren t.o.v. de i820 chipset. Helaas heeft Tyan geen rekening gehouden met overklokkers, die dan ook weinig plezier aan de S1854 Trinity 400 zullen beleven:

However, Tyan S1854 Trinity 400 doesn't have any specific functions for overclocking. There is no way to set manually the AGP and PCI dividers as well as to change Vcore and Vio (memory chipset and AGP voltage). Moreover, there is one more especially upsetting thing: it appears absolutely impossible to clear the CPU settings in BIOS if you overclock the CPU too high and the mainboard doesn't boot at all. In this case you will have to open the case and to clear CMOS settings with a jumper.

But this is also not the very end. The gravest problem about the processor overclocking on S1854 Trinity 400 is the AGP divider. To set it the mainboard uses the info about FSB frequency provided by the CPU. It means that if we install Intel Celeron, then the AGP frequency will be always equal to FSB frequency no matter which FSB frequency we had in BIOS Setup beforehand. The same thing happens if we install a 100MHz CPU: the AGP frequency will always be equal to 2/3 of the FSB. And only if the processor used is intended for 133MHz FSB, we will get AGP equal to 1/2 of the FSB frequency.

vsmb@superweb.nl" rel="external">ovs brengt ons bij AMD Zone waar melding wordt gemaakt van nieuwe AGP drivers voor de AMD 750 Athlon chipset. Helaas geen release info, er zullen waarschijnlijk wel een aantal compatibility issues zijn gefixt. Klik hier om de self-installer neer te laden.

Anand Lal Shimpi heeft het laatste deel van zijn Intel Developer Forum op z'n site gemikt, maar daarin uitsluitend processor info. Naast o.a. info over Intel's Willamette en de AMD Thunderbird bericht Anand ook over de nieuwe generatie Celerons:

Intel will shortly be introducing even higher clock speed Celerons manufactured on the 0.18-micron process with the same 128KB of L2 cache we’re used to. Contrary to what we’ve been told in the past, these Celerons will be 66MHz FSB CPUs only, meaning that they will most likely be the next big overclockers for us to enjoy.

If the yields on these 66MHz parts are as high as the yields on the Coppermines, then it shouldn’t be too out of the question to see a Celeron 566 running at 100MHz x 8.5 instead of its default 66MHz x 8.5 setting. Since these CPUs are targeted at the low end market you can expect them to be quite affordable as well.

The continuation of the 66MHz FSB Celeron line may mean a new upgrade option for older BX/LX motherboard owners, but the processors would admittedly have to have BIOS support in order for this wish to come true. Imagine being able to use a board you bought over two years ago with a 700MHz processor…

3DHardware.net heeft een 12 pagina tellend verlag onine gekieperd over de CeBIT beurs. Naast standaard AMD, Intel en 3dfx info nu ook aandacht aan o.a. Seagate, Videologic, Terratec en MidiLand. 3DHardware heeft ook voor elkaar gekregen om de specs van nVidia's NV11 en NV15 te ontfutselen:

NV11

• Up to a 1.5X performance improvement over GeForce 256
  • Up to 50% improvement over the GeForce 256 in multi-textured applications
  • Up to 50% improvement over the GeForce 256 in T&L performance
• Aimed at a cheaper price point than the GeForce 256
• Support for 128bit SDR or 64bit SDR/DDR memory
• 1X/2X/4X AGP support
• 2 pixels per clock, 2 texels/ 2 pixel graphics pipeline
• Integrated dual-link LVDS/TMDS
• Double, independent display pipelines
  • Primary – up to 2048x1536 @ 60Hz
  • Secondary – up to 1600x1200 @ 100Hz
• VIP 2.0 Level I support
  • 8bit/75Mhz (targets HDO apps)
• 35% of the GeForce 256’s power dissipation
• Lower price level than current SDR GeForce 256 cards

NV15

• Up to a 3X performance increase over the GeForce 256
  Clock for clock faster, and running at higher clock speeds
  2X-3X improvement in multi-textured apps
  45% improvement in T&L performance
• 128bit DDR/SDR and 64bit DDR/SDR memory support
• Memory sizes supported: 128, 96, 64, 48, 32, 16 and 8Mb
• 4 pixels per clock, 2 textures per pixel
• 1X/2X/4X AGP support
• Integrated single-link TMDS transmitter
  • Support for flat panel resolutions of up to 1600x1200
• Integrated 720p HDTV decoding
• AGP and PCI support
• 0.18 micron technology
• 50% of the power dissipation of the GeForce 256

• Same price level as current SDR GeForce 256 cards

According to the companies we asked, nVIDIA hasn’t yet started shipping sample units of the chip to board manufacturers, so it would be customary to assume they don’t have any silicon ready at this moment.

Interessant, de prijs van een NV15 ligt gelijk aan de prijs die momenteel betaald wordt voor een SDR GeForce 256 kaartje. Sinds er ook wordt gemeld dat de NV15 PCI compatible is kunnen we dus misschien wel NV15 in onze PCI slot planten, net zoals 3dfx dat ook gaat doet met haar Voodoo5. Ideaal voor overklokkers die last hebben van de 2/3 AGP divider.

FullOn3D heeft een interview afgenomen met Donald Eubank, een mannetje bij VIA die wat kwam vertellen over de nieuwe Cyrix III. Hieronder een vraag over de Integer en FPU performance van deze processor:

Can you tell us about performance of VIA Cyrix® III (estimates in business applications and games like Quake3A)? Traditionally, Cyrix has been associated with fast integer but mediocre FPU (which translates into slow 3D gaming because of their profound use of the FPU). How does VIA Cyrix® III change this?

The integer performance is on par with the Celeron- that is how PR ratings are decided. If the integer performance as tested on Ziff Davis' Business Winstone 99 is equivalent to the performance of a particular speed of the Celeron™, then the VIA Cyrix® III is PR rated at the same numerical value as the Celeron™'s speed. For example, a VIA Cyrix® III PR533 has the same performance as a Celeron™ 533MHz. Concerning the FPU performance, the VIA Cyrix® III's FPU is competitive with Intel® Celeron. It is pipelined for single and double-precision operation, has Advanced 3D instruction set supported via 3DNow! instructions, a dual-issue MMX unit with enhanced MMX instructions for MPEG, modem, and audio, and a single-clock context switch between MMX and FPU ops.

Competitive = 40% trager?

ZDNet heeft een interview gepost met Jerry Sanders, CEO van AMD. In het interview staan o.a. wat leuke stukken over de Intel vs. AMD battle, die al sinds 1986 aan de gang is. Hieronder vast een gedeelte:

Tell us a little about last quarter and how AMD profited from Intel's problems.

First of all, we did not profit last quarter from Intel's problems. Intel couldn't match our performance. They caused themselves problems. Our limitations were primarily infrastructure. You may recall there was an earthquake in Taiwan in September. We were developing a brand new infrastructure -- a new chip set and a new motherboard -- to support the Athlon. We were hand-to-mouth on infrastructure support for Athlon in Q4.

What Intel did, or didn't do, had no significant impact on our business. What Intel was unable to do, of course, was to match our clock speeds in volume with their Coppermine. Now that it is more aggressive on top speed, we believe that we will have a more competitive offering. We don't think Intel's problems had any material impact on our quarter.

What we do believe is that Intel's problems had a major beneficial impact on our customers' attitude to our future. Historically, Intel was considered to be invulnerable. I think that today it is considered to be nearly invulnerable. We're looking forward to the point when people start to think of Intel as vulnerable!

At this point in time AMD is producing 850MHz Athlons in volume. Both Gateway and Compaq have announced they will have systems available for sale for immediate delivery. The bottom line is that we are producing high-volume, leading-edge processors to the extent that we will continue to have a competitive offering. I think that our customers will wish us to stay in the game.

Electic Tech maakt melding van nieuwe Win9x drivers voor TNT & GeForce kaarten van Creative. Versie 1.3 bevat een kleine revision update:

This is the latest full-release driver update (Ver 1.03) for Creative's TNT, TNT2 & GeForce accelerator cards for users running on Windows 9x. The products supported are Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT, 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Ultra Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT2 Value (32Mb) 3D Blaster GeForce/3D Blaster GeForce Pro.

Note - This release is a minor revision update. Users who have downloaded tntaw9x.exe dated 16 Feb 2000 are encouraged to download this full release.

Haal de drivers bij deze page neer.

Microstar heeft een nieuwe BIOS gereleased voor haar MSI K7 Pro Slot-A moederbord. De update voorziet je bios nu met een Super Bypass Mode optie. Hieronder meer info over versie 1.2:

1. This is the AMI(R) BIOS ver 1.2 release.
2. This BIOS fixes the following problems of the previous version:

• Fixed Japanese and Korean keyboard problem under Windows(R) 98 ACPI mode.       
• Added support for AMD(R)K7 750Mhz.       
• Added the "Super Bypass Mode" option

Volg deze link om te downloaden.

C|NET meldt in dit nieuwsbericht dat o.a. Hewlett-Packard al eind deze maand een systeem gebaseerd op de Pentium III 1000MHz zal introduceren. Uiteraard blijft de oplage zeer beperkt. Pas in het derde kwartaal zal de 1GHz processor goed verkrijgbaar zijn.

Consumers will likely be able to buy PCs containing 1-GHz chips later this month, a lurch forward in the release date of these systems, sources said today.

Hewlett-Packard will start shipping consumer PCs containing Intel's Pentium III running at 1 GHz (1,000 megahertz) later this month, sources at HP said. Corporate computers containing these chips won't come out until June.

Likewise, IBM is expected to make an announcement regarding 1-GHz systems next week, sources said. With the anticipation building around 1-GHz systems, consumers should be able to buy whatever computers are available soon after the shipping dates.

Bedankt insane en pales die dit nieuwtje ook hadden ingezonden.