gijs kummeling schrijft: "Volgens The Register staat de Playstation 3 voor eind 2002 op de planning van Sony. De PS3 krijgt een brand new Emotion Engine 2 waarmee deze bij zijn release alle 'gewone' desktop PC's te boven moet gaan. Als je bedenkt dat de Pentium III nu 10 miljoen transistors heeft en dat de Emotion Engine er in 2002 50 miljoen heeft, dan snap je dat-ie best snel kan worden. Er is ook al een Emotion Engine 3 engine in ontwikkeling en deze heeft 'half a billion transistors shoehorned onto the die by a 0.1 micron process'. Wel koel dacht ik zo":

Emotion Engine 2 is slated to appear in 2002 and will contain some 50 million transistors. Its successor, known by the ambiguous moniker Emotion Engine 3, will sport half a billion transistors shoehorned onto the die by a 0.1 micron process.

Of course, the projected arrival of both chips suggests Sony is planning to update the PlayStation 2 rather more quickly than that machine will supplant the original PlayStation. The gap between PSX 1 and 2 is five years (1994 to 1999), but according to Kutaragi's presentation, the PlayStation 3 could appear in three years' time -- just two years after the debut of the PlayStation 2.

The next-generation of Sony's Linux-based PlayStation development system is due in 2002, and it too appears geared to tie in with the release of the second version of Emotion Engine and PlayStation 3. Sony is describing the system not only as a video game development system but also as the basis for creating real-time digital entertainment content.

Voor de trouwe Playstation aanhangers is het prettig om te weten dat ook de PS3 volledig backwards compatible zal zijn met oudere Playstations.

Thresh's Firingsquad heeft een brede preview van de Microsoft X-Box neer gemikt. In het artikel wordt de technische architectuur van het apparaat besproken alsmede de positie van de X-Box bij game developers en de technical demo's die op de Microsoft presentatie werden gegeven. De specificaties van de X-Box geven tevens een goede indruk van hetgeen we van de nVidia NV25 mogen verwachten. Deze krijgt volgens de informatie van Firingsquad een fillrate van maar liefst 4,8Gigapixels per seconde:

We see from the numbers that the X-Box will fill at a very impressive 4.8 gigapixels per second! This is about twice as much as the Playstation 2, 4 times higher than the Voodoo 5 6000's projected performance, and 6 or 7 times higher that what the NV15 is expected to output when it's released. And unlike the Playstation 2, the performance doesn't degrade after adding one or two textures; this gives the X-Box graphics processor almost a 10 gigatexel fill.

But wait a second - the clock speed is "only" 300MHz! 4.8 gigapixels/300MHz = 16 pixels per clock. Does this infer a monstrous 16 pixel pipeline? It sounds outrageous now, but with current top end video cards giving a quad pixel pipe, it's not totally out of the question. There is another thing to consider as well. A wider pixel pipeline means even greater importance placed on the clock speed of the graphics chip. A 50MHz drop in the clock speed of a GeForce card means a 200 megapixel loss in fill rate. The same drop in clock speed of the X-Box would spell a nearly gigapixel (800 megapixel) loss in fill rate though! This presents another pitfall of early numbers - if NVIDIA can't hit the projected clockspeed of 300MHz (remember, there's precedent here with the TNT and TNT2), then these fillrate numbers go straight down the tubes. Time will tell.

Thanks Vipertje voor de tip.

tomson schrijft: "Gaming Intelligence meldt dat het middels een simpele handeling op de Playstation II controller mogelijk is om regio 1 DVD's op de japanse regio 2 PS2 te spelen":

The first code comes from the GIA's own J.T. Kauffman; it is apparently circulating Japanese message boards and web sites. The code is: hold down L1, Circle, and Select. This code has worked with both the Dual Shock 1 and 2 with about 40% accuracy.

The second code comes from a friend of the GIA known as Barubary. The code is: press in L3 (the left analog stick) straight and hard. This code does not work with the Dual Shock 1, but works with the Dual Shock 2 with about 60% accuracy.

-=[Terrorvis]=- bracht ons een linkje naar deze melding van Betanews dat er een nieuwe build uit is van Streambox MagicSpell, een proggie dat inkomende berichten van de ICQ, AOL, MSN en Yahoo instant messengers voor kan lezen:

Streambox MagicSpell lets you actually LISTEN to your Instant Messages as they are sent! This amazing new must-have software add-on to ICQ, AOL, MSN & Yahoo Instant Messengers will read your incoming Instant Messages aloud so that you can do more. Streambox MagicSpell utilizes advanced Microsoft Agent technology, along with a powerful built-in text-to-speech (TTS) engine.

MagicSpell Build 023 mag je hier neer gaan halen.

Matrox Users heeft een Matrox roadmap gepost, gebaseerd op gelekte informatie van KBench (thanks =Alpha=Psycho voor de tip):

De G400 zal snel vervangen worden door de G450 met DDR SDRAM en de G200 blijft voorlopig een leuke 2D kaart voor OEMs. Op zich was deze informatie al bekend, interessanter is de reaktie die Matrox Users van Matrox kreeg op het recente lekken van G800 en G450 specs. Matrox is daar niet blij mee en benadrukt dat het om onbevestigde, niet officiële specs gaat:

I received a phone call from Matrox on Friday who were concerned about all the information on the G450 and G800 that I have posted on the MURC and has been talked about in the forums. At present they were not prepared to talk to me about either the G450 or G800 even though others like Aces Hardware have been NDA'd on both. What they wanted to do was to stress that all of this information is not being released officially by Matrox and so may not prove to be entirely correct. What Matrox need to understand is with the strict secrecy they have always had about their products rumours are going to spread like wild fire in absence of anything official. And hey if they are 't going to talk to me I have no choice but to reel in the rumours to keep you all happy

De DPC Hitparade Top 10 van 11 maart 2000

1. 37,248 Interior Lulu(9, Totaal:646,568)
2. 11,024 Sueno(40, Totaal:227,343)
3. 7,332 DPC-sub st'wold(173, Totaal:66,135)
4. 6,680 Sub-Team Hack BV(23, Totaal:342,308)
5. 6,083 Sir Soes & Shellshock(54, Totaal:184,705)
6. 5,148 sienema(2, Totaal:1,104,374)
7. 4,539 Sjaak & Scott(86, Totaal:134,200)
8. 4,348 misser(28, Totaal:324,418)
9. 4,231 The Vinz(211, Totaal:50,024)
10. 4,191 Chainsaw(17, Totaal:444,634)

En de nummers 11 tot en met 20:

11. 4,012 warmode(219, Totaal:48,757)
12. 3,742 #hekje team(34, Totaal:266,531)
13. 3,599 Hein(185, Totaal:57,571)
14. 3,545 Eddict(24, Totaal:334,495)
15. 3,410 Felysium(114, Totaal:101,029)
16. 3,153 VLS(197, Totaal:53,613)
17. 2,796 HellRailers!(119, Totaal:96,537)
18. 2,790 thejesus(298, Totaal:26,220)
19. 2,783 j.deij(126, Totaal:90,708)
20. 2,720 Vossie(15, Totaal:520,013)

De Top 15 teams van 11 maart 2000

1.( 0) 727,703 Slashdot.org
2.( 2) 619,588 #DeathMatch
3.( 0) 605,086 AnandTech
4.( 2) 568,650 Russian Team
5.( 0) 458,678 HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries
6.( 0) 381,191 The Amiga RC5 Team effort
7.( 1) 352,288 Team EvangeLista (Macs Rule! :-)
8.( 1) 334,474 Team Warped (OS/2)
9.( 1) 277,951 Japan FreeBSD Users Group
10.( 1) 268,651 Dutch Power Cows
11.( 1) 264,693 Libertarians for Privacy (Freedom Works!)
12.( 1) 235,492 Japan Windows NT Users Group
13.( 2) 192,046 CCC.de
14.( 1) 186,812 L0phT Heavy Industries
15.( 1) 186,011 Team Hungary STB+
53.( 17) 64,121 The #koffie Team

Teams om ons heen (total stats):
27.( ) TeamUFies (All Hail the Dust Puppy!) (Tot:52,172,809, Gis:170,787)
28.( ) Prof. James Challis' Most Excellent UK Team (Tot:51,857,585, Gis:107,995)
29.( ) AL-Mail Users (Tot:49,453,676, Gis:65,764)
30.( ) Team RimArts UsersGroup (Tot:48,018,839, Gis:78,346)
31.( ) Dutch Power Cows (Tot:46,838,271, Gis:268,651)
32.( ) NetBSD Users (Tot:42,995,758, Gis:77,739)
33.( ) SwissTeam (Tot:39,654,795, Gis:78,773)
34.( ) Michigan State University (MSU Spartans) (Tot:38,668,880, Gis:100,309)
35.( ) QUALCOMM Incorporated (Tot:38,554,668)
(Teams waarvan de score van gisteren ontbreekt, hadden geen score in de top 100!)

Wanneer halen we ze in:
TeamUFies (All Hail the Dust Puppy!): 55 dagen
Prof. James Challis' Most Excellent UK Team: 32 dagen
AL-Mail Users: 13 dagen
Team RimArts UsersGroup: 7 dagen

Dutch power cows is vandaag 10e en heeft een kans van een op 126 om de sleutel te vinden!

Naast een Willy preview heeft iXBT vandaag ook een review van de FIC KA-11 gepost. Dit is een plank met de Apollo Pro 133A chipset, 5xPCI, 4xDIMM, 2xISA en geen AMR. Voor overklokkers is dit een bord met beperkte mogelijkheden: er zijn slechts 11 busspeeds beschikbaar, Vcore is alleen via jumpers in te stellen en de AGP divider is altijd afhankelijk van de busspeed:

Well, it's high time we took a look at FIC KA-11 overclocking. At first sight, the situation is not very optimistic. The range of the supported FSB frequencies, which can be set via BIOS Setup is extremely poor: 66, 75, 83, 100, 103, 112, 120,124, 133, 140 and 150MHz. Even Tyan S1854 Trinity 400, very ascetic in terms of overclocking, could boast much more FSB frequencies. However, we have to note that the clock generator, IC-Works W150H can provide three frequencies per clock: 105, 110 and 115MHz, which can theoretically be added to new BIOS versions.

But KA-11 allows changing the processor core voltage with the help of a five-jumper set, which is of course not so convenient as an option in BIOS Setup. The second disadvantage of this realization is the unlimited opportunities for the user to set Vcore to any value between 1.3 and 3.5V (between 1.3 and 2.1V with step 0.05 and between 2.1 and 3.5V - with step 0.1V) no matter which CPU he installs. That is why if you prefer to give up the AUTO setting, you have every chance to burn your CPU having set its Vcore higher than allowed. You should be especially careful about it when upgrading your CPU.

Harige Naad schrijft: "Jawel, veel mensen zitten op dit plankje te wachten om er zo'n lekkere Athlon in te steken. Nu is de plank nog niet uit maar de manual is al online. Die kan je ophalen op de ftpsite van AOpen in Taiwan. Ik denk dat sommigen waarschijnlijk onaangenaam verrast zullen zijn door de plaatsing van de ATX power connector en door het beperkte aantal busspeeds wat available is. Toen ik net nog ff ging kijken was de ftp site van aopen uit de lucht maar waarschijnlijk is ie morgen weer te bereiken....":

serephim let me know that Aopen has posted their AK72 manual here.The middle one is the English version. I'm not sure what the other ones are. The manual shows voltage selections from 1.30V to a whopping 3.50V in .05 increments. The FSB speeds are 100, 110, and 115, with memory bus speeds of 120, 124, 129, 133, 143, and 147. The only thing I don't like is the placement of the power connector.

VTec schrijft: "Diamond heeft sinds gisteren nieuwe drivers beschikbaar gesteld voor de Viper II + een nieuwe bios voor de kaart. Deze is voor de mensen die problemen hebben met de TV-out van de kaart. Helaas nog geen T&L ondersteuning. Deze drivers komen waarschijnlijk pas in april uit.":

Release Notes:

- This driver is not optimized for DirectX 7
- Optimized for DirectX 6.1
- Support for WinBench2000 is not implemented

Haal het zaakie hier op Diamond's FTP naar binnen.

DiederikJ schrijft:"Volgens de Windows 2000 E-Newsletter van Lyris draait Win2k op de komende X-box. Ik ben heel benieuwd hoe ze een spel en W2K in 64Mb kunnen proppen, maar ach Microsoft staat bekend om nog wel sterkere memory uitspraken. Kan geen WWW pagina naar het artikel vinden, dus hier het hele verhaal."

EXCITING NEW MICROSOFT GAME CONSOLE RUNS ON... WIN2K!!

Bill Gates last Friday at the annual Game Developers Conference 
in San Jose said that Microsoft will enter the video game world 
and intro a future-generation dedicated video game console, named 
X-Box. It promises to deliver intense, action-packed games. It 
will be an Intel processor that will drive this thing, it's a
PC stripped to the bone with some add-ons and it runs Win2K. 
You can call it either: 
a) a high-end game box that can also operate as a PC, OR 
b) a low-end sub-$300 PC optimized to play games.

This will make future games positively s c r e a m if you look at:
- High performance of Intel Pentium III processor technology with 
Streaming SIMD Extensions.
- More than three times the graphics performance of the newest-
generation game consoles will be offered. Co-developed with 
experts at NVIDIA, the custom-designed graphics chip will deliver 
more than 200 million polygons per second.
- Fast-action and realistic experiences will be enabled by the 
X-Box hard drive.
- Broadband Internet connectivity will extend the game experience.

This will give game designers some cool hardware to develop on. 
X-Box is slated to launch in fall 2001, and numerous developers and 
publishers have already expressed their enthusiasm for it, 
including industry leaders Electronic Arts and Eidos Interactive.

Microsoft is NOT going to have an easy time here. The competition
is murder. Market leader Sony, number 2 Nintendo and No. 3 Sega
are not going to sit still. The electronic games industry is now
mature and makes $6.9 Billion per year, (compare to the Movie box-
office receipts of $7.3B per year).

This is basically the beginning of the Battle For The Living Room
that will last at least 10 years because it will start with games
and then go off to other forms of entertainment, movies on demand,
Intelligent Agents, SmartBots, house automation, you name it: BIG
MONEY. 

A fun background point is that this thing was built by a small 
renegade group of MS engineers in their spare time. They spent
months to lobby their bosses to be allowed to build this thing.
Only when Sony introduced their PlayStation 2 that turned into a
much larger threat than MS had expected, the X-Box project was
discovered by MS-management and lots of resources were thrown in.

The new Sony machine was perceived as a Trojan Horse because it
was a game machine but also a DVD movie player, an Internet access
device and could be turned into more easily. When the original
programmer that wrote the 'Internet-memo' (that woke up Bill Gates
to go for blood regarding the Net) decided to join the X-Box team, 
MS management got alerted. He said: "the X-Box is going to change
the world". 

The box is running a bare-bones Win2K flavor fortified by DirectX 
software and will be built by a specialized manufacturer that sticks 
the Microsoft name plate on it. One of the major features is the 
new Nvidia chip that runs at a trillion operations per second. 
That is three times as much as the Sony Playstation. Gonna be fun
testing one of THOSE puppies! Perhaps MS can get me a beta .

Want to be kept up to date on the development of X-BOX?
Check out this site and subscribe: http://www.xbox.com

The Register heeft een artikel geplaatst over het nVidia Virtual AGP design. Middels deze techniek wordt het mogelijk om de voordelen van de AGP bus (zoals AGP texturing) ook op PCI videokaarten toe te passen. Binnenkort lanceert nVidia twee VAGP kaarten: de TNT2 M64 Pro met een 64-bit 133Mhz chip met 16 of 32MB 166MHz geheugen en een meer krachtigere TNT2 Pro kaart met een 128-bit 144MHz chip en 32MB 166MHz geheugen. Deze modellen zijn erg interessant als aanvulling op i810 moederborden en zijn volgens nVidia sneller dan de Voodoo3-PCI kaarten van 3dfx.

Besides this, for many i810 and i810e mainboards on market this will be a very useful feature, particularly for Socket 7 which doesn't have an AGP port. The solution for this problem is a patent from Nvidia called “Virtual AGP”. It provides high performance AGP style graphical options for Non AGP slot systems. It's based on unique NVIDIA texture management technology – Virtual AGP. Believe it or not, it provides AGP style texturing in standard PCI slot.

The benefits from this technology will mainly be AGP functionality on the PCI bus followed with better performance and higher resolutions. Products based on it will enable very large texture memory support on all systems.

It will provide full speed DVD decode with no increased CPU utilisation. One cool thing for Graphiczilla is that it currently doesn't have any competition in the market with similar solutions and it's much more affordable to upgrade, than to buy a new AGP based system and card.

[...] Both cards are likely to support Open GL ICD, large textures up to 2048x2048 and will work with 32 bit color and 32 bit Z/stencill buffer. According to Nvidia’s tests these other cards are faster than Voodoo 3 2000 and 3000 PCI.

De mannen van iXBT-Labs hebben een preview gepost van de Intel Willamette processor, de opvolger van de P3 die later dit jaar op 1.3GHz zal debuteren. Hieronder vast een gedeelte uit het stukkie, volg deze link voor meer info.

Since the performance of the today's CPUs and memory subsystem keeps growing higher and higher, the fact that GTL+ system bus has got only 33MHz faster is not that impressive, actually. Besides, there has appeared a new platform - IA64. All in all, with its Willamette Intel is introducing a new system bus, which is expected not only to increase the general bandwidth (100MHz clock frequency is even lower than that of the today's GTL+ - 133MHz, however, transferring 4 packs per clock makes the resulting frequency equal to 400MHz). It should also turn a link between IA32 and IA64: after Tehama (a chipset for Willamette), it will be used for i870, intended for both - IA32 Foster and IA64 McKinley.

So, these are the main advantages of the new bus: a significantly higher bandwidth - 3.2GB/sec (400MHz, 64bit) against 1,064GB/sec (400MHz, 64bit) of the today's 133MHz GTL+ (3.2GB/sec is exactly the level, which can be provided by a dual-pipeline RDRAM supported by Tehama) and, of course, a rather promising future.

As for the disadvantages, here you are. 4 data packs per clock is, certainly, a cool thing, but only if they are ready by the time a new clock begins. Otherwise, the bus bandwidth won't be utilized to the full extent. Frankly speaking, 3.2GB/sec will be achieved only in the most ideal situation. The second disappointment is connected with the today's mainboards, which in no way suit for Willamette. And it is not only a new system bus, which is to blame here. A new form-factor - Socket-462, this is the reason. This means that we will get an absolutely new platform, which cannot be cured with any converters.

Bij AnandTech is een review online gezet van de Best Data CABO MP3 speler. De CABO heeft standaard 64MB geheugen en kan met een smartmedia kaart verhoogd worden naar 96MB. Verder is er een mogelijk aanwezig voor voice-recording en kun je er 250 telefoonnummers in kwijt.

The manual could be better by including all necessary procedures for basic CABO usage. Having equalizer presets (DSP modes) that actually reflect the type of music played could be improved upon. The bass and treble performance in general is weak for all songs again reflecting the need to have a better decoder to improve the overall sound quality. The CABO also only offers Windows 95 and Windows 98 support. It does not support Windows NT or the new Windows 2000. In this manner, the CABO cannot reach this audience and soon many PC manufacturers will start to make the move to Windows 2000. The technical support is another downside since Best Data charges 7 dollars (U.S.) per incident for all of their products. Finally, the price of the CABO is steep at a street price of $239, which is inline with most other players currently in the market. For the average MP3 user, this can put a deep dent in the pocket.

Bavaria schrijft: "Op deze wazige Franse site staan wat geruchten over de opvolger van de Voodoo5: Rampage. Voor degenen die wat minder goed zijn in Frans even een samenvatting:

Chip: