The Nando Times heeft een artikeltje gepost over wonderboy Anand Lal Shimpi van AnandTech.com. Op 17-jarige leeftijd trekt onze vriend een omzet van 1 miljoen dollar per jaar, rijdt-ie in een dikke BMW M3 Roadster en heeft-ie 14 mensen aan een site werken die voortgepowered wordt door 4 servers:

Anand Shimpi could make just about anyone feel like a failure. The 17-year-old high school senior is creator and CEO of an Internet company that reviews computer hardware and is on track to bring in more than $1 million in ad revenue this year. Between school and 60-hour workweeks, he manages to study enough to be an honors student and play enough to have a close circle of friends and a steady girlfriend.

He goes to corporate VIP parties in Las Vegas, and comes home from school to find urgent messages from Intel computer executives. He just moved into a bigger house to make room for his business, and his mom is one of his 15 employees. He drives a $49,000 BMW Z3 convertible to Enloe High School in Raleigh.

USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe have all mentioned him. Fortune magazine recently featured him. In its upcoming issue this month, Atlanta-based YoungBiz magazine will name him the country's top young entrepreneur.

Hilko schrijft: "Bij Ace's Hardware kwam ik het heugelijke feit tegen dat Asus nu eindelijk officieel het Athlon platform ondersteunt. In de press release staat dat men met de levering is begonnen, dus we zouden het bord nu moeten kunnen kopen. Dit zou betekenen dat Asus als één van de eerste fabrikanten met een KX133 plankje op de markt komt":

TAIPEI, TAIWAN, 10 March 2000 - ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. (ASUS), a world leader in the IT industry, announced today the start of shipment of ASUS K7V motherboard.

The K7V is the first motherboard to support the recently released 1GHz (1,000MHz) AMD AthlonTM processors. This announcement came just four days after AMD officially announced the commencement of shipments of the processors, which has been hailed as an industry milestone. The K7V is being touted as the successor to the highly successful K7M Athlon motherboard. With ASUS ASIC plus VIA Apollo KX133, and a two-chip set consisting of VT8371 North Bridge controller and VT82C686A South Bridge controller chipset, this brings the AMD AthlonTM processor platform to a higher level of performance for desktop PCs. ASUS has also released another member for the K7V family, the K7V-RM, which boasts most of the features of the K7V in a smaller microATX form factor, while K7V will be using an ATX form factor.

Maxtor heeft vandaag de DiamondMax 60 en DiamondMax VL30 aangekondigd. Deze schijven geven een capaciteit van respectievelijk 60 en 30GB en hebben beide een toerental van 5400 omwentelingen per minuut:

The DiamondMax 60 is a high capacity four-disk design that provides up to 60 GB of storage, the highest in its class today, and is an ideal solution for high-end consumer PCs and advanced consumer audio/video (AV) applications. The DiamondMax VL30 offers up to 30 GB of storage capacity and extends the low cost mechanics and electronics of Maxtor's DiamondMax VL20 product line introduced last fall. Both products incorporate the new Maxtor Silent Store technology, making them ideal for consumer AV and other noise-sensitive applications. In addition, these new DiamondMax products support UDMA 66 MB/sec buffer-to-host data transfer rates and can be easily updated to UDMA 100 once that standard is released.

"Storage intensive applications are becoming increasingly important in the marketplace, as reflected in the significant growth in our shipments of three- and four-disk configurations," said Mike Cannon, Maxtor's president and CEO. "The combination of leadership areal density and our four-disk design distinguishes Maxtor as a provider of high capacity solutions for our customers' high-end desktop PC systems. The 60 GB capacity point of the DiamondMax 60 also makes it ideal for non-PC applications that require large amounts of storage including consumer AV systems and network attached storage products such as our MaxAttachTM server appliances.

"Maxtor introduced its DiamondMax VL product line last fall and ramped it rapidly to meet our customers' requirements for their entry-level systems," Cannon continued. "With our new DiamondMax VL30, Maxtor continues to provide our customers cost-optimized products without requiring them to compromise on performance or reliability."

Hekkey brengt voor de fanatieke Napsteraars een interessant linkje naar Betanews, waar een WinAMP plugin wordt aangekondigd waarmee via Napster naar MP3'tjes gezocht kan worden:

The first music-finding plug-in for Nullsoft Winamp has officially hit the Net. Dubbed NapAmp, the new plug-in allows a user to search for digital audio on the Web using the popular Napster service.

Under 70kb in size, NapAmp integrates itself into the Winamp digital audio player from Nullsoft. With a simple keyboard combination, a new box appears, allowing the listener to search for and download MP3 audio using Napster's huge userbase. Although still in early stages of development, BetaNews tests proved NapAmp's quick searching ability coupled with end results almost identical to the actual Napster client.

Those behind firewalls may experience problems downloading, as the inital release does not yet support the "Alternative GET" mode used by Napster.

NapAMP kun je vanaf deze link naar binnen sjouwen.

De Austin American Statesman (krant in Austin, Texas) schrijft dat Intel van plan is om zijn ontwikkelingscentrum in Austin flink uit te breiden van 250 naar 1500 werknemers. Motorola en AMD, die beide een belangrijke vestiging in Austin hebben, zijn niet blij met deze ontwikkeling omdat Intel mogelijk talenten en bedrijfsgeheimen wegkaapt:

Intel doesn't lack for money, market clout or image. But it does lack more engineers to fuel its continued growth with successful new chip designs. That's why the world's largest and most profitable chip maker is building its presence in Austin from a minor outpost to a full-fledged engineering center. And it is dishing out the perks to do it.

The growth of Intel in Austin is both a stamp of approval on the local semiconductor design scene from the industry's largest player and a guarantee that the red-hot local labor market for chip engineers will grow even hotter.

[...] Intel's growth intentions here mean that rivals like Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Motorola Inc. must not only compete with Intel products, they must also compete for talent in what is expected to become an increasingly expensive war.

McDermott, a veteran design manager for Motorola, knows first hand the tensions caused by Intel's increasing presence. He created a local stir when he jumped ship to join Intel in 1998, and within weeks of his departure, Intel was actively recruiting from a list of senior Motorola chip designers in Austin.

Motorola felt threatened enough to file a lawsuit in the spring of 1999 claiming that Intel's systematic recruitment of its chip engineers would result in misappropriation of its trade secrets. The two companies settled out of court last May after Intel gave Motorola assurances that it wouldn't steal its trade secrets.

K-Bench maakt ons blij met een melding van een nieuw beta bios voor de Abit BE6 en BH6 moederborden. Schijnbaar is er een ACPI bug gefixt onder Windows 2000:

ABIT announced new beta bios for BE6 and BH6 mainboards. Both bios have fixed ACPI problem when running Windows 2000 You may download beta bios for BE6 here and BH6 here ...

Nou ja, het nieuws vanuit de Games Developer Conference is dat er eigenlijk geen nieuws is . Het enige wat de mannen van nV News te weten zijn gekomen is dat de NV15 hardwarematige Environmental Mapped Bump Mapping ondersteuning zal krijgen en dat de eerste X-Box demo's draaide onder een NV15 kaart.

Unfortunately NVIDIA was very tight-lipped about the NV15 at GDC. In fact, they were not showing it to any online press in order to avoid any potential leaks, which they’ve had some trouble with recently. Nonetheless, I was able to pick two small tidbits about the NV15. First of all, it will support Environmental Mapped Bump Mapping in hardware (the GeForce will also receive EMBM support with a driver update, albeit in software).

Also, for those of you who saw Bill Gates’ keynote on the X-Box (or who saw images from it), the demo machine was using a NV15, and some of the demos were in fact NV15 demos (which actually were not supposed to be used). Unfortunately, that’s it for the NVIDIA news from GDC. It looks like we’ll just have to wait until a few more weeks (probably a month or two) for the full scoop on NV15.

Onder die kop schrijft Heise.de dat wij Europeanen voorlopig geen 1GHz PIII's op het Europese continent hoeven te verwachten. Intel en HP hebben in Duitsland zelfs nog geen 1GHz PIII test samples beschikbaar en Dell verwacht op z'n vroegst vanaf begin april de eerste systemen in Europa te kunnen leveren. De extra cooling van de 1GHz PIII vormt ook een mogelijk probleem. De 1GHz Pentium III mag een maximale temperatuur van 60°C voor z'n kiezen krijgen, 20°C lager dan de PIII-800:

Die deutsche Intel-Filiale etwa hat keinen einzigen Gigahertz-Prozessor für Testzwecke zur Verfügung. Unisono klingt es auch aus den Reihen der PC-Häuser: Nicht einmal in den Labors habe man hier einen GHz-Pentium III, verlautete von HP in Böblingen. Frühestens Anfang April könne man mit ersten Systemen in Europa aufwarten, teilte Dell mit. "Nichts zu machen" war die auch lapidare Auskunft bei IBM. Intel-Konkurrent AMD hingegen konnte bereits am Tage der Vorstellung stabil laufende 1-GHz-Testsysteme ausliefern.

Intels "Launch-Partner" demgegenüber scheinen noch weit davon entfernt zu sein, mit funktionierenden Systemen aufwarten zu können. Ein Grund dafür dürfte auch in der aufwendigen Kühlung zu suchen sein, die der Prozessor erfordert. Denn nach Intels Spezifikationen darf das heiße Eisen keineswegs so heiß werden wie bisher üblich: Laut Datenblatt ist nur noch eine Sperrschichttemperatur von maximal 60°C erlaubt (gegenüber 80°C beim Pentium III-800). Diese Obergrenze einzuhalten, stellt eine erhebliche Herausforderung an die Kühlung dar. Bei Dell etwa wird man erst die Bestückungsautomaten für die Prozessoren umrüsten müssen, damit sie mit den speziellen Kühlsystemen hantieren könne

Nu.nl meldt dat het in Gouda gevestigde DeltaKabel, fabrikant van kabelmodems, is overgenomen door Lucent Technologies. DeltaKabel voorziet naar eigen zeggen viervijfde van de Nederlandse markt van kabelmodems. Onder het klantenkringetje bevindt zich ook het door ons zo geliefde Kaazemah:

Financiële details zijn niet bekendgemaakt. DeltaKabel is in particuliere handen en heeft zestig werknemers. Tot halverwege de jaren tachtig installeerde het bedrijf, in 1973 opgericht, kabelnetwerken.

De afgelopen jaren zijn de activiteiten verschoven naar dienstverlening en de ontwikkeling van kabelmodems.

Thanks SanMan voor de tip.

Gillish schrijft: "Thresh's Firingsquad kreeg op de Game Developers Conference werkend silicon van de nieuwe ATi Rage6 te zien. Helaas wilde ATi nog niets kwijt over de clockspeed waarop de kaart gaat lopen, dus geen moeilijke fillrate discussies deze keer . Verder ziet de Charisma Engine er erg leuk uit maar het is nog de vraag in hoeverre de speciale features van de Charisma door game developers ondersteund zullen worden":

The alpha silicon ATI showed us was less than a week old, still fresh from the Taiwanese foundry. Performance was impressive even though the silicon was only running at 50-75% of the planned speed. ATI will reveal all the product specifications at the official announcement.

It looks like ATI is on track to officially announce product at around WinHEC, and production should start in the summer for a 2H launch. We couldn't squeeze out any information about fill rates or clock speeds. When we asked ATI's Brian Hentschel if he thought the Rage 6 would be "dominant" in the upcoming generation of video cards. He acknowledged that the Rage 6 would be competitive, but he'll wait until all the other cards are released before he makes a comment regarding dominance.

Met een mooie 300.000 work units staat DPC op de 9de plaats van distributed.net.
Deze week gaat, als alles volgens verwachting loopt, Team RimArts UsersGroup een plaatsje omlaag, en DPC een plaatsje omhoog! En daarmee is DPC een van de teams in de TOP 30 OVERALL!

De DPC Hitparade Top 10 van 12 maart 2000

1. 37,318 Interior Lulu(8, Totaal:683,886)
2. 6,327 Sir Soes & Shellshock(54, Totaal:191,032)
3. 6,148 Insane(265, Totaal:32,121)
4. 5,703 gnouwens(56, Totaal:186,556)
5. 5,655 Boer Zevenbergen(310, Totaal:25,176)
6. 5,309 [eNeRGy](16, Totaal:507,433)
7. 4,956 sienema(2, Totaal:1,109,330)
8. 4,823 misser(27, Totaal:329,241)
9. 4,796 Hunter(206, Totaal:51,556)
10. 4,749 2fast4u(30, Totaal:291,763)

En de nummers 11 tot en met 20:

11. 4,574 a-vorst(108, Totaal:105,762)
12. 4,565 The Vinz(194, Totaal:54,589)
13. 4,465 Eddict(24, Totaal:338,960)
14. 4,423 Kees(149, Totaal:79,558)
15. 4,323 landzaad(79, Totaal:144,685)
16. 4,052 HarryB (Mac Power beats Femme)(13, Totaal:559,448)
17. 3,913 MisterJ(48, Totaal:212,173)
18. 3,381 DPC Division Heteren City(40, Totaal:234,940)
19. 3,317 TEX(114, Totaal:99,763)
20. 3,278 #hekje team(34, Totaal:269,809)

De Top 15 teams van 12 maart 2000

1.( 0) 697,279 Slashdot.org
2.( 0) 646,910 #DeathMatch
3.( 0) 590,186 AnandTech
4.( 0) 560,597 Russian Team
5.( 0) 431,907 HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries
6.( 0) 365,479 The Amiga RC5 Team effort
7.( 0) 355,124 Team EvangeLista (Macs Rule! :-)
8.( 0) 343,974 Team Warped (OS/2)
9.( 1) 300,710 Dutch Power Cows
10.( 1) 290,476 Japan FreeBSD Users Group
11.( 0) 268,204 Libertarians for Privacy (Freedom Works!)
12.( 0) 226,565 Japan Windows NT Users Group
13.( 0) 216,104 CCC.de
14.( 7) 193,133 Team FreeBSD
15.( 1) 184,982 L0phT Heavy Industries
60.( 7) 56,672 The #koffie Team

Teams om ons heen (total stats):
27.( ) TeamUFies (All Hail the Dust Puppy!) (Tot:52,358,075, Gis:160,437)
28.( ) Prof. James Challis' Most Excellent UK Team (Tot:51,948,146, Gis:90,561)
29.( ) AL-Mail Users (Tot:49,525,674, Gis:71,998)
30.( ) Team RimArts UsersGroup (Tot:48,083,886, Gis:65,042)
31.( ) Dutch Power Cows (Tot:47,139,491, Gis:300,710)
32.( ) NetBSD Users (Tot:43,077,426, Gis:81,668)
33.( ) SwissTeam (Tot:39,736,939, Gis:82,144)
34.( ) Michigan State University (MSU Spartans) (Tot:38,771,335, Gis:102,455)
35.( ) QUALCOMM Incorporated (Tot:38,574,745)
(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!): 38 dagen
Prof. James Challis' Most Excellent UK Team: 23 dagen
AL-Mail Users: 11 dagen
Team RimArts UsersGroup: 5 dagen

Dutch power cows is vandaag 9e en heeft een kans van een op 112 om de sleutel te vinden!

Computer!Totaal schrijft dat de ICANN na internationaal topoverleg in Caïro heeft besloten dat er zes tot tien nieuwe top level domeinen bij moeten komen. Het is nog niet bekend welke extensies dit zijn:

Wanneer de nieuwe domeinen precies worden geïntroduceerd, is nog niet bekend. Eind april zal ICANN zich buigen over voorstellen. Na de zomer kan vervolgens worden begonnen met een testfase. Kenners denken dat de daadwerkelijke implementatie pas begin volgend jaar zal plaatsvinden.

Leden van ICANN komen in mei weer bij elkaar in Yokohama, Japan.

Thanks The Slicer voor de tip.

Heise meldt dat Nintendo's next-generation game console begin 2001 op de Amerikaanse en Duitse markt geïntroduceerd wordt. Deze Nintendo Dolphin heeft volgens eerdere berichten een 400MHz IBM PowerPC processor en kan overweg met S3TC. De oorspronkelijk release stond gepland voor eind 2000:

Der neue Starttermin für das Dolphin-Projekt ziele nicht nur auf die normale Lebensspanne der Nintendo-Konsolen ab, sondern biete zwei weitere Vorteile, erläutert Peter Main, Nintendos Vize-Präsident für Verkauf und Marketing. "Erstens erlaubt es unseren Kunden, ihr Geld zunächst in Videopiele zu investieren, ohne gleich eine neue Konsole kaufen zu müssen. Zweitens bedeutet der verzögerte Starttermin von Dolphin, dass das System gleich mit einer Masse an Genre-übergreifenden Spiele-Titeln bestückt sein wird, die kein Hersteller überbieten kann." Während der verbleibenden Monate des Jahres 2000 soll noch eine Reihe neuer Spieletiteln der dritten Generation für das N64 herauskommen, darunter unter anderem Zelda 2 und Mario Role-Playing-Game.

ZDNet heeft een artikel geschreven waarin wordt gemeld dat Windows Millennium, de opvolger van Windows 98, nog steeds in erg buggy staat verkeerd. Deze informatie kregen ze van beta-testers die twijfelen of WindowsMe het zal redden voor een release in het derde kwartaal. Microsoft heeft Beta 3 overigens gepland staan voor 8 april.

In recent weeks, however, WindowsMe testers have questioned whether Microsoft will be able to ship the product by the rumored third-quarter delivery date.

"If you want to really see some buggy code, then take a test drive of Windows Millennium, which is mondo buggy," said one developer, who is participating in the private, invitation-only beta test.

The developer, talking on condition of anonymity, complained that Microsoft has not acknowledged bug reports via e-mail as it did in the past.

"So you don't even know if anyone ever reads the damn things," he said.

Microsoft has reportedly added a new TCP/IP stack to the most recent beta builds, resulting in Millennium breaking "half the cards out there," according to another beta tester.

"My laptop cannot even see the network, because the binding won't work," he said. "I can boot the same laptop into [Windows 2000] with the same settings and it is fine."

Fast-MHz heeft een review klaarliggen van de Nikon Coolpix 950, een 2.11 mega pixel digitale camera met een maximale resolutie van 1600 x 1200 en een 8MB CompactFlash memory-card. Hieronder een hap uit de review:

I really like the quality of the photographs the Nikon produces. I also like the fact that if I should want to add additional memory to increase my photo capacity, it is a simple matter of placing an order for an additional flash memory card. I purchased a 64MB card in addition to the 8MB card that comes with the camera.

The 64MB card allows me to take 870 photos at 1024x768 (fine) resolution. I also really think that anyone using this camera will benefit from the 9 that is right count them up 9 different options for photos. There is a Course, fine, super fine setting for all 3 resolutions for a total of 9 settings! The LCD screen on the back of the camera is pretty standard for digital cameras today, and when I purchased the camera nearly a year ago. I do however question the durability of the camera body it’s self. As the lens area swivels while the battery/memory/battery area remains stable. I wonder how long it will be before the stiffness which exists becomes so loose that you physically have to hold both pieces to keep it pointing where you want it.

Klik hier voor de rest van de review.

Bij Overclockers Workbench is een review online geketst van de Microstar MS-6192, een op de i820 chipset gebaseerde moederplank met 5x PCI, 1x ISA, 1x AMR, 2x DIMM en 2 RIMM sloten voor het gebruik van Rambus geheugen. Dit bord is overigens ook geschikt voor het gebruik van Fuzzy Logic, een stukkie software van Microstar die automatisch je systeem overklokt. Hieronder een hap uit de conclusie, lees hier de rest.

MSI 6192, the i820 based mainboard that supports some best of the breed features. It is a pretty interesting board that features both ram technology on one board. The performance is pretty fantastic if you were to compared with BX based boards though.

From the benchmarks, it can seen that with the use of RDRAM, the system is more responsive and appears much faster than using SDRAM.

The ATA66 result is not very impressive as compared to those from HighPoint and Promise chipset on BX based boards.

If you were to compare with VIA Apollo Pro133A based boards, I can see that both 820 performance is slightly better than the VIA ApolloPro133A.

As we all know, 4X AGP and 2X AGP does not differ much in performance, so we did not bother to benchmark this aspect.

By the way, this board is spec. to run at 100 and 133Mhz FSB. If you intend to run Celeron on it, it might not work provided you're running the older Celerons like the 300A,333 or 366 which is able to overclocked at 100Mhz FSB.

Overall, I would recommend this board to those who have the extra cash and intend to upgrade to RDRAM in the near future.

For those who need just the ATA-66 and 4X AGP, you may want to consider an alternative, the MSI 6301 which also features similar functionalities but you get 3 DIMMs with 0 RIMM slots.

Game Forces brengt ons een roundup van een aantal producten uit het coolers assortiment van 3DCool, zoals de bekende Super Duper Slot Fan en de Ultra Thin Exhauster. Hieronder een stukkie over de 3DCool Monitor Cooler, die schijnbaar een goede taak heeft aan het koel houden van bv. je 19 inch:

One would hope for a more convenient form of powering the Monitor Cooler, but you need to open up your case and fill in the opening for an ISA or PCI card with a piece of metal that has a 4-pin power cable plug within it. The inner side plugs into a cable from your power supply, and the outer side connects to the cord from the Monitor Cooler. Thankfully, it's several feet long, and in our case, it was able to reach from the monitor on one side of a desk, to the tower on the floor by the opposite side of the desk.

Benchmarking the performance of this fan is difficult, but even after hours and hours of leaving the screensaver off and disabling power saving modes, the top of our screen was as cool as the keyboard and mouse. This was a shock -- in contrast to the seemingly normal TV dinner-like temperates previously felt. How does it stay on top of your monitor? Even if you have a steeply slanted monitor, the Monitor Cooler stays in place via a small pin that seats itself into the air vents which make their home on top of 99% of PC screens.

Tillmann Steinbrecher heeft zijn Athlon Cooler Roundup van een update voorzien met de resultaten van de RDJD K702 & K703, en de Vantec K7T-5030. Helaas bleek dit drietal niet in staat om de Global Win VOS32(-plus) en de Alpha K7125/YS Tech te verslaan. Lees hier alle info.

Before we started testing the RDJD dual fan heatsinks, our expectations were high, and we would not have found it astonishing if the K703 had even outperformed the VOS32 or the Alpha P7125. But this was not the case - instead, RDJD's dual fan coolers were a bit of a disappointment.

Does this mean that RDJD's "bonded fin" heatsink design is bad? Definitely not. RDJD has proved with the K701 that their design makes sense. But the problem with the K702 and K703 is that their heatsinks are based on a design that was developed for single fan coolers. The airflow inside the dual fan coolers, especially in the center, is less than ideal. If RDJD came up with a heatsink design optimized for a dual fan configuration (with a different orientation of the fins, for example), then they could definitely produce top-performing coolers. But let's see what the future will bring...

As for the Vantec cooler: Although it certainly isn't the most efficient Athlon heatsink available - nobody would have expected that - it provides good performance, making it even suitable for overclocking. Whether this heatsink will be successful depends on its price - and it's probably going to be very attractive.

Anand lal Shimpi heeft deze maandag een review gepost van de Asus K7V-RM, een KX133 moederplaatje in MicroATX formaat. De meeste van ons zullen natuurlijk meer interesse hebben in de gewone K7V versie, de prestaties tussen de twee zullen als het goed is identiek zijn. Vanuit het Award Medallion (Phoenix) bios kun je een keuze maken uit 12 busspeeds, evenals kan daar de geïntegreede Crystal Logic CrystalClear SoundFusion CS4299 AC'97 geluidschip de nek om gedraaid worden. Verder blinkt dit Asus KX133 vooral uit in stabiliteit en is eventueel ook geschikt voor een 1GHz Athlon.

Until AMD introduces their 426-pin Socket-A interface for the future Athlon processors, all motherboard manufacturers will be producing Slot-A based motherboard designs. This obviously includes the K7V-RM whose cramped layout still finds room to house the 242-pin interface connector. Around the Slot-A connector we find a number of 1500uF, 680uF and even an oversized 4700uF capacitor that help keep a clean and reliable signal supplied to the power hungry Athlon processor.

The K7M was the first Athlon motherboard to offer any real options for the overclocker because it featured support for FSB settings between the default 100MHz and the current unofficial limit of the Athlon motherboard designs, 110MHz. While some users managed to hit above 110MHz, for the most part you can consider 110MHz to be the realistic maximum overclocked FSB setting on any current Athlon platform. The K7V-RM manages to offer quite a few useful FSB settings in its list of 12 frequencies selectable from within the board's BIOS setup. Those settings are: 90 / 92 / 95 / 97 / 100 / 101 / 103 / 105 / 107 / 110 / 112 and 115MHz.

The BIOS setup also allows you to set the DRAM to CPU frequency ratio as either 3:3 or 4:3, thus allowing you to run your memory at 133MHz while your FSB runs at 100MHz. In addition to FSB selection, the AWARD Medallion BIOS of the K7V-RM lets you manually adjust the core voltage of your CPU, making the board even more flexible for overclockers. Both the FSB selection and core voltage selection can be accomplished through jumpers and dip switches located on the motherboard itself.

Het volk achter TBreak.com lijkt de primeur te hebben met de eerste review van de Creative labs Nomad II. Dit MP3 playertje heeft een USB interfeesje om vlot MP3'tjes over te takelen en een ingebouwde FM tuner voor het geval je uitgeluisterd raakt op de beperkte hoeveelheid muziek die je in de maximaal 64MB flash memory weg kunt zetten:

Calling Nomad II an MP3 player would be like calling the PC a games machine. Sure you can play games on the PC but that’s not the only thing you can do on it. Similarly the Nomad II is much more than an MP3 player. It can tune into your favorite FM station or take voice notes. And currently, it’s also the only player that can upgrade itself to support future audio formats making it nearly obsolete-free! That alone puts the Nomad II above all other MP3 player, but along with USB functions, an easy-to-use GUI and a great software bundle Nomad II is way ahead of its competition.

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van de Leadtek Winfast GeForce DDR online gezet. Eerder werd deze kaart door onze vriend Anand tot winnaar van zijn GeForce DDR roundup bekroond. Net zoals AnandTech bereikte Sharky Extreme uitermate positieve resultaten bij het overklokken: met een maximale core/mem setting van 162/372MHz overheerst de Leadtek overheerst alle andere GeForce DDR-en!

With the included Speed Runner utility, we were able to overclock the LeadTek WinFast DDR board and improve performance without the tedium of restarting our machine.

We were successfully able to overclock our LeadTek DDR board to 162/372MHz, giving us an additional 13% increase in performance at all resolutions. It also managed to take the overclocking crown away from the Hercules Prophet DDR board, quite an impressive feat! Of course, the standard disclaimer applies in that the board you receive may not overclock to such high levels.

AMD Zone heeft een review van de Athlon 900 gepost. Naast een zak met benchmarks brengt deze review ons interessante info over de overklokbaarheid van de 900MHz Athlon. Het exemplaar van AMD Zone liep tot 1.03GHz, bij een Vcore van 1,9V:

As you can see the Athlon ran fine at .1V less than spec at 900MHz. It was only after I hit 1GHz that I had to raise the voltage past spec. I could post and start get to the welcome to Windows screen at 1040MHz but it would crash there. Now voltage would get me past that point. I tried 1050MHz but could not get a bios post. Remember, this is all with a 2/5 L2 cache divisor. I expect that with better cooling and a 1/3 cache divisor that higher speeds will be obtainable.

I want to be clear on the settings I used to get a stable 1030MHz. I set the GFD to 1GHz and 1.9V in conjunction with a bus speed of 103MHz. Now I could lower the GFD to 950 or 900MHz and raise the bus speed higher, but this was the optimal clock speed I was able to reach. This was with Cas 2 PC100 ram and with super bypass enabled. To test stability I used the system as my main computer since I picked up the 900MHz and my normal tasks include several windows on IE 5 open, Outlook, RC5 cracking, ICQ, and various other miscellaneous programs in the background. I also tested with several hours of intense Quake Arena death matching. I used Windows 98 for gaming, and Windows NT 4 SP6A as my primary work OS. I'm happy with the 1030MHz setting, but it is not as stable as the Sys Cold Fusion 1000 system I reviewed.

KMK schrijft: "Via een vriendin kreeg ik het goede nieuws dat de DDS eindelijk een nieuwe vormgeving heeft. Wat je er van vindt moet je zelf maar weten, ik vind het zeker een vooruitgang. Ik hoop dat ze er eindelijk een goede Toko van kunnen maken. Ze hebben zo veel potentieel. Suc6 DDS!!"

Ik lees bij Voodoo Extreme dat de jongens en meisjes van Matrox twee nieuwe EMBM tech demo's in mekaar hebben geknutseld:

Matrox Funky Bumped Earth

(with source): This sample is a funky twist on the standard DX SDK bumped spinning Earth sample. It now has multi-colored stars orbiting the Earth, which dynamically effect the envmap. You'll need a Matrox card for this demo to work.

Matrox Bumped Flame

(with source): This sample simulates a flame using EMBM, with bumped water and bumped heat distortion effect. A very cool/simple demo with NO procedural textures and very few polys! You'll need a Matrox card for this demo to work.