Thermo schrijft dat IBM de 7200rpm Deskstar 75GXP heeft aangekondigd met een opslagcapaciteit van 75GB . De 75GXP is tevens geschikt voor ATA-100 en bevat platters gemaakt uit glas in plaats van aluminium. Dit heeft als voordeel dat de schijf veel stabieler is op hoge snelheid:

International Business Machines Corp. on Wednesday unveiled two disk drives that the world's largest computer maker said set records for data storage, including one that can hold information from a stack of documents more than two miles high. IBM (NYSE: IBM) said in a statement its 7,200 rpm Deskstar 75GXP drive for desktop computers held 75 gigabytes of data, more than 10 times the capacity of drives found in the average home personal computer.

A single one of the new drives can now store the equivalent of up to 159 music compact discs or "the data contained in a stack of documents 20 times taller than the Washington Monument," the statement said. The monument is just over 555 feet tall. Twenty times that height is 11,100 feet, or 2.1 miles.

[break]IBM introduceert ook de Deskstar 40GV, een 5400rpm disk met 40GB aan capaciteit. De 40GV draagt het "areal" density record record met zich mee van 14.3 miljard bits per vierkante inch:[/break]IBM also unveiled the Deskstar 40GV, which runs at 5,400 rpm, holds 40 gigabytes of data and set a new so-called "areal" density record of 14.3 billion bits per square inch. Greater areal density allows more information to be stored in less space, producing a drive that is more reliable, quieter and cheaper to make.

De officiële press release kun je hier nalezen.

De mannen van iXBT-Hardware hebben besloten om hun preview van de nVidia NV11 en NV15 nogmaals online te parkeren (zie ook dit bericht van 13 januari). In de tussentijd hebben ze de inhoud wat kunnen verversen met wat nieuwe info. Zo zal de NV15 vergeleken met de GeForce 256 over een compleet nieuwe graphics core beschikken die op ongeveer 160-200MHz zal draaien. Zoals al bekend kunnen de vier rendering pipelines van de NV15 twee textures tegelijk verwerken wat in een multi-texturing omgeving zoals Quake III Arena minimaal dezelfde fillrate oplevert als de 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 (664Mpix/s):

The core clock frequency of both, NV15 and NV11, will be equal to 160-200MHz. It is the nominal frequency. We would like to remind you that the nominal core frequency of GeForce 256 is 120MHz, and the chip proved easily overclockable up to 130-135MHz, while some pieces overclocked even to 160MHz! In this respect, we suppose that NV15 and NV11 will allow overclocking to 250MHz. NV11 mobile version will be also able of working at lower frequencies. The clock frequency reduction will lead to general performance drop. However, in case of mobile computers low power consumption and minimum heat dissipation are much more important.

The key innovation in NV15 and NV11 is that each pixel rendering pipeline can now boast not a single texturing block as we saw in GeForce 256, but two of them. This provides the so called "free" multitexturing, when two textures are applied over one pixel and the general peak fillrate doesn't drop. Moreover, it appears possible to arrange hardware anisotropic filtering based on 16 texture samples. This should undoubtedly have a highly positive effect on 3D graphics quality even compared to GeForce 256.

[...] The graphics cards manufacturers are going to receive the first NV15 and NV11 chips in March-April. The official announcement is planned for end of March and probably we will also see the first real graphics cards based on the new GPUs, and the mass sales will start in the second quarter. The manufacturing of GeForce 256 chips is very likely to cease as soon as the mass manufacturing of NV15 and NV11 gets started. And if we take into account, that there will hardly be any DDR SGRAM chips shortage, then we can expect most NV15 and NV11 cards to be equipped exactly with the memory of this type.

Pathfinder schrijft: "En daar gaan we weer hoor, gisteren is er weer een nieuwe CloneCD uitgekomen. Dit zijn de veranderingen van versie 2.0.2.4":

Compatibility fixes:

• CloneCD.vxd changed to reduce memory fragmentation (Windows 95/98 only).

Bug fixes:

• Fixed problem of *.ccd file not created under certain circumstances.

New features:

• Auto Insert Notification is now disabled immediately, if CloneCD is started (Windows 95/98 only).

Je kun CloneCD hier neerhalen.

Mike Andrawes van AnandTech heeft een review gepost van de ATi Rage Mobility 128, een 3D graphics chipset voor notebooks. De Mobility 128 is grotendeels gebaseerd op de Rage 128 Pro core en doet naast 2D en 3D ook hardware DVD decoding. Om het stroomverbruik te verlagen werd de kloksnelheid verlaagd naar 105/105MHz, wat resulteert in een maximale theoretische fillrate van 210MPixels/s. Uit benchmarks blijkt dat de performance ongeveer vergelijkbaar is met de TNT2 Model 64. Niet echt geweldig dus, maar voor mobiele gamers voorlopig de beste oplossing zolang de nVidia NV11 er niet is:

Basically, if you want a notebook that offers reasonable 3D performance in the next few months, there's nothing better than the Rage Mobility 128. As of the product announcement on October 25, 1999, ATI claimed a price of $55 in quantities of 10,000 - that's nothing compared to the price of a good notebook. There's obviously quite a bit of room for improvement, but there's simply nothing that's been announced that even challenges the Mobility 128. As mentioned previously, we'd like to see ATI go to a 0.18 micron process, increase the clock, and integrate 16MB of embedded DRAM with a 256-bit bus. While it's certainly wishful thinking, it doesn't seem too far out of reach at this point and that would allow for a huge boost in performance.

Rumors have started circulating about an mobile NV11 part from NVIDIA. We haven't been able to confirm or deny such rumors, but throwing T&L and 4 texels per clock could certainly cause trouble for the Mobility 128. Nevertheless, these are still rumors, while the Mobility 128 is real and available today (more on availability below).

Voodoo3.net heeft een verslag gepost van de Game Developers Conference, met onder meer wat info over de waren die in de 3dfx tent gedisplayed werden. Anti-aliasing leverde volgens mr. Bobcat van Voodoo3.net een indrukwekkend resultaat:

Then Peter turned on Anti-Aliasing. That funky looking ground speckle you get in flight sims disappeared completely! Whoa! I leaned closer..... The camera continued to sweep around the jet, but the image no longer looked like a computer game, it took on the appearance of an actual film of a game. This illusion was facilitated by flawless smooth panning, still with no stuttering or pauses. Add that in with a complete absence of any form of "jaggies" or stair stepping, and you have a film like image that must be seen to be believed. The difference is subtle, and while it's turned on, you might say, "it looks good, but what's the big deal?". Then, when it's switched off, you vomit all over the monitor. Standard "jaggy" images look like friggen Lego toys after you looked at an AA image. It's that big of a difference. This comes with no apparent FPS rate hit. None that I could see anyways.

De Voodoo5 samples die op de GDC werden gedemonstreerd draaiden nog steeds op ongeveer een œ clockspeed (waarschijnlijk 100Mhz, net als op de CeBIT drie week geleden).

RobzQ schrijft: "ZDNet schrijft dat onze vrienden (?) bij de FBI een waarschuwing de wereld hebben in gestuurd met betrekking tot de beveiliging van gegevens. Of bedrijven moeten hun huidige beveiliging verbeteren, of de regering gaat zelf regels opleggen waarmee het zelfregulerende karakter van internet zal verdwijnen":

The tech industry has a choice: Develop real proposals for protecting consumer privacy and network security or stand back and watch the government do it.

That was the blunt message delivered by U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Orson Swindle here Tuesday at the Global Internet Summit, a gathering of more than 900 tech leaders and government officials to address policy concerns in the digital age.

"It's going to be your way or the government's way. Your choice," Swindle said. "I would urge every CEO in this country to personally inspect their company's privacy policy."

Voormalig aartsrivalen RealNetworks en Microsoft roken de vredespijp nadat Real gisteren bekend maakte een licentie te zullen nemen op het Windows Media audio formaat. Microsoft lijkt hiermee weer een stap verder te zijn om het WMA formaat door de markt te drukken:

Microsoft said today that RealNetworks and several other major Internet companies, including Yahoo, have agreed to license its Windows Media audio format. The technology has been picked up by 70 companies, according to the software giant.

"Windows Media is poised to become an audio standard," Will Poole, general manager of Microsoft's digital media division, said in a conference call.

[...] RealNetworks will continue to offer products in competition with Microsoft, including its RealPlayer for streaming video and audio and its Jukebox software for playing audio tracks on PCs. But it now has the right to incorporate Microsoft technology into its products.

Check dit nieuwsbericht van News.com voor het complete verhaaltje.

CK schrijft: "Het lijstje van aanbevolen moederborden voor de AMD Athlon is uitgebreid. Zelfs de Athlon 1000 is vermeld. Grappig is dat alleen de Asus K7V geschikt is voor de snelste Athlon die momenteel op de markt verkrijgbaar is":

This test suite has been developed to ensure compliance with motherboard design guidelines for the AMD Athlon™ processor. To ensure reliable operation, the AMD Athlon™ processor should be used in conjunction with one of these recommended motherboards.

De DPC Hitparade Top 10 van 14 maart 2000

1. 48,566 Interior Lulu(6, Totaal:774,664)
2. 8,006 Snakebyte(56, Totaal:188,078)
3. 7,913 [eNeRGy](16, Totaal:523,072)
4. 6,807 HarryB(13, Totaal:576,246)
5. 5,977 sienema(2, Totaal:1,120,393)
6. 5,816 #hekje team(32, Totaal:280,948)
7. 5,787 The Vinz(175, Totaal:65,270)
8. 5,674 my_sirion(35, Totaal:267,910)
9. 5,661 wildhagen(9, Totaal:671,364)
10. 5,374 Katsov(19, Totaal:444,077)

En de nummers 11 tot en met 20:

11. 5,180 Jorma(3, Totaal:907,693)
12. 4,971 Team Tilburg (ThE RaVeR)(64, Totaal:173,309)
13. 4,823 Chainsaw(17, Totaal:457,685)
14. 4,769 Eddict(24, Totaal:348,027)
15. 4,606 Nosferatu(20, Totaal:405,959)
16. 4,425 DSmarty(609, Totaal:7,455)
17. 4,383 slice(433, Totaal:14,339)
18. 4,226 m_dejong(63, Totaal:174,885)
19. 4,124 Ferion Power!(18, Totaal:454,121)
20. 3,931 Nasty(10, Totaal:647,297)

De Top 15 teams van 14 maart 2000

1.( 0) 781,498 Russian Team
2.( 1) 733,668 Slashdot.org
3.( 1) 671,190 AnandTech
4.( 0) 668,615 #DeathMatch
5.( 0) 637,942 HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries
6.( 1) 420,740 The Amiga RC5 Team effort
7.( 1) 408,106 Team Warped (OS/2)
8.( 1) 373,824 Team EvangeLista (Macs Rule! :-)
9.( 1) 347,419 Dutch Power Cows
10.( 7) 336,935 L0phT Heavy Industries
11.( 1) 315,908 Japan FreeBSD Users Group
12.( 1) 276,798 Japan Windows NT Users Group
13.( 1) 268,036 Libertarians for Privacy (Freedom Works!)
14.( 1) 256,601 Team Hungary STB+
15.( 4) 253,437 CCC.de
60.( 6) 61,056 The #koffie Team

Teams om ons heen (total stats):
27.( ) TeamUFies (All Hail the Dust Puppy!) (Tot:52,729,385, Gis:191,882)
28.( ) Prof. James Challis' Most Excellent UK Team (Tot:52,338,879, Gis:189,520)
29.( ) AL-Mail Users (Tot:49,692,201, Gis:89,498)
30.( ) Team RimArts UsersGroup (Tot:48,248,383, Gis:83,634)
31.( ) Dutch Power Cows (Tot:47,953,478, Gis:347,419)
32.( ) NetBSD Users (Tot:43,244,363, Gis:85,358)
33.( ) SwissTeam (Tot:39,918,229, Gis:83,890)
34.( ) Michigan State University (MSU Spartans) (Tot:39,071,266, Gis:156,113)
35.( ) QUALCOMM Incorporated (Tot:38,620,833)
(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!): 31 dagen
Prof. James Challis' Most Excellent UK Team: 28 dagen
AL-Mail Users: 7 dagen
Team RimArts UsersGroup: 2 dagen

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

Naast GamePC (zie deze nieuwsposting van Femme) zijn er ook verslagen van de Game Developers Conference te vinden bij Sharky Extreme en FiringSquad. Ook hier kom je bedrogen uit als je op zoek bent naar sappig nVidia NV15 nieuws, verwacht de echte info pas over een paar weken . Hieronder wat info uit Sharky's report over ATi's volgende videokaart gebaseerd op de Rage6. Ziet er nu al erg veelbelovend uit:

The first demonstration showcased the lighting capabilities of ATI's future card. Like the GeForce, ATI's product supports eight hardware lights, but in a more efficient manner. Using the Glaze 3 utility, ATI demonstrated that under a full load of eight hardware lights, performance was reduced by 45%, while on "other" T&L engines performance would drop by approximately 60%. Made possible by optimized circuitry, ATI has gone to great lengths to ensure that their T&L pipeline will always stay busy (pointing out that one of the worst performance hits occurs when an engine is waiting for data due to an poorly optimized pipeline).

We tried to get information about the board layout, but since it wasn't a production product we weren't allowed specifics. In the short time we looked at the card, we did manage to copy down the data silk-screened on the surface of the RAM and found that ATI was using 6ns DDR Hyundai memory (more than likely 32MB).

At over 60fps in Quake III at 1024x768, we are looking at close to 90fps for the shipping product (if the 2/3 performance estimate proves accurate). With this kind of performance on a single chip solution, we hope with fingers crossed for a dual-chip SKU sporting massive amounts of memory bandwidth providing for the rich quality features ATI has incorporated into the Pixel Tapestry.

Claiming their next-gen product will be competitive, it will be interesting to see if ATI will be able to leapfrog NVIDIA's dependable six month product cycle and top-notch performance and 3dfx's anticipated T-buffer. Only time will tell, but you can be sure that we will have the skinny in the very near future.

Floris meldt ons dat de eerste shipment van de nu al populaire MamboX MP3 CD speler 10 apil binnen zal komen. Hieronder het e-mailtje dat Mambox Nederland ontving van hun contactpersoon bij Tagram System Corp:

"De samples worden volgende week zeker gereleased, dit is bevestigd door de directie van Tagram. Voor de eerste shipment zal het 20 werkdagen duren. De productie is gestart op 13 maart, dus we verwachten dat de eerste shipment op 10 april zal verscheept worden."

"Het was een misverstand van onze kant dat we u geinformeerd hebben dat de eerste shipment eind maart zou komen. We dachten dat het 20 dagen zou duren om de produkten klaar te krijgen, maar daarvoor zijn 20 werkdagen nodig (gelijk aan 4 weken)"

"Ik zal het apparaat volgende week kunnen beschouwen, en ik zie daar erg naar uit, want steeds meer mensen denken dat we niet in staat zijn om het produkt te releasen."

Vergeet in de tussentijd niet om je in te schrijven voor de Tweakers.net MamboX prijsvraag! Klik de animatie linksboven voor meer info.

Het volk van Thresh's FiringSquad schenkt ons een Quake III videokaarten shoutout met daarin opgenomen de 3dfx Voodoo3, ATi Rage Fury Maxx, Matrox G400 Max, de nVidia TNT2 Ultra, een GeForce 256 SDR/DDR en als laatste de S3 Savage 2000. De uitslag zal iedereen nu zo onderand wel kunnen dromen lijkt me:

If you didn't know it before, the GeForce 256 DDR is clearly the best video card currently available. This doesn't mean it's the best solution for everyone however, as the Celeron 450 tests clearly indicate that DDR memory doesn't substantially outperform conventional SDRAM on a 450MHz processor.
The Rage Fury Maxx is still a work in progress: Windows 2000 drivers still aren't available and the latest Windows 98 drivers still leave room for improvement. At a retail price of $299, this card is clearly out of reach for most gamers.

The Viper II offers excellent performance in Quake III fastest at 640x480, and at such a good price it's definitely a tempting card for the typical gamer on a budget. Quake III high quality tests also reveal goood Viper II performance. The GeForce SDR also offers good overall performance.

Thanks Tachyon voor de tip.

Ik lees bij Voodoo Extreme dat Asus voor de V6600 en V6800 nieuwe BIOSen heeft gereleased waarmee sidebanding ge-enabled kan worden:

The Adrenaline Vault heeft een aantal screenshots van de Microsoft X-Box online gewipt. De shots geven (hopelijk) een goede indruk van de graphics die wij PC gebruikers over een jaar op onze Rampages, NV20's of NV25's in realtime over het beeldscherm zien vliegen:

Thanks PHiLO voor de link.

EBN Online meldt dat Quantum een nieuwe low-cost IDE harddisk heeft gereleased. Quantum is van mening dat geluidsproduktie in het low-budget segment belangrijker is dan rauwe performance en verlaagde daarom het toerental naar 4400rpm. Deze nieuwe lct15 produceert een geluidsniveau van 28 tot 31dB, ongeveer een decibel stiller dan de oude lct10:

OEM marketing manager Leslie Mulligan said Quantum polled several hundred end users and found that applications like Internet browsing and word processing were driving many customers to purchase PCs priced between $500 and $1,200. The results didn't exactly back up the argument that such users require the same vast amounts of storage that purchasers of high-end disk drives allegedly need. Instead, the company reduced the level of noise generated by its drives as a way to appeal to customers. "Knowing these were attributes that [users] valued, that's what we used to design the drive," Mulligan said.

GameFan heeft part II van hun Voodoo4/5 preview online gemikt. In dit tweede deel worden de mogelijken van anti-aliasing besproken en worden tevens een aantal vragen beantwoord door Bubba Wolford van 3dfx:

GameFan: Your full-scene hardware anti-aliasing really impressed me at GDC. Most of the games I saw appeared in 800x600 resolution, so I'd like to ask what FSHAA will add to lower and higher resolutions? Will the effect be washed out or enhanced as resolutions increase?

BW: The effects will definitely be noticeable at higher resolutions. There was a bit of a misnomer on the web a while back that high-res can replace FSAA. Once VSA-100 owners get their products home and begin to play with FSAA, we are confident that they will realize very quickly that a resolution like 1024x768 with FSAA "on" will produce an image like they have never seen! Look at the screen shots of the KittyHawk demo we showed you at GDC. That was a 1024x768 demo, and the effects of FSAA were very apparent. [break] En dit is ook een leuke opmerking richting onze freunden van nVidia: [/break] BW: We recognize that there will be a frame-rate hit to some games. Each title will be independent of another due to the different amounts of fill rate each game requires. Because we are doing "hardware" FSAA, we don't expect the huge performance hits you might see on another card that provides anti-aliasing through drivers.

GamePC heeft een verslag gepost van de Game Developers Conference 2000, die afgelopen week 10.000 game developers in San Jose bijeen bracht. De grootste aankondigingen op de GDC kwamen ongetwijfeld van Microsoft en ATi, daarnaast was er ook minder prominent nieuws van Sensaura en Aureal, nVidia en 3dfx. Laatstgenoemde demonstreerde de mogelijkheden van full scene anti-aliasing:

3dfx was showing off a few Voodoo5 boards with alpha hardware and alpha silicon. T-Buffer effects, including demos of full screen spatial anti-aliasing (FSAA) and temporal anti-aliasing, were shown on a variety of games including legacy titles like Test Drive 5 and Falcon 4.0 and newer titles like Quake III Arena. I was very impressed with the image quality of FSAA gameplay. Even at a resolution of 640x480, FSAA makes the resolution appear much higher and very clean. FSAA will be application independent (the game doesn’t have to be programmed for it), API independent (Direct3D, OpenGL and Glide will all be supported) and OS independent (3dfx was showing this on a Mac as well).

One thing to keep in mind about FSAA is the fact that the chip needs to constantly keep generating 2 or 4 frames at all times for the function to be effective. This eats up a lot a memory when enabled. A 32 MB card will allow for 4 sample 800x600 anti-aliased screens, while a 64 MB card will allow for 4x 1024x768 with FSAA. While this may seem like a limitation, the quality increase under FSAA is really incredible even at the lower resolutions. 3dfx reps stated that FSAA is a requirement for high polygon models, as smaller polygons and textures tend to create visual artifacts when rendered on the screen. In their opinion, hardware T&L is the logical step after FSAA. Expect the Voodoo4/5 boards to hit around the April timeframe.

Steve en Bill zijn 'gethrilled' vanwege het het nieuws zij meer dan 1 miljoen Windozen 2000 aan de markt hebben kwijtgeraakt. De press release meldt tevens dat het aantal support telefoontjes ondanks de succesvolle verkoop laag bleef:

Microsoft Corp. today announced it estimates that customers have obtained more than 1 million copies of the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Professional, Server and Advanced Server operating systems since the worldwide launch less than one month ago. This milestone includes estimates from channel resellers, retail outlets and PC manufacturers; Microsoft has yet to count its largest customers around the world that have acquired licenses through enterprise agreements. In addition, Microsoft Customer Support is receiving the lowest volume of calls per unit licensed of any previous Microsoft operating system, indicating that customers are having an extremely positive experience upgrading to Windows 2000.

"We are thrilled with the tremendous customer response to the Windows 2000 platform," said Steve Ballmer, CEO and president of Microsoft. "Reaching 1 million units so quickly is testimony to the high quality and reliability of Windows 2000. This is a product that was built from the ground up with the help and support of customers and industry partners. It's great to see them thoroughly evaluating the platform in their environments and deploying it throughout their organizations today."

Support Calls Remain Low

Microsoft has received an extremely low number of customer support calls for Windows 2000, considering that more than 1 million copies of the product have been acquired. The volume of support calls per unit sold is significantly lower than for any other operating system Microsoft has produced. The low number of support calls reflects the overall quality of Windows 2000 as well as the fact that the appropriate customers are obtaining this product, namely businesses that have taken the time to pilot and test Windows 2000. Microsoft is actively monitoring customer feedback and is committed to ensuring that customers have the best PC and server experience possible.

Akiba's PC Watch aka Wazige Japanse Site heeft een Intel processor roadmapje online gekegeld. De belangrijkste punten die deze redelijk gedetaileerde grafiekjes ons laten zien heb ik hier ff bijeen geharkt:

Consumer processors

• Willy debuteert eind dit jaar op 1,3 en 1,4GHz
  
• Northwood eind 2001 op >2GHz
  
• Coppermine 128K (tweedehands Pentium III met half werkende L2 cache) vanaf Q4 '00 op 733MHz
  
• Boven 1GHz geen concrete clockspeeds voor de Coppermine (de rek is er nu blijkbaar helemaal uit)

Server processors

• Itanium met 2 en 4MB L3 cache op 733MHz vanaf derde kwartaal
  
• Foster (server versie van Willy) met 256KB L2 cache vanaf eind 2000 op 1,4GHz
  
• Gallatin (IA-32) vanaf Q1 2002
  
• McKinley (opvolger Itanium) eind 2001 / begin 2002