AMD Zone brengt ons een comparison tussen 8 verschillende Athlon Gold Fingers Devices, kleine printplaatjes die je op je Ahlon plant waarna je met switches eenvoudig o.a. de multiplier kan tweaken. Hieronder een handig overzichtje over de uitkomst per criteria:

Ease Of Use
The Outside Loop Afterburner! wins this category hands down. With only 3 dials to adjust you won't have any problems with getting settings confused.

Budget
The Easy MHz and the Northwind Rev2 are very cheap considering the Northwind Rev2 has shipping included. Honorable mention goes to the K7OC.

Most Tweakable
None of the cards cover all of the possible settings, but the Afterburner!, Easy MHz, K7OC, and Northwind Rev2 are tied for the most tweakable GFD.

Innovative Design
The Afterburner! is great because of it's 3 dial design. The Northwind Rev2 is unique because it does not need an external power supply. The Maximzer stands out because it mounts to the back of the Athlon.

My Choice
I prefer the Afterburner!. With it's ease of use and wide range of settings, the Afterburner! is particularly suited to my needs. I constantly use it on several Athlons for tweaking, so it has become my GFD of choice.

Bij Stomped is een review te vinden van de NEC 1525x Ambix 15" LCD monitor. Hier wat info over zijn beeldkwaliteit, die ook zeer geschikt blijkt te zijn om snelle 3D shooters weer te geven:

We ran Half-life, Opposing Force, Rally championship, 3dmark 2k, Quake3, and Soldier of Fortune. It was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. Games that looked beautiful before were so much more vibrant and crisp than we could have ever imagined. Forget what you may have heard about LCD not having a fast enough pixel response for 3d games. That’s yesterday. This new LCD monitor displayed fast enough for every game we threw at it.

The tough thing about writing this review is that we cant give you screen shots to show how kickass it looks, you must see it for yourself! The contrast ratio is so good that staring at the monitor for extended periods of time surfing the web becomes less of eyestrain inducing journey and more of a joy. Its interesting to note that Matrox cards always seemed to have the best visual quality with analog monitors. Now with digital connections the data is always exactly what’s in your frame buffer so all DVI video card output should look EXACTLY the same in 2d modes.

In navolging van AnandTech heeft ook Sharky Extreme een kritische blik geworpen op de ATi Rage Mobility 128, een 3D graphics chipset bedoelt om de notebooks wat gaming power te geven. Naast redelijke framerates in Quake III kan de Rage Mobility 128 overigens ook zeer aardig overweg met DVD codering. Hieronder een hap uit de conclusie:

It has been a long time in coming, but mobile gaming is finally a reality. Overcoming graphics limitations has been difficult, but ATI has finally created a part that delivers plenty of memory, a low heat output, and offers a compelling reason to take up a large chunk of hard drive space with a full Quake III installation.

There are still several control issues out of ATI's realm (like playing Quake III with a touchpad), but we make due with what's available, right? If the price difference doesn't prove to be astronomical, we'd definitely recommend opting for the 16MB version, as the 8MB model may result in a bit of texture swapping.

Although there haven't been any product lines announced around the Mobility 128 yet, we've been assured they are right around the corner. Because the chip can be outfitted with either 8 or 16MB, it won't be exclusive to the high-end laptops either. Granted, performance isn't equivalent to that of a desktop, but ATI's Mobility 128 takes the crown in the mobile market. The bottom line is despite the established stereotype claiming that mobile gaming isn't feasible, ATI is here to emancipate the masses and show us otherwise.

Lees hier de rest van de review.

Jeff Lee van GamePC heeft een review geplaatst van de Quantum Fireball Plus LM 7200rpm harddisk. In feite is dit model hetzelfde als de Fireball KX, alleen profiteert de LM van een 10ns 2MB cache. De IBM Deskstar schijf blijft vanwege een tragere cache van 50ns qua performance duidelijk achter:

Coming down to the line, Quantum seems to have finally taken the lead over IBM. Under a FAT32 file system, the LM drive dusts the GXP drive. Quantum can thank their choice of going with a faster RAM to be used as the buffer (10ns compared to IBM using 50ns). Though a little on the strange side, the LM trailed the GXP when it came to a NTFS file system. You would think having the fast results in a FAT32 file system would show up the same somewhere when using a NTFS file system, but it didn’t giving a file thought of sporadic performance. IBM however posted decent numbers in both FAT32 and NTFS, which were more consistent to each other. So in a nut shell, Quantum proves once again that they are still at work in trying to be the best and their LM drive shows just that. So until bigger and faster drives from both companies to keep flowing into the market, the LM drives are a good choice in terms of home desktops and workstations needing fast performance. [break]Nu we het toch over Quantum hebben, check Hot Hardware voor een reviewtje van de Quantum Atlas V, een 18GB Ultra160 SCSI drive met een gemiddelde seek time van slechts 6.3ms:[/break]We are going to bring this look at the new Atlas V Ultra160 SCSI drive, to a close by posing a question. Is this new technology worth its higher price tag? This 18Gig Drive goes for about $450 retail and the Adaptec 29160 SCSI card retails for right around $200. So as you can see we are in a new ballpark here with respect to cost. On the other hand, if you need the bandwidth for things like Multi-Media and Video Creation, 3D Animation, Intranet Servers, etc..., you just can't beat the performance and low CPU overhead of Ultra160 SCSI. For those who need to "have it all", this is your kind of upgrade.

Ik lees bij JC dat AMD een .PDFje met een overzicht van de Athlon errata openbaar heeft gemaakt. AMD meldt 6 bugs voor de Athlon, waarvan er al 2 werden gefixt voordat de Athlon op de markt kwam. De overige bugs zijn in het huidige 0,18micron Athlon design verholpen. Ter vergelijking: de Pentium III kent in totaal 65 bugs:

If you'd like to compare and contrast, the Pentium III buglist is kept here. Note that the Pentium III has had a few more revisions than the Athlon, so it's only natural that it had gone through a greater amount of bugs than the Athlon. However, it is incredibly notable that AMD has only reported four bugs in the Athlon (they number up to six, but two were apparently pre-release bugs and fixed before full production went underway.

The Pentium III has a total of sixty-five bugs (including those related to APIC), a little more than sixteen times as many as are on the Athlon (GAKKK!). Mind you, the vast majority of these are either fixed or worked around. For example, the most recent stepping fixed nine bugs from the previous stepping. The number of unfixed bugs in the current revision/stepping of the Pentium III appears to be something like 48 (Intel maintains that these particular bugs are not critical enough to pursue fixing, according to the documentation).

[...] Apparently, the 180nm Athlons (Model 2) do not have any of these bugs. I doubt it is totally bug-free, but its current quantity of reported bugs is: Zero.

Computable meldt dat de 1 miljoen Windows 2000 exemplaren die Microsoft een maand na introductie verkocht heeft vooral bij consumenten terecht zijn gekomen. Bedrijven lijken vooralsnog een afwachtende positie in te nemen ten opzichte van Win2k:

Microsoft lijkt er niet in te slagen het succes van Windows NT met Windows 2000 te herhalen. De recentste statistieken laten zien dat de eerste miljoen afgezette versies van het nieuwe besturingssysteem vooral hun weg hebben gevonden naar de desktopcomputers van consumenten.

[...] Analisten van Gartner schatten dat 97 procent van de Windows 2000 Professional-systemen die tot dusver geleverd werden, bestemd waren voor desktops. Klanten zouden het systeem vaak ten onrechte zien als vervanging voor hun Windows 95 en -98 programmatuur.

Het volk van Silicon News heeft hun wekelijkse Athlon vs PIII prijsvergelijking van een updatetje voorzien. De Athlon blijkt, ondanks een duidelijk daling van de PIII prijzen afgelopen week, nog steeds een flink stuk minder te kosten dan een vergelijkbare PIII. Ook als de kosten van een moederplank worden meegerekend is de Athlon goedkoper:

Penstar Systems bracht afgelopen week op de Game Developers Conference een bezoekje aan de 3dfx stand en praatte daar met Bryan Speece, hoge harrie van de Macintosh Business Development afdeling, over de VSA100 en Mac support:

How will the VSA-100 handle Quicktime acceleration, or for that matter will it support Rave out of the box?

QuickTime acceleration will be implemented for VSA-100 similar to the above. The difference obviously being your aim is to accelerate key mulitimedia functions of the Mac rather than it's 2D. Quickdraw 3D (aka RAVE) will be supported by VSA-100 out of the box. In fact, Voodoo cards are the only Macintosh graphics products to ever support all three major Macintosh 3D API's = RAVE, Glide & OpenGL.

Daily Radar heeft een artikeltje gepost waarin een game developer vijf redenen noemt waarom de Playstation II zal worden overtroffen door de X-Box. Hoewel meneer de game developer z'n naam niet openbaar wil maken wordt door Daily Radar bevestigd dat het om iemand gaat met ervaring op meerdere platformen, PC's en next-generation consoles. Hier alvast één van de vijf argumenten:

2. The X-Box is Easier to Develop for Than PS2

Maybe to gamers this doesn't seem like a big deal. But believe me, it is. Writing games on the PC platform is a dream compared to writing games on other platforms. The bar has only gotten higher on the PlayStation2. Much like the Saturn and the Jaguar, the PS2 requires an exceptional amount of jumping through hoops to get titles running smoothly. The reality is that many developers are either lazy, stupid or really f**king busy, and don't get around to making the title's performance the best in can be on a system that is really hard.

I am sure the X-Box, in the beginning, is going to have a ton of ports. That's because to port a game to the X-Box and have it look great is easy. To port a game to a platform like the PS2 and have it look great is a big pain in the ass.

AsiaBizTech schrijft dat de Taiwenese moederplank fabrikanten Asus, Gigabyte, Elitegroup en FIC melding maken van een tegenvallende afzet van van hun i820 borden (wat een verassing! ). De oorzaak van de lage verkoop ligt volgens de fabrikanten in de hoge kosten van de i820 chipset en Rambus modules:

Local motherboard makers Asustek, Giga-byte, Elitegroup Computer System Co., Ltd. and First International Computer Inc. all reported that their 820 motherboard shipments accounted for less than 10 percent of the total last month. To add insult to injury, reports of flaws in Intel's i820 chipsets sent 820 motherboard sales down even further.

They blamed the slack sales of the 820 motherboard mainly on the high cost of the i820 chipset, which restricted their ability to boost sales by cutting motherboard prices. In addition, they noted that the failure of Intel's Rambus memory (a feature of the DRAM used in its 820 motherboards) to gain a foothold in the market has also dampened prospective interest in the 820 motherboard.

\Hardware One heeft een review gepost van de Iwill SIDE RAID66, een op de nieuwe HighPoint HPT368 chipset gebaseerd IDE RAID controller. Net zoals de Promise FastTrak66 heeft de SIDE RAID66 ondersteuning voor de RAID levels 0 (striping), 1 (mirroring) en 0/1 (striping+mirroring op 4 drives). Hotswappen is ook mogelijk en daarbij is het bovendien handig dat er op de tweede IDE connector tevens externe schijven aangesloten kunnen worden. De SIDE RAID66 zou ideaal kunnen zijn voor een low-budget Linux webserver, helaas is er echter nog geen Linux driver beschikbaar:

Admittedly, my fears relating to the HPT368 are completely allayed following this test. The Iwill SIDE RAID 66 is a testament to non-problematic setup and compatibility. Furthermore, its RAID 0 performance is also remarkably fast, generally offering significant speed gains. Mirroring also offers full redundancy albeit with a slight performance hit, applicable for most economical servers.

Coupled with a retail price-point slated at US$99 or so, it should offer stiff competition against the Promise FastTrack controller, whom has since been enjoying a market monopoly. However, with recent developments allowing a Promise UATA 66 to convert purportedly to a FastTrack controller via a simple hack, its widespread market penetration may be slightly hampered by this cheaper alternative.