Voor de echte hardcore tweakers heeft zdnet.de een (duitse) guide gemaakt waar word uitgelegt hoe je door middel van wat leuk soldeer werk je Socket 370 moederboord kan aanpassen voor gebruik met een Pentium III. Hieronder de brakke babelfish vertaling:

At the beginning of December last year Intel shocked the computer world with a doubtful update: The new Pentium III, code name Coppermine, in FC-PGA design which runs only into particularly Socket 370 Boards laid out for it. This base was reserved to date for the Celeron CPU's. The new Pentium III types need additional pins, which are not needed of the Celeron PCU's for the operation.

For the owners of a motherboard with base 370 this means first that for the application of a Slocket 370 Pentium III a new board is necessary. In order to save to the user the acquisition of a new Motherboards, the PC pro laboratory developed a circuit, which enables it with many boards to use nevertheless a Pentium III.

Thanks Mindfields for the Tip!

Voor alle mensen die het in hun hoofd hebben gehaald om een ATI Rage Fury Maxx te kopen inplaats van een GeForce heeft Tech-Junkie een mooie comparison on-line gezet om je van dat idee af te halen .

As can be seen the rage Fury Maxx really seem to lag behind the GeForce in terms of performance under 3Dmark. This might have been due to the beta drivers I used, as version A6.32 CD38 was the latest for this article but a more recent driver A6.32 CD48 has been released.

The GeForce may have had a big advantage in 3Dmark simply due to hardware Transform and Lighting (T&L) used, but overall the Rage Fury Maxx seemed to have a hard time equalling the score produce by the GeForce. This may be true since other reviews have indicated that the Rage Fury Maxx runs best on high-end Pentium III/Athlon systems, even then it barely equals the GeForce DDR in speed.

But this begs the question, if two cards cost the same why would you buy one that barely keeps up with its rival; even on high-end machine?

Er is natuurlijk ook nog een positief punt: Je krijgt wel hele coole ATI menutjes in je configuratie scherm...

Nog meer iMac-related nieuws want harley bezorgde een link naar dit nieuwsbericht waarin gemeld wordt dat een Anti-iMac reclame filmpje (helaas?) niet op TV te zien zal zijn. Een halve zool die zich "ljrunner" noemt besluit zijn hobby (schieten) bot te vieren op een iMac. Na wat intern overleg heeft het bedrijf (Epinions) besloten de spot terug te trekken omdat reclames met vuurwapens in de hoofdrol toch niet zo geschikt werden geacht. Gelukkig is er altijd nog internet

Would you really want to buy a computer based on its color?" says Jay, before unleashing another round at a stricken iMac, hung up like a paper target at a shooting gallery. The iMac takes four bullets and some heavy criticism in a TV ad for the Epinions consumer ratings site -- an ad that'll never make it to your TV.
The controversy surprised John Runner, of Clarksville, Tenn., who, as "Jay," blasts away at Apple Computer literally and figuratively. "I thought it was really cool. I like firing handguns -- it's a hobby of mine. I have a rifle, and a pistol that I take out to a shooting range every once in a while." But it wasn't a gun that inspired the ad -- it was his scathing review of the iMac, titled Macintosh's Dying Breath. "The ad agency asked me, what would you think about shooting at [the iMac] to express your anger. I said that sounds pretty good to me."

Het filmpje kunt je hier bekijken (RealVideo)

dennis@wacky schrijft:"In navolging van de (inmiddels klassieke) iMac van Apple komen zowel HP als Compaq nu met vergelijkbare pceetjes. Genaamd: Compaq iPaq, Compaq Presario EZ, en HP e-Vectra. Deze bakkies hebben veel weg van de iMac zowel qua design, als qua gebruiksgemak. "

Compaq noemt het ding, weinig orgineel, de iPaq :r, HP gebruikt het nauwelijks betere e-Vectra als naam...
De machines zijn vooral bedoeld voor mensen die voor niet te veel geld een leuke internet-PC willen hebben die ze ook nog eens met goed fatsoen in de woonkamer kunnen zetten. Wat dat betreft zal het wel lukken, maar voor de gemiddelde tweaker is er waarschijnlijk weinig eer te behalen

Computer makers are going design-happy with their latest offerings, seeking to simplify computing with a creative PC chassis, bare-bones features, and low prices. Three of these new PCs--the Compaq Presario EZ2700, the Compaq iPaq, and the HP e-Vectra--all have futuristic cases in common but little else. The EZ2700, like the rest of the Presario line, is aimed at novice users who need a home system with an easy overall setup. Despite the not-so-veiled reference to the consumer-focused Apple iMac, the iPaq is much more of a business machine. This network box comes stripped down to the essentials needed for a typical office environment. Compaq believes that if you're buying 20--or 200--machines for a fully networked company, you shouldn't spend money on extras that will never get used, such as modems. And the HP e-Vectra measures smaller than almost any PC we've seen, especially for a corporate box. Sound like smart ideas? Read on to find out just how office-friendly the iPaq and e-Vectra really are and if the Presario EZ2700 is user-friendly (and fast) enough to be a newbie's home computer.

Wandel naar CNet voor meer info.

Microsoft heeft aangekondigd vandaag nog met het eerste service pack voor Office 2000 te komen. Dit pakket zal (zoals gebruikelijk) weer een groot aantal grote en kleine bugs, foutjes en "hidden features" verhelpen. Het SP moet er bovendien voor zorgen dat Office beter aansluit op Windows 2000. Tenslotte zal een oudere versie van IE geupgrade worden naar 5.01. Houdt in ieder geval de Office update-site in de gaten.
(Thanx [eNeRGy] voor de tip!)

As reported last week in a WinInfo exclusive, Microsoft Corporation will finally release its first Service Release for Office 2000, Office 2000 SR-1, on Tuesday March 21st at 9:00 am Redmond time. SR-1 is designed to make it easier to deploy and use Office 2000, and the release enables better compatibility with Windows 2000. Most importantly, SR-1 fixes an extensive list of bugs in Access, Excel, FrontPage, the FrontPage server extensions, the Office server extensions, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word, the Office Setup and a number of other common components. The service release can be applied to any version of Microsoft Office 2000 or any of the standalone applications, aside from PhotoDraw 2000. If you're running an older version of Internet Explorer, it can optionally upgrade that to Internet Explorer 5.01, the version of IE that ships with Windows 2000.

jurrien bezorgde het nieuws dat beta 1 van "de andere browser" Opera uit is. Ben je het zat om steeds 10+ MB te downloaden voor de nieuwste IE of Netscape dan kun je Opera proberen. Deze browser past op 1 floppy omdat er standaard nauwelijks plugins worden meegeleverd. Wat je nodig hebt kun je gewoon apart installeren. Grootste nadeel: Opera is niet gratis, in tegenstelling tot de grote concurrenten. Een trial versie kun je hier downloaden.

Tired of 10MB+ downloads, megabytes of updates, sluggish performance, HTML standard violations, desktop domination, instability, the seductive word 'free', and a browser war that left you as the only casualty? Then welcome to Opera! Small, fast, customizable, powerful but user-friendly, Opera takes the wait out of the Internet, reduces your online charges and does what the others tried in vain: it puts a big smile on your face. With all these features, Opera is well worth paying for.

insane schrijft dat 3dfx met haar popie Voodoo3 2000 PCI nog steeds de best verkopende videokaart in huis heeft:

3dfx Interactive Inc. today announced that, according to research firm PC Data, the company realized the best selling retail product based on both revenue and unit sales for the month of January. The Voodoo3™ 2000 PCI took the number one spot as measured by both unit sales and revenue for the eighth consecutive month. The Voodoo3 family of products has held the top spot in retail for nine consecutive months, ever since the products were introduced in April 1999.

For January, PC Data's report showed that 3dfx had the top four selling retail graphics boards in the U.S. in terms of revenue, with the Voodoo3 2000 PCI, Voodoo3 3000 PCI, Voodoo3 3000 AGP and Voodoo2 1000 PCI. Additionally, 3dfx held six of the top seven spots for revenue, rounding out with the Voodoo3 3500 TV and Voodoo3 2000 AGP.

PC Data's report also showed that 3dfx took the top three positions in unit sales with the Voodoo3 2000 PCI, Voodoo2 1000 PCI and Voodoo3 3000 PCI. Voodoo3 3000 AGP, Voodoo3 2000 AGP and Voodoo3 3500 TV hold the fourth, fifth and sixth places respectively.

Betanews meldt dat de iso van FreeBSD 4.0 van het net getankt kan worden. FreeBSD 4.0 werd vorige week donderdag gereleased en was tot nu toe alleen beschikbaar als losse verzameling files:

This is the ISO version of FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE

FreeBSD offers advanced networking, performance, security and compatibility features today which are still missing in other operating systems, even some of the best commercial ones.

The quality of FreeBSD combined with today's low-cost, high-speed PC hardware makes FreeBSD a very economical alternative to commercial UNIX workstations. It is well-suited for a great number of both desktop and server applications.

Thanks xoror voor de tip.

Zend.com heeft een artikel gepost over Michael Widenius, één van de developers van de populaire MySQL database (waar o.a. sites zoals Slashdot, Freshmeat en onze eigen Tweakers.net op draaien):

Michael "Monty" Widenius of MySQL is one of the few open-source developers who has been working alone. According to Monty, his company gets more offers of money from venture capitalists than submissions of code fixes for the MySQL server. On the client end, the contributions have been great, but the MySQL server-end software has been written from the ground up basically by Widenius himself, who has no official title at the company.

The idea for MySQL started in the mid-1990s, when Widenius was working with TCX. TCX clients doing data warehousing started asking for a browser-based rather than a standard GUI interface. "We started to look around for some language that would be easy to embed in Perl or something like that, and when you look around, SQL is probably the appropriate choice," says Widenius. After checking the available commercial and open source servers they found that the available programs were too slow for even the medium sized databases of 5-10 million rows. They turned to the developer of mSQL to see if he would be interested in implementing the server software needed, but he wasn't, so they decided to develop their own. By that time, Widenius had gathered a lot of knowledge, and knew exactly what functionality he needed. The first implementation took him only three months to program, "but it didn't do much," he said. "I already had something in place ... I just ripped out the GUI and put in a simple SQL parser."

[...] Another unusual attribute of the MySQL company is that it is completely self-sustaining, that it, it was always profitable, and it continues to grow through profit, rather than outside investment. Frankly, says Widenius, although we get offers from investors weekly, we don't have anywhere they want to invest the money. "We will never give up our ideas," says Widenius. And since they don't need the money, there is no need to sacrifice control. "The main target is to make the best SQL server there is," he adds.

ActualFantasy schrijft: "3Com geeft toe verslagen te zijn in de high-end netwerk business. Ze hebben verloren van bedrijven als Cisco Systems, en zullen daardoor hun high-end business volledige afbreken. Dit zal onder andere omvatten dat alle apperatuur gebaseerd op PathBuilder, Corebuilder en Netbuilder niet meer ondersteund en gemaakt zal worden":

Hardwaremaker 3Com heeft onverwacht aangekondigd dat ze producten voor netwerken van grote bedrijven en de modemverkoop zal afstoten, in totaal 45 procent van de omzet.

3com is na Cisco de tweede grootste in levering van netwerkapparatuur. Chef Eric Benhamou zei dat hij met 3Com louter de nodige groei van 20 tot 25 procent kan behalen zonder de onderdelen die een negatieve invloed hebben op de cijfers.

Recent bracht 3Com Palm Computing al naar de beurs, en zal nog meer aandelen daarvan verkopen, tegen een nu veel hogere koers.

Wat resteert voor 3Com is vooral de levering van apparatuur aan telecombedrijven, en aan de andere kant van het spectrum apparatuur voor midden- en kleinbedrijf en voor thuisgebruik.

Voor meer info, lees verder bij Planet Internet, of ga naar WebWereld of CRN.

Mitch schrijft: "Bij Hard OCP las ik een kort artikeltje over een bezoekje aan 3dfx in Dallas, waar de jongens van Hard OCP met een camera zich mochten uitleven op een Voodoo5 5000 PCI":

What we got to see was the Full Screen Anti Aliasing (FSAA) in action. They has a test unit set up with a PCI Voodoo5 5000. Here are the specs if you want to check them out over at 3dfx's site.

We were told upfront that what we were there to see was NOT a FPS performance but rather the FSAA enhancements and what they look like out of the box.

We got to see PodRacer, Falcon 4.0, Quake3, Nascar Something, and Unreal Tourney in action.>

Steve posted a blurb on this Saturday, and I have to totally agree with him, the FSAA IS what it is all cracked up to be. While the FSAA does make Quake 3 look a HELL of a lot better at lower resolutions, you don't / won't really see the benefit due to the game being so fast moving. I mean if you stand around and enjoy the eye candy, then you will love it, but for most fraggers the FSAA will not make a difference here. More frames per second is what we want and hopefully that is what we will get.

We did compare the 3dfx FSAA with the leaked nVidia FSAA on a GeForce and I think the 3dfx stuff looks better. This is NOT a true comparison though seeing how the GeForce does not officially support the feature, but I am sure they will the next time round...

The Falcon flight sim was simply AMAZING with the FSAA turned on. The planes themselves damn near looked liked filmed footage. The landscape you were flying over was also brought into realistic detail with the FSAA. I could rave on about the Falcon game for a day and I don't even like flight sims...that is how much better it looked.

Silvino Orozco van Tom's Hardware Guide heeft een artikel geschreven over de gevolgen van het overklokken van je AGP snelheid naar 89MHz, als gevolg van het draaien van je BX mobo (die helaas niet gezegend zijn met een 1/2 AGP divider) op 133MHz FSB. Silvino testte welke populaire videokaarten uberhaupt werkten met een dergelijke setup en hoe groot de snelheidswinst dan wel niet was:

On a performance level, a 133MHz bus speed on the BX platform performs very well and shows a solid improvement on almost every single card. The CAS latency doesn't seem to make such a huge difference but it may be worth looking into if you feel that you need every single % squeezed out of your system. We also noticed that the heat differences from running a card at the two bus speeds was basically nothing so you need not worry about heat issues if you take the 133MHz plunge.

This situation is interesting for two kinds of people. Die hard overclockers may want to try upping the bus speed with their Pentium III 550E or 600E processor to reach 733 or 800 MHz if they are lucky, thus benefiting from the overclocked processor as well as from the superior performance of BX at 133 MHz FSB. People who don't really want to overclock their CPUs, but who don't mind that their graphics card is running at 89 MHz AGP might want to plug an official Coppermine processor for 133 MHz FSB (ending with 'EB') into their BX-board. In this case there is still the benefit of the high performance that BX offers at 133 MHz FSB, which is superior to any platform that officially supports this FSB-clock.

After testing all the boards I had handy, we've learned that not only does the 3D-chip matter but also the board vendor design itself comes into play as we've seen the same 3D-chip fail and pass running at 133MHz bus. By no means is this a complete list of graphics cards available or that will work but it should give you an idea of which popular cards should work in case you wish to switch over immediately to the fastest platform setup available right now. We also cannot tell you if the 3D-cards might suffer long term damage from running at an AGP-clock that's 33% beyond spec.

Hieronder een aantal nieuwe reviews van een stel GeForce videokaarten.

Ars Technica reviewt de ASUS V6600 GeForce Pure SGRAM en de SDR Deluxe versie:

We were happy to see such overclockable cards cross our bench. So many readers wanted us to review these cards that we got really fired up about their potential. In the end, however, I'd have to say that these cards didn't live up to their billing as demi-DDRs.

First, there's still the obvious issue of price. The Pure SGRAM model is just too expensive (indeed, I think that ASUS' SDRAM model is too expensive, too). Floating $50 above some other SDRs and only $40 below certain DDR models puts this card into a Limbo of sorts. If you're not looking to overclock, this card is a waste for you (but seriously, this card invites even Grandma to the overlocking party... it's so easy). If you are planning on pushing the limits, then factoring in the money saved by not needing to implement a custom cooling solution helps even the score, but not quite enough to put ASUS in the win-column. In all reality, I expect that buyers will continue to gravitate to the two extremes and forsake the middle for now, at least as long as the middle is as high as $220. Phunk aside, $220 is a lotta dough for an SDR. [break] TNFST heeft een review van de Guillemot 3D Prophet: [/break] As you can see, even the mighty GeForce takes a big hit in 32-bit. Over 30fps. That doesn't mean it's slow, in fact it's mighty fast, but I was hoping for less of a performance hit. Also remember that these scores won't hold true for all games. Different game engines don't have the same efficiency. In fact, as I've noticed, Quake III doesn't appear all that efficient at all.

Even with it's setbacks, this is one fast card. Unfortunately, it falls short of it's potential in higher resolutions and 32-bit color due to the SDRAM. Because of this, I can't honor it with an award. But, the DDRAM version, whenever I can review it, may manage to get that honor if it doesn't suffer as much from the SDRAM's fallbacks. [break]iXBT-Hardware maakt ons blij met een flinke review van de Gigabyte GA-GF2560 SDR: [/break] Summing up we can say that Gigabyte GA-GF2560 doesn't yield to its competitors at all. However, the general impression is slightly spoilt by the fact that this NVIDIA GeForce 256 based graphics card is equipped with slow SDR-memory. Besides, we didn't notice any peculiar features so typical of Gigabyte. In fact, it is pretty strange that the company launched a graphics card much later than its competitors but still didn't do anything to show off a bit against the general background.

We also don't know anything about the price of this graphics card because it is not so widely spread yet. We suppose that if its price is quite low, or even lower than that of the competing products, the card will undoubtedly be a success. But we have to note that the triumph won't last long anyway, because the cards with DDR memory are getting cheaper and cheaper and the gap between the cards with SDR and DDR memory is getting smaller and smaller… Very soon buying a card with SDR memory will be a total waste of money, don't you agree? [break]3DGPU heeft een review gebakken van de Leadtek WinFast
GeForce 256 DDR:[/break] I have to say, the Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 impressed me. Not with it's blazing speed, because while it is extremely fast, it is no faster than any other GeForce 256 DDR card available. Not with it's software bundle which is rather anemic. Rather, the card impressed me with it's bang for the buck.

Starting with the addition of not only a S-Video cable, but also aS-Video/RCA splitter, and a RCA cable, Leadtek really gives you more for your dollar. Their tech support, while lacking phone support, was relatively quick and knowledgable. You get get all of this for under $265 over at CrazyPC while stock lasts or one of the new Revision B cards for $277. With any luck we can review one of those for you soon. That's what I like, great performance, relatively low price.

The Register raapt een paar vage geruchten van de straat volgens welke AMD en VIA mogelijk gaan fuseren. De bekendmaking van VIA dat het de processor divisie in een apart bedrijf onder wil brengen zou een voorteken zijn voor mogelijke fusieplannen. Zoals gezegd een wazig berichtje, dus niet meteen al te serieus nemen:

The news is already prompting widespread speculation that AMD and Via could tie up their businesses, in a bid to give chip major Intel an even tougher run than it has had in the course of the last four months.

That spin has been scotched today by Via. Marketing director Richard Brown, based in Taipei, said: "There's no truth in these rumours. It's true that we will spin off the chip company but it will be 100 per cent owned by Via. We have no plans to merge with AMD or anyone else."

[...] As far as a spun off CPU company is concerned, earlier this year, at CeBIT 2000, we reported that Via was not in any condition to start distributing its CPUs on a worldwide basis for at least a year, given that it has no merchant infrastructure, nor distributor channel to sell the CPUs. AMD has such a structure and could help it out. There's no doubt there's quite a close relationship between the two.

Added to the current alliances Via has with AMD, the Taiwanese firm has also made considerable investments in graphics firm S3.

There have been persistent rumours on Silicon Investor and other financial bulletin boards, that CEO Chen has been making large investments in AMD stock. These, apparently, are just rumours.

Thanks insane voor de tip.

Sebastiaan Brozius schrijft dat er bij 3D Chipset nieuwe BETA Win9x Detonator drivers te vinden zijn. Deze versie (3.77) biedt ook ondersteuning voor S3TC en FSAA onder OpenGL:

It seems that the good ol v5.08 might have been causing some people compatibility problems. Well it seems someone wanted to change that and the outcome is Beta 3.77 drivers with S3TC and FSAA in OpenGL. Here is the scoop:

Modified Detonator v3.77
v3.77
Date: 03/20/00
Size: 1.64mb
Download Here

Release Notes:
- Modified to add S3TC and FSAA support for Opengl
- Files are dated 02/08/2000

Het leedvermaak kan niet op dezer dagen . World Online heeft ten opzichte van de slotkoers van maandag momenteel al weer een daling van meer dan 13% gemaakt:

Update: World Online zakt verder naar een slotkoers van 29,95 Euro, een dalig van bijna 20%:

De mannen van Got Apex hebben een review klaarliggen van de draadloze Logitech iTouch tikplank, uitgevoerd met een aantal hotkeys die je met behulp van de uitgebreide software zelf kunt configgen. Hieronder een hap uit de test:

I stated earlier in this review that a cordless keyboard is not a necessity but rather a spoil. I now would like to withdraw that statement, because I will never go back to a standard keyboard again. The Logitech keyboard worked flawlessly out of the box, and its inclusion of two Duracell AA batteries, as well as the PS/2 to AT adapter illustrates their commitment to the consumer. The receiver is roughly a little bigger then a floppy as you can see in the comparison picture below. The small footprint of the receiver leaves you with numerous possibilities of where to stick it...on your desktop that is, without creating a cluttered appearance. Using the Logitech Cordless iTouch keyboard has been sheer heaven. It is basically like taking a regular keyboard and taping a remote control for your VCR, Stereo, and TV to it. The iTouch control panel is very user friendly and offers you tons of options to configure your internet shortcut keys. As far as the reliability of the digital radio signal; I have nothing but good things to say about its incredible accuracy and lack of delay. Another feather in the iTouch's cap is that its battery power consumption is quite low when compared to other Logitech cordless devices, such as their cordless mice, which require you to have an endless supply of batteries. The Logitech Cordless iTouch keyboard will make a useful addition to your PC. Once you have used you will wonder how you managed without.

Bij Thresh's FiringSquad hebben ze part 2 van hun Quake III videokaarten roundup online gemikt. Hierin hebben ze de benchmarks nogmaals gedraaid met wat nieuwere drivers, zoals de Detonators 5.08 voor de GeForce, Matrox TurboGL drivers, Wicked3D's WickedGL drivers en nieuwe S3 drivers voor de Savage 2000. Hieronder een hap uit de conclusie:

The 5.08 drivers offer a significant performance improvement for the NVIDIA cards in Quake 3. The framerate increase alone justifies the download.
Unfortunately, this performance increase can come at a cost. The FiringSquad message boards are full of unsuccesful 5.08 stories and the emails continue to flood in. Those are the risks you take when using unofficial drivers: increased performance at the risk of increased system incompatibilities.

Clearly you can't go very wrong with either GeForce board, the Viper II makes a good solution as well under the right conditions.

The Rage Fury Maxx is highly difficult to recommend based on performance alone, as its low resolution performance clearly has room for improvement. Keep in mind that this can change; the Rage Fury Maxx is the newest card of the bunch running on early drivers.

The older generation cards all offer similar performance and you shouldn't be disappointed with any one card in relation to another. Don't expect any of these cards to compete with a GeForce, but when you consider the current street price of any one of these cards it makes a pretty tempting offer.

In the end, the moral of the story is to keep your video drivers up-to-date. Newer driver releases can offer dramatically increased performance at no cost to the end user.

Wonderboy Anand maakt ons blij de eerste (leesbare ) review van de AOpen AK72, een KX133 plank met 5 keer PCI, 1xISA, 1xAMR en 3xDIMM. Anand is niet tevreden over de ongelukkige plaatsing van het AMR slot, deze bevindt zich onder het ISA slot en eet daar ruimte weg die we liever op een zinnige manier gebruikt zien worden (de gebruikelijke positie tussen AGP en PCI creeërt in ieder geval nog extra space voor videokaart cooling). Anand schrijft in zijn conclusie dat de stabiliteit van het bord achter blijft bij de Asus K7V en niet op het niveau is van de andere AOpen borden. Da's jammer aangezien AOpen normaal gesproken juist bekend staat om de goede stabiliteit van hun mobo's:

In spite of carrying the AOpen name, the AK72 wasn't as stable as most AOpen boards we've encountered in the past. The board itself was fairly stable but definitely not as stable as the ASUS K7V-RM and definitely not up to par with AOpen's award winning BX boards in terms of stability. When you're in a position like AOpen there are definitely very high expectations, and when those expectations aren't met the disappointment can be great.

The layout and incredible size of the board is pretty unusual for AOpen as well, the board may have problems in cramped cases but luckily the positioning of the DIMM slots makes it so that you shouldn't have any problem occupying all three DIMM slots, even in the smallest of ATX cases.

Thanks Tafkae voor de tip.

Volgens The Register gaat de NV15, sinds gisteren bekend onder de officiële naam 'GeForce 2', geklokt worden op een snelheid tussen 180 en 200MHz. Da's weer nieuw, want eerder hoorden we cijfertjes van 135, 160, 200 en 250MHz (187 gemiddeld ). Als we The Reg mogen geloven komt Creative als eerste met een GeForce 2 op de markt:

As we reported earlier this year, Nvidia's NV 15 is speeding towards completion. The chip is likely to be called the GeForce 2 and will clock to between 180 to 200 MHz, according to reliable sources.

[...] The fill rate may be as high as 1600 million pixels per second, a figure four times greater than previous cards based on the NV10 (Geforce256) graphics processors. That means we can expect 80 FPS in Quake 3 at a resolution of 1024 x 768 x 32. The transform and lighting (T&L) features will be augmented by clipping, which is expected to increase the performance of the feature.

Betanews meldt dat er via een aantal Amerikaanse scholen een interne build van Windows 2001 (codenaam 'Whistler') is uitgelekt naar het internet. Whistler is een gecombineerd consumer en business besturingssysteem gebaseerd op de NT kernel:

While the new operating system currently looks almost identical to Windows 2000, a number of people who installed the leaked build stated there were a few HTML enhancements to folders, simplifying things for novice users. For example, the control panel is now by default an HTML interface, offering access to a few basic configuration options.

Whistler does contain the infamous MarsCore.DLL file which started rumors last month regarding the purpose of Mars, now known to be part of the future version of Microsoft's MSN client. However, it is unknown whether or not the new HTML folders are part of the Mars core or if users will be given the opportunity to switch off more user friendly parts of the operating system.

Thanks [eNeRGy] voor de tip.

Met 15.000 blokken over zijn we met de 414.234 work units die we gisteren geflushed hebben het team van de "AL-Mail Users" voorbij gegaan! Waarmee we nu dus 29ste overall staan bij Distributed.net!

De DPC Hitparade Top 10 van 20 maart 2000

1. 52,898 Interior Lulu(3, Totaal:1,085,536)
2. 15,829 wildhagen(7, Totaal:701,291)
3. 14,690 m_dejong(57, Totaal:194,917)
4. 8,918 HarryB(13, Totaal:609,001)
5. 7,755 Kees(141, Totaal:89,688)
6. 7,512 sienema(2, Totaal:1,169,172)
7. 7,508 Ferion Power!(17, Totaal:493,466)
8. 6,996 Katsov(19, Totaal:466,721)
9. 6,601 [eNeRGy](15, Totaal:553,104)
10. 5,994 my_sirion(36, Totaal:274,062)

En de nummers 11 tot en met 20:

11. 5,988 ThE RaVeR(53, Totaal:205,139)
12. 4,832 BRILSMURF(102, Totaal:117,504)
13. 4,804 Jorma(4, Totaal:927,040)
14. 4,464 Chainsaw(18, Totaal:482,064)
15. 4,336 Eddict(23, Totaal:369,305)
16. 4,212 Sjaak & Scott(71, Totaal:160,365)
17. 4,171 Sir Soes & Shellshock(43, Totaal:231,264)
18. 4,092 arjennap(256, Totaal:37,615)
19. 4,010 GiLuX(5, Totaal:833,492)
20. 3,976 Nasty(10, Totaal:670,164)

De Top 15 teams van 20 maart 2000

1.( 3) 864,980 Russian Team
2.( 3) 786,403 HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries
3.( 2) 730,286 Slashdot.org
4.( 1) 647,257 AnandTech
5.( 3) 621,113 #DeathMatch
6.( 0) 504,920 The Amiga RC5 Team effort
7.( 1) 427,737 Team Warped (OS/2)
8.( 1) 414,234 Dutch Power Cows
9.( 2) 410,370 Team EvangeLista (Macs Rule! :-)
10.( 2) 301,840 Team Hungary STB+
11.( 5) 292,300 L0phT Heavy Industries
12.( 2) 286,601 Japan FreeBSD Users Group
13.( 0) 275,766 CCC.de
14.( 3) 266,402 Libertarians for Privacy (Freedom Works!)
15.( 4) 243,724 Czech RC5 Team
43.( 21) 92,679 The #koffie Team

Teams om ons heen (total stats):
25.( ) moomin (Tot:55,230,997, Gis:179,667)
26.( ) TeamUFies (All Hail the Dust Puppy!) (Tot:54,232,395, Gis:182,860)
27.( ) SEGA Users Group (Tot:53,735,420, Gis:84,286)
28.( ) Prof. James Challis' Most Excellent UK Team (Tot:53,198,619, Gis:204,500)
29.( 1) Dutch Power Cows (Tot:50,180,033, Gis:414,234)
30.( 1) AL-Mail Users (Tot:50,154,157, Gis:68,832)
31.( ) Team RimArts UsersGroup (Tot:48,666,272, Gis:83,187)
32.( ) NetBSD Users (Tot:43,750,326, Gis:84,102)
33.( ) SwissTeam (Tot:40,421,989, Gis:110,037)
(Teams waarvan de score van gisteren ontbreekt, hadden geen score in de top 100!)

Wanneer halen we ze in:
moomin: 22 dagen
TeamUFies (All Hail the Dust Puppy!): 18 dagen
SEGA Users Group: 11 dagen
Prof. James Challis' Most Excellent UK Team: 15 dagen

Dutch power cows is vandaag 8e en heeft een kans van een op 97 om de sleutel te vinden!

De koers van World Online is gisteren, na de daling van vrijdagmiddag, verder gezakt naar een uiteindelijke slotkoers van 37,40 Euro. Volgens Planet Multimedia deden veel particulieren hun aandelen van de hand:

Opnieuw hebben particulieren hun aandelen World Online vanmorgen massaal ter verkoop aangeboden te hebben. De koers dook vanmorgen onder de 43 Euro, de introductiekoers. Na een voor sommigen teleurstellende introductie sloot de koers vrijdag op 43.20 Euro. Rond 13.00 uur stond de Wol-koers op 39,65 Euro en tegen 15.30 uur was hij al gezakt tot 36,50 Euro. [break] Verder heeft Nu.nl een artikel gepost over de enorme advertentiecampagne waarmee World Online momenteel haar naamsbekendheid hoopt te vergroten. Volgens het artikel steekt de publiciteitscampagne goed in elkaar, maar moet World Online oppassen voor het slechte imago dat het bij klanten heeft: [/break] De voortdurende investeringen in de naamsbekendheid hebben de internetaanbieder geen windeieren gelegd. Dat de inschrijving op de aandelen World Online vorige week zo'n 21 keer werd overtekend, is daar een bewijs van, menen deskundigen. "World Online zoekt op een waanzinnig knappe manier de publiciteit met als gevolg, dat de naam op ieders lippen ligt", meent G. Heyning van The Name Works, dat merknamen bedenkt.

[...] Niet iedereen is echter zo positief. World Onlines grootste valkuil schuilt in zijn imago bij klanten. Wie abonnees spreekt, hoort drie dingen: het netwerk is vaak bezet, het internetten gaat traag en via de geautomatiseerde serviceverlening krijg je zelden een antwoord waar je iets mee kunt.

Als World Online serieus aan de slag gaat met die veelgehoorde klachten, levert dat veel meer op dan de naamsbekendheid die reclame genereert, verzekert B. Elbersen, directeur van Bikker Interactieve Media. "Je kunt nog zoveel reclame maken, maar als de binnenkant rot is, hebben klanten dat heel snel door. En op internet gaat dat helemaal als een lopend vuurtje."

Gnutella is blijkbaar niet zo dood als wij allen dachten, want Betanews meldt dat er een nieuwe beta uit is gekomen. De Gnullsoft site is desondanks nog net zo temporarily down als vorige week, toen de tent door AOL werd dichtgegooid:

Gnutella is Gnullsoft's first software offering, and will be a GPL, open-source fully distributed search and download system for media and archive files. Gnutella is similar to the concept of Napster. Instead of having users connect to a single server, slowing down things, Gnutella allows each user to connect to each other directly. When doing searches, Gnutella will search recursively through everybody you're connected to and then to everybody they are connected to and so on. During this initial development cycle, development is being done only on the Windows 32bit system, and is closed. Once 1.0 is released, source will be available for bringing Gnutella to many platforms.

Gnutella .50c mag je hier naar binnen gaan hengelen (thanks [eNeRGy] voor de tip).

ComputerNerd, de welbekende leverancier van overclocking gereedschappen, waarschuwt in een persberichtje dat er mogelijk grote aantallen geremarkte Athlons in de omloop zijn. Naar eigen zeggen kreeg ComputerNerd een lading met fake Athlons afkomstig van de grijze markt. De processors zijn herkenbaar aan de plastic achterkant van de cartridge. Deze is vervaardigd van een ander materiaal dan de originele Athlon. Tevens tonen de metalen clips sporen van mishandeling:

Plantation, FL. March 20, 2000. ComputerNerd USA is issuing this alert to Athlon buyers that it has recently received a shipment of counterfeit Athlons. The plastic cartridge back cover on these CPU is not exactly the same as the original AMD cover. This may assist in identifying the counterfeit without having to open the case, and also suggests that the counterfeiting operation may be large scale.

Since it is not an authorized AMD distributor, ComputerNerd USA purchases large numbers of Athlon processors from several suppliers on the gray market and opens them for testing with the Advanced POW!er Boost overclocking controller. It is therefore able to detect CPUs which have been opened and remarked which would be accepted as original AMD products by customers that do not open the case or do not carefully check for signs of internal tampering.

The counterfeit CPUs were marked as Athlon 650 0.25 micron (C types) with serial numbers on the case of 219936022369, 219936022600 and 219936022907. The paper sticker inside the cartridge on the circuit card with the original serial number had been removed and replaced with another sticker with slightly smaller size and different printing than the original AMD sticker. The serial numbers on the inside sticker were nearly but not exactly the same as on the cartridge (219936022781, 219936022780, 219936022802, respectively).

The metal clips holding the CPU circuit card showed signs of having been opened and reclosed, and some resistor pads (R121, R147, R158) on the circuit card showed clear traces of removal or resoldering. The cores were marked K7650, indicating that the original AMD CPU was probably an Athlon 500 since many of these CPUs were produced with 650 MHz cores.

The plastic CPU back cover is made of a different kind of plastic than the original product (two of the three CPUs had the cover break on removal, whereas the original plastic cover never breaks on removal). Surfaces of the plastic are shinier than the original product. The most distinctive difference, however, is that all corners and angles of the counterfeit plastic cover are rounded, whereas on the original part all angles are sharp with straight intersecting edges. [break] Gamers Depot is er super snel bij met een reactie van Drew Prairie / AMD. Hij adviseert resellers om geen procs op de grijze markt te kopen: [/break] This is the reason why we always recommend that resellers everywhere avoid the "gray market", and only buy through certified distribution, because you never know who you're buying from, and what their doing to the chips before you get them. We're not aware of this particular problem, but I will pass this onto our legal team for further investigation.

Het idee om processors te remarken is niet bepaald nieuw. Anderhalf jaar geleden was er ook al veel ophef over de circulatie van fake PII's. De Athlon is dankzij z'n Gold Fingers ideaal voor overklokkers, maar ook gevoelig voor remarking.

Voodoo Extreme vroeg Tim Sweeney (Epic / Unreal programmer) naar de mogelijkheden van 3D texture mapping, een nieuwe feature van de ATi Rage6:

Q: ATI's Rage 6 (and eventually others) will support some sort of 3D texture mapping in hardware. It sounds like the next logical step after bump mapping to provide added depth to visuals in games. Do you feel this will be an important feature in hardware that will be available to your disposal? If not, what do you think is the next emerging "must have" feature for a graphics accelerator, beyond raw fill rate / T&L?

A: Hang on a second: there are two different concepts here. 3D texture mapping, a.k.a. solid texture mapping, is a surface effect just like 2D texturing, but it involves sampling a single pixel from a 3D texture instead of a 2D texture. There isn't anything revolutionary about this, but it's a great practical benefit because it enables you to seamlessly texture parametrically generated objects like terrain and trees for which there is no nice continuous 2D mapping.

Volume texturing, a.k.a. volume visualization, is a much more computation-intensive technique used in medical imaging, which involves casting rays through a 3D image, usually performing 10 to 100 independent texture lookups and filters per pixel. It is currently too slow to be used in mainstream 3D hardware, but given a few years of Moore's Law, it should be within our grasp. However, the advantages of this approach for real-time rendering aren't so clear yet, as is its justification for existence. What can we render with it that we can't render as well otherwise? Cloud banks, rocks, realistic volumetric fog. I figure it's probably 4 or 5 years before the infrastructure exists to use this capability well.

Meer Tim Sweeney Q&A'tjes (en antwoord op de vraag wat de 'killer 3D feature' is) vind je op deze page bij VE.

GA-Source wist een zak met screenshots te pakken te krijgen van de X-Box demootjes die Pipeworks Software vorige week tijdens de Game Developer's Conference liet zien. Hier een paar sampletjes:

Ik lees bij Voodoo Extreme dat nVidia twee nieuwe technology demo's voor de GeForce online heeft gemikt. De eerste is een Quake III Arena bumpmapping proggie en de tweede is een hardware lighting demo:

Quake3 Arena Model Bump Mapping: Bump maps can add a lot to polygonal models. Ths app lets you import Q3A models and apply bump maps to them to see the results on a GeForce 256.

Lights Demo: This 70s flashback shows an undulating mesh lit by up to 300 hardware-calculated lights on a GeForce 256. A simple cloth model is used to animate the mesh, and it is transformed with hardware TnL on appropriate chipsets. It will also run in software on non-TnL hardware.

Netscape heeft in een press release laten weten dat de eerste Netscape 6 beta binnen 25 dagen uitgebracht zal worden. Tevens werd bekend gemaakt dat onder andere IBM, Intel, NetObjects, Noka, Red Hat en Sun zo lief zijn om de Gecko engine (waarop Netscape 6 is gebaseerd) in hun produkten te adopteren:

Netscape 6, the Company's next generation browser and email software, is built on the Gecko engine, resulting in a browser that enables a new generation of powerful Web applications. The new browser -- scheduled for Beta release within the next 25 days -- will take advantage of Gecko's unprecedented power and flexibility to feature:

• Small Size and Speed: Netscape is reversing the trend of software bloat by developing a browser that is small in size and excels in performance. Customers benefit from a small download and a fast browser, while third-party developers benefit from a compact browser engine that can be easily embedded in myriad network-ready devices.

• Services on the Net: The most interesting applications being developed today are free, Web-based services. The goal is to harness the Web for the benefit of users, and Netscape 6 will expose those services through the browser. The best recent example is Smart Browsing, which continues to improve on one simple goal: helping users to find the information they want quickly.

• Same-Time Messaging: Instant messaging with buddy lists is emerging as the next killer application on the Web. Instant messaging is popular and powerful because it enables people to communicate quickly from any distance, and notifies them when friends, family, and colleagues are online. In many cases, instant messaging is becoming a low-cost alternative to the telephone. It also brings same-time community to the Web by enabling people with common interests to participate in their own chat sessions.

• Standards Compliance: Users insist on a full-functionality Web browsing experience. Because of its full support for existing browser technologies and industry-leading support for the latest Web standards, Netscape 6 will give users access to all the power of the Web today and will unleash the potential of Web standards to build the Web applications of tomorrow.

Gecko Now Includes XUL, for More Powerful Web Applications Gecko also provides industry-leading XML support and supports XUL for rich, powerful Web applications. Netscape leads the industry in XML browser support by providing the most standards-compliant XML implementation across a variety of desktop and device platforms. Gecko now also supports XUL, an innovative open source XML technology that enables Netscape and other developers to provide a powerful and easily customizable application interface across multiple desktop platforms and devices.

XUL, the XML-based User Interface Language, uses XML to describe the features, objects, and layout of a traditional desktop application user interface. XUL lays out the user interface elements across all platforms by using these common Web standards: HTML, XML, CSS, the W3C DOM, and JavaScript.

Gecko's industry-leading implementation of Web standards provides, for the first time, enough power to build an entire software application user interface. Using these Web standards alone, developers can recreate within a Web application the entire user interface of a traditional desktop application, including pull-down menus, pop-up menus, toolbars, icons and scroll bars. XUL makes this even easier by using the standards to provide a pre-built implementation of each UI object and a compact markup for laying out the interface.

Dokter Tom heeft een follow-up gepost op z'n 1GHz Athlon en PIII benchmark festijn, met benchmarks van de 1GHz Pentium III op een i840 plank met PC600 en PC800 Rambus DRAM. Daartoe moest hij wel eerst een speciaal BIOS bij Intel los purken want het standaard i840 BIOS blijkt gelocked te zijn voor processors sneller dan 800MHz. Toen het zaakje eenmaal aan de gang was gekacheld bleek dat de i840 met dual Rambus in bijna alle benchmarks sneller is dan de 1GHz Athlon en in sommige gevallen zelfs een 440BX op 133MHz voorbij gaat. Hoerah, applaus voor Intel!

There you have it! With the inclusion of Intel's 840 chipset in the Giga-evaluation, Giga-Pentium III is able to win each real world benchmark in this set. Only Giga-Athlon's pure FPU-performance is on top of Giga-Coppermine's.

[...] As for the winner of this competition, the Giga-Pentium III, you are in a strange situation. First of all the product doesn't seem to be available. World wide only a handful of reviewers has done testing with it. European reviewers are ranting and raving about Intel's inability to supply review samples. Actual Giga-system are hardly in sight anywhere and I doubt that there will be any boxed Giga-Pentium III in retail shops for quite some time to come. So what does that leave us at? A Phantom-product has won the competition. It's as if an Athlete broke the latest 100m-race record by running on the moon. Even if Giga-Pentium III was available though, you would get the best performance out of an officially 'outdated' 440BX-platform, or out of an expensive i840-system, which currently doesn't support Giga-Pentium III as well.

Iridium laat z'n peperdure satellietparkje van 6 miljard dollar in de atmosfeer verbranden nadat het Iridium netwerk voor satelliet telefonie tot een mislukking is uitgelopen. Door de opkomst van mobieltjes aan de grond bleek er uiteindelijk nauwelijks belangstelling te bestaan voor de dure space phone:

De hoge gesprekskosten – zo'n 7 dollar per minuut – waren het grootste obstakel, toen Iridium begin 1999 na tien jaar voorbereiding eindelijk van start ging. Het heeft niet lang mogen duren. Iridium heeft haar faillissement aangevraagd, het satellietnetwerk is niet langer operationeel. Aldus heeft Motorola – de grootste investeerder in Iridium – bekendgemaakt. De schuldenlast bedraagt 4,4 miljard dollar.

Check dit artikel van Webwereld voor het complete verhaaltje (thanks vls voor de tip).

Beleggers lijken eindelijk in te zien dat Rambus niet alleen rozegeur en manenschijn is. Het Rambus zeepbelletje spatte uiteen met als gevolg dat de aandelenkoers binnen een week 33% daalde. The Register schrijft dat de de plotselinge bezinning bij beleggers volgens analisten onder meer het gevolg is van het Rambus artikel dat vorige week door Tom's Hardware Guide werd gepost:

"The stock is getting killed because of the report," Drew Peck, an analyst at SG Cohen Securities, told Bloomberg. He rates Rambus stock 'neutral. "In this environment, it doesn't take much to tip it over. It's more or less and 'shoot first and ask questions later'."

[...] Astonishing, isn't it -- that it took Tom's Hardware to prick the trading bubble enveloping Rambus. The facts surrounding Rambus -- yield problems, expense, performance issues, OEM unpopularity -- have all been in the public domain for months. But still, they traded. [break] Ook door Fool.com wordt THG als mede schuldige aangewezen : [/break] Chip performance enhancement technologies developer Rambus (Nasdaq: RMBS) was run over for a $76 19/32 loss to $317 1/32 today, adding to Friday's 5% decline. A host of less-than-positive comments about the company's prospects have been made recently, issued from commentators as diverse as Merrill Lynch and www.tomshardware.com.

Thanks Arjan voor de tip.