Normaalgesproken iets voor Gamer.nl, maar in het rijtje zeer boeiende en geloofwaardige verhalen op deze miezerige dag:

We haven't been updating much lately, because we've been saving up to give you a lot of info at once. The time has come for us to reveal what will be included in beta7. First of all the map cuts: we've decided that it's time for siege, dust, docks, militia, and prodigy to be cut. They've had their time in the sun, but now they have to go. In their place will be "mansion2000," which will have new features like more lag. It has also been decided that the famous Snark from HL will make its way into the mod (perhaps as some kind of projectile, say from a snark cannon). Beta7 will also have driveable vehicles, more gunz, and the ability to sell the c4 for inflated prices to unsuspecting hostages. Also, the AWP, M4A1, and mp5 weapons are going to be taken out and replaced by Half-Life's Gluon Gun. We figure this will capture the Sci Fi audience as well as the realism audience. Here are all the other beta7 features: The VIP will now be armed with a rocket launcher; crosshairs will now be rainbow colored; VIP will have a useable jetpack ala Duke Nukem; player speeds have been cut in half; CT's will now be clothed in pink jumpsuits; K9 Units; New weapons (an axe, a guitar like Honkey Tonk man where you can break it over the backs of your enemies, a 2 by 4, and a sledgehammer to smash up the CT's APC). Biggs and Brumbek from the Goldeneye mod have been hired to commence work on new player models and weapon animations. I hope you're all as excited about beta7 as we are!

Voor degenen die het niet hebben begrepen nog, CounterStrike is een toevoeging of ook wel "MOD" van Halflife, en de genoemde maps zijn de beste en meest gespeelde levels. Het begrip LAG is iets wat de meeste gamers wel als het meest hinderlijke in een spel ervaren... Het had allemaal nog best gekund, ware het niet voor de "Pink" CT's.

Yup, I'm all exited, ik lig op de grond van het lachen...

The Register schrijft dat ze de roadmaps van Intel hebben gezien van de komende mamaplankjes voor servers:

Sources working within Intel in Europe have leaked comprehensive details of the firm's strategy for server boards which reveal plans the chip giant currently has up until the year 2002.

Documents seen by The Register show that the firm is scrambling to ensure that its lucrative server business carries on being the cash cow to fuel future growth.

As we revealed yesterday, internal rifts between motherboard and chipset divisions in the firm have caused bitterness, with heads rolling as those at the top try and sort out difficulties in the middle and the bottom of the firm.

The roadmaps we have been shown are internal Intel documents and the firm is stressing to its customers that these are "preliminary" and "subject to change".

Tweakotine schrijft: "Bij Overclockers.com is een review van een Celeron-II FCPGA 533Mhz engineering sample te vinden. Met een multiplier van 8 was het mogelijk deze processor op 100MHz FSB te draaien ":

SUMMARY:

* Overclocking Nostalgia March 2000: Remember the good old C300A? Did 450 out of the box.
* Overclocking Nostalgia March 2002: Remember the good old FCPGA C 533? Did 800 out of the box.

And that about says it. By sheer luck, we got to play with an engineering sample of the about to be released Celeron FCPGA 533 MHz CPU. It is sweet. This baby runs at 1.5 volts because it is a 66 MHz part. We found that to run it stable at 100 MHz, you have to increase the voltage to at least 1.65 volts - coincidentally (?) the same voltage for the PIII 600E running at 800 MHz. Note closely the multiplier - 8x.

Helaas, geen eerste plaats , maar een mooie 3de plaats, met 1.742.761 work units.

Een stel Japanse teams hebben samengewerkt voor een super flush, waardoor in de daily stats plaats 1,2,4,5,6 en 7 bezet worden door japanse teams.

De DPC Hitparade Top 40 van 31 maart 2000

1. 98,796 Andy [ DPC Koetje ](2, Totaal:2,007,252)
2. 77,880 Pinball -- [Dutch Power Cows](49, Totaal:238,182)
3. 67,440 Exploder [Dutch Power Cows](76, Totaal:170,030)
4. 63,369 The Vinz [Dutch Power Cows](89, Totaal:158,009)
5. 57,172 Katsov [Dutch Power Cows](19, Totaal:539,635)
6. 54,447 Interior Lulu(3, Totaal:1,677,376)
7. 47,990 BRILSMURF [Dutch Power Cows](77, Totaal:169,532)
8. 43,957 Marsman (m_dejong)(47, Totaal:243,396)
9. 43,639 blimmel [Dutch Power Cows](13, Totaal:658,472)
10. 38,951 Sueno [Dutch Power Cows](36, Totaal:292,787)

En de nummers 11 tot en met 20:

11. 38,659 #Team Dicon [Dutch Power Cows](73, Totaal:176,450)
12. 38,511 Insomniacs [Dutch Power Cows](62, Totaal:203,377)
13. 38,294 LD! [Dutch Power Cows](18, Totaal:546,976)
14. 36,050 Burnin' Cows [Dutch Power Cows Roelen!!](35, Totaal:296,673)
15. 33,831 misser(24, Totaal:415,010)
16. 32,900 BoGoH [Dutch Power Cows](133, Totaal:98,910)
17. 31,083 Jurgen Wildhagen (Dutch Power cows Rule ;-))(8, Totaal:780,684)
18. 29,268 HarryB [Dutch Power Cows](12, Totaal:675,766)
19. 28,514 Marc Heida (DPC Rule!)(29, Totaal:362,115)
20. 27,118 wiho [Dutch Power Cows](1, Totaal:7,140,728)

En de nummers 21 tot en met 30:

21. 21,579 HellRailers!(105, Totaal:123,517)
22. 21,280 gebrc5-1(87, Totaal:159,428)
23. 20,943 USRFORCE CLAN [DPC RULE!](22, Totaal:429,116)
24. 19,317 DPC Division Heteren City (Dutch Cows Rule!)(42, Totaal:261,815)
25. 18,099 Dutchman [Dutch Power Cows](348, Totaal:25,134)
26. 17,239 Oezie Woezie [Dutch Power Cows](114, Totaal:116,444)
27. 16,787 Vossie(17, Totaal:566,241)
28. 16,613 DSmarty(352, Totaal:24,842)
29. 16,344 Gambit [Dutch Power Cows](41, Totaal:274,013)
30. 16,216 Wijk bij Duurstede [DPC](66, Totaal:192,795)

En de nummers 31 tot en met 40:

31. 16,097 a-vorst(109, Totaal:121,859)
32. 15,897 Hobbylijm [Dutch Power Cows](161, Totaal:81,197)
33. 14,482 Sir Soes & Shellshock(38, Totaal:283,977)
34. 13,418 RubZie ==> [Dutch Power Cows Rule!](52, Totaal:225,551)
35. 12,138 ChUcKiE [Dutch Power Cows](182, Totaal:70,428)
36. 11,402 Knarf (Dutch Power Cows)(256, Totaal:41,784)
37. 10,654 Flagg(118, Totaal:113,627)
38. 10,299 Team SVM(202, Totaal:62,633)
39. 10,037 snakeyenl(270, Totaal:37,963)
40. 9,909 Redwing [Dutch Power Cows](127, Totaal:104,223)

De Top 15 teams van 31 maart 2000

1.( 45) 2,230,613 Team RimArts UsersGroup
2.( 9) 1,917,617 Japan Windows NT Users Group
3.( 7) 1,742,761 April Fool Dutch Power Cows Rule!
4.( 13) 919,644 Japan Linux Users Group
5.( 59) 891,370 Japan Celeron Users Group
6.( 103) 883,769 Triangle'nTatibanaLab. with UHOON/HIU
7.( 548) 881,673 Team Tohoku UNIV. Japan
8.( 3) 778,238 impulse.irc
9.( 7) 749,817 Slashdot.org
10.( 9) 748,273 Russian Team
11.( 27) 727,060 AL-Mail Users
12.( 9) 699,607 AnandTech
13.( 9) 666,219 HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries
14.( 82) 662,843 Team KIKUMARU
15.( 9) 619,937 #DeathMatch
79.( 10) 59,346 The #koffie Team

Teams om ons heen (total stats):

20.( ) LinuxNET RC5 (Tot:66,488,850, Gis:65,358)
21.( ) SysOpt.com/Tweakit.com (Tot:66,074,013, Gis:160,025)
22.( ) Team FreeBSD (Tot:65,363,658, Gis:195,869)
23.( ) Team BeOS (Tot:64,449,368, Gis:105,274)
24.( ) April Fool Dutch Power Cows Rule! (Tot:62,512,393, Gis:1,742,761)
25.( ) Team Germany (*.de / uni.de - German Universities) (Tot:59,209,030, Gis:128,263)
26.( ) moomin (Tot:57,052,392, Gis:175,942)
27.( ) TeamUFies (All Hail the Dust Puppy!) (Tot:56,290,199, Gis:171,226)
28.( ) SEGA Users Group (Tot:55,055,858, Gis:115,383)
(Teams waarvan de score van gisteren ontbreekt, hadden geen score in de top 100!)

Het overzichtje: "wanneer halen we ze in" is vandaag wegens totaal onzinnige getallen vervallen. (lees: de routine crasht! )

Dutch power cows is vandaag 3e en heeft een kans van één op 30 om de sleutel te vinden!

Helaas hebben we vandaag dus de eerste plek niet kunnen behalen ondanks een MegaFlush, maar laat dit een extra motivatie zijn om de volgende keer extra veel te flushen, wat trouwens waarschijnlijk flushen wordt op 4 mei.

Het is vandaag 1 april en dat zal je weten ook! CNet schrijft dat Cyrix met een CPU komt lopend op 1*10^6 Mhz. De die size is wel aardig groot uitgevallen, waarschijnlijk gebruiken ze nog een .35 micron technologie...

VIA Technologies made a surprise announcement this morning: it is set to unleash an unprecedented 100-THz processor, the Cyrix III 100-THz 7x86. THz stands for terrahertz; one terrahertz is equal to one thousand gigahertz.

"Intel and AMD can wallow in the puny gigahertz market for as long as they wish," said a VIA representative who chose to remain nameless. "Our Cyrix III 100-THz 7x86 with SuperFantasticMega3DNow! is faster and less expensive than either the 1-GHz Athlon or the Pentium III processors. And wait until you see the floating-point performance!"

SuperFantasticMega3DNow!, he elaborated, is a set of proprietary multimedia extensions, similar but superior to AMD's 3DNow! and Intel's SIMD extensions. "With Super3DX support, games won't need a 3D accelerator card at all," said the source. Asked about game developer support, he said, "Our evangelists are talking to all of the major publishers and developers as we speak. We've already seen interest from Head Games, makers of the top-selling Extreme Series, including Extreme PaintBrawl 2 and Extreme WaterSports."

Aangezien het 1 april is wil ik je het volgende nieuws niet onthouden: er komt een nieuwe muis van Microsoft, de Intellimouse Explorer Pro. Deze muis is niet alleen zonder bal maar ook zonder knoppen:

Thanks Laguna voor de tip!

jverelst schrijft dat het weer tijd is voor de Internet Cleaning Day, iets wat erg belangrijk is voor alle mensen die geen snelle internet verbinding hebben:

It's that time again! As many of you know, each year the Internet must be shut down for 24 hours in order to allow us to clean it. The cleaning process, which eliminates dead email and inactive ftp, www and gopher sites, allows for a better-working and faster Internet. This year, the cleaning process will take place from 23:59 pm (GMT) on March 31st until 00:01 am (GMT) on April 2nd. During that 24-hour period, five powerful Internet-crawling robots situated around the world will search the Internet and delete any data that they find. In order to protect your valuable data from deletion we ask that you do the following: 1. Disconnect all terminals and local area networks from their Internet connections. 2. Shut down all Internet servers, or disconnect them from the Internet. 3. Disconnect all disks and hardrives from any connections to the Internet. 4. Refrain from connecting any computer to the Internet in any wy. We understand the inconvenience that this may cause some Internet users, and we apologize. However, we are certain that any inconveniences will be more than made up for by the increased speed and efficiency of the Internet, once it has been cleared of electronic flotsam and jetsam. We thank you for your cooperation.

Eigenlijk had ik dit al gisteren moeten posten zodat je vandaag de operatie niet zou storen... *sorry*

Thermo schrijft dat de Bitboys de deadline hebben gemist van het geven van de ''final product specifications'' (wat een verrassing...):

Keenly watched Finnish 3D graphics chip company Bitboys has as near as dammit missed its self-imposed 31 March 2000 to announce its upcoming chip based on its Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture (XBA).

Back in January, Bitboys unveiled XBA and promised to "introduce the final product specifications, product names and target prices of the first XBA enabled products March 2000".

Well, boys, it's 31 March now, and there's still no announcement - what's happening, dudes?

XBA provides 32-bit colour and a 32-bit Z-buffer, and enables one and two-processor acceleration systems, providing data throughput rates of 12GB per second and over 20GBps, respectively. The key to the technology is the inclusion of stacks of on-die RAM - up to 18MB of it - built into the chip using Infineon's embedded DRAM process. By tightly coupling memory and 3D engine, XBA-based chips are free of the key bottleneck - the system's memory bus - in other 3D chip and card designs.

STMicro heeft aangekondigd om mee te gaan doen op de videokaarten markt met een kaart die sneller en goedkoper moet worden dan een GeForce. Later willen ze komen met kaarten voor de ''set-top box'' markt:

SAN MATEO, Calif. — STMicroelectronics will take another crack at the mainstream graphics chip market, and plans to release the first in a new family of devices next month. The company will aim its graphics chips at the desktop PC segment, and also hopes to leverage its strong presence in the set-top box market, which is beginning to use more graphics technology. But the company faces significant barriers in a cutthroat market that has lately seen more company exits than entrances.

"The graphics market can be extremely rewarding to the leaders, and punishing to the also-rans. It is not our intention to be in the latter category," said Tim Chambers, vice president and general manager of ST's graphics products division in Carrollton, Texas. "We understand the environment we are entering, and we have no fear."

Chambers said ST will launch the first in a planned family of devices in April, aimed at the mainstream desktop PC space. A second chip aimed at the set-top box market will follow in the summer. Initially, the PC version of the chip will target both system companies and add-in card vendors, Chambers said. ST hopes to eventually establish its brand name in order to pursue retail sales of add-in cards under the ST logo. The chip family does not yet have any official name.

Hoe meer concurentie hoe beter: voor de snelheid en voor mijn portomonnee .

Hardware Central heeft een review gepost van de Powerleap PL-Pro/II Pentium Pro CPU Upgrade. Deze upgrade is bestwel aan te raden is voor mensen met een Pentium Pro die het leven van hun computer nog wat langer willen verlengen:

The 533 MHz PL-Pro/II lists for $279.95, the 500 MHz version for $219.95. While your immediate reaction might be that the price seems a bit high, consider that to upgrade a Pentium Pro-based system to even approach the level of today’s machines would require replacing most everything it contains. This is not what the PL-Pro/II was designed to do. The PL-Pro/II is not going to give you support for SDRAM, or an AGP port, or UDMA capability, or a USB port, etc., a machine you could buy today certainly would have.

Many Pentium Pro machines are used today as servers and, more than likely, contain a considerable amount of expensive EDO RAM. For this reason alone, investing in the PL-Pro/II makes a lot of sense. The PL-Pro/II will give your Pentium Pro system quite a lift, but CPU power alone will not turn it into a graphics powerhouse or a speed demon. For those of us who might have been mislead by Intel’s empty promises of a real upgrade path, however, the PL-Pro/II gives our old (and expensive) investment a few more years of serious use. Recommended.

In onderstaande tabel staan de benchmark resultaten van een pentium pro @ 200 mhz en eentje die is uitgerust met de upgrade @ 533 mhz. Zoals je ziet gaat de performance mooi omhoog, genoeg om Quake III Arena te draaien .