Bij iXBT Hardware is veel info te vinden over Creative's nieuwe videokaart gebaseerd op de nVidia NV15 chip. Als onderstaande klopt kunnen we begin juni voor $349 dollar een 32MB DDR versie kopen die op ongeveer 200MHz zal draaien . Als je liever een kaart hebt met 64MB DDR geheugen zul je óf moeten wachten tot het eind van de zomer óf je koopt er een compleet syateem van een der grote OEMs omheen (dat wordt dus wachten).

• 32MB DDR card will be introduced simultaneously with NVIDIA announcement
• the samples will be available in the first or second week of May
• the cards will be shipped in volume in the beginning of June
• 32MB DDR card will be priced at $349 at launch
• the retail card box design is the same as GeForce and GeForce Pro (or Annihilator) but with a word GeForce2 on it
• the card will be bundled with several games and software titles - Evolva (enhanced version with EMBM), Rage Rally, Whole
• Experience, Colorific, software DVD player (probably WinDVD)
• there will be no TV-out on the card, but this feature will be provided by a specially developed daughter card
• 64MB DDR card will initially be available only for OEMs
• 64MB DDR retail version is scheduled to the end of summer
• 128MB version won't be produced
• chip will run at "about 200MHz"
• the card will be equipped with Infineon DDR memory chips
• we can suppose that memory will be clocked at 166MHz (333MHz DDR) since Creative's manager mentioned that "there were no DDR memory chips at the market faster than 166MHz at an acceptable price"
• reference design of NV15 based card for NVIDIA was developed by Creative (since the company is the main NVIDIA's partner - it buys about 17% of all NVIDIA's graphics chips)

The Digital Bits schrijft dat George Lucas tijdens een uitzending van KROQ radio in Los Angeles persoonlijk heeft bevestigd dat er gewerkt wordt aan een DVD versie van Star Wars Episode I. In de DVD release zullen enkele scenes worden opgenomen die niet in de bioscoop versie te zien waren. Industrial Light & Magic werkt momenteel aan de uitwerking van deze scenes:

Lucas also revealed that the first draft of the Episode II script is now complete. You can read more on this over at our fellow IGN.com affiliate The Force.net. But that's not even the best part.

A good friend of the Bits had the unique opportunity to spend some time chatting with Lucas in person this week, and among the many topics discussed were the Star Wars DVDs. What our friend learned is amazing, but the person is sworn to secrecy on most of it. However, thanks to Lucas' comments on KROQ this morning, our friend can confirm that there are still several unfinished scenes and sequences from Episode I, the original Star Wars and the other films. Lucas plans to finish them and include them on the DVDs. Whether these scenes are edited back into the film or included in a separate deleted scenes section is still unknown. What's taking so much time is that ILM actually needs to complete the footage - much of it was never finished originally. And since work on Episode II is under way at ILM, along with several other non-Star Wars films, resources there might be stretched a bit thin. But best of all... our friend says Lucas seems totally enthusiastic about doing the DVDs.

Tweek verteldt ons dat het lijkt dat Sony Microsoft een stap voor is, de PlayStation 2 krijgt een hardeschijf en een modem in de Verenigde Staten. De nieuwe console van microsoft, de X-Box van Microsoft zou dit ook krijgen:

Sony’s official line on the availability of a modem has been “wait and see” up to this point, and has always voiced its intent to wait for widespread high bandwidth connections before committing to an Internet service. The move is seen as a direct response to the announcement of X-Box at GDC by Microsoft earlier this year.

“Sony is one step ahead of Microsoft,” said Masahiro Ono, an analyst at Warburg Dillon Read Japan, who rates Sony a strong buy. “Producing PlayStation 2 with a hard drive and modem will allow the console to take root in the US”.

“The PlayStation 2 has tremendous capabilities which are not all being used,” said Alex Muromcew, a portfolio manager at Loomis Sayles & Co., which manages $70 billion. Adding a modem and hard drive “upgrades it to the next level, though we'll need to see what it does to the price of the machine.”

Tussen 11 en 13 mei zal Sony ons precies vertellen wat voor soort hardware bij de VS versie van de PS2 komt .

Bij 3D Alpha is een review geschreven van de Tyan Trinity 400, een moederbord gebaseerd op de Via Apollo Pro 133A met zowel een Slot 1 als een Socket 370 aansluiting. Het moederbord bevat ook nog eens 6 PCI sloten (waarvan 1 shared met ISA). De conclusie is kort maar duidelijk:

At $91, you'd have to be crazy not to pick this one up. Even though it's not jumperless, it's feature set far outweighs it's shortcomings. Tyan scores a direct hit with this motherboard. If you get it, you won't be disappointed.

In de pricewatch zag ik dit mobo staan voor Fl. 302,-, wat mij zeker niet te veel lijkt.

Wzzrd schrijft als eerste dat er een nieuwe versie is van Winamp, het populaire progje om je MP3's te beluisteren :

Ah yes. Another incremental upgrade to the world's finest MP3 player, Winamp. Version 2.62 features all the great advances made by Winamp 2.60 plus enhancements to the preferences interface and a fix for a big nasty memory leak in the Mjuice support which would cause the program to crash if used for many many hours. Sleak and stable, Winamp 2.62 makes subtle improvements on an already solid base.[break]Hier een list met de nieuwe features and bug fixjes[/break]

Generic dialog processing message loop so now TAB/etc... works in plugins dialog windows

Fix to Mjuice (memory leak that caused the full install to puke after many hours)

Winamp Visualization Studio updates

Installer bitmap updates

Installer terminology changes

Mensen die willen downloaden kunnen dat op deze pagina gaan doen.

HardOCP heeft twee fotootjes gepost van de AMD Thunderbird waarvan zij eerder benchmarks naar buiten brachten. Zoals je ziet heeft de Slot A versie een lege PCB zonder cache chips (thanks vsmb@superweb.nl" rel="external">ovs voor de tip):

DPC had gisteren 1521 leden (25 nieuwe), wil jij ook lid worden, of begrijp je er niets van waar we het nu over hebben, kijk dan hier.

De DPC Hitparade Top 10 van 14 april 2000

1. 52,832 [Dutch Power Cows] wiho(1, Totaal:7,781,735)
2. 52,405 [Dutch Power Cows] Interior Lulu(2, Totaal:2,387,377)
3. 27,092 [Dutch Power Cows] HellRailers(101, Totaal:153,169)
4. 13,103 Kbroux(558, Totaal:13,103)
5. 9,664 Bram--Obie[Dutch Power Cows](57, Totaal:233,922)
6. 7,937 Shellshock & Sir Soes [Dutch Power Moo's!](31, Totaal:379,736)
7. 7,281 [Dutch Power Cows] ZFLaSH(318, Totaal:34,175)
8. 5,753 [Dutch Power Cows] Jobe(22, Totaal:493,920)
9. 5,742 [Dutch Power Cows] Jurgen Wildhagen(6, Totaal:853,399)
10. 5,260 [Dutch Power Cows] TEX(60, Totaal:223,669)

En de nummers 11 tot en met 20:

11. 5,255 [Dutch Power Cows] Sub-Team Hack BV(27, Totaal:446,243)
12. 5,076 [Dutch Power Cows] ThE RaVeR(35, Totaal:336,990)
13. 5,020 [Dutch Power Cows] Oezie Woezie(85, Totaal:180,177)
14. 4,925 [Dutch Power Cows] Hobbylijm(144, Totaal:101,094)
15. 4,912 grimlock0(275, Totaal:41,631)
16. 4,719 Jorma(5, Totaal:1,017,144)
17. 4,038 [Dutch Power Cows] UT Fragteam(53, Totaal:248,847)
18. 3,935 Chainsaw(19, Totaal:567,825)
19. 3,896 Richard Zuidhof(26, Totaal:448,254)
20. 3,882 [Dutch Power Cows] #hekje team(23, Totaal:466,447)

De Top 15 teams van 14 april 2000

1.( 0) 779,989 Russian Team
2.( 0) 756,545 Slashdot.org
3.( 0) 754,282 AnandTech
4.( 0) 655,830 HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries
5.( 0) 530,480 Dutch Power Cows
6.( 0) 468,523 #DeathMatch
7.( 1) 437,640 The Amiga RC5 Team effort
8.( 1) 396,340 Team EvangeLista (Macs Rule! :-)
9.( 2) 370,280 Team Warped (OS/2)
10.( 0) 322,367 Japan Windows NT Users Group
11.( 1) 291,373 Libertarians for Privacy (Freedom Works!)
12.( 17) 282,889 Team OS/2 Japan
13.( 2) 282,717 Japan FreeBSD Users Group
14.( 0) 261,389 CCC.de
15.( 2) 258,762 Team Hungary STB+
76.( 5) 54,437 The #koffie Team

Teams om ons heen (total stats):
16.( ) CCC.de (Tot:88,017,414, Gis:261,389)
17.( ) Team OS/2 Japan (Tot:81,345,080, Gis:282,889)
18.( ) #DeathMatch (Tot:77,243,382, Gis:468,523)
19.( ) PINGUIM: Portugal Is Now Going Up In Megakeys (Tot:72,314,024, Gis:183,521)
20.( ) Dutch Power Cows (Tot:70,445,910, Gis:530,480)
21.( ) SysOpt.com/Tweakit.com (Tot:68,410,490, Gis:168,393)
22.( ) Team FreeBSD (Tot:68,293,291, Gis:207,218)
23.( ) LinuxNET RC5 (Tot:67,454,366, Gis:63,310)
24.( ) Team BeOS (Tot:65,819,385, Gis:100,520)
(Teams waarvan de score van gisteren ontbreekt, hadden geen score in de top 100!)

Wanneer halen we ze in:
CCC.de: 66 dagen
Team OS/2 Japan: 45 dagen
#DeathMatch: 110 dagen
PINGUIM: Portugal Is Now Going Up In Megakeys: 6 dagen

Dutch power cows is vandaag 5e en heeft een kans van een op 78 om de sleutel te vinden!

IBM personeel heeft te horen gekregen dat op computers die verbonden zijn met het wereldwijde bedrijfsnetwerk van IBM géén Windows 2000 geinstalleerd mag worden.
Nu.nl (bedankt voor de link, Reflex) schrijft:

Windows 2000 bevat volgens het memo componenten die 'slecht samengaan met IP-netwerkdiensten (de zogeheten dhcp-functies)'.

Dit zou vervelende gevolgen kunnen hebben voor de beschikbaarheid van het wereldwijde netwerk van IBM. In oktober werd bekend dat IBM van plan was Windows 2000 als zijn standaard besturingsprogramma op driehonderdduizend computers te installeren. [break]Grappig detail is dat IBM eerder deze week, na een lange tijd van stilte rond OS/2, heeft aangekondigd het besturingssysteem te zullen blijven supporten en onderhouden. ZDNet weet hier het volgende over te melden:[/break] IBM will provide annual refreshes of OS/2 Warp 4 and OS/2 Warp Server for e-business components through its Software Choice subscription service. While the first "Convenience Package" will remain a uniprocessor kernel and lacks JFS support, it will include the latest device drivers, DVD and USB support, and Java Version 1.1.8. In short, this isn't the much gossiped about complete update of OS/2. But, the new packages will include all the previous fix patches, and improvements to the Web Browser, the Java Virtual Machine and TCP/IP. For long suffering OS/2 users, this release will be very welcome indeed.

Toevallig hoor.

Bumpy meldt dat Tom een Intel & AMD Roadmap heeft gemaakt, een leuk stukje tekst waarin we kunnen lezen welke CPU's en chipsets we kunnen verwachten de komende tijd:

Also in September there will be AMD's server/workstation chipset AMD 770 for Mustang. 'Thunderbird will run on it as well though. These are its features:

Dual Athlon support, additional north bridges can be combined with AMD's 'LDT'-bus to create systems with 4, 6, 8 CPUs as well. Each north bridge can host 2 Athlons.

Support of 200 and 266 MHz FSB

PC1600 / PC2100 memory = 100 / 133 MHz DDR-SDRAM

AGP4x

ATA100 (?)

SlotA/SocketA

[...] You might have noticed that I neither commented on Intel's Itanium processor, nor on AMD's upcoming 'Sledgehammer'. Both CPUs are supposed to mark a new era for the PC. Itanium is a completely new 64-bit architecture that doesn't have much in common with the 32-bit x86 processors we know today. AMD's 'Sledgehammer' goes a different way. It will also offer 64-bit extensions, but it will still offer native support of 32-bit software as well.

Het wordt dus een interresante tijd met dual Athlon chipsets en 64-bit CPU's .

Ik lees bij JC dat er binnenkort een nieuwe RC5 core voor de Athlon uit komt waarmee een 1GHz Athlon 6,4MKeys/s zou kunnen halen. Op dit moment haalt een Athlon 700 ongeveer 2,1MKeys/s, dus dan zou de nieuwe core een gigantisch verschil betekenen:

Richter suggests that the latest rc5 core -- that "Vulture" thing from a month or two ago -- gives 6.4Mkeys/sec with a GHz K7 core and will be entering real release soon. This might start to get interesting once the cheap Spitfires come out -- moreso if they eventually can be worked into dual platforms. Actually, even if this speedy core never ends up existing, a dual, heavily overclocked Spitfire could make for the next big rc5 darling.

De jongens en meisjes van FullOn3D gingen op de thee bij Eric Boeing van Abit en stelden hem een aantal vragen over de huidige produktlijn en toekomstplannen van Abit. In dit interview lezen we o.a. dat de Abit engineers zelf fanatieke overklokkers zijn :

What is ABIT’s philosophy on motherboard design? You are clearly focused on the more knowledgeable end-user segment, however, are there any plans to try and target the competitive OEM market as well?

A: Yes, it’s true that our motherboards are very overclocker-friendly. Our R&D engineers are overclockers themselves, and we get a lot of e-mail from people telling us what they’d like to see. We listen closely to that. We also pay very close attention to all the reviews that are done of our products. For example, we’d been hearing that the layouts of all our boards were starting to look similar, but now look at the KA7. It’s gotta be one of the best laid-out motherboards I’ve ever seen.

We do a lot of OEM projects already, but those products are kept quite distinct from our channel products, so you don’t read about them at our website. Some of our other motherboards, such as those based on the i810 chipset with all its integrated features, have been popular with OEMs and system integrators. Furthermore, there’s a huge OEM demand for the KA7. And we expect our i815 models, when they come out, to have a strong cross-over appeal.

Na een eindeloze hoeveelheid release candidates is eindelijk de beta 3 van Windows Me (ook wel Millennium edition genoemd) klaar. Gisteren (13 april) werd de beta gezonden naar de beta-testers.

Microsoft shipped CD-ROMs of Windows Me to beta testers, who will then test the release for lingering bugs as the company prepares to officially launch the final version of the DOS-based consumer Windows line. The code was made available online to testers yesterday.

Windows Me development has seen many twists and turns within Microsoft. Originally, Windows 98 was to be the last DOS-based operating system for home users to come from the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker. But a combination of product delays and market shifts led the company to push back the planned transition to its Windows NT code base. (Windows NT is the precursor to Windows 2000.) Instead, it released Windows 98 Second Edition in 1999 and announced that Windows Me would be the last DOS-based operating system from the company.

De mensen van HardwareCentral hebben een mooi interview in elkaar gedraaid met de goede mensen van 3dfx. De vragen lijken goed, de antwoorden van 3dfx zijn helaas heel kort. Zo van: wat is belangrijk voor 3D? "FSAA." Hoe krijg ik foto-realistische graphics? "FSAA." Er zijn toch nog wel wat interessante dingen in te vinden, zoals de vragen over geheugen op videokaarten:

Will embedded memory replace external memory? If so, when?

Gary: You have to remember that no vendor has yet to ship an embedded memory product. Embedded memory silicon processes are still in their infancy. We do not expect to see embedded memory replacing external memory for a long, long time in the 3D market. First you’ll see embedded memory augmenting external memory, but even that is probably a year or so away for a mainstream offering.

Is DDR Memory going to lead the way for increased memory bandwidth?

Gary: It is a step in the right direction.

Do you see a future for RDRAM as a solution for video memory?

Gary: Certainly not now, as the price premium for RDRAM is outrageous. But we monitor the memory markets constantly detecting price shifts, so if Rambus begins to become cost competitive, we will look at its use for our products.