Paz schrijft: "Volgens The Register probeert Intel uit alle macht de invasie van AMD enigszins in te dammen door zelf deze maand alles uit de kast te trekken. Meest in het oog springende datum is 19 juni, waar zowel de nieuwste Celerons (633 en 667MHz) als de i820e chipset worden gereleased. Daarnaast wordt gespeculeerd over de overgang van Celeron's bussnelheid van 66Mhz naar (eindelijk) 100MHz MHz":

It'll be a busy month for Chipzilla as it launches a whole slew of new products that it doubt hopes will take the shine off the arrival of AMD's Thunderbird and Duron processors.

The Solano i815 and i815E chipsets aren't even here yet and they're already getting rave reviews, albeit by being compared extremely favourably with the chipset you love to hate, the Caminogate i820. With ATA100, four USB ports, six AC97 channels and inbuilt networking, the E variant has the improved I/O controller hub, ICH2, as will its big brother, the i820E.

[...] On the desktop, the 19th should also see a 633 and a 667MHz Celeron, still at 66MHz FSB (The 700MHz flavour, pencilled in for September, could be the first Celeron part to sport a 100MHz FSB – it'll depend on market conditions (aka is Duron posing a threat?) rather than any tricky technical issues).

And, saving the best till last, Son of Caminogate, the i820E chipset, is also poised to burst upon an unsuspecting World on the 19th. Featuring the enhanced ICH2 I/O controller and up to four (count 'em) RIMMs which we are assured will work properly, the 820E will also support PC100 and PC133 SDRAM (although we are reliably led to believe the 133 stuff will only work at 100MHz).

Het Duitse magazine c't heeft nu het volledige Thunderbird artikel online gezet samen met meer vergelijkende benchmarks tussen de Thunderbird 700, Pentium III 700 en Athlon classics. Uit de resultaten komt wederom naar voren dat de Thunderbird over het algemeen iets beter presteert dan een gelijk geklokte Pentium III Coppermine. De Thunderbird profiteert van haar betere FPU kwaliteiten terwijl de Intel P3 sterk is in SSE geoptimaliseerde programma's. Hier een klein gedeelte uit het vertaalde artikel.

Under the line the Thunderbird the Pentium III is equal with same clock rate, if do not consider. The difference is situated mostly in the area of fewer per cent points. There are larger deviations only, where one can out-play the Duellanten specific strengths. The Thunderbird profits particularly from its faster Floating POINT unit, while the Pentium III shines, where software is particularly optimized for its instruction set, not however for that of the contractor.

More still than the performance the prices and the actual deliverability of the processors count in the fight for market shares. AMD seems concerning the price to have good truempfe in the hand. Whether in addition, all Thunderbird versions announced now will be available in sufficient number of items, remains being waiting still. AMD gives itself at present confidently and has in view of the continuous scarceness of Pentium III types beyond the 800-MHz-Grenze a outstanding starting situation. If still succeeds then bringing the manufacturing so correctly in Dresden on trab it could become a still stretching second quarter - particularly for the umworbenen customer.

Het benchmark grafiekje heb ik wat ingekort, ga langs het artikel voor de complete versie:

RaZoR schrijft dat Digital Web 3D een kleine review in elkaar heeft getikt van de Asus CUV4X gebaseerd op de VIA Apollo Pro 133Z chipset (dat wil zeggen dat-ie de Apollo PM133 compatible 694Z north bridge gebruikt ipv de oudere 694X). Verder beschikt het bordje over 5xPCI, 1xAGP, 1xAMR, 1xISA, 3xDIMM en 4xUSB. Vanuit het bios kan gekozen worden uit 32 busspeeds met als maximum 166MHz.

As with any ASUS motherboard, installation is 'a piece of cake'. The manual will help you to get through the cable connections and BIOS settings.

As usual, you have two choices to set the CPU, DIP switches and the JumperFree Mode in the BIOS. If you use the DIP switches you have a choice of thirteen different FSB settings, and can go up to 150MHz. But once you switch to JumperFree mode, you get 32 FSB settings with maximum of 166MHz (66 / 68 / 75 / 80 / 85 / 90 / 95 / 100 / 103 / 105 / 110 / 112 / 115 / 116 / 118 / 120 / 124 / 126 / 130 / 133 / 135 / 138 / 140 / 142 / 144 / 146 / 148 / 150 / 155 / 160 / 166). I was very impressed by overclocking ability of the board. PIII 600EB was running at 150MHz FSB absolutely 100% stable.

The motherboard comes with a driver CD that has the VIA 4-in-1 driver. (version 4.20) I suggest staying away from this driver and get version 417 instead. Why? Because the board scores only 75FPS at normal settings in Q3A. Once the 4.17 driver is used, the board goes all the way up to 118FPS.

GamePC heeft een review klaar van de Tyan Tiger 133, een dual Slot-1 moederbord gebaseerd op de VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset. Helaas is de plank erg brak uitgevoerd want hij was namelijk met geen mogelijkheid stabiel te krijgen :

I knew I was in trouble when the board repeatedly failed Windows NT and Windows 2000 installation with two processors, but once I took a single processor out, the system installed fine. This is a perfectly fine work around if you're using Windows 2000, but if you're installing Windows NT, it's a tough job getting the OS to load the multiprocessor kernel after the single processor kernel has already been installed. In Windows 2000, it's as easy as switching a driver in the OS, but unfortunately, we did our testing in NT.

Once inside the OS, stability was no better than before. The system would randomly freeze until I could get enough time to install the VIA 4.20 drivers in the system. Even with everything installed as it should be, it still wasn't as stable as any other SMP chipset I've used. Case in point, we couldn't run any 3D Studio or SETI tests, because the board would crash midway through our tests (these are quite long tests, 3-10 hours). We managed to wrangle out a set of Quake III SMP vs. non SMP benchmarks, but when we set Quake III to preform indefinite loops, it crashed within an hour.

Update : We tried multiple Tiger 133 boards, they all had these problems, not just a single bad board.

Thanks downtime voor de link.

Ik lees bij C|NET dat Intel's Willamette zo'n 170 vierkante mm groot zal zijn op een 0,18micron procédé. Ter vergelijking met de Pentium III is hij maar liefst 60% groter. Omdat hierdoor de productiekosten voor Intel dus vrij hoog liggen kan zijn dat de consument pas te maken krijgt met de Willamette zodra Intel de chip wat in kan krimpen:

Willamette, Intel's next-generation desktop processor expected to emerge later this year, will debut at 170 square millimeters, according to estimates from analysts. At that size, it will be 60 percent larger than today's Pentium III. While the larger size will allow Intel to pack more transistors onto the chip and add more features, it also means fewer chips can be produced out of a single wafer, which raises Intel's costs.

That has some worried that the transition to Willamette, Intel's first all-new desktop architecture since the Pentium Pro in 1995, could affect Intel's profit margins in the future.

[...] By contrast, Kumar predicted quantities of Willamette would be limited this year, partly because of the size of the chip. A shortage of factory capacity has also created a processor shortage, although Kumar noted that the company is investing heavily to bring more facilities on line by next year.

"The more wafers Intel devotes to Willamette, the fewer total processors it can produce," he said. "This problem will prevent Intel from selling significant quantities of Willamette this year, as the company is already capacity constrained and expects to be so until the end of the year."

Willamette is crucial to Intel's plans to stay ahead of rival Advanced Micro Devices. The two companies have been battling for the fastest clock speed since AMD debuted its Athlon last June. At 1 GHz, the current Pentium III design is nearing its peak. Willamette is slated to debut at a speed of at least 1.4 GHz.

[break]Niet iedereen ziet de grote die size van de Willamette als een probleem:[/break]Others think that the large die size won't hurt Intel that much, as Willamette will initially be a rather high-priced item. Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Charlie Glavin said that by the time Willamette is in the cost-sensitive segment of the market, Intel will have shrunk the chip as it has with previous processors.

"Don't be myopic about the first die size and product," Glavin cautioned investors. "You throw out the first one. It's like making pancakes."

It's not unusual for Intel to debut a processor at a large size, waiting for the next generation of thinner wiring to allow the chip to shrink to a less costly size. Intel is expected to move sometime next year to a 0.13-micron process, from today's 0.18 micron manufacturing line. The numbers refer to the size of components on the chip.

Dank aan MiWa® die dit ook instuurde.

Bij Tom's Hardware Guide is voor het eerst in haar geschiedenis een harddisk roundup gepubliceerd. Patrick Schmid keek naar 6 IDE schijfjes van Fujitsu, Quantum, Seagate en Western Digital en kwam tot de volgende conclusie:

I think it is extremely difficult to give a recommendation for just one drive. After reading this article you should know now that every drive has both benefits and handicaps. The Seagate Barracuda ATA II is the fastest one, but will likely make your case vibrate as well. The Fujitsu drive is very quiet and provides short seek times, but gets almost as hot as the Seagate drives. Quantum builds a decent drive as well, With only the Windows 98 performance letting it down. Western Digital provides two great drives as well, but performance freaks will complain about their basic performance.

I hope you understand why I'm not going to recommend any particular drive at this time, as choosing the right one depends highly on your personal requirements. If you want performance or capacity in the first place, I'd go for the Seagate drive. But you should spend some money for a hard drive cooling kit as well. Windows 98 users should avoid the Quantum drive, while database applications will run fast with the Fujitsu drive. You should also take either the Fujitsu or the Quantum drive if you want to get a quiet model.

Finally, all users who just don't know what they want may take a look at the Western Digital drives. They are not the very fastest, but come with little CPU utilization, no annoying noises and acceptable temperatures.

Vipertje schrijft dat er bij Thresh's FiringSquad een artikel is neergemikt over het overklokken van een Intel Pentium III 700 op een Abit BE6-II met een Golden Orb cooling fan:

"De P3-700 overclockte naar 917MHz, en dat liet zich wel zien in de benchmarks, 15% verbetering in het algemeen":

Intel's recent price cuts have made the P3-700E a very attractive chip. You can find FC-PGA P3-700s in the $240-230 range these days. The high multiplier will make it easier to reach 900MHz+ speeds because you won't have to stress your system with an extreme FSB speed.

If you're looking for a powerful upgrade for an aging system, you might want to consider getting the P3-700E and a stick of PC133 memory. If you're interested in building a whole new system, we suggest waiting to see how the new Athlons perform. There should be a slew of articles in the next few days.

Klik hier voor meer info en benchmarks.

The Rock schrijft: "Na maanden wachten weer eens een nieuwe versie van MP3-player Winamp. Aan de verbeteringen te zien niet echt de moeite waard om te downloaden, maar waarschijnlijk kunnen de meeste tweakers net als ik een hoger versienummer niet weerstaan ":

• Language pack improvements/cleanups.
• Giant (2000+) skin archive bug fixed.
• Promotional offers on install.
• Streaming improvements (authentification, proxy authentification, dialogless streaming when winamp is not active, content-disposition usage, etc).
• Minibrowser start page now live if inet connected.
• Return of out_wm (WMA writer) -- lets you transcode your WAV/MP3/MOD/etc. files into WMA!

Haal Winamp versie 2.63 hier naar beneden.