Razor Boomslang - 22:51 pm Wilfred
3D Unlimited posted a review of the Razor Boomslang mouse, they should be available in Singapore very soon and I bet some of you can't wait to try it out for yourselves!

Karna’s Razer Boomslang 2000 does live up to advertised performance in every aspect. However most people interviewed thought $99.99 was too much for a 2000 dpi mouse even with the fourth button and on-the-fly-scrolling. Overall, I highly recommend the 2000 model or for $69.99 the1000, the difference being dpi resolution. Though we’ve mainly focused on the gaming use, this mouse is perfect for users who modify and manipulate photographs or work with CAD (Computer Aided Design and Drafting).

ABIT SlotKET !!! Press Release - 22:49 pm Wilfred
Just some hours after we got those pics out of the door, ABIT sent along the official press release of the SlotKET !!! product.

ABIT^® Announces the SlotKET™!!! Adaptor, for “Flip-Chip” Pentium® III (Coppermine) Support on Slot 1 Mainboards

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. Wednesday, January 18^th, 2000— With great shifts taking place in CPU architectures, ABIT^® continues to help bridge the gaps between them with their introduction of their new SlotKET™ !!! adaptor card.  Previous SlotKET™ converters were able let Celeron PPGA CPUs run in Slot 1 mainboards. The new SlotKET™ !!! allows you to do the same with Intel’s new line of socketed Pentium® III Coppermine CPUs. This architecture, termed “FC-PGA” or “Flip-Chip” (as opposed to the PPGA Celerons), is supposed to gain more precedence in the future, but the SlotKET™ !!! lets you enjoy it on your current Slot 1 motherboard.

In addition to “Flip-Chip” Coppermine support, another new addition to the SlotKET™ !!! is core voltage adjustment capabilities, for further stability and control.  Sets of color-coded jumpers allow you to select from 32 different voltage settings between 1.3 and 3.5v, including an “auto select” option. As with previous SlotKET™s, dual CPUs are possible. In addition to the Coppermine’s 133MHz front side bus speed, the SlotKET™ !!! can be set at 66 or 100MHz instead, to comply with motherboard support.

With this new solution from ABIT^® a person can purchase among any of the Slot 1 or Socket 370 CPUs on the market (be they PPGA or FC-PGA) and not have to worry at all about compatibility with whatever motherboard they have.

Dreamcast Console Review - 22:42 pm Wilfred
SharkyExtreme reviewed the Sega Dreamcast. Go hear what they have to say about this gaming station. I didn't fall off my chair when I saw it, but I guess it's still the best there is now.

At the core of the DreamCast is a 200MHz Hitachi SH4 processor with 8KB of instruction and 16KB of data cache on chip. Serving it is 16MB of interleaved SDRAM running at 100MHz and connected by a 64-bit memory bus. The SH4 is 2-issue superscalar RISC processor designed with Windows CE and 3D in mind. It sports a 32-bit integer unit and a 64-bit floating point unit. It has a multiply-accumulate unit that, Sega tells us, can take four floating point numbers, multiply them by four, then sum them all in only seven floating point instructions. These kinds of abilities prove useful for 3D graphics calculations. In fact, in certain procedures, it can attain 1.4Gflops of processing power. Of course, such situations rarely, if ever, come up in the real world, but the processor's capabilities are still impressive and translate into high frame rates in complex game scenes.

KDS 19" Monitor - 22:39 pm Wilfred
Don't remember seeing this item on sale here in Singapore, but the KDS looks like an elegant monitor to have for a good price. The TechZone posted a short review on it.

Image quality on the VS-195 is great. No matter what resolution you are running, the image and text quality don’t seem to fade, this is achieved by the clock speed reaching up to 205mhz. Dot pitch is another ruling factor of image quality, the lower the number the tighter images appear.  With a dot pitch of 0.26, any graphics artist would appreciate the images produced by the VS-195.

Thief 2 Preview - 22:36 pm Wilfred
Followers of the first Thief will want to read this at The FiringSquad, but of course, you would have already been playing the demo right? Here's a blurb from their preview:

One of the most interesting things about the Thief universe is the setting. The city and world are clearly vibrant and alive. Its leaders have goals, the factions within the city have goals and, of course, Garrett has his goals. Throughout the game, you will learn more about the situation, Garrett and the workings of the City in general. Of course, most of this comes through what Garrett says, which starts at cynical and goes down from there.

GeForce DDR ShootOut - 22:33 pm Wilfred
Gamers Depot posted a shootout comparing the Erazor X2 and the Asus V6800 GeForce cards. Errmm.. I believe the guys there had much too high expectations for even the DDR GeForce, check this:

Well there is no question about it, DDR does make all the difference in the world to the overall performance of the GeForce. Both cards totally eclipse the performance of both the Rage Fury Maxx, and the GeForce SDR, especially under 32bit rendering, which is the direction that the games are moving to. Unfortunately all the GeForce cards crapped out under our D3D test when pushed to 1600x1200@32bit due to driver issues, which we are sure will be fixed in future releases.

ThinkPads For US$1?? - 09:22 am Sniper
Too good to be true? Well, find out for yourself here.

Austin placed his order on Tuesday and received two separate confirmations that the unit price for his ThinkPad was $1.00, plus $70.45 in shipping and taxes. "Well, I ordered overnight delivery," he said with a chuckle. "It sounded like a good price to me." 

Mobile Linux - 09:15 am Sniper
Some information regarding the Mobile Linux developed by Transmeta are available here.  Go grab it.

Many Linux improvements are under way at Transmeta. Employees have developed support for touch-sensitive screens that get around the need for a keyboard and mouse. They've written a program that draws a keyboard that can be used to type on a touch screen and that recognizes handwriting in a method similar to that used on Palm Pilots. 

They also built in a way to automatically store files in a compressed form for computers with small storage space or no hard disk at all. And they've written software that will let small handheld devices run programs actually stored on powerful computers across a network. 

ABIT SlotKET !!! - 09:02 am Wilfred
Here's some saucy information about ABIT's SlotKET !!! PPGA/FC-PGA to Slot-1 converter, together with some pics you might like to see:

• Converts PPGA/FC-PGA 370 processor into Slot 1

• Supports Celeron PPGA / Coppermine FC-PGA / Cyrix PPGA CPU

• Supports Dual CPU configuration

• CPU Vcore adjustable (1.3v~3.5v) via Jumper

• CPU FSB adjustable (66/100/133) via Jumper

• More CPU options for Slot 1 Motherboard

• Pentium II/III-like cartridge for easy insertion and CPU safety

• Dimension:128 (W) x 73 (H) mm (w/o cartridge)

• Available later February, 2000

Ars Takes On Transmeta Crusoe - 08:45 am Wilfred
Whoa! Surely the Crusoe generated immense interest with so much hype and hope. The crew or more specifically Hannibal at Ars Technica sat down and wrote you a nice analysis of the Crusoe announcement and what it promises. Lots of intriguing keywords like 'Code Morphing', 'VLIW core' and more...

Crusoe isn't about framerates (yet), and it isn't about 3DSMAX rendering or weather simulation. It's about doing low to mildly compute-intensive sorts of tasks like word processing, video and audio playback, web browsing, email, etc. And more specifically, it's about taking those tasks on the road.

The Crusoe team's answer to the questions they asked is an impressive blend of software and hardware technology that should make anyone with even a passing interest in CPU architecture sit up and take notice. Throughout the rest of this article, I'll be talking about the actual technology behind the Crusoe in detail: the Code Morphing software, the VLIW core, the Long Run power management features, and more. I'll look at how those technologies work and what they offer.

Intel Seeks To Ban Imports of VIA Chipsets - 08:37 am Wilfred
A report at CNet says that Intel is trying to seek a ban on VIA chipset imports, citing intellectual property infringement of the 'P6' bus. This may extend to their upcoming Joshua processor. Read this:

The giant chipmaker has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission to bar Via from importing, among other products, its Apollo Pro chipsets, which work with Intel's Celeron and Pentium III processors, said Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman.

Via is also slated to release its "Joshua" processor for low-end PCs in the near future. It is uncertain, but likely, that the request for a ban could be expanded to include these products as well.

AMD To Add On-Chip Cache To Athlon - 08:31 am Wilfred
Most of you who'd read about AMD's future Thunderbird processor would prolly know, the CPU will come with integrated on-chip cache, much like the CuMines. So we can really expect the stellar processor to perform even better! EETimes has a story you will want to read (more about SpitFire and Mustang, slurp!):

"AMD has a very coherent road map, and they are executing it beautifully," he said.

The upcoming Thunderbird device will boost performance by transforming the Athlon's current 512 kbytes of off-chip L2 cache into 256 kbytes of on-die L2 cache. Brookwood noted that Intel used the same strategy to turn its Katmai chip into the Coppermine, with cache sizes in the same ranges as the Athlon and Thunderbird designs.

FIC KA-11 VIA Apollo Pro 133A - 06:23 am Kan
Word from AnandTech on their new review on the FIC KA-11 VIA Apollor Pro 133A motherboard. From the physical layout, it looks pretty good with 4 DIMMs and 5 PCI/2 ISA slots. Here's an excerpt:

Otherwise, the layout of the FIC KA-11 follows the ATX specification closely with all FDD, HDD, and ATX power connectors are all located at the front of the board, right in front of the DIMM slots. FIC has also implemented an optional 6-pin ATX power connector that offers power supply fan speed monitoring and control for power supplies that offer such capabilities. While this may not seem like the most useful feature, it is unique nonetheless.

Despite being rated to run at 133 MHz, with the option of overclocking it to 150 MHz, the 694X chip was not covered with a heatsink. Fortunately, we did not notice any heat related issues in our evaluation sample. Creative Labs CT5880 sound is optionally integrated on the motherboard and provides a basic PCI audio solution for those that don't need some of the more advanced features available with dedicated PCI sound cards.

The Future of Operating System - 06:16 am Kan
BuyBuddy also just penned down their thoughts on The Future of Operating System. Now, I only wish for a stable OS! 

If you take a look around the world of database management, on the massive scale of, say, a bank or large corporation, you’ll find little evidence of a Microsoft based system, but rather one based on Unix. Unix is an operating system based entirely on file serving. Linux is a Unix-based system with an interesting concept: the entire OS is based on open source code. What is open source code? It means that anyone can take the code, change it the way they want, and (the most important part) package it as their own. This is a step sideways in the operating system world. If Microsoft’s Windows was open source, anyone could take the core operating system, change it, and sell it, thereby creating competition. Which is why, of course, Windows is not open source.

Transcend TS-AVD1 Review - 06:15 am Kan
iXBT-Hardware dropped us a note on their review on the Transcend TS-AVD1 motherboard. Using the Apollo Pro Chipset, it comes with 5 PCI slots as well as 3 DIMM sockets. 

So, Transcend TS-AVD1 is a Slot 1 mainboard based on VIA Apollo Pro133 chipset. Like any other mainboard, TS-AVD1 is equipped with a voltage regulator meeting VRM 8.4 specification. It means that it supports all Intel processors including its brand new Coppermine. In fact, choosing VIA Apollo Pro133 was a very logical move: it supports not only old system bus frequencies - 66 and 100MHz, but also 133MHz, which is required for some new Coppermine 133MHz processors. Besides the FSB frequency equal to 133MHz, this chipset also features such modern technologies as UltraDMA/66 and PC133 SDRAM. The only modern feature, which is not supported by VIA Apollo Pro133 chipset, is AGP 4x. However, this is not that fatal, actually, since the performance difference between the graphics cards using AGP 2x and AGP 4x makes not more than 1%.

Intel Celeron 533 - 06:12 am Kan
The fastest Celeron to date by Intel, GamePC took a peek at this processor based on the good-old Mendocino core.

As you can see from the benchmarks, the Celeron 533 can hold its own against slower overclocked Celerons. It also posses a threat to the P3 450, and when overclocked does amazingly well even with a relatively low front side bus, which reminds all of us just why and how the Celeron became so popular. Its brute speed helps it along the way, but you can't forget about the 128k of L2 cache running at the CPUs core speed. The L2 cache is one of the main reasons why it did so well in all the tests.

All Games Hardware - 06:08 am Kan
Alright, be sure to get out AGN3D on their All Games Hardware video review. This time round, the guys get their paws on reviewing the Klipsch, Midiland as well as Altec Lansing speakers. 

On tonight's All Games Hardware show we talk with Midland, Klipsch and Altec Lansing on the topic of their newest gaming speakers. The interviews go into detail on the benefits of their speakers and how they were built as well. The big question is who is the current leader for that precious desktop space for your speaker needs for your PC? You can check out the Hardware show and then come up with the decision on your own. 

Will this OpenGL be Open Source?

A: Since the future product is a result of the collaboration, we have not yet determined an Open Source strategy. We will let you know the details at a future time.

New Batteries - 21:40 pm Kan
Yep, though not exactly computer related, but being the geeky us, Electric Tech dropped us a line on the new announced batteries from Motorola. 

Scientists at Motorola Labs and Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a new, miniature fuel cell that may one day replace the traditional batteries that now power everything from cellular phones and laptop computers to portable cameras and electronic games.

The energy density of these new fuel cells is 10 times that of conventional rechargeable batteries. At the same time, they will be significantly lighter in weight and less expensive to purchase.

The new fuel cells, each measuring about one inch square and less than one-tenth of an inch in thickness, are powered by liquid methanol (wood alcohol) and can easily be installed into numerous existing and future electronic devices. Use of the fuel cells, for example, could safely power a cellular phone for more than a month and eliminate the need for battery chargers and a/c adapters.

Diamond Web Pad - 21:36 pm Sniper
Diamond Multimedia is expected to be the first company to announce products that make use of the Crusoe processor.  Catch all the info here.

Details on the Diamond Web tablet are sketchy, but the Santa Clara, Calif., company showed a copper-colored device on the stage at yesterday's unveiling of Transmeta's initial processors. Transmeta chief executive Dave Ditzel said in an interview that he expected the first products with the Transmeta chips to ship in the second quarter of this year.

The Diamond product will use Transmeta's lower-end 3120 chip, which costs between $65 and $89 and is in production. Web pads and other devices using the 3120 chip are expected to cost between $500 and $1,000, Transmeta representatives said yesterday.

Western Digital Caviar WD205BA - 21:32 pm Kan
Alright, not to leave out the gurus over at StorageReview on their latest thoughts on the Western Digital Caviar WD205BA hard disk.

Though the scores are close in high-level tests, the WD drive falls just short of the Maxtor's lofty scores. The Business Disk WinMark 99 run under Windows 95 reveals a negligible 2% difference in Maxtor's favor. The High-End WinMark difference is slightly more substantial, with the Caviar trailing by 7%. Traditionally Maxtor would put considerable distance between itself and its competitors when it came to the Disk Winmarks in Windows NT. Here, however, the overall difference is relatively slim, with the Caviar trailing the DiamondMax by margins of 4% and 6% respectively in the Business and High-End WinMarks. ThreadMark turns in virtually identical scores for both drives, with the Maxtor edging out the WD by margins of 1% or less.

Erazor X Review - 21:30 pm Kan
3DRage dropped us a line on their review on the Elsa Erazor X GeForce graphics card. I guess once Wilfred's hard disk is stable enough, we can release our thoughts on it soon. :)

The graphics cards manufactured by Elsa Inc. have always been good, reliable products, that might not have topped the competition in performance, but what they lacked in performance they made up for in features. A majority of the time, however, the performace compliments the feature rich board, and you come out with a wonderful product that any Nvidia owner would be proud to own. When 3dfx began to produce and ship their own graphics boards, and S3 bought out Diamond Multimedia, NVidia chipsets became the only staple in the OEM market. ATI and Matrox have always made their own cards, so right now all the OEM's are trying to best each other in the GeForce 256 market. Today we take a look at the latest SDRAM GeForce 256 offering from Elsa Inc., the ERAZOR X.

GeForce DDR Overclocking Guide Updated - 21:27 pm Kan
Planet GeForce sent note on their updated overclocking guide with with some new benchmarks in Quake III using a new technique to boost the overclockability of the RAM chips of the card. Increases of between 10 and 20 MHz over the previous maximum were observed.

One of our readers, Ed, mentioned a way of significantly increasing the overclockability of the DDR RAM chips. When hooking up the second fan (the one on the back of the card) avoid connecting it to the video card's output if at all possible; try to splice it in with the Socket 370 fan. After new testing of my own, I was able to confirm what Ed suspected. By the looks of it a fan drawing power from the video card can draw enough juice to hamper the maximum frequency the RAM will operate at. While before I could only overclock to 347 MHz I can now push it all the way to 355 MHz. Results will vary, but it's pretty obvious that there is enough of a voltage drop across the board to make it harder to crank up the speed.

Build your Own Blowhole - 21:25 pm Kan
Ah, trust our buds over at HardOCP to come out with such provocative title. Anyway, the guys have some very interesting ideas on how to cool your system efficiently, so check it out:

Voila!  The hole is ripped and what you see is the Power Supply right under it.  See how we had to follow the back edge of the PS with the snips so we would have enough room to cut. Even though this only made a little bit of space, it was NEEDED to make the fan fit in the space.   Another thing this illustrates is the fact the not so much metal was removed that it hosed the structural integrity of the case.  It is still very solid.  You don't want to cut the entire plate out or really close to the edges as this will weaken you case considerably.

AGP Sidebanding vs AGP Overclocking - 21:21 pm Kan
Looks like Adrian over at Adrian's Rojak Pot updated his AGP Sidebanding vs AGP Overclocking guide, bumping it up to Rev 3.0. Here's some of the new stuffs:

Overclocking the AGP bus appears to be the most logical step in improving the performance of the AGP bus since it brings about a substantial increase in AGP bandwidth. For example, overclocking the AGP bus to 112MHz increases
the AGP bus' maximum bandwidth to 900MB/s (using the AGP2X transfer mode), which is way over the usual AGP2X's maximum bandwidth of 534MB/s.

Hauppague WinTV/GO Review - 21:17 pm Kan
Here's an interesting review for today on the Hauppague WinTV/GO card from CTNews. It allows you to watch TV on your monitor (good if you stay in a small room or hostel) and it can also capture TV programmes directly into AVI files.

Playing around with the utility, I was pretty much impressed. The video captured was of very decent quality (depedent on format, of course) and audio was good. The only problems I had were that there is an occasional line of "static"-like artifacts. This is because that CPU and I/O system was working hard to encode and write the image to disk. Quality improves when audio is disabled and when you minimize the capture preview. Quality can also be improved if Microsoft wrote a decent operating system ;) (Seriously though, if one needs good capturing, you should try Linux, or Windows NT). The more CPU, the better. This also applies to your harddrive too. If you are capturing images at a higher resolution, you need a harddrive that can keep up. SCSI is always the best when it comes to heavy I/O usage, but a decent 7200 RPM IDE should suffice for most capture. 

Sanding the PPGA Celeron - 21:15 pm Kan
Overclockin.com has an article on sanding your PPGA Celeron to improve heat transfer between the processor and the heatsink. Tricky stuffs, but it sure looks interesting!

There are a couple of reasons why one might get something out of slug sanding. First of all, we're taking off a layer or two of material from between the hot silicon inside the chip, and the heatsink that will dissipate that heat. Second of all, the fewer types of metal involved in the heat transfer, the more efficient the heat transfer. The silicon in the chip transfers its heat to a copper casing, the copper casing transfers the heat to a coating of (I believe) nickel, and then the heat is transferred to your heatsink (probably aluminum). Slug sanding takes out one of those transfers, because we're sanding off the nickel. Thirdly, the flatter you can get the chip against the heatsink, the more evenly and faster you can transfer the heat (you may think of sanding the bottom of your heatsink in basically the same way we'll show you to sand you're processor).

Future of PC Memory Article - 21:12 pm Kan
FiringSquad posted an article on the Future of PC Memory Article. The usual technical stuffs, sure makes me excited. =)

Since a read request generally takes two or three cycles to be processed and fulfilled, there are obviously some other technologies supporting this gap between processor and memory performance. One of these technologies is the multi-layered cache design of modern systems. Cache is a small amount of extremely fast RAM that is physically and logically closer to the CPU than regular memory. To understand how a cache works, you first have to understand how a CPU functions. The following is a short version of the explanation found in our G4 and IA-64 articles.

Transmeta Announcement Coverage - 21:01 pm Sniper
Slashdot's David Cassel wrote an article covering the entire Transmeta Announcement.  If you don't feel like reading, you can watch the telecast here at ZDTV.  Well if you fast forward to 57min of the telecast, you can catch Linus Torvalds and Dave Taylor co-creator of Quake demonstrating Quake on Crusoe chips running on Windows and Linux.

Then to break things up, there was the historic Quake showdown between Quake co-creator David Taylor and Linus. "I can't think of anybody better on the face of the planet to demonstrate Crusoe on Linux than Linus Torvalds," Laird joked. The photographers rushed towards
the stage again for the even-more-obvious photo-op as Linus came out in his denim shirt, jeans, and sandals. ("I'd like to point out that if I lose, it's not the operating system," Linus joked.) It all ended when Linus fired all
his bullets in a spray, then got nailed when he ran out of ammo. (Later in the press conference, after a bunch of questions about his role and Transmeta, Linus referred back to the Quake game, saying it was "meant to show that I'm here, but I'm not supposed to be the main point of it all.") One of Transmeta's technical staffers told me at lunch that "We all knew Linus was gonna get his ass kicked," and sure enough, when I asked Dave Taylor what he thought of Linus's Quake-playing, he said "I
thought he sucked." But then he added modestly "I suck at code compared to him. So that felt good." 

Torvalds at Transmeta - 11:54 am Sniper
Wide Open News has an article describing Linus role at Transmeta.  Described by Transmeta executives as "key" to Crusoe's software
development.

While considering job offers at the time, he passed on many chances to join Linux startups, because "I didn't want to polarize the Linux community" by hooking up with a single vendor. But at Transmeta, Torvalds said, he gets to work for a company "that is very interested in Linux.... I'll do Linux because that's my passion and that's really what I know." 

Wilfred Coughs: Splutters of Me - 08:44 am Wilfred
Sigh. Gave up the HotRod/66 and Seagate Barracuda combo late last nite and conceded running the new HDD at ATA/33 instead. Still in the process of restoring the system to its former glory... I'll be back!

Racing Wheel Wars - 08:40 am Wilfred
Well, even racing wheels wage war against one another at 3DWars. If you are on the verge of splurging on a racing wheel to add more thrills in your driving simulators, I urge you to read this first.

Well, to start off our search for the ultimate racing wheel, we have two contenders that would like to try for the spot. In one corner, we have the highly acclaimed ACT Labs and their Force RS racing wheel. ACT Labs is very well known for making peripherals of all types. On the opposite end, we have AVB Tech and their GC Force Feedback racing wheel. AVB is also a pretty big peripheral manufacturer with a lot of history behind them. Both wheels provide powerful force feedback effects and the bliss of USB...

Trinity Micro Gold Fingers - 08:36 am Wilfred
BXBoards let me know that they reviewed Trinity Micro's Gold Fingers. Yes, surely you need Midas' touch to overclock that hot Athlon chip of you.

Well, being that both seem to operate the same, one may opt for the older device, being that he or she can save a few bucks. I personally recommend the newer Northwind GFD, because of two big differences. First of all, the Northwind is a fully fabbed solution, which means there are none of the wires that go along with the old device. Second of all, the quality of resistors used on the Northwind is higher. I think that the Northwind device will outlive the old Gold Finger Device. (Will they both outlive one's Athlon 500? Well, probably, so it's all relative.)

With those two improvements come two drawbacks. #1) The DIP switches on the Northwind are much smaller. They require a fine ball point pen or small blade to alter the device's settings. This is not a big deal to me, but it is a slight hassle. #2) The settings for half of the DIP switches are read left-to-right, while the other half are read right-to-left. This was a little confusing at first, but in the end, it wasn't that significant as well.

MSI K7 PRO Motherboard Review - 08:24 am Wilfred
The guys at OWB are fast, and posted a review of the MSI K7 PRO Motherboard. This newcomer uses AMD's Irongate chipset and it does seem to be very overclocking friendly. But there seem to be some issues... this is a review in progress:

Initial test shows that the board is very stable under normal condition. Overclocking it is also not a problem. We managed to set our Front Side Bus to 119Mhz and the system went straight into Windows 98 without much hitches at all default at 1.6volts.

BCM Diagnostics tests passed through with no problems at all. It is absolutely stable.

Knowing that I have run the modified Athlon 500 on the ASUS K7M on 1.75v and worked like a charm, I tried the MSI K7 PRO by installing a fresh Win98 using the modified Athlon 500 that runs at 700Mhz and you know what happened ?? 

The Win98 was very unstable and I did not managed to install the Windows at all. Even I use a preinstalled Harddisk which was meant for another Althon board does not help. I am still wondering why is that so.

Crusaders Of Might And Magic - 06:20 am Kan
Gameslink.net did a pretty nice review of Crusaders of Might and Magic. As far as I can remember, Might and Magic has been out for a long time already. If you like RPG games, you may like to check this out:

The "map" of the world in Crusaders of MM is actually several maps joined together. This is actually quite apparent as you traverse through Crusaders' world. Environmental changes can be dramatic from one section of the map to another (foggy to clear and sunny). Collections of maps make up each section of the main map. These collections formulate the areas for each of the quests. However the world in Crusaders is primarily made up of valleys, corridors and tunnels. This type of map design produces very linear quests. There is almost no adventuring, as the entire world is not open for exploration. Portions of the map open up when a quest requires that area. As long as you follow the path it will take you to your goal. So there really isn't any adventuring (or thinking) involved.

Editorial on 3D Glasses - 06:15 am Kan
CTNews3D whipped up an editorial on how 3D Glasses 'trick' your brains into perceiving 3D images.

This method is usually used with projection displays when 3D material needs to be displayed. Every viewer has to wear special glasses which have two polarizing lenses which have their polarization directions adjusted to be 90 degrees different. This makes is possible that left eye sees it's picture without problems but everything ment to right eye (sent out at different polarization) seems to be black. Same applies also to right eye.

The material which has to be shown is typically projected using two projectors (film projector, slide projector or video projector) which each have polarizing lenses in front of them (adjusted to meet the polarization directions of the glasses). The projection surface must be specially made so that it does not do any harm to the polarization (many traditional projection surface materials are not suitable, silver stripe screen is recommended). The advantage of this method is that the pictures can be in full color and the viewing glasses are still quite inexpensive.

AMD K6-2E Processor - 06:05 am Kan
Thanks to CNEWZ who pointed us to this article on the new AMD K6-2E processors which were announced today.

AMD today introduced two new AMD-K6®-2E embedded processors, providing higher-performing solutions to help meet the increasing bandwidth demands of the embedded market. The 400MHz standard-power processor and the 350MHz low-power processor extend the performance of the AMD-K6-2E family of processors and are AMD's highest frequency embedded processors offered to date.

The AMD-K6-2E family of embedded processors is designed to offer compelling yet affordable power and performance for embedded applications, including point-of-sale terminals, printer controllers, public and private communications infrastructure, industrial automation, information appliances, and Microsoft® Windows® operating system-based single board computers and embedded PCs.

UT Better than Q3? - 06:02 am Kan
Eh-oh. In the latest My Voice editorial in PC Paradox, the guys discussed which game engine is better, UT or Q3. Gee, reminds me of the browsers war... =)

I bet you thought that discussion was over, long gone, completely forgotten. Than let me ask you this, why did half of you just open up your e-mail client to curse me out, while the other half were nodding their heads in agreement? I'm going to re-open this debate, because frankly, it interests me. I enjoy hearing your opinions, and am surprised by the intelligence and legitimacy in them (well most of them ;). More over, it amazes me that politicians and religious fruitcakes blame video games such as UT and Quake for the downfall of IQ, and yet there are 12 years olds E-mailing and trying to explain to me the nuances of texture mapping. But that's a column for another day. 

CL Annihilator Pro - 06:00 am Kan
Jsi Hardware also posted a GeForce review today on the Creative Labs Annihilator Pro.

The card uses Nvidias GeForce Chip which is a .22 micron design that has over 22 million transistors (That's more than a Pentium III Chip). Creative have used Nvidias reference deign for the board which has 32Mb of DDR Sgram which is made up of 8 5ns chips (4 on front and 4 on back)

The card has no extra bells and whistles like TV out and Dvi (Digital Video Output) for Flat screens just Raw Gaming Power.

ASUS V6600 SDR - 05:58 am Kan
AnandTech posted a look at the ASUS V6600 SDR GeForce graphics card today. Yes, it's still a pretty fast card but eventually will be out shadowed by those newer DDR GeForces very soon.

As with the majority of the GeForce based cards that are coming into the AnandTech lab, the ASUS V6600 Pure is based upon NVIDIA's reference design. By using this design, ASUS was guaranteed to have a functional card off the bat and, in theory, prevented the need for future board revisions. By using NVIDIA's reference design, ASUS could also essentially skip the costly and time consuming development and testing phase, as they were guaranteed a fully functional and efficient card upon manufacture. However, rest assured that ASUS put the card through a battery of tests, as this is the tradition at ASUS.

ASUS P3C-E and ASUS PC3-2000 - 05:55 am Kan
The guys over at GamePC did a roundup comparison between the ASUS P3C-E and ASUS PC3-2000. Both are i820 Camino boards and the P3C-E comes with 2 RIMM (RAMBUS) slots while the PC3-2000 comes with the MTH (Memory Translator Hub) and hence supports 4 DIMM (SDRAM) slots.

Like Asus's popular P2B series of boards, the P3C series are quite large in physical diameter, measuring about 1/3 wider than most other BX/I820 motherboards. This larger form factor allows Asus to use the same PCB size for all of it's P3B-series motherboards. The P3C-2000 board seems to use quite a bit more of it's PCB space, seeing as how the board has an extra large chip (memory translator hub), and two extra memory slots. On the other hand, the P3C-E board has plenty of wide open space, but leaves room for optional SCSI connectors and chips.

Epson Perfection Scanner W2K Drivers - 05:50 am Kan
Yep, the usual good stuffs over at NT Compatible. If you are using that scanner, you can check that out.

Palm IIIe Special Edition - 05:47 am Kan
Digital-Clips did a review on the Palm IIIe Special Edition. Looks like the guys didn't like it a lot due to the lack of expandability as well as flash ROM updates.

The Palm IIIe/SE editions are identical to the slightly older Palm IIIX.  Basically, it is a marketing ploy by 3Com to lure unwitting people into spending money for the translucent case.  No, actually, its targeted towards students who do not have the need for power which business executive demands but would like to make a fashion statement, jot down when they have sex and their score...not that I have anything like that in mine...I can only wish. =)

Fastest x86 Mobile Processor - 04:36 am Sniper
Over at TechWeb, the Crusoe chip is quoted as the fastest x86 mobile processor out there in this article.

Each of the chips contain an on-chip SDRAM memory
controller and PCI interface. In addition, the TM5400 contains an interface to double data rate SDRAM. 

The chips are sampling. The 500- and 700-MHz TM5400 versions will list for $119 and $329, respectively. The 333- and 400-MHz TM3120 devices will list for $65 and $89, respectively. All chips ship in a 474-pin BGA package. 

Crusoe News - 04:30 am Sniper
ZDNet just released an article on the Transmeta Crusoe.  Go chew on it.

The Santa Clara, Calif., company unveiled Crusoe, a two-member family of what Transmeta calls the first software-based, low-power smart microprocessors designed for mobile Internet computing

Transmeta's initial chips are the 400MHz TM3120 and 700MHz TM5400, which use so-called code morphing technology to translate x86 instructions into the chip's very long instruction words (VLIW) to run the thousands of applications already written for PC based on Intel processors.

Transmeta Goes Live - 04:10 am Sniper
After years of waiting, the Transmeta website goes live at this moment with all the information you need.  Yawn........time for me to get some sleep too after watching the live webcast of their announcement.

Transmeta Day - 03:20 am Sniper
Yawn.................I'm back.  If you are wondering where I disappeared to, just to let you know that I'm saving all my energy and strength for this event.  Well, today is the official launch of Transmeta's products and HW1 editors will try to bring you as much news as possible on this revolutionary processor.  

To give you some hints on what this baby can do.  It will run many instruction sets out there (i.e. x86, java, SPARC etc).  It will be a low power consumption, high performance, 0.18 u processor. The highest clock speed is 667mhz and it is the only CPU out there that is software upgradeable thru the internet.

The Abit BM6 is a great package. Socket-370 only, it uses Intel’s ubiquitous 440BX chipset and has bus speeds up to 133 MHz. For more detailed info on this product, click here. What is crucial to ramping up a 66 MHz chip to the next level is support for the 100 MHz FSB and AGP 2/3 divider. Unfortunately, like many other socket-370 MB’s, the BM6 FSB’s have huge leaps in the lower range. The BM6’s list starts with 66 MHz, then 75, 83, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 115, 120, 124, and ends with 133. Until you manage to reach to 124 FSB, the PCI divider stays at 1/3 which means that your add-in cards need to be extraordinarily stable if you’re lucky enough to venture into the 110-120 FSB area.

Choose Your Weapon - 21:54 pm Kan
HardwareCentral has an article titled Choose Your Weapon. Besides your rail-gun in Q3A, the guys also recommend a sensitive mouse as well as a chopping board as a mousepad. Here's an excerpt:

So let’s face it, there has been tremendous growth and change in the computer industry, but one device has remained pretty much the same since it was first introduced well over a decade ago. The computer mouse has become a standard device for all PC’s, but it has not been altered dramatically. You could argue that the first dramatic change came when the mouse was re-engineered to be more ergonomic, You may also argue that the addition of new features such as a scrolling wheel between the left and right mouse buttons are fundamental changes. Most people would agree that these changes have significantly improved the use of the mouse. But even with all of these new additions, the fundamental technology used within the mouse itself has not changed. No matter how pretty the device is or how many gadgets it has, you’re still pushing a ball around on your desk.

Q3A W2K SMP Shoot Out - 21:51 pm Kan
The dudes over at FiringSquad did a Q3Test Windows 2000 SMP shootout! In the grueling tests, the guys also tested the game with new .DLL drivers which bypass the usual Quake3 VM code, giving you more performance gain!

Even after optimizations, the VM still causes a significant slowdown. With the release of the Q3 gameplay source, people are now releasing precompiled DLLs that bypass the VM to avoid the frame rate hit. With the release of these DLLs and the new Nvidia drivers, we had to test them out for ourselves, and we decided to share the results with our readers.

Just to make things clear, Nvidia is not associated in any way with the Q3A DLLs. We just decided to kill two birds with one benchmark set.

Overclocking For The End User - 21:43 pm Kan
Systemlogic posted a Guide to Overclocking for the end users. I'm aware that some of you out there do not know what overclocking is or may not have tried it before. But never mind, check out the article and you will see all the benefits overclocking can bring to your system:

Reduced CPU life – A normal CPU is designed to last between 10 to 20 years. If the life of the CPU is reduced by 50%, the CPU will last between 5 and 10 years, at the rate that technology is advancing; how useful will that system be in 5 years? (Given my clients past record this system will be used for about 2 years)  So in reality, you will not have to worry about this that much because of the lifetime of a computer these days.

Everglide Large Attack Pad - 21:43 pm Kan
Overclockers Australia took a look at the Everglide Large Attack Pad. Seriously it's a chopping board, and I wonder how it can actually  creep into your computer table as a mousepad. =)

This particular unit is called the "Large Attack Pad". It looks pretty wicked, more like some kind of Klingon hurled weapon than a humble mousepad. For the true fetishists there's even one with the Q3 logo emblazoned across the top. This one has a small "EverGlide" logo in the bottom left corner. This has been painted on - stamped, it seems - the rough surface makes the paint look pretty scruffy around the edges, though. The units are apparently hand-made and they have that feel, the not quite machine-perfect curves and the occasional ripple on the bevelled edge. It seems to be made from the same plastic as those chopping boards - in fact, it really does seem to be one of those plastic chopping boards cut to shape. The surface is covered in millions of extremely fine craters and I wonder how it would stand up to months of sustained use.

Intel & Five Others Ganging Against RAMBUS - 14:32 pm Wilfred
So much for the Intel and RAMBUS alliance, it seems like Intel is switching sides. From this story at EETimes, the Santa Clara giant is teaming up with 5 major memory suppliers Hyundai Electronics, Infineon Technologies, Micron Technology, NEC Corp and Samsung Electronics to decide upon the next generation DRAM products to be ready by 2003. Here's a blurb:

TOKYO—In a stinging slap at the troubled Rambus memory technology, Intel Corp. and five major memory suppliers will collaborate to develop a new high-performance DRAM architecture. Intel, Hyundai Electronics, Infineon Technologies, Micron Technology, Inc., NEC Corp., and Samsung Electronics will solicit other participants in the effort and aim to have the DRAM ready for systems by 2003.

Palo Alto ATCX Convertible - 14:26 pm Wilfred
ArsTechnica has taken to reviewing cases lately, and today they have this really neat box from Palo Alto Products International. Hey, the modular design resembles that of my T-10A, but it has a host of other enhancements that will make this a great case to own!

In the end this case shows all of the grace and beauty of the PA-600 in manufacturing quality. I don't want to sound like I'm a member of the Palo Alto Glee Club, but the ATCX is just another example of their attention to detail and their dedication to smart design. The ducting system adds a little cooling benefit to those of you looking to mildly overclock, and of course the one thumbscrew pop off size is always nice, too.

Absolute Multimedia GeForce 256 DDR - 14:05 pm Wilfred
Looks like everyone has a DDR to play with these weeks! The boys at SharkyExtreme whipped up a lengthy review of this newcomer:

The effect of the increased memory bandwidth offered by DDR RAM is apparent throughout as you can easily tell, but the performance gains are most noticeable at the higher resolutions and color depths where memory performance is stressed the most. While the SDR based LeadTek board is some 22% slower in 1024 x 768 at 32-bit than at 16-bit in our 3DMark tests the DDR based Outrageous 3D GeForce DDR is just 9% slower in 32-bit than it is at 16. The same is also true at 1280 x 1024 where the SDR board takes a performance hit of roughly 36% while the DDR board takes a hit of "only" 26%.

Piracy: OpenSource User's Perspective - 14:01 pm Wilfred
More good stuff from the site of opinions! osOpinion has an editorial about software piracy taken from the view of an open source user.

I could even make a business case for supporting the growth and development of these alternative markets, development methodologies, etc. If Microsoft, for example, is going to lose several billion per year to software piracy, then if someone gets the same functionality from a standard Linux distribution, Microsoft has not necessarily 'lost' a customer. They might well have not had that 'customer' in the first place.

Leadtek WinfastGeForce DDR - 13:56 pm Wilfred
I keep hearing good things said about this card, I wonder if they will be bringing in this product to Singapore. I could do with a DDR that gives me the best bang for the buck any time. Today, HotHardware evaluates Leadtek's flagship video accelerator.

The Leadtek GeForce256 DDR was a competent overclocker. With Leadtek's Speed Runner utility built directly into the driver suite, we were able to easily take the card well beyond the default core and memory clock speeds. We were able to hit 140MHz core and 326 MHz DDR Memory clocks. With other GeForce cards we have been able to obtain slightly higher core clock speeds of 150MHz. This was probably due to the heat sink on the Winfast product being a little bit "lighter duty" than others we have tested like the Elsa Erazor X. Regardless, you can still gain a fair amount over the default speed with the the Winfast GeForce256 DDR.

Wilfred Coughs - 08:43 am Wilfred
You hear me now on my little notebook, but don't expect me for quite a while as I'm troubleshooting the dumb PC I have. Did not imagine a new HDD, ABIT HotRod/66 card and a CPU swap could gimme so much headache. Sigh... 

Linux Vs Microsoft In China - 08:38 am Wilfred
Sounds like some kind of pugilistic competition in ancient China eh? Surely, the duel has only started and osOpinion has an editorial about how Linux would square off Microsoft, now with rumours that the Chinese government is backing the former.

Right now, Microsoft dominates the mainland Chinese market just as it dominate the OS market in every other country so far, and this is no doubt one of the reasons why Chinese officials are reluctant to adopt any overt anti-Microsoft political stance. Yet patriotism, nationalism, a dose of anti-foreign sentiment and a rising concern about Microsoft business practice is giving Linux many aces it will need to level the playing field against Microsoft. The Chinese government is probably adopting a wait and see approach towards Red Flag Linux, China's very own operating system.

VIA Cyrix Joshua Preview - 08:29 am Wilfred
The good guys at iXBT have a preview on VIA's Joshua. It is expected to come for the low-end and performance like the present Celerons. Check this:

As for the overclockability, the answer is rather vague here. On the one hand, the clock multiplier isn't locked, which seems heavenly cool compared to Intel and AMD processors. On the other hand, the processor initially designed for the voltage of 2.2V (for the slowest 300MHz model marked as 433 according to the PR-rating). However, the chosen technology - 0.18 micron - still gives us hope for the better.

As for the performance, we expect it to be at the level of Celeron processor with the working frequency according to PR-rating. Some drawbacks of a slightly improved architecture should be compensated mostly by 256KB L2 cache working at the processor clock frequency. In general, it has to do with office applications, where the extra 128KB L2 will hardly be a burden. Speaking about the games, we have to mention a significantly improved coprocessor since the times of 6x86MX. And of course, you shouldn't disregard the support of 3DNow!. Today almost all the more or less serious games as well as new graphics card drivers are optimized for this set of SIMD instructions.

Athlon 800 Processor - 08:21 am Wilfred
Gamers Depot took the sexy Athlon 800 processor out for an exhilarating spin today. Have a read if you are one of them who can afford the price tag.

The benchmarks really do tell all don't they?  The scores presented here have set new records at the GD labs, and represent just how powerful this chip is.  Even with it's "crippled" 1/3 speed L2 cache, the sheer muscle of 800Mhz shines through and tears the Quake 3 benchmarks a new one.

Even under 3DMark 2000, the Athlon 800 does manage to edge ahead of the slower chips to some degree.  This is the same kind of performance delta to expect in your Direct3D games as well.  With this level of CPU power, it's hard to imagine just how far interactive gaming can go when they start making games to really take advantage of the Athlon.

Some Info On The FC-PGA - 06:32 am Kan
Ah, managed to find this mail from tBreak on some of the interesting specifications of the FC-PGA processor. 

Today I just found about a new Datasheet: the PIII FC-PGA specifications up to 750 Mhz. (Before, the PIII FC-PGA datasheet was only for the 500E and 550E) There is explanation/literature of the SMP pins:

It says that only the processors that have not the "For Uniprocessor systems" on the box are SMP capable. Are they all or not? I don't know yet. I'll write an article about the BR1 pin change, that went from AN15 (remember ..;) to X2 that was a reserved pin. The bug is that the AN15 is a VTT now. That is a real bug since BREQ0 from the chipset goes to BR0, and BR0 to BR1 of the second processor, and BR0 from that one to BR1 (AN15) of the first CPU.

That means that a BP6 transformed to dual FC-PGA will be quite a thing to look at! ;))

New Generation of Optical Drive - 06:22 am Kan
Thanks to CDR-Info for pointing this out, there's a new model of the Plasmon WORM optical drive which supports up to 30GB on a single 12 inches disc. Gosh, check out the prices as well. *faint*

"..Plasmon has announced shipping for the 8000 series, its fourth generation 12-inch optical TrueWORM Technology drives

With a substantial 30 GB of online storage per disk, the 8000 series will more than double the current 12-inch disk capacity. The new series will also include a SCSI-II (Fast/Wide) interface and a faster sustained data transfer rate of 6.0 MB/s -- more than double the current speed.

Unlike the first three generations that used ablative WORM recording, the new series uses Phase Change write-once technology to encode data. This Phase Change technology increases disk capacity while also speeding up the data-verify pass for drives. Also, by using 12-inch glass media, the most stable on the market, the 8000 series ensures that archived data is protected and unalterable for 30 years or longer.

The 8000 will be offered in stand-alone RapidChanger, or library versions. The series can be configured with 22 to 141 disks and one to five optical drives. The maximum configuration will yield 4.2TB of data storage. Prices will start at $30,000 for the drives and the libraries will range from $126,000 to $263,000 depending upon the configuration. The media list price will be $595 per disk, resulting in a cost of only two cents per MB.

Current Plasmon users will be able to upgrade their existing 12-inch libraries by simply replacing the drives. Plasmon announced a hot swap program for users in North America to exchange their 12 GB drives for the new 30 GB drives for a reduced price. Because the 8000 series is fully backwards compatible, users can migrate data into the 30 GB media format or use libraries intermixed with 12 and 30 GB media.."

The 1000 MHz