February 1 - 8, 1999
Archive

• 1. Fix for Y2K RTC test failure with ami2000.exe program.
• 2. Added AT/ATX power supply detection for P2B-B.
• 3. Added CPU Microcode Update support for 653h (dB-1) & 1632h (P6T dB0) CPUs.
• 4. Support Legacy USB Suspend/Resume.
• 5. Support new revision of W977 super IO chips.
• 6. Fix for some LAN cards can't be assigned with IRQ9.
• 7. Fix for NT5.0 HCT 'RTC power up' test failure.
• 8. Added "CDROM,A,C" boot sequence.
• 9. Added Katmai processor support.
• 10. Revised Y2K support.
• 11. Fixed RTC resume failure from standby sometimes.

• ASUS P2B 1007 BIOS Update
• Award Flash Utility

 

• Abit BH6 JJ BIOS Update (133 KB)
• Award Flash Utility (version 6.6 - 25KB)

 

An executive at AMD UK today said that the K6-3 will have a different name -- but he won't say what it is.

Paul Ridgway, at AMD UK, was talking at a VIA seminar in London this morning. He also the introduction of the K6-3, whatever it is called, will be "very, very soon" but didn't narrow that down either.

However, Ridgway hit out at Intel and its strategy, and promised further OEM wins after AMD's success with Gateway.

He said: "People are no longer saying: 'What Intel PCs have you got?' when they go into stores."

The K6-3 will give the Pentium III a run for its money, he claimed. "The Pentium III and the K6-3 are good sparring partners, and the K6-3 is absolutely equal to the Pentium III."

 

To start with, all you overclockers out there can start breathing again. One VERY pleasant surprise was the fact that the Voodoo3 3000 IS overclockable, as previous reports say that it was locked at 183MHz. The Voodoo3 we saw was final silicon. It had a fan, but Tony said it wouldn't be necessary and most boards wouldn't have one. There WOULD be boards with a built-in fan though, and as Tony slipped us that the V3 3k had been run successfully at over 200Mhz in 3Dfx's labs, I would suspect this chip to be one of the hottest things for overclockers around. Or can you say more than 400 Megatexels?

 

Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, said that he expects prices for the 366 megahertz version of the Celeron chip to come down to $111, from $131 previously, in units of 1,000 and possibly below $100 in big quantities to PC makers.

Kumar estimates that the 400 megahertz Celeron will drop to $133 each, in quantities of 1,000, from $158 previously.

 

• Nvidia Riva TNT Detonator Driver (Win9X - 1.09 - 3.27MB)

• Tweak3D
• Rivazone
• Riva3D

 

The Desktop TV supports WebTV, Wavetop, Intercast and more. It also gives you a 125 channel tuner, video-in as well as an FM Tuner for some Tunes. You can check out the full review here. Ohh did I forget to mention? The TV-Tuner only card is only $79.99 :)

This is for the Graphics Blaster Eclipse CT6500 card only!

Fixes and Updates:

• Provides multiple monitor support for Win98
• Includes BlasterControl

• Graphics Blaster Eclipe Driver (Win9X - 1.3 MB)

The STB Desktop TV is not a typical TV PCI card. It incorporates a Cable/Antenna-Ready Television Reciever w/optional FM tuner, plus the added features of being able to do Video Confrencing and Capture, recieve WebTV for Windows and Intel Intercast Programs.

The Desktop TV is not a daughter card. It is designed to work with virtually any graphics chipset that is equipped with an integrated scaler and has the appropriate DirectX support.

 

An OEM Vortex 2 card, at retail prices. There don't appear to be any specific advantages to the Turtle Beach version of the Vortex 2, which makes it hard to recommend. You'll pay the same price for this card as the MX300, which has a better software bundle, four speaker support, and an expansion-friendly hardware design. The MX300's position in the market is well-defined - for 3D sound enthusiasts it's the high-end card to get. The Montego 2 however, is a little more vague. It sells for the same price yet offers less. It's certainly not a bad sound card-but the bottom line is that this card isn't worth considering until Turtle Beach lowers its price.

 

Despite all the rumors, both chipsets will NOT support more than 16 Mb of shared memory (framebuffer and texture). 3Dfx will not support 32 Mb because, as Tony said, the Voodoo 3 chipset is supposed to be a mainstream solution and it wouldn't be worth the cost. When asked if owners of a Voodoo II SLI configuration have any reason to upgrade to Voodoo 3 both Tony and Nick agreed that the only real advantage is that you free up some PCI slots. In a typical system the Voodoo 3 chipset will not perform much better than a SLI Voodoo II setup. This is mainly because most of today's games are basically limit by the geometry setup part of rendering, and that part is done by the CPU. This is clearly shown when we run the timedemo DEMO1 on Quake II: On the test system with houses a PII 450 with 128 Mb, the Voodoo 3 3000 hopped out 110.4 fps at 640x480, while at 800x600 the performance dropped only 4 frames to 106.2 and at 1024x768 the demo system still showed a very playable 83.8 fps. So the fill-rate isn't the limiting factor anymore with Voodoo 3, at least in low resolutions. Quake I which is less geometry dependant showed a stunning 178.8 fps on Timedemo demo2 with default settings.

I put this post here and a couple other places but a couple people suggested that a different title would get it the attention it deserves (it seemed like it was doing fine to me but what can it hurt). So, here's the new one.

Thanks to Charlie for this awesome discovery!

Look on this page folks:
www2.tky.3web.ne.jp/~nrklv/

The page is in Japanese but the programs are english. Ready for the good part? Look carefully at the page for the download links.

sfsb130.zip
cgi.tky.3web.ne.jp/~nrklv/cgi-bin/softdl.cgi?sfsb130.zip
This beauty will let you change your front side bus frequency ON THE FLY. You can literally select and apply a frequency from the GUI interface from within Windows!

wcpu220.zip
cgi.tky.3web.ne.jp/~nrklv/cgi-bin/softdl.cgi?wcpu220.zip
This thing will tell you your CPU stepping, familly, ID, etc. and your cache information. The best one I've seen so far.

wclk100.zip
cgi.tky.3web.ne.jp/~nrklv/cgi-bin/softdl.cgi?wclk100.zip
A simple but cool CPU frequency display. Useful for checking the frequency you just dialed in with the FSB above.

wl2dd130.zip
cgi.tky.3web.ne.jp/~nrklv/cgi-bin/softdl.cgi?wl2dd130.zip
This program will let you adjust the L2 cache latency ON THE FLY. Hmm, useful for attaining that previously unreachable speed thanks to that pesky cache.

ENJOY!

Here's some links to the other posts so you can see the results people have had.
www.anandtech.net/bbs/Forum9/HTML/001093.html
www.anandtech.net/bbs/Forum2/HTML/000747.html
www.anandtech.net/bbs/Forum1/HTML/003686.html

Ben

 

At first glance, the PhotoSmart C30 looks plain and boxy--kind of like the Toyota of digicams. But don't let its simplicity fool you. The C30 is as smartly designed as its predecessor, the PhotoSmart C20, and does exactly what you need it to without a fuss. All the essential controls, including menu choices, delete options, frequently used flash modes (fill, red eye, and off), and the 2X zoom are easy to operate and conveniently located right at your fingertips. The camera also has both an optical viewfinder and a 1.8-inch LCD, auto-focus, and a TV-out port.

 

Now that Microsoft has made a solid space for themselves in the software market, why not try the hardware market? The Digital Sound System 80 is Microsoft's first journey into the highly competitive speaker market. Ever since the boom of MP3s on the market place, high-end quality computer speakers seem to have been more in demand. And with the addition of USB to the computer mainstream, products that take advantage of the interface have been in demand. The DDS80 makes use of USB and brings us high quality sound without requiring a sound card. But does the DSS80 bring down the house?

 

• Starfighter PCI Driver (Win9X - 0323 - 1.6 MB)

 

That pretty much leaves one way to lock down the multiplier: put a circuit on the Slot 1 PCB that sits between the chipset and the CPU pins. The lock circuit could sit there, invisible to the entire system during normal operation. As long as RESET# is inactive, it could let the signals on A20M#, IGNNE#, LINT[1] and LINT[0] pass without interference. The lock circuit would listen to the RESET# pin; upon hearing it go active, it would kick into action. It would have to block any signal coming from the chipset onto A20M#, IGNNE#, LINT[1] and LINT[0] and impose its own, fixed multiplier on those pins until RESET# goes inactive again. The following picture gives a functional depiction of how this mechanism would work.

 

Sources close to Intel said the chip maker will introduce its 433 megahertz (MHz) Celeron processor several months ahead of schedule, on March 15. The processor was not expected to arrive until sometime during the second quarter.

Sources indicated that Intel is speeding production to better compete for PC design wins with Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) upcoming K6-3 processor. The two chips are targeted at vendors building PCs in the sub-$1,200 range.

As a result, Intel will also debut its 466MHz Celeron ahead of schedule, to the second quarter of this year -- it was originally slated to arrive late in the second quarter. Both of Intel's new chips will feature 66MHz system bus architectures.

At only $130-$150 the Dynamite TNT is a fantastic TNT-driven product for gamers looking for a true AGP 2X part that's based on the nVidia TNT technology. It's just as fast as the competition's TNT boards, it costs less, because you're not paying for a bundle, and it offers a cooling fan and superb driver support. There's just really not much more to want in a 16MB TNT-driven solution. The only feature this board is missing is TV-Out support, but since most gamers don't always have a TV in close proximity to their PC; it's a feature most gamers won't be missing.

 

A3D-enhanced games sound great, regular games sound great, even my Super Nintendo plugged into my WinTV card sounds great.  These are pure gaming speakers.  They position audio greatly and will pump out the music nicely. I personally like to play games really loud and I'm glad I got these speakers to do that with.  They don't distort or sound crappy when turned up loud... they just sound better.

Does ABIT^® have a Super 7 Board?

Although at the re-launch of the project we felt the Super 7 market was still a viable market for us, as the window for a robust market entry has recently closed we felt the project was in danger on not being able to be supported by the current Super 7 market. So as of Jan. 20th 1999, ABIT^® has dropped our SK5 Super 7 project. In addition, ABIT^® feels that the future trend for the new Socket 370 market looks good. ABIT^® deeply regrets any confusion or disappointment in relation to the project. We will continue to work with all architectures and provide the most innovative and wide selection of boards for the computer industry. For any questions please contact: market@abit.com.tw

 

Take ABIT's BH6, remove the slot-1 connector, and position the 443BX controller chip and a Socket-370 interface next to each other in the empty space and you have the ABIT BM6.  The BM6 features ABIT's standard 5/2/1 expansion slot configuration (PCI/ISA/AGP) and combines the peripheral expansion capabilities with 3 SDRAM DIMM slots accepting up to 768MB of RAM as documented by ABIT in the specifications sheet. 

 

"There is a new revision of the Rage 128GL chip which is 215R4GASA22. It does not include any functional changes however it is a completely modified substrate which improves the power supply of the chip and the heat diversion. (...) All the shipping products have revision A22 of the Rage 128GL chip. You can do a 48 hour test with the Rage Dawning Demo in 1024x768x32bpp and you will not see any missing triangle. At this point I disagree with you - the Rage 128GL A22 chip does NOT need any cooling. As an evidence I will send you an XPERT 128 board (Rage 128GL, 16MB SDRAM)."

 

ASUS released new BETA drivers for the ASUS AGP-V3400 TNT. These v2.0
drivers have the name DETONATOR and are based on the new NVIDIA
reference drivers v1.07a (1007)!

I´ve made some 3DMARK99 runs. Check it out on my page:
http://www.rivastation.com/index_e.htm

The driver can be found on the ASUS ftp-server shortly. in the meantime
you can download the 1MB sized driver from RIVA Station (Got OK by ASUS)

I want those new 1.07a reference drivers, I wonder how they jumped from 0.48 to 1.07a

The highly overclockable Celeron 300(a) is now a classic. With Intel stopping Production, and the Highly wanted BH6 being hard to find, the BX6-2 will Surely become a Collectors Item. Users lucky enough to have a Celeron 300(a) And no Motherboard will want to pick up a BX6-2. Those owners with a BH6 Model Will not find many reasons to warrant the upgrade. Users that don’t plan on pushing Their CPU’s to the limits, and need stableness will have to go elsewhere. Those looking To Post at 1GB of RAM are in luck. The 168pin DIMM sockets can soak-up 256MB PC- 100 SDRAM DIMMS like Gatorade on a Hot day.

 

Fixes/Updates:

• Contains the latest bios (v1.44.2)
• Support the new DX6's Flexiable Vertex Format (FVF)
• Allow the 'Advanced Properties' module to be shown correctly under Blastercontrol

• Graphics Blaster Exxtreme Driver (Win9X - Revision 5 - 1.5 MB)

 

Intended initially for medical imaging applications, the Roentgen (named after the discoverer of the X ray) has some impressive specifications: The 16.3-inch display has a resolution of 2,560 by 2,048 pixels (over 5 million pixels). That's 6.7 times as many pixels as an XGA display (1,024 by 768 pixels) and 4 times as many as a Super XGA (1,280 by 1,024 pixels).

In related news, Japan manufactures are raising flat-panel prices by as much as 30% in april.  Check out the ZDNet article here.

The PT795 uses a new Mitsubishi tube. The image quality on the ViewSonic PT795 is truly first rate. Distortion is eliminated due to the perfectly flat screen moire, color, contrast, and uniformity was tested using several display test images. You may notice that the advertised dot pitch is 0.25mm aperture grill in the center and 0.27mm aperture grill at the corners. This is due to some of the tricks needed to make a true flat CRT. On our image tests the difference was not noticeable except when we got very close to the monitor and compared text at the center and then text at the corner. In day to day use this would not be a concern.

 

I have always been one of those people who'd think that any 10-dollar sound card was good enough for almost everyone - and those who needed more MIDI power could simply download software wavetable programs, such as Wingroove and Yamaha's YXG50. Not being exactly a sound expert, I have seen many sound cards in action, and wasn't really impressed by any of them. I remember that my friend's SB AWE 64 sounded as good as my 10-dollar Yamaha OPL3card. I used to think that as long as the card had 44Khz, 16-bit stereo wave capabilities,the brand didn't matter much. So, I received Creative's Sound Blaster Live! with a littlebit of skepticism. I thought it was just another sound card with a bunch of useless gadgets on it, but I was wrong...

 

I've found stability to be very good, even at the higher bus speeds. At 527mhz, it was still rock solid. It could run Quake II at 1280x960 in the foreground and Unreal (a real touchy game in terms of overclocking) at 1024x768 in the background, and this with all visuals and sound quality maxed. It can crunch these things in software, and even toss Final Reality in software on there looped. Memory could be used in any DIMM slot without affecting stability, something that could not be said about the some BH6's.

 

What really changed my mind however, was the ease of modification to obtain dual-Celeron operation. Before the PPGA Celeron, the process required custom equipment (some of which is apparently not readily available in the US) and some real precision modification to the CPU itself. With a slocket, it's possible for anyone who's handled a soldering iron before to fashion themselves a dual-CPU rig. Theoretically this should be possible with any slocket design, and you can expect documentation on how to do so shortly on the web. I might even try it myself!

 

As you can see, if you're going to be burning a full 74 minute audio CD, or a full 650MB data CD, the time to record on a 4X burner such as the Yamaha is approximately 18.5 minutes, a good balance between the annoyingly slow 2X burn time and the extremely fast, and expensive, 8X burn time. Why would you want to go for a 4X burner instead of a faster 6X or 8X drive? The speed at which you burn a disc doesn't depend entirely upon the drive itself, but also the media being used, as many cheaper discs won't allow for reliable copies to be made at speeds greater than 2X or 4X, with 6X or 8X writing being out of the question. Just recently have blank CD-R discs become available in 6X rated versions, with the majority of them concentrated at the 4X burner market, making 8X drives the alternative for those with much (much) deeper pockets as both 8X certified media and 8X burners are quite expensive.

 

HardwareCentral: How much of a difference in terms of performance does the
increase in memory speed give (between the 125Mhz RAM GT and the 143Mhz Pro
versions)?

Michelle Belusar of S3: The performance increase will be different for each
benchmark or application depending on the amount of memory accesses.  In
general, I would expect approximately 10 to 15% difference between Savage4
Pro and Savage4 GT in 3D performance.

 

TV-out is provided by Chrontel's 7003 chip, which provides excellent image quality at 640 by 480 and 800 by 600 resolutions. Unlike TNT cards from STB and Diamond, which feature TV-out but cannot display on the TV and monitor simultaneously, the V3400 can do this dual display when running in high-color mode. TV-out includes positioning adjustment and flicker control, but we were disappointed to see that there wasn't any support for simultaneous display in DOS mode.

Windows 9X Reference Drivers:

• Voodoo2 3.01.01 (WHQL Compliant) Driver v1.03.01
  Run-time drivers for Voodoo2 on Win95/98. They include: Glide 2.54, Glide 3.01, Direct3D, DirectX 6.x, support for AMD 3DNow! and the Voodoo2 Control Panel. This is the minimum set of drivers that you'll need to run your Voodoo2 board.
  

• Voodoo2 Control Panel (Non-WHQL Compliant)
  A non-WHQL compliant Control Panel for Voodoo2 (it does not include any of the components included in File #1). This file will allow you to use the enable/disable VSync feature, but will overwrite the WHQL certified Control Panel in the process.

Windows NT reference drivers:

• File #1: Voodoo2 v3.01.01
  Run-time drivers for Voodoo2 on WinNT. They include: Glide 2.54, Glide 3.01, support for AMD 3DNow! and the Voodoo2 Control Panel. This is the minimum set of drivers that you'll need to run your Voodoo2 board on WindowsNT.
  
• File #2: Voodoo2 Control Panel (Non-WHQL Compliant)
  A non-WHQL compliant Control Panel for Voodoo2 (it does not include any of the components included in File #1). This file will allow you to use the enable/disable VSync feature, but will overwrite the WHQL certified Control Panel in the process.

 

Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. today announced that the company plans to develop one of the PC market's first AGP 4X graphics accelerators based on S3's new Savage4 architecture.

The AGP 4X technology allows for the transfer of twice as many 3D textures versus previous generation AGP 2X implementations. Furthermore, Diamond's Savage4-based product will take advantage of S3 Texture Compression, or S3TC, for 3D graphics featuring larger, more realistic textures. Diamond's next-generation product is expected to provide uncompromised 2D and 3D graphics acceleration and digital video playback performance for the mainstream PC gaming and consumer markets at an engaging price point.

``Diamond is partnering with S3 to deliver a feature-rich graphics solution to PC consumers and OEMs,'' said Scott Vouri, vice president and general manager of core graphics at Diamond Multimedia. ``Diamond plans to capitalize on its close and long-standing relationship with S3 as a key partner to bring performance 3D graphics to the mainstream PC market.''

``Savage4's 4X AGP and S3TC will clearly give Diamond a competitive advantage in the market,'' said Rick Bergman, vice president of marketing for S3 Incorporated. ``We anticipate that Diamond will be highly successful in both the OEM and retail markets with their upcoming Savage4-based product.'' With true 32-bit 3D rendering, complete DirectX 6 support, AGP 4X technology and full optimization for Intel Pentium III and AMD K7 processors, Diamond's Savage4-based graphics accelerator is expected to provide the horsepower to enhance the performance and intensify the realism of today's mainstream and gaming applications.

 

The experience set forth by this system is one of the best I've had with my computer hardware in a long time. This kit brings the best out of your sound system and your computer in ways which you never imagined. The price tag of $249 makes this system well worth the money. Creative Labs has done a fantastic job of putting this setup together and their experience in the multimedia hardware industry has earned them a top position on my list. The documentation in this kit was some of the best I've had experience with in a long time, and the player software was fantastic as well. The decoder card has great features and the quality of the picture is amazing. The sound is incredible as well. If you have a free PCI slot in your computer and are contemplating getting a DVD kit, get this one, you won't be disappointed.

 

The Diamond Sonic Impact S90 is card that I would recommend to a person with a midrange system that doesn't want to spend $100+ on a sound card, but at the same time wants more than just 16-bit audio.  If not for the hogging up CPU time, I would have recommended it for a low end system, but in order for no loss to occur in the quality of sound, the quality of the graphics would have to suffer.

 

S3 will also be offering two variants of the Savage4 chip. The Savage4 GT will only support a maximum of 16Mb memory running at a 125MHz clock with a 270MHz RAMDAC, while the high end Savage4 PRO will support the full whack of 32Mb running at 143MHz with a 300MHz RAMDAC. The truly amazing thing is how much the chips cost: US$22 and US$25 for the GT and PRO versions respectively (in units of 10,000). This is much cheaper than any other high end chip on the market today, and as a result this will cause board prices to be surprisingly low. It may not be impossible to see a 32Mb board selling for less than US$140, which may translate to ~£100, which makes me ask the question: Who else is going to be making hundred quid boards with 32Mb of memory? Chances are no one will, at least not in the short term.

 

Guillemot seems to have done everything right, though just by following 3Dfx’s design map, they managed to bring the Phoenix to market at a lower price than most of their competitors. For those who demand the SGRAM, the Phoenix is a prime candidate. Building a business machine? More accurately, on a budget for a "business machine"? Excellent 2D for those long days, and 3D that works for those "off-hours" deathmatching on the office LAN. Another thing worth noting is that the Phoenix comes in a PCI bus package too, making this product one of my top recommendations for some people still running on lower end machines.