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February
24 - 29,
2000: Archive
Tuesday
- February 29th
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I noticed over at Voodoo Extreme,
that Gary Peterson has updated his Voodoo3 overclocker. It now
supports Windows 2000, here is the info and a link to download:
Now that I no longer work for 3dfx I'm free to update the Voodoo3
Overclocker again. Since Windows 2000 shipped I've had a lot of
requests to add support for it so here it is. The Graphics Clock
adjustment and Glide VSync enable/disable checkbox are fully
functional. Right now the D3D checkbox is disabled because I don't
know if it's supported in the current Windows 2000 drivers but if I
find a way to use it I'll add it and release an updated version.
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3dfx has released new beta drivers
for their Voodoo3 cards. Note that these are unsupported
drivers. Grab it below:
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Riva Station has posted a their
Cebit 2000 coverage.
In it, they take a look at products from ASUS, ATI, NVIDIA, 3dfx,
Tekram, Abit, ELSA, Creative Labs, Cyberhome, Guillemot and Impressions.
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got apex? has posted a review
of Mitsubishi's Diamond Pro 2040 22" Flat-CRT monitor. The
price is way out of my league.
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Hardware Central has posted
an article
which explains how NOT to install newly purchased upgrades to your
PC. This is a rather strange article, that lists a bunch of ways
that you can kill your PC :)
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Doc Hardware has posted a review
of Creative Labs VideoBlaster WebCam 3 USB. Not a bad piece of
equipment, especially for the price.
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Monday
- February 28th
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3dfx has released new Windows
2000 drivers for their Voodoo3 2000/3000 AGP/PCI cards, this one
supports the Velocity 100/200 as well. Grab it below:
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Hardware-One has posted a review
of AOpen's AX6C i820 based RDRAM Slot-1 motherboard. If you're
going to go with i820 board, this one is a very good choice! Check
out this bit:
The AOpen AX6C i820 Camino board is a fine piece of engineering
from the high-quality manufacturing at AOpen Inc. Aside from minor
flaws in layout, and the absence of voltage tweak options, the
motherboard represents one of the most overclocking friendly choice
there is available, not to mention its top-notch stability at
maintaining very high CPU clockspeeds.
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Fast-MHz has posted a review
of the TARGA 1000/1000 PRO and 2000/2000 PRO products. These are
mainly professional market, here is what they are:
The TARGA 1000/2000 Pro series are professional
nonlinear video and audio editing solutions. They provide the power to
create high-quality video right on your desktop computer and
transforms it into a powerful digital video editing system. The TARGA
series operates with a wide range of application software, and
supports NTSC and PAL video standards to capture, edit and play back
full-motion, full-resolution digital video. The TARGA series also
supports CD and DAT quality audio input and output. TARGA 1000 PRO and
TARGA 2000 PRO add component video I/O’s and CCIR 601 Resolution.
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3D-Unlimited has posted a review
of D-Link's USB Radio. This device hooks up to your USB port and
lets you listen to local radio stations on your PC speakers. It
even has software that converts what you get on the radio to MP3.
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Sharky has also posted a technology
extreme guide that has 10 of the most lucrative, expensive tech toys
you can find. Really interesting if nothing else, since most of us
can't afford any of these things :)
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Sharky Extreme has posted a review
of Diamond's Rio 500 64MB digital audio player. This player has
got almost everything you'd want in a next generation audio
player. The only thing missing is an FM tuner.
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BoomGames has posted a review
of Logitech's Wingman Force Feedback mouse. This awesome looking
mouse has the same dimensions of the old MouseMan 96 which some of you
know and love. It was one of the best designed mice ever! And now
they've given it a mind of it's own.
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Anand Tech has posted a huge
12-way way roundup
of motherboards based on the VIA Apollo Pro 133/133A chipsets. If
you want to get a board based on one of these chipsets, be sure to check
out this article.
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Ace's Hardware has posted a
great article
covering Intel's and AMD's plans for the next little while. The
Willamette, Thurderbird and Mustang are amongst the processors talked
about in this article.
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SystemLogic has posted a review
of the very nice looking Colorcase Yuri Mid Tower ATX case. High
quality construction, with a sweet looking exterior, what more could you
want?
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Hardware Central has posted
a review
of Plextor's UltraPlex 40X Max Ultra SCSI CD-ROM drive. They gave
it a perfect rating!
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of Evergreen's Performa 500 CPU upgrade kit. This processor
upgrade fits in a Slot-1 and is designed to upgrade old Pentium II's/Celerons.
What it really is, is a Celeron 500 with an inflated price.
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iXBT Hardware has posted a review
of Chaintech's 6ATA4 Slot-1 VIA Apollo Pro 133A based ATX motherboard.
Looks like a very decent board.
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Sunday
- February 27th
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Tweak3D has updated their CPU/BIOS
tweak guide with up-to-date information. Here are the issues
covered:
-BIOS flashing instructions and information
-BIOS tweaking (I counted 25 different settings)
-Overclocking CPUs and modifying L2 cache latency for
performance/stability.
-System tweak programs: a large list of programs that can be used to
tweak motherboard and CPU settings further.
-System recovery
-Printer friendly version available
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Overclocker's Workbench has
posted a review
of EPoX's 7KXA VIA Apollo KX133 based Slot-A motherboard. If
you've been waiting for better Athlon motherboards to surface, now is
the time it begins. Head over and see how this board performed.
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Sharky Extreme has updated
their weekly
CPU price list. HUGE drops this week, due to the addition of a
new processor in each of Intel's and AMD's high-end line-up. Those
Coppermine 550's and Athlon 500-650 are looking mighty good.
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Hot Hardware has posted a review
of DFI's PC64 i820, RDRAM based, Slot-1 ATX motherboard. Not a bad
board, but do you really want to shell out all that cash for RDRAM?
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GameFan has posted a review
of Microsoft's Sidewinder Dual Strike game controller (what the hell do
you call that thing?). It's primary use is supposed to be FPS for
beginners, but if you're already a pro with the keyboard and mouse,
don't even bother with this one.
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Here are some more articles which cover the stuff that went on at this
years Cebit show:
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Friday
- February 25th
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Tom's Hardware Guide has
posted a report
of the Spring 2000 Intel's Developer Forum. They've got pretty
much all the stuff that was covered, including info on the Williamette,
Tehama, IA-64, Foster & Colusa, Timna, Serial ATA and USB 2.0
amongst other things.
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iXBT Hardware has posted a CPU
Naming Guide. Are you confused about the tons of CPU names and
codenames floating around? This article has them all listed with
descriptions of each. Very good for reference!
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GamePC has posted a review
of Mitsubishi's 2040u 21" flat-CRT monitor. Head over and check out
this beauty.
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Anand Tech has posted the second
part of their Analysis of VIA's new KX133 Athlon chipset. They
used EPoX's 7KXA motherboard for testing and the results look good but
nothing outstanding.
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HardOCP has posted a review
of Abit's VA6 Slot-1 VIA Apollo Pro 133 based ATX motherboard.
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Extreme Hardware has posted a review
of Matrox's Millennium G400 card. This card is over a year old
now, but it's still a great choice, especially because of it's unique
features.
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Guillemot has released new
drivers for the 3D Prophet/DDR-DVI cards, grab them below:
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3DWars has posted a review
of Gen-X's Athlon Overclocked combo. This kit comes with a Full
Tower Case, an Athlon 550 overclocked to 850 and an ASUS K7M
motherboard.
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Matrox has released a whole bunch of new drivers including Windows 2000
drivers for their G100/G200/G400 based cards. Grab the ones you need below:
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Eric over at Fast Graphics has
posted part
1 of his Cebit 2000 highlights. This show is where all the big
boys show off their latest technology. In this article, there are
some info and shots of the Voodoo4/5 and some info on new products from
ATI and Matrox.
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of AMK Services OCD-3333 Full Tower ATX case. By the way, OCD
stands for "Overclockers Dream" :)
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SystemLogic is giving away a
bunch of Razer Boomslang stuff, head over to check it out and enter
yourself here.
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I'm surprised that the Joshua processor is getting all this coverage,
especially considering that it's only meant to compete with Celeron's.
In any case, it's feature set does look quite impressive. Head
over and read
Bill's take on this chip at CPUReview.
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3DSoundSurge has posted a review
of Guillemot's Maxi Sound Fortissimo PCI audio card. This card is
based on Yamaha's YMF-744 chip. This card provides great sound and
a ton of features for it's price. Here is a bit from the review:
In this review will take a look at Guillemot's Maxi
Sound Fortissimo which as uses the Yamaha YMF744 chip. The version of
the board has a built in optical out. For 3D sound and reverb it uses
the Sensaura engine which can support DS3D, I3DL2, EAX 1.0 and 2.0 and
32 3d steams. In addition the Fortissimo is bundled with a
pretty nice bundle for a 49 dollar card with the crown jewel of the
bundle being Cyberlink's PowerDVD software MPEG decoder that supports
4 speaker downmixing on the Fortissimo. At under 50
dollars is it too much of a good thing or is the Fortissimo the
bargain that it seems to be? Check out the review for all the
answers!
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Dan's Data has posted a comparison
between two of largest and best mousing surfaces around, the Everglide
Giganta and the Ratpadz mouse pad.
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PC Accelerate has also written up
a good article
on VIA's new Cyrix III processor. They've got info on the
specs, manufacturing and design.
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PC Accelerate has posted a review
of EPoX's EP-6VBA2 Slot-1 VIA Apollo Pro 133A based ATX
motherboard. EPoX has been a strong partner of VIA's and makes
some of the best boards based on VIA chipsets.
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Thursday
- February 24th
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Ars Technica has also written
up an article
on VIA's Joshua CPU (now named the Cyrix III). They've got a ton
of information on the architecture of the processor, so it's quite
interesting.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted an article
covering the launch of the VIA Cyrix III Joshua CPU. Check out
this bit:
The Cyrix III/Joshua is based on the "Cayenne" core, and
will compete with Intel's Celeron processor. The Joshua was designed
by VIA's Cyrix team in Richardson, Texas. The Joshua uses the same P6
bus and Socket 370 format as the Intel Celeron. Feature-wise, the
Joshua has a couple notable advantages over the Celeron. The Joshua
features 64KB of L1 cache and 256KB of integrated L2 cache. The Intel
Celeron only features 32KB of L1 cache and 128KB of integrated L2
cache.
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Sharky Extreme has posted a
in-depth review
of ATI's Rage Fury MAXX card. They take a look at it's technology
(dual Rage Pro 128 chips in parallel) and it's performance compared to
the GeForce. These aren't just any benchmarks, they are frame by
frame analysis.
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Storage Review has posted a review
of Quantum's new Atlas 10K II 36.7GB hard drive. When you read
this bit from the review, your mouth will probably water as much as
mine did:
After it's all said and done, the Quantum Atlas 10k II is by far
the fastest drive we've ever laid our hands on. When it comes to
performance, the Atlas is the best in every category: the best access
time, the best transfer rate, the best Win9x performance, the best
WinNT performance, the best Business performance, the best High-End
performance, etc. The list goes on and on. Seagate's restraint in the
10k landscape has resulted in a ceding of the market to Quantum. The
Atlas 10k II unequivocally trounces the Cheetah 36LP.
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The Tech Zone has posted a comparison
between the two biggest and baddest heatsinks on the market, the Alpha
P3125 and Global WIN's VOS32. The VOS32 is quite a bit cheaper, so
head over and see how it compares to the Alpha.
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Hardware Central has posted
a review
of one of the first commercially available CPU water-cooling kits, the
Senfu Watercooler. If you've always dreamed of it, but were afraid
to make one yourself, you're prayers have been answered.
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DocHardware has posted a review
of D-Link's DSB-H4 4-port USB hub. If you more than two USB
devices and you need more plugs, head over and check out this neat
little device.
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