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Tech News for Friday October 15th 1999

AMD kicks 1ghz Athlon into production.
Posted: 10/15/99     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise
The Register reports that AMD has sent the first copper chips to production for the 1ghz Athlon chip in Dresden's Fab30 production plant. AMD is gearing up for the 1ghz release sometime in Q1 2000. No price was given.

Woohoo. I can't wait - dual 1ghz AMD chips in one system. 

Asus announces GeForce 256 based video cards. 
Posted: 10/15/99     Source: nV News  Added by: Kim Heise
Saw this news post over at nV News that Asus has two new video cards ready for launch:

There will be two models available at the beginning stage:
1) V6600 with 32MB pure VGA available by 20th of October
2) V6600 with 64MB, TV-Out & Video-in available by 30th of October

U.S. hands down final tariff duties against Taiwan's DRAM makers
Posted: 10/15/99     Source: CMP Net  Added by: Kim Heise
Are you also tired of RAM prices? One day it's way up there, tomorrow it's dirt cheap and then two days later it's sky high again. Well there's good news for us consumers:
The U.S. Commerce Department yesterday assessed final dumping duties against Taiwan's DRAM manufacturers ranging from 8.21% to 35.58%-with one DRAM design house charged tariffs of 69%.

Windows 2000 delayed (again).
Posted: 10/15/99     Source: ZDNN  Added by: Kim Heise
Just two days ago I posted a news article that Windows 2000 should hopefully be released this year. Now ZDNN reports that Microsoft has officially delayed Windows 2000 and it will most likely not hit the streets until February 2000. 

More price drops for the AMD K7 Athlon.
Posted: 10/15/99     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise
Here's the scoop from the Register on AMD's new prices to further turn up the heat for Intel:

Sources said that AMD will drop the price of its top-of-the-range processor, the Athlon 700MHz part, from around $835 to a rather spooky $666 on the 24th of October. There is also likely to be a 750MHz part introduced soon -- AMD has always said it will scale its Athlons quickly.

IBM unveils 73GB hard drive.
Posted: 10/15/99     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise
IBM will announce the UltraStar 72ZX 73GB hard drive today. IBM now takes the lead again over Seagate's 50gb hard drive. If you think the size of the drive is amazing you also need to now the drive is the standard 1 inch high drive with an average seek time of 4.9ms!!

Site News Update.
Posted: 10/15/99     Source: N/A  Added by: Kim Heise
I apologize for the lack of news yesterday but I had a crazy day at work and will try to catch up with yesterday's news.

Tech News for Thursday October 14th 1999

Windows 2000 final will be out in November.
Posted: 10/14/99     Source: ZDNET  Added by: Kim Heise
Microsoft plans to ship Windows 2000 RC3 which will be dubbed the "final" sometime in November. It is still unclear if Windows 2000 will be shipping this year to the general public and Microsoft simply plans to release it when it's "done".

Tech News for Wednesday October 13th 1999

HardOCP overclocks 700mhz Pentium III Coppermine to 800mhz.
Posted: 10/13/99     Source: HardOCP  Added by: Kim Heise
I saw this article over at Anandtech that HardOCP has managed to get hold of the new Intel Coppermine CPU and overclock it from 700mhz to 800mhz. Here's some of their conclusions:

Basically what we are seeing here is a 38% increase in clock speed over the PIII-500 used for the constant and we also see a 38% increase in performance. (thank god!) I would have been disappointed with anything else.

No bad.
For those of you not familiar with "overclocking", it's simply a term for running a CPU faster than it was designed to go. This can be done with various cooling and hardware optimizing methods.

SoundTrack Digital XG Review.
Posted: 10/13/99     Source: The Firingsquad  Added by: Kim Heise
Take a look over at The Firingsquad for their full review on the  SoundTrack Digital XG sound card which is based on Yamaha's second generation YMF744 chip. The new card has some very impressive features such as ABS/EBU digital connectors, and Toslink digital optical connectors. 

Details on Intel's i820 Camino chipset.
Posted: 10/13/99     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise
The team over at The Register have been able to find some specs on Intel's upcoming Camino chipset.

The OR840 has built in support for floppy drive, ultra DMA and integrated Fast Ethernet 10/100 Base TX. Video, which is not integrated, has a 266MHz data transfer rate, while the board has two USB ports, one 32-bit PCI slot, and five other bus slots. Bus slot four uses AGP 4x.

GetRight 4.1 Released
Posted: 10/13/99     Source: Getright  Added by: Kim Heise
The title speaks for the itself. If you haven't heard about Getright it is a fully featured downloading tool for the serious downloader and novices alike. Advanced features include scheduling downloads, dialing your modem, hanging up your modem (or shutting down your computer) when downloads are done, finding the fastest server to download from, and more.

Another nasty security hole with Internet Explorer 5.0
Posted: 10/13/99     Source: ZDNET  Added by: Kim Heise
The Bulgarian bug-finder Georgi Guninski has uncovered his 12th Internet Explorer 5.0 bug and this one allows hackers to read the contents of one's hard drive. Microsoft said they would release a patch for this new security breach by the end of the week and suggests to disable all ActiveX controls until then. 

Here's an important clip from the article:
It may also enable "window spoofing," or opening a window in a user's browser that appears to be the location of a trusted site, the report said. When an unsuspecting user types in his or her credit card number or other personal information, that data is sent to the owner of the malicious website instead.

USB 2.0 to reach 480Mbps
Posted: 10/13/99     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise
The official specs on USB (universal serial bus) 2.0 have been released and the speed has been increased to 480mbsp. The new standard is supposed to be shipping in systems sometime during Q2 of 2000.

Asus AMD K7 KM7 motherboard to ship this month.
Posted: 10/13/99     Source: AMD Zone  Added by: Kim Heise
AMD Zone reports that Asus's much anticipated Athlon (AMD K7) motherboard will be shipping on October 19th. No word yet on pricing.
On other somewhat related news, AMD will drop Athlon prices on October 24th and the K6-X prices on November 1st.

Notable stock market movers.
Posted: 10/13/99     Source: News.com  Added by: Kim Heise
Some very interesting company quarterly results have been posted. For the third quarter, Intel reported revenues of $7.33 billion, slightly more than the $7.3 billion expected. Earnings, however, came to $1.9 billion, or 55 cents a share, before accounting for acquisitions. While this represents an increase of 22 percent over earnings of 45 cents a share for the third quarter of 1998, it is less than was expected for the period. Analysts polled by First Call expected earnings of 57 cents a share, or nearly $1.97 billion. A number of analysts expected earnings to reach 59 cents per share.

On the flipside,
Seagate Technology, the world's largest disk drive maker, walloped analysts expectations today by 14 cents a share. Seagate reported earnings of diluted net income of $2 million, or 1 cent a share, on $1.68 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2000 first quarter, ended October 1.This compares to revenue of $1.55 billion a year earlier with a net loss of $ 30 million, or 12 cents a share. Excluding restructuring charges and net gains related to the purchase of Veritas Software, Seagate earned 7 cents a share compared to a projected loss of 7 cents a share according to a consensus by First Call.

Tech News for Tuesday October 12th 1999

Intel's Camino Chip Set Expected In 4Q
Posted: 10/12/99     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise
According to TechWeb Intel is going to release the much troubled i820 chipset (Camino) this year. Early rumors had posted the release date sometime in Q1 2000. The post does mention that the chipset will only be shipped out in small quantities which could most likely mean us consumers will not be able to get our hands on it until early next year.

Sources said they were specifically told that Intel would roll out the Camino, or Intel 820 as it is officially known, in the fourth quarter. They said the company also indicated that it would be able to ship the product at that time, though only in small quantities. Earlier this week, Intel publicly denied the Camino would be released in the first quarter of 2000, contradicting published reports.

Debian Linux Backers To Introduce Retail OS
Posted: 10/12/99     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise
Ah, competition is good..... 

SGI, VA Linux Systems, O'Reilly Associates, and the Debian Project are coming together to place another retail distribution of Linux on the market, but this one has a twist: it's non-profit.

Debian, a non-commercial Linux distribution since the early 1980s, will be packaged for the international operating systems market. The companies said all profits will be donated to Software in the Public Interest, which includes the Debian Project, a non-profit organization of about 500 Linux developers

Site news update.
Posted: 10/12/99     Source: N/A   Added by: Kim Heise
Hitechbits.com is looking for some people to help with the news posts. If you are interested please email me and let me know.  

Galileo introduces Router-On-Chip
Posted: 10/12/99     Source: TechWeb   Added by: Kim Heise
Everything keeps getting smaller and more powerful. Well to back up that claim TechWeb have posted a news flash about a company (Galileo) who has managed to fit a series of basic network router functions on a single chip. This translates to reduced prices and physically smaller devices which is always good news for us consumers. 

Here's a piece from the news post:
The single-chip GT-96100 integrates five functions that, in current systems, are usually implemented as discrete chips: WAN  controller, PCI arbiter, PCI system controller, and two Fast Ethernet controllers. The resulting chip, when combined with an external processor, can support up to eight channels linked to a WAN moving data at 55 megabits per second at full-duplex rates. Two Fast Ethernet channels are linked to the LAN end of the IC; other peripherals can be used with the PCI interfaces.

Microsoft Millennium not canceled.
Posted: 10/12/99     Source: Betanews  Added by: Kim Heise
Microsoft has put their foot down and squashed all rumors that their new OS (Millennium) had been canceled. Betanews has the bottom line from Microsoft and here's a snippet:

Microsoft today put an end to rumors that Windows Millennium had been canceled, stating "We still have a long way to go." The rumors surfaced late last week in the wake of a suggestion that Millennium would become merely a service release update for Windows 98.

Jump over here to read the full article. For those of you not familiar with Millennium, it is a new operating system being developed by Microsoft with a supposedly revolutionary interface. No mention has been made when Millennium is expected to be shipped. Millennium is not to be confused with Windows 2000. 

Impressive GeForce 256 DDR Benchmarks.
Posted: 10/12/99     Source: Lance Gibb  Added by: Kim Heise
My good friend Lance forwarded me these benchmarks from Riva3D that are simply mind-blowing. 
Here's a snippet directly from the Riva3D article showing Quake2 and Quake3 benchmarks. The results are posted in frames/sec.

Now take a look at Quake 3 benchmarks. These results took me by surprise.

Almost 100 frames/sec! That is very impressive. I think the GeForce 256 DDR is currently the video card to get.

Tech News for Monday October 11th 1999

Intel Coppermine prices.
Posted: 10/11/99     Source: The Register    Added by: Kim Heise
Here's a direct quote from The Register on Intel's Coppermine prices:

AMD K7 700mhz Athlon systems available at Circuit City.
Posted: 10/11/99     Source: AMD Zone    Added by: Kim Heise
The AMD Zone reports that Circuit City stores are selling the new AMD 700mhz machines. No prices were posted but I might try and drop by one of the local stores to take a test drive and obtain some prices.

Detailed GeForce 256 benchmarks.
Posted: 10/11/99     Source: Shugashack     Added by: Kim Heise

The Sugashack has some benchmarks comparing the GeForce 256 to the TNT2-Ultra and the Voodoo 3. The benchmarks were conducted on P2-300, P3-450 and on the AMD K7 600.
You can jump directly to any results by selecting a link below:

Athlon @ 600mhz
Voodoo3 3500, TNT2 Ultra, GeForce256
Quake2, Q3Test v1.08

Pentium3 @ 450mhz
Voodoo3 3500, TNT2 Ultra, GeForce256
Quake2, Q3Test v1.08

Source: Shugashack.

If I had to throw in my two cents worth, I still can't say I'm overly impressed at this time with the performance and I'm still going to hold onto my TNT2-ultra a little while longer until the DDR version of the GeForce256 ships and the prices drop a little. I haven't seen many screenshots using the GeForce 256 and that may change my mind.

By all means it is the fastest video card on the market but for $300 to $350 that seems a little steep. If you are in the market to buy a new video card today and are upgrading from anything other than a TNT2-ultra, Matrox G400 or a Voodoo3 then it is worth it.

At this point when more games begin to support the new GeForce256 features and when the drivers will be more tweaked we might see dramatic speed improvements.