Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:00 AM CET - Dec,17 2002
- Post a comment
- What do you want to see in Halo for the PC? - Make your voice
heard at the
Halo PC Wish List topic at the Gearbox forums.
- Coming soon: Video game price cuts - The consensus seems to
be that
we can expect another round of cuts before mid-year, most likely right
around the same time as the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the gaming
industry's annual trade show. Most execs are predicting another $50 reduction,
taking the Xbox and PS2 to $149 and the GameCube to $99. While unlikely, they
acknowledge it's not inconceivable that PS2 and Xbox prices could fall to $99
(and, by default, the GameCube would slip to $50). Either way, the cuts
are going to have a ripple effect on the gaming world.
- Microsoft postpones DirectX 9 date for a week - Microsoft has
postponed
the launch of DirectX 9 for a week. We said that DirectX 9 would
officially be introduced on Thursday 12th but its plans have changed, we have
learned.The new "final date" is 19th of December, just before Christmas
to make many Radeon 9700 and 9500 generations people happy.
- Die another day and Harry Potter 2 DVD Leaked - Both the movies
James
Bond: Die Another Day and
Harry
Potter 2 DVDs are now available to download on the internet. The website
posts release information of groups that make the movies available for
downloading. As N. writes: "They seem to have been leaked from the Oscar 2002
movie award screenings. Also seems that LOTR Two Towers DVD will be available
too before Christmas." (Source
CDRFreaks.com).
- Intel postpones Wi-Fi chip -
Intel is delaying its first Wi-Fi chip so the company can clean up some
engineering issues and clear a few more regulatory hurdles. The Santa Clara,
Calif.-based chipmaker originally intended to come out with a dual-band
802.11(a)(b) chip at the same time that it released Banias, a new chip
specifically designed for notebooks, and Calexico, a module for containing
802.11 or Wi-Fi chips and other components.
- Warner Backs CD/DVD-Audio Hybrid - Warner Music Group is
supporting efforts by the DVD Forum to create a hybrid dual-layer CD/DVD-audio
disc, according to reports from New York the first week of December. WMG,
a unit of AOL Time Warner, is one of the music industry's principal backers of
the DVD-Audio format. The creation of a hybrid disc would require amendments
to the "Red Book" CD standard. CD players, under the current standard, can't
read DVD-Audio discs-for that matter, neither can most DVD-Video players,
which default to a DVD-Audio disc's alternate Dolby Digital multichannel
tracks, as if the disc were a DVD movie. (A "Warner Vision" informational
website discusses DVD-A's capabilities in depth.)
- New CDMA PPC Phone, With Keyboard? - Ryan of Juss Press took
one very interesting picture at GadgetFest in San Diego:
a new Hitachi PPC that might be coming out for the Sprint Vision network.
Can you say camera, thumb keyboard, and 1xRTT all in one?
- ECS Xabre600 graphics cards on the market - Motherboard maker
Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) recently extended its graphics card
operation further with the release of the
Camelot Xabre 600 (model number AG600). Adopting the 0.13-micron process,
the Xabre600 offers a clock speed of up to 300MHz. Meanwhile, incorporating
64MB of memory, the Camelot Xabre 600 can allow faster processing.
- Delta Chrome info removed - S3 Graphics has removed the information
about Delta Chrome9 :-o, well, I bet they will officially announce it this or
next week.
- Philips Announces New Sound Technology -
Called Sound Agent 2, the new Philips technology uses sophisticated
algorithms to analyze sound along two dimensions, the source of the sound and
where the sound is going to be played, resulting in high quality total sound
optimization.
- Memory Market Overview (December, 2002) -
Now
memory module makers will have something to put their efforts into. They
have been occupied with some real nonsense lately: producing memory modules
that work at non-nominal frequencies in mass quantities. Corsair, the
well-known manufacturer of overclocker's modules, rolls out the second version
of its modules based on 434MHz chips with the respective bandwidth of
3.5GB/sec. Yeah, the second one, with lower latencies than the first. GeIL and
OCZ produced 466MHz modules they call "PC3700". Moreover, OCZ announced 500MHz
"PC4000" modules! Of course, the latency is too high, and we would also like
to know how many CPUs there are in this world that can synchronously work with
the 250MHz memory bus. Not very many, we guess.
- simFUSION: The Open, PC-Based Simulation Solution -
E&S simFUSION is the first and only PC-based visual system to offer
advanced simulation features. Fully OpenGL compliant and D3D compliant,
simFUSION can be configured to meet your requirements and price range. For the
developers of training and simulation environments, simFUSION provides the
features that you need to create realistic and effective training experiences,
including the best PC image quality available under real simulation
conditions. No one knows the full range of visual simulation technology better
and Evans & Sutherland, and with simFUSION, you get all the benefits of E&S
inside. Best of all, simFUSION gives you this level of performance at the
lowest system cost of any PC-based image generator.
- Benchmarking Intel C++ to GNU g++ -
Preliminary Pentium 4 numbers are here! I've extended the tables, keeping
the Pentium III numbers for comparison purposes. You'll find specifications
for both test systems below. I'm likely to update this article after the first
of the year, based on feedback from readers and two new "real world"
benchmarks that I'm getting ready. The article has been expanded, and I've
fixed some inconsistencies in the text. In particular, my conclusions changed
in light of the Pentium 4 tests. To get the whole story, read the entire
article.
- BIOS Optimization Guide Rev. 7 Part 6 - Adrian's Rojak Pot has
posted Part 6 of
the Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide Rev. 7.
- Xbox Media Player (XBMP) version 2.0 - A new version of the
Xbox Media Player (XBMP) has been released. XBMP requires a modchip to
work and can be used to play AVI, MPG, MP3...from a CD-RW/DVD inside the Xbox
DVD-ROM or of the Xbox hard disk drive.
- MSN Messenger 5.0.0543 - MSN Messenger has been updated to
version 5.0.0543.
- Powerstrip 3.30 Build 364 Final (Bugfix) - An updated final version
of Powerstrip 3.30.364
(bugfix release after 362) is out.
- O&O DriveLED -
O&O DriveLED (freeware) takes the hard disk LED, which is built into your
computer, and puts it right there on your monitor screen. And there's more -
you can see information about activity on virtual drives, e.g. network drives,
and you can easily tell the difference between disk reading and disk writing
activity. (thanks
WindowsXP.nu)
|
Updated:09:01 AM CEST Jun,22
(new)
