Sunday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:24 PM CEST - Jun,15 2003
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- Fast forward into trouble - Four years ago, Bhutan, the
fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce
television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries,
was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan's first
crime wave - murder, fraud, drug offences.
- Pentagon to Move to Next-Generation Internet - The Defense
Department said on Friday it planned to link its high-tech weaponry,
battlefield sensors and other communications systems to an upgraded Internet
operating system within five years.
The new standard, known as Internet Protocol Version 6, or IPv6, being
developed by an independent standard-setting body, will help glue together the
key components of the Defense Department's so-called Global Information Grid
-- its sensors, weapons, aircraft, information systems and digitally linked
forces.
- Unleash the beast inside your cell phone - The megabyte or four of
memory and the couple of multi-megahertz CPUs that are standard on today's
Web-enabled mobiles dwarf what you could find on almost any machine available
to the developers of Unix, e-mail or the Internet. Yet most of the time, all
that
computing power just sits unused.
- Has Google run out? - A rumour is spreading like the plague
over the infinite paths of the Internet: Google has reached overbooking. The
most popular creature in the virtual universe has space problems, or, more
precisely, it could have them in the future. In fact, is seems that the most
popular search engine in the world is about to reach the limit of
its capacity of listed pages: 4,294,967,296. A numeric problem that is
mainly due to a calculation error.
- Microsoft kicks IE for Mac out the door -Microsoft
will not create a new version of Internet Explorer for Macs in a move that
leaves Apple users in an uncomfortable spot. Jimmy Grewal, the Microsoft Mac
IE lead, is fleeing Redmond and heading to Dubai due to the browser's
termination. Microsoft is saying it will provide some updates to IE 5 for Macs
but does not plan to release an IE 6. It reckons users are in good hands with
Apple's own Safari browser, and so the trouble begins.
- ATI's new secret weapon is the R420 -
According
to The Inquirer, the R420 is being developed under the project name Loki,
named after the Norse deity, son of Farbauti, held responsible for fire and
magic, and able to take numerous different shapes. Loki was also held directly
responsible for the death of the god of light, Baldur. The R420 will be a PCI
Express chip and at this time we can only wonder how many transistors it will
have, but we have every reason to assume more than 110 million and probably
less than 150 million. Production and market availability of the cards is
scheduled for Q1 2004.
- ABIT Engineers Crack the 865PE Code ABIT's IS7 / IC7 Series now with
Game Accelerator - In a spectacular feat of engineering prowess, the
ABIT Engineers have created
a BIOS for the IS7 Series that unlocks the performance of the 865PE chipset,
making the ABIT IS7 series boards the fastest 865PE motherboards ever made!
Even at stock speeds, the IS7 series is 17% faster than all other Springdale
boards. The IC7 Series also takes advantage of ABIT's Game Accelerator making
the ABIT IS7 / IC7 series the gamer's choice for more frags, better gameplay
and mind-bending graphic performance. Within ABIT Softmenut, Game Accelerator
allows users the following options: Auto, Turbo, Street Racer, F1.
- Albatron GeForce FX 5200 Ultra Review - For those who currently
want to upgrade from their GeForce 4 Ti4200 or Radeon 9000 will probably want
to look elsewhere as there wouldn't be much of an improvement. Sure there is
DX9 compatibility but you will probably want something with more pixel pushing
power. It was interesting to see that the
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra was able to compete quite competitevely with the GeForce
FX 5600 in many of the benchmarks. Currently Albatron's GeForce FX 5200
Ultra goes for around $145 but Im sure you can find slightly lower prices if
you shop around. For $15 more you can get a GeForce FX 5600 and in my opinion
be more happier than you would be with a 5200 Ultra in the long run when
playing games with AA & AF enabled.
- Inno3D's Tornado GeForce FX 5200 Ultra Review -
Inno3D's Tornado GeForce FX 5200 Ultra isn't yet available online, but
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra cards from other manufacturers are going for as low as
$132 on Pricewatch-a good $11 cheaper than the least expensive GeForce FX 5600
and $30 cheaper than ATI's Radeon 9600 Pro. If Inno3D is to be competitive
among other GeForce FX 5200 Ultra manufacturers, its card will have to come in
at around $130.
- Athlon XP Chipset Shootout - VIA KT400 vs. VIA KT400A vs. nVidia nForce
2 -
Epox's nForce2 is defiantly the quickest motherboard thanks to its Dual
Channel. The KT400 held its ground and MSI have been able to put together a
very nice product. The DFI is defiantly the coolest looking board in the
roundup (and possibly ever) and comes with a host of features but it seems to
be let down by a poorly designed chipset. Considering the KT400 doesn't have
support for Dual Channel, it performed very well in a large amount of tests,
it will be interesting to see when VIA brings Dual Channel chipsets to the
party, if they even do.
- 865PE/875P Motherboard Roundup June 2003 - Part 1: 20-way Shootout
- After many hours of testing the guys at AnandTech have decided that the
best
value Pentium 4 motherboard is ABIT's IS7 based on the 865PE chipset. The
IS7's assortment of onboard features such as IEEE 1394 FireWire, Serial ATA
RAID, 10/100 LAN, and AC'97 alone make it a great buy at just over $105.
However what separates the ABIT IS7 from other motherboard's is its excellent
overclocking ability and superb performance that rival the most expensive
motherboards on the market, including those based on Intel's 875P chipset.
- Albatron KM18G Pro V2.0 nForce2 IGP Motherboard Review - With a
retail price of $170 CDN ($105 US) the
Albatron KM18G Pro v2.0 is a little on the pricey side, but then again
smaller sized components have always costed more. The KM18G Pro v2.0 supports
current 200/266/333 MHz FSB based AthlonXP processors and can be used with a
maximum of 3GB of PC1600/2100/2700/3200 DDR RAM. Because of the relative small
size, the only "frills" of the motherboard are its 10/100 LAN, integrated
video & TV-out, and 5.1 audio.
- Samsung HT-DB600TH Home Theater System Review - Although contained
within a small package,
this
compact home theater system performs. Bringing a 500 watts of audio power
and 5 disc DVD/CD capability to a livingroom for around US$260 is nothing less
than a bargain. When compared to what it replaces, an equivalent separate
component system would cost two to three times more. It's a great system that
you can have up and running in 15 minutes which at the same time will leave a
considerable amount of cash in your pocket.
- Linux Kernel 2.4.21 released (patches) - The latest stable version
of the Linux kernel is
2.4.21 (changelog).
The release, version 2.4.21, adds support in the open-source operating system
for a host of new devices and corrects software flaws. It also incorporates
support for Advanced Micro Devices' 64-bit Opteron processor.
- Umaniacs XviD Build 11.6.2003 1420 - An updated Umaniacs
XviD build
11.6.2003 1420 codec has been released.
- GeForce FX 5900 videos - Nvidia has now offers some new WMP9 videos
for the GeForce FX 5900 -
Vulcan -
Dusk -
Last Chance Gas (thanks
Warp2Search).
- TMPGEnc v2.513.53.162 -
TMPEGenc
(changelog)
converts *.AVI file to MPEG1, the format which is used in VideoCD. Using a
variety of options in TMPEGenc, you can compress your video file in high
quality.
- WinAmp 2.92 - Nullsoft Winamp (full
~ standard ~
lite) is a
fast, flexible, high-fidelity music player for Windows. Winamp supports MP3,
CD, Audiosoft, Audio Explosion, MOD, WAV and other audio formats, custom
appearances called skins, plus audio visualization and audio effect plug-ins.
This new version fixed startup with hung winamp process in background,
shuffle, added CD ripping support in media library (with OGG Vorbis encoding
support), preliminary AAC playback support (in_mp3.dll) and more.
- Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility 5.6 - This version of the
Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility has been updated to support the new
Intel Xeon Processor, Pentium 4 processors, Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processors,
Pentium III processors, Mobile Pentium III processors with Intel SpeedStep
technology, Pentium III Xeon processors and Intel Celeron processors with 66,
100, 133, 400, 533 , and 800 MHz system memory bus products, as well as adding
new processor identification functionality (CPUID).
- nForce Linux Drivers (v1.0-0261) - NVIDIA has released a new
version of their
nForce Linux drivers (v1.0-0261).
Added kernel patch to support nForce GART; Added "spdif_status" module
parameter to audio driver to enable/disable S/PDIF support for compatability;
Fixed bug in audio driver that was causing MSI nForce board to only use 2
channels; Fixed mmap bug in audio driver causing Quake III to hang; Fixed Red
Hat Linux 9 build issue with remap_page_range(); Fixed problem with rebuilding
SRPM on Red Hat Linux 9; Added Red Hat Linux 9 and Mandrake Linux 9.1 binary
RPMs. (thanks SavegeNews)
- nForce2 Drivers 2.78 -
These v2.78 drivers
are from MSI and should work for most boards.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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