News

VIA has unleashed another of their 4in1's. This is version 4.29 and it updates the-

inf version to 1.20a

ide miniport 3.011 to pci ide driver 1.04 in win2k

Since these new files are not on the VIA site as of yet, you can get them over at M3DZone.

If you like beta flavors instead the new beta AGP and INF are available at M3DZone as well here.

I was leery about posting this news since I think cable modem uncapping is seriously a lose-lose situation for all, but I felt it would be wiser to warn the unknowing or inexperienced, since a new program is about to emerge on the scene to help in the uncapping process. You will read in the article about a young man, who didn't know any better and paid the price for 'more speed'. It's nothing to trifle with, as a provider holds to many of the cards in detecting folks who might try to unleash the data floodgates. Read on... Cable Modem Hacking

Remember Master of Orion? The turn based strategy game? That was such a great game. Gamespot has the preview of the next version of the game!

Finishing up the development of Master of Orion III hasn't exactly been a Sunday drive. At the beginning of the year, the game was still said to be on track for a June release, but things have gone off course since then. Early last month, Infogrames revealed that the release date had been pushed back to this fall to give Quicksilver time to streamline and simplify the design. The design changes that have followed are more than simple tweaks. Some of the unique design decisions made by the original designer to balance micro- and macromanagement made it so the game was doing "too much for the players" and just wasn't fun. But the team has gone through each part of the game to set things right. The result is said to be similar in gameplay style to the first Master of Orion game, which garnered quite a following when it came out in 1993. We talked to Constantine Hantzopoulos, the game's producer at Infogrames, to get a sense of what the final game will be like after all these changes. [PAGEBREAK]
GameSpot has the full preview

According to Warp2Search, UT 2003 is coming out on 6/27/2002 (June 27, 2002). They also have a cool picture up of a piece of wall paper.[PAGEBREAK]
Go to Warp2Search for more

According to the INQ, Sun will use AMD Opteron CPUs in their system Score one for AMD.

He told me, and said that I should keep it quiet, that Sun will definitely use Opterons when the CPUs formerly known as Sledgehammer launch.

Beyond3D reviews the Visiontek Ti 4400.

While both the Ti4600 and Ti4400 are virtually identical in 3D features/technologies (they both also feature 128MB), the XTASY GeForce4 Ti4400 is a less muscular version of the XTASY GeForce4 Ti4600, the differences coming down solely to the GeForce4 chip's core clock speed as well as DDR memory clock speed. Where the Ti4600 features 300MHz/650MHz core/memory clocks, the Ti4400 features 275MHz/550MHz core/memory clocks. The difference in the core clock speed of 25MHz should not result in too much performance differences - we'll see a relatively small difference in fillrate as well as pure polygon-pushing power. The memory clock speed difference, however, could potentially decide the differences in performance in a variety of circumstances - there is a memory bandwidth difference of approximately 1.6GB/sec (the Ti4600's 10.4GB/sec versus the Ti4400's 8.8GB/sec) and this could be a major performance determinant in situations where various combinations of resolution, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering exists.

News.com reports that Hynix (The company that Micron failed to merge with) owns more than $5 billion. That means that banks and creditors will break up the company most likely.

They have asked Hynix to split up its businesses, which include memory and nonmemory semiconductors, and other operations such as TFT-LCD (thin film transistor liquid-crystal display) used in computer flat screens, the Hynix executive said.

In the battle against Microsoft, an independant contractor is now being called in. He made a version of Windows that it modular, using Win XP embedded.

The states say a modular version of Windows would level the playing field for non-Microsoft software trying to compete with Microsoft's continued practice of attaching features to the operating system like its Web browser and multimedia player.[PAGEBREAK]
But the software giant says it would be technically impossible to offer multiple versions of Windows and would create havoc for consumers and the computer industry.

Read more at ZDNET

A contest is out to win an AMD AthlonXP cpu and nVidia nForce based motherboard and/or a trip to NYC for the PC Expo. Prizes are given out on a weekly basis and you can enter your name once a week until the conclusion of the contest on June 2. Enter the contest here. Ultimate Digital Experience

According to this article over at the Inquirer a russian site has posted an AMD roadmap showing the Clawhammer cpu scaling up to a phenomenal 4000+ at the end of next year. I believe that translates to a 3Ghz cpu clock speed.

VR Zone has a few benchmarks up on a preproduction Xabre Pro card running a Xabre400 GPU. Not a very extensive set of benchmarks, but it's something concerning the newcomer GPU. It's showing a bit of promise beating out a GF3 Ti200 card under 3DMark2001Se.

Well it was bound to happen sometime and once the floodgates open there is no going back once a tax is created. (Spanish-American war telephone tax ring a bell? No pun intended ) Taxes will range from 15-25% depending on the country. Ouch! Read on..... EU Internet Taxes

Viper has put up some new XP services tweak suggestions for his WinXP 411 services tweak guide. He has also added a new 'safe configuration' settings for services running on XP section for those new to the game of trying to eliminate those pesky memory hogging M$ services. He has a lot of different configuration suggestions to choose from in these guides. I also noticed he has revised his Win2K 411 guide earlier this week as well. As always read through the settings to make sure they are right for you. This very excellent guide can be located at Viper's homepage.

A friend of mine got this virus a few weeks ago, and I just read an article about it on PCAbusers... [PAGEBREAK]
Symantec recently upgraded it to a level 4 threat because of it's continued spread. Please, Read this article, and stay on the watch for dangerous viruses.

AMD is eliminating 200 jobs at it's Houston, TX plant (Fabrication #25) soon. Read into it.

The Inquirer has the story on the Intel price cuts on the 12th.

CHIP GIANT INTEL will introduce its 1.70GHz Pentium4/"Celeron" with the launch price on the 12th of May being a low $83.
But it appears to believe that at prices of $83 for the 1.70GHz ICP1.7G and $103 for the ICP1.8G, Athlon processors will be within the reach of its Pentium 4/Celeron products.

I saw at 3D Gamers that they have some dedicated server files from the 1.03 release.[PAGEBREAK]
Download page

Hot Hardware reviews a Ti4600 for a change, not really

Today we have an answer to that question, with the review of the eVGA e-GeForce4 Ti4600, with the unique Asymmetric Cooling System², or ACS². It is no real secret that offering video cards based on nVidia technology is a relative safe bet. These cards have a well established history of being performance leaders, usually staying a step or two ahead of the competition. However, adding a unique cooling package that no one else offers, is a sure way to grab peoples attention.