The Extreme3D guys send word of a new article they have slapped together called "Overclocking 101" which takes some of the more novice users through that scary world of overclocking your system.

AnandTech has gotten a hold of one of those new-fangled Permedia3 cards and puts it through the test.

AVault has a pretty good article taking a look at that copper technology that should be hitting the CPU market soon. Keep in mind that Intel's "Coppermine" chip doesnt actually use this tech.

AnandTech has quickly posted some new Q3Test benchmark figures with SMP enabled on a dual P3 450 system. They run through the resolutionss- it's pretty bad-ass even though things might not be fully optimized. Makes that dual celery system all worth it eh?

They're at it again. Saw on /. that Intel is slashing the prices on their line of processors. They wouldn't be scared of AMD's Athlon would they? (sarcasm). The new prices are as follows:

The 550-MHz Pentium III will drop 10 percent from $723 to $646 while the 500-MHz version of the chip will go from $473 to $415. The 450-MHz Pentium III, meanwhile, will drop from $263 to $226. These are volume prices for wholesale purchases.

Retail prices will vary depending on supply, the time of the month, and other factors. Some retailers, for instance, are currently selling versions of the Pentium III at lower prices than the "official" wholesale price. Prices also vary slightly depending upon the chip packaging.

The 500-MHz version of Athlon currently sells for $324 while the 550-MHz and 600-MHz versions sell for, respectively, $479 and $699. Tight supply of Athlons, however, is creating something of a high ceiling price for the chip. Retailers are offering the 600-MHz version for $950, where available, while the 550-MHz and 500-MHz versions are being advertised for $720 and $488.

Tim Sweeney does the pseudo .plan thing again with the Unreal Tech Page. He's on the soap box with step by step instructions on how to get Unreal D3D working all peachy and stuff. Hehe, and the best part is when he smacks Nvidia about the driver update process (though almost all hardware vendors are guilty of such). Here's the deal on this whole driver/API mess:

Downloading drivers and patches is an unfortunate necessity in this industry.  There are several reasons for this.  One, Direct3D and OpenGL are at a pretty early stage of evolution on the PC compared to other drivers (for example, printer drivers are now very reliable and stable).  So, there are a lot of features in the API's that aren't very well defined or well tested, and the API's and extensions are evolving very quickly.   Two, hardware makers are under extreme market pressure to get their cards to market quickly, so they often end up rushing the drivers, and fixing them later.  Three, there is tremendous variation among Direct3D and OpenGL games, so that a driver that performs bug-free under some games may have bugs revealed as soon as a new game ships.

Hothardware and VE scored some exclusive stuff on the new 3dfx driver features that should be making their way into the next Voodoo3 driver updates. Basically it's their continuous quest at trying to hide / down play the artifacts as a result of 16-bit external rendering. They appear to be using a new alpha blending mode to try to smooth over the ugly "screen door" artifact. Here's a look at the screenshots comparing the new modes with what a TNT2 can do at 16 and 32. And here's a peek at the new control panel. Oh, and the 3500-TV should be shipping late July, and hitting shelves early August.

From IBM's page: "IBM will soon be shipping leading edge 0.20µ Memory Products ... and Registered DIMMs up to 1GB for high-end servers." -- I'll take 4, please.

AMD has made an update to their list of 3DNow! supported games according to 3dnow.net. Even with the powerful FPU of the K7, those SIMDs still help.

Not part of the usual game developer .plan crew, Nvidia's Nick Triantos writes in a bit on how to force textures to be in 32-bit mode.

Multimedia freaks that like to mess around with their own videos will want to check out the Matrox Marvel editing guide over at Ars Technica.

Some networking toy reviews: 3drage reviews the EZLink USB home networking kit, and then Riva3d looks at Diamond's Homefree kit.

KAC reviews the PVR Neon 250 with Quake2 benchmark numbers that beat Voodoo3s and TNT2Ultras. Sounds like they really like it.

G3 has an article talking about how the introduction of ADSL technology could change the face of the internet as we know it.

The guys at MaximumPC fired off an email to VE letting them know that they have put some information/benchmarks on a new OpenGL ICD for the Matrox G400 MAX. Dig it:

Matrox just released a new OpenGL ICD for the G400 that speeds things up a bit--the Quake II timedemo (at 1024x768) shot up from 61.9fps to 70.7fps. Unfortunately Half-Life performance didn't get as much as a boost. The G400 just doesn't do Half-Life very well mainly because the game uses so many textures.

I am, however, very encouraged by the progress Matrox has made in the past month in optimizing their OpenGL ICD. I think they've learned from the whole G200 debacle and have a highly capable team in place that will continually improve OpenGL performance.

Ravensoft's William Mull goes .plan wagoning again about HexenWorld stuffs, and of course Soldier of Fortune. Here's a bit that will make you TNT/2 owners happy:

According to Rick Johnson, the best 3D accelerator card for Soldier of Fortune would be any one of the TNT cards, since we use them in-house. They have the best performance and 32 bit rendering, so of course they look really good in SoF.

93D reviews the Diamond Stealth III S4 board, featuring big benchmark graphs and loads of side clicking.

Former CanopusUSA pushers might want to see what's up with the Spectra 5400 TNT2 (review at Singularity) in the Asia market.

Tweak3D's rabid monkey has made a few updates to the popular Video Card Overclocking guide FAQ.

Sharky unfolds the absolutely HUGE (from a to s) revised Intel roadmap which is probably the product of the waves AMD's Athlon has generated.