Best CPU For Your Software Part 2, Games and Overclocking from Aces is now up. Pricing, performance, software support/compatibility, and overclocking are all taken into consideration as they investigate which of the current offerings provide adequate performance as well as being fairly "future proof" investments.

P3D (while no longer exclusively Canopus) has done up a page with all the Canopus cards in existence. Some of you might be interested in the 5400 TNT2 (Japan only)

"133Mhz is a problematic speed, so we have also covered the pro's and con's of running at this speed, and also covered some motherboard cooling issues as well" said (D)Andy of BXBoards. One of the cons right now is that your AGP is shot at that bus speed...oh well, a V3 2000 PCI is still speedy in a P3 450 @ 621 ;-)

Dan Wu nabbed one of those Plextor 8x CD writers and wrote about it...daaaamn that's fast. Under 10 mins for a burn! Whoa, check out this clip: "the Yammy broke down (probably due to excessive burning...)" ... I'm okay folks! :-P

CPUReview conducted an interview with AMD. Nothing new and a lot of "nothing has been announced yet" etc...but it's not surprising to see that AMD isn't all in favor of Intel pushed RAMBUS.

All you guys holding back on TNT2 since you saw those Q3Test scores are in for a review of the G400Max (hey waitta minute... ;-) from FiringSquad. As usual, Tim runs though the good stuff and likes the card as much as the other guys do.

Hothardware interviews the BB of 3dfx about the 3500-TV (the V3 with all the extra stuff at 183MHz). Here's the hot question on everyone's mind (surprise, the answer isn't "when it's done"!)

-Dave: Finally, I'll ask the too often asked question that you marketing types hate to answer.... :-) When will it ship?
-Brian: Easy, end of July .

Saw on VE that there's a new version of Liveware out for you guys that use those SB Live cards. I don't know how much a difference LW2 makes, since I never received a Live (no idea who dropped the ball on that one). Here's the new stuff:

• Improves the audio quality of razorjack weapon in Unreal SE game
• Rear speaker distortion sound when CMSS is turned on has been improved
• Half Life frame rate has been improved
• Enables WinAmp 2.10 to function properly on Windows NT 4.0
• Corrupted game presets in the Surround Mixer folder have been updated
• In-game volume mixer slider in some games now functions properly

On VE: Thanks to Karl for letting us know that D128 has posted new nVidia reference drivers (v2.03).  Not sure if these are legit/leaked, but there you go, if you feel brave.

Well this is interesting, it looks like since Microsoft doesnt seem interested in working with OpenGL much that the folks at Intel and SGI have decided to take it upon themselves to improve the API. Thanks VE

The GameSpot folks have posted one of those end-all be-all 3D card showdown thingies taking a look at the card lineups from ATI, 3dfx, NVidia, 3DLabs, and S3. (Along with all the different versions from other vendors based on the chipsets from those guys)

- The Hercules Dynamite TNT2. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking. It clocks higher and runs more stable than any other TNT2 board with a built-in performance slider. But it's no slouch at its default 175/200 speed. Now if Hercules can just write a decent setup program....
- The Voodoo3/3000 is the price/performance leader for 3D games. It's very nearly as fast in 16-bit games as the Xentor or Hercules boards. Think of it as the Dodge Viper of graphics cards - stripped down to the bare essentials, what it does do, it does very well.

That's right, just before Cyrix was going to be gone for good, VIA steps in to save the day. I've always been an Intel man myself...but an AMD Athlon or two (would that be like a Biathlon? <groan>) could sway my ways. I also gotta get me on'a those! Anyways, you guys check out the official press release about VIA and Cyrix.

Thanks VE:  The lovely and talented Andrea over at Matrox sends word that they have just released new drivers on their website that include a final ICD for Windows 9x (driver 5.13) and Windows NT (driver 4.13) for the Matrox G100 and G200 series products.  Here's what else she had to say about these new drivers:

With our Beta 2 ICD that was released in May, 1999 our score in Quake II at 640 x 480 @ 16-bit was 38.2 fps. With this new driver in Win 98 we are getting a score of 47.5 fps, an increase of 25%. The ICD also includes optimizations for other Open GL titles and support for Lightwave 3D and 3D Studio Max.

Couple of "the biz" bits for you guys to check out. Firstly it looks like the folks at VIA are buying out Cyrix famed for that umm WinChip I believe? Also they made that 6x86 CPU that I bought like 3 years ago and returned 12 hours later. Also on the big corporations for sale front is GT Interactive according to Next-Generation. Keep in mind GT published Unreal not very long ago which was a 1+ million seller. Thanks 3DGameGeek

The announcement was fueled by a severe loss in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1999. GT's net loss for the fourth quarter of fiscal 1999 was $72.3 million, or $1.00 per share, compared to net income for the fourth quarter of fiscal 1998 of $0.4 million, or $.01 per share.

Oh my goodness, someone besides Abit has made a good overclocking motherboard? Check out the HardOCP guys for details.

FiringSquad has a look at Creative's 4point speaker system for those of you not wearing headphones.

YEAH BABY! Updated Shackware! I ramble about RAM, babble about the wonderfulness of BeOS, and once against deliver on all your hardware buying needs. Check it out!

YEAH BABY! Updated Shackware! I ramble about RAM, babble about the wonderfulness of BeOS, and once against deliver on all your hardware buying needs. Check it out!

YEAH BABY! Updated Shackware! I ramble about RAM, babble about the wonderfulness of BeOS, and once against deliver on all your hardware buying needs. Check it out!

YEAH BABY! Updated Shackware! I ramble about RAM, babble about the wonderfulness of BeOS, and once against deliver on all your hardware buying needs. Check it out!