News

Intel released new drivers for its integrated graphics shipset series including Intel 810/810E/810E2/815/815E/815EM/815G/815EG

Drivers for Win 9x/Me, version 4.13.01.3004 are available here

Drivers for Win 2000/XP, version 6.13.01.3004 are available here

It's been only a day interim for EnTech Taiwan to ship another version of the popular utility for flexible videocard tweaking.

Perhaps, something was wrong with the previous beta. Get the new one here.

ATI has posted new official Win9x drivers. You can get them here.

Ace's Hardware has posted some news about the upcoming Hammer cpu. AMD has also put up a press release about it here.

You know Alpha right? The company that Compaq has bought out a long time ago? The company that the EV6 bus is made from? Ohh, you don't? Hmm, well, you should. Alpha has yet again made strides in super computing. That's right, we are surpasing the teraflops. Alpha is leading the pack (or is the whole thing). - The Inquirer

Micro$oft is under fire by both the 9 US states and now Be. You remember Be right? (BeOS, the little OS that never was)

Be claimed in a statement that the Redmond Vole harmed the developer of BeOS - a potential Windows alternative - through a series of illegal exclusionary and anti-competitive acts designed to maintain its monopoly in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market. - The Inquirer

Altavista reports that the free mail service that is provided by the site will be stopped in March. On the 31st of March 400000 mail users will no longer have Altavista mail accounts. The company admits that the service is stopped due to financial reasons, thus ridding of the mail service will cut operational expenses.

Altavista is one of the most popular search engines, and this measure is undertaken by company to stay in business.

One of the biggest game publishers Interlay is on its way out of the NASDAQ index due to financial problems. Interplay has time until May 15 to straighten out financial matters, or else it will be excluded from the listing. The official warning came from NASDAQ stating the reason for this action. Interplay's price per stock and total stock cost dropped below allowed minimum ( 3.00$ and 15 000 000$ correspondingly).

Sad news for game fans, Interplay is known for some of the greatest titles published (Fallout , Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Descent )

Anandtech posted a review of VIA KT333 chipset. To shortly sum up the review: Anand says that KT333 is a platform for future that can utilize potential with 166 FSB, at the moment KT333 is meant as a replacement for KT266A chipset, but those who own a board with KT266A should not switch to KT333, since there will not be a tangible performance boost.
Read full review.

If you like to tweak your XP/2000 rig as many do to get that optimal prerformance, you may want to peruse Black Viper's pages, as he has updated a few things since the last time I looked. He has a listing for XP/2000 background services settings that can be changed to improve performance. Many are turned on by default and sit in the background doing nothing but hogging resources.

Over on M3DZone they gave a heads up a M$ patch. M$ has released a patch to correct a startup error if you use an IDE drive and fixes a checkdisk problem. Get it http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q315403&ID=315403\">here.

Tom's Hardware Guide has put up thier reader's choice awards for 2001. Readers of the site were asked to vote on a number of different components they considered thier favorites from the past year. Check it out here at Tom's Hardware Guide.

It is a great pity that 3Dfx is officially dead and so is their official web site. Visit the site to read the official announcement of discontinued support for 3Dfx products and a little ad of Nvidia products. Starting February 19th the site will be officially closed. Too bad, 3Dfx was the first one to bring quality 3d to masses. Let's hope no other company will follow their path.

VIA's revamped roadmap looks like this:

Chipsets for Intel platform:

P4X333/400 DDR 266/333/400 ECC support, (up to 8GB memory), V-Link 533 MB/s, AGP 4x/8x, QDR support, optional VPX-II for PCI 64-bit (66 Mhz) samples available 1Q, mass production 2Q of year 2002

P4M333 DDR 266/333 ECC support, Integrated graphics core Zoetrope GFX, V-Link 533 MB/s, AGP 4x/8x, samples available end of Q1, mass production end of Q2 year 2002

P4X600 DDR 333, 128 bit DRAM controller, QBM (up to 5.4 GB/s), V-Link 533 MB/s, AGP 4x/8x, mass production Q2 year 2002.

P4X800 not much info on this chipset, supposedly it will offer support for DDR II

Chipsets for AMD platform:

KT333/333A VIA engineers are not quite sure which is which themselves, should feature the following: DDR 333 support, AGP 4x/8x, V-Link bus 533 MB/s, USB 2.0 и ATA 66/100/133.

KT400 DDR 333/400 support, V-Link 533 MB/s, AGP 4x/8x, samples shipping March 2002, mass production Q2 year 2002.

KM333 DDR 333 support, Zoetrope GFX,AGP 4x/8x, V-Link 533 MB/s,AGP 4x/8x, mass production 1Q year 2002.

K8HTB DDR266/333 support, 8X V-Link 533 MB/s, AGP 4x/8x, samples shipping April 2002, mass production Q3 year 2002.

Destroyer Command UBISOFT/SSI title went gold and should be available in retail any time soon. If you enjoy WWII naval battles, get this title and take command of naval destroyer or destroyer escort.

One of the most respected and long living turn-based strategies that is scheduled for release in March-Heroes of Might and Magic 4 has a fan site that has published a map with units that are going to be used in upcoming release. If you can not wait till release date, then you can take a peek at the joint high quality map or low quality map.

Well, ASUS is following Nvidia driver trails with their motherboard bios releases. If you want to get the latest bios for ASUS boards you will have to go to German ftp for the following motherboard BIOSes:
A7N266
A7M266-D
A7N266-E
CUEP2-M
CUSL2(onboard audio)
CUSL2(no onboard audio)
CUSL2-C(onboard audio)
CUSL2-C(no onboard audio)
CUSL2-C(Black Pearl Edition)
CUSL2-LS
CUSL2-M
TUEG-VM
TUEP2-M
TUSL2
TUSL2-C
TUSL2-M
TUV4X

If you own Pioneer DVD drive you might find this utility quite useful. The utility allows DVD-A06S, DVD-106S or DVD-116 drives changing speed when viewing DVD, exctracting music from audio CD. Other features include changing the DVD region code and flashing firmware in Windows.Pioneer DVD utility works with above mentioned models and supports Win 98/98SE/Me/2000/XP. Size: 4.5 MB. http://www.pioneer-eur.com/support/utility/dvdutils_103.zip\">Download

This follows up the rumors on the net that AMD have been burning away the L1 contacts instead of just the bridges to ensure that the chip couldn't be overclocked. Well, AMD has reiterated that they want you to overclock . How about that?

Want to get full summary of your system configuration take a look at this program that is Win XP compatible. User friendly interface and ease of use make this program a definite asset to your utilities. The porgram is rather small and has freeware license. Although utility is made available by Russian server the interface is in English. Download

Found this archiver browsing for RAR unpacking utility on the net. This utility named 7-Zip offers support for ZIP, CAB, RAR, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR and 7z(utility special format) all in one 837 KB program.

Installed it and found it easy to use, if you are looking for archiver that supports most of the formats, give this one a chance.

Newly released Intel Application Accelerator version 2.0 is aimed to offer performance boost to systems based on Intel core logic and CPUs. The utility boasts Accelerated Operating System Load Time feature, which supposedly speeds up booting process along with improved disk performance in games, graphic intensive applications, and games. The utility also features improvements for P4 (Data Pre-Fetcher).

Intel Application Accelerator supports Win 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP and is also meant as a replacement for Intel Ultra ATA Storage Driver.

You can get Intel Application Accelerator ver. 2 here or if you are upgrading from Intel Application Accelerator ver. 1.1.2 read developers comments here.

Remember when you could by a 256MB Dimm for $30? Well, you can't because Dram prices are shooting up. - The Inquirer

The Inquirer has the scoop on ECS selling more boards than Asus in January. ECS makes the cheap K7S5A and the K7S6A boards, they sell for under $80.

This new promising title from Sierra is available as demo version from this ftp address

Although the demo is available now, rumors around the web state that the game will go gold in April. I guess just like all of the promising games Nakatomi Plaza follows traditions in being delayed.

Intel has revealed thier roadmap for thier upcoming motherboad offerings and thier various supporting chipsets. It's a bit confusing to go through with all the different variants. But then again I guess that's why I have been keeping my distance from Intel products. You can find the list here.

AMD posted new drivers for boards using AMD chipsets:

IDE Busmaster : for boards with AMD 768, 766, 756 southbridge, version 1.43 MS OS versions 95-XP, size 8.2 MB get driver here

Power Management for boards with AMD 768, 766, 756 southbridge, version 1.22 MS OS versions 98-2000, size 437 KB get driver

AC '97 Driver for boards using AMD 768 southbridge, version 1.0b, MS OS vesrions ME/2000/XP, size 581 KB get driver here

AC '97 version 1.0b is likely to be a beta driver as you can see from its name

Hey everyone! We've got something special for you. ASE Labs.com turns into your one stop for ALL things computers.

Check out ASE Labs - Software!!!

Come one, come all for ASE Labs' new venture: Software News! Now, you have a one stop location for all your computer needs! DMIAD will be heading this section up. Give him a pat on the back and post in the forums!

Well, this surely must be a sad day for Microsoft. The Inquirer is reporting that MS must hand over its Windows code (Yes, including WinXP) to 9 states for review. They will see if MS is justified in stating that Internet Explorer was to tightly integrated in the OS and couldn't be removed. I suspect that there will be some leaks of code here and there possibly .