[08/14/2000]
Voodo5 Mac feedback
xlr8yourmac.com has some news and reports on the Voodoo5 cards for Mac. Obviously in pre beige G3 Systems, the card uses only 1 chip of both, in all the modes. Of course only Beige G3 or later are officially supported, but still that might be an issue for owners of some high-end 60x PowerMacs.

[08/14/2000]
NV15 or NV20 or what?
the register notes that nVidia has unveiled their latest graphics card, the GeForce 2 Ultra, which is like up from the TNT 2 to the TNT 2 Ultra, just a faster running version of the same old technology. The new card runs 50MHz faster and offers about 25% more performance than the GeForce 2 GTS. It also supports faster SDRAM and ships with new drivers. Altogether nVidia claims the Ultra runs twice as fast in Quake 3 @ 1600x1200 than the GTS. At least they didn't miss a product cycle.
FiringSquad already has a preview of the card and also has an article concerning the new Detonator drivers. (which are said to be up to 42% faster...)
SharkyExtreme also has a, what they call, "Guide" on the Ultra.

[08/14/2000]
Nice try
MacWEEK has written up an article about overclocking. Of course they say its all bad and risky and reducing lifespan of your chips etc. But I can tell you, overclockig is a good thing. If it is done sensibly, carefully and with the right additions, you can often get a few nice free MHz extra. I don't want you to overclock your systems now, but the reason why the industry dislikes overclocking so much is clear: Selling a slower chip produces less profit than selling a faster chip. And if the slower chip is overclocked to the speed of the faster chip successfully...you will only sell the slower chips eventually. I have overclocked my G3 for a year now and after meeting some of the problems noted in the article, and further adjusting clock speed downwards a bit, it now runs stable. And honestly if you overclock a chip, do you expect to keep that machine for the next 50 years? Or will you rather buy a new one after a few years again? Well anyway, my opinion doesn't matter, I was just saying what I think on the topic.

[08/14/2000]
MOSR
MOSR notes that OS X seems to run on Alphas as well (the Darwin part of it) which amy again lead to various speculations about the future of Mac CPUs...
And the also take on the Xtrem 1.2GHz Mac rumor/announcement further defending the claims of the Sweds. While I agree on everything the media have said so far, they obviously all missed one important point: if Xtrem overclock a G4 to a System bus of 150MHz and the G4 to 1200MHz, that also needs support for faster RAM. I'm not sure whether the UMA motherboard currently supports PC-133 SDRAM, which would be required to run it at 150MHz, also Cache memory might be problem. Obviously there is no 600MHz Cache RAM availlable, so Xtrem would have to choose a different CPU/Cache ratio, which would of course hit performance of the machine a lot. Let's say they can get 300MHz Cache memory, that would need them to run it at a 4:1 ratio, not exactly great. I don't believe this until I see one of those machines reviewed and photographed on an independent site. And I suggest you to do the same.