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Mar 5, 1999: Absolutely Online has been added to the download page. Do you hate it when your ISP boots you off because you exceed the idle time? Well with Absolutely Online, that won't happen anymore. The program keeps your line active at all time so your ISP can't boot you! Click here to download Absolutely Online.

Mar 3, 1999: LockDown 2000 V2.5 has been added to the download page. LockDown 2000 is the best anti-hacking program I've ever used. It protects your computer from unauthorized access: it scans, detects and removes Internet Trojans. LockDown 2000 provides absolute security and complete privacy whenever you go online. Click here to download LockDown 2000.

Qtalk 1.03 is available now on the download page. This is an update to Qtalk 1.01. Qtalk is the only program of its type developed specifically to enhance ICQ users with the power of speech. You can actually TALK live with  your ICQ friends, no long distance phone charges and no server directories full of weirdoes to negotiate through.

Mike Chambers of Viper 3D has added a help page to his site. It contains questions and answers to a variety of Viper V550 problems.The information on this page originates from scanning newsgroups and message boards for the past 2 months. You can read the help page right here.

Live! Like a SAVAGE has put an article on how to overclock the Savage 3D card, complete with some nice Quake 2 benchmarks. Read it here.

Mar 1, 1999: I have made a timedemo for Quake3. This timedemo has a bit of everything, including bots! If you are one of the lucky few to have Quake 3, download the timedemo and see how fast your system can run the game. I got just 24.4 frames per second at 1024x768x16bit. I hope they speed up the final game.

Here are 2 more Quake 3 screen shots. It's me looking at myself in a mirror. Damn I look good! :-)

Feb 28, 1999: Being trying out Quake 3 tonight (Please don't ask me how I got this). This game is going to rock! Here are 4 screen shots I made from the game. Taken at 1024x768. It runs really fast at this resolution. Don't have any frame rates to report because, well, I don't know how to do a timedemo yet!

Feb 26, 1999: The Heatsink Guide has put up an article on how to build a Celeron Sandwich cooler in 5 minutes without any drilling. Good stuff!

Bullet Proof has updated their FTP program. You can get version 1.11 on the download page or click here to start downloading.

Thresh's FiringSquad had a chance to check out Metabyte's "Parallel Graphics Processing" or SLI TNT Technology in action, even including some "rough benchmarks".  Here's a snip: 

What really got me jazzed was the fact that you can use PGP with a combination of AGP and PCI cards, something 3DFX once said wasn't possible unless systems started shipping with 2 AGP slots. One of the things that's always just nagged at me was the necessity to have three video cards in my system for SLI! As if two wasn't enough!

Metabyte has put out a news release confirming SLI TNT. Can't wait to get one. Here are the good parts:

This technology will allow Metabyte to run graphics cards in a parallel configuration using any existing chip on the market. It will also have the capability to be applied to any future chipset that comes to market. Specifically, the application of this technology to an existing 2D/3D chip set will yield a 40+ percent increase in performance and will double megapixel per second fill rate of a dual card configuration over a single card. A white paper outlining the benefits of this technology in more detail can be found at http://www.wicked3d.com.

Wicked3D has successfully implemented this technology on current 2D/3D AGP and PCI architectures. Presently, demand for this technology has proven overwhelming as a result of unauthorized leaks on the Internet that have lead to customers demanding to pre-order Wicked3D parallel graphics boards. The company is reviewing a number of options to bring its technology to market in the coming months because of the tremendous response of consumers and companies within the industry.

The implementation of this Wicked3D driver technology requires very minor modifications to existing hardware. The process of rendering images from two sources will separate the images being rendered into sections. The driver then sends the render information to the appropriate board so that rendering occurs in parallel on the two boards. Such rendering is still the biggest performance bottleneck performance with current graphics hardware especially at high resolution so this approach provides a big win

Ace's Hardware has an article that attempts to explain CPU makers push their chips to very high speed. Worth reading. Here's a snip:

Have you ever wondered why an Alpha CPU is able to reach such high speeds? Why the P6-Core of intel will be able to reach 800 MHz and more and why the K6 core (most probably) never will? Why does AMD claim that the K7 is designed for high clockspeeds?

Well, it is time to find out. This article is the beginning of a series of articles that will explain you what makes a fast processor. We'll take a good look under the hood of all those number crunching beasts. Let me tell you, there is a lot to discover. And don't worry, the purpose of this article is to explain, not to bombard you with technical terms. Let us get on with it!

Feb 25, 1999: I'm looking for a new name! As some of you may know, project 504 was started as a simple page just to tell about my personal computer. It has expanded a bit beyond that since then. I have decided to spin off this page as a brand new page with it's own domain name. Right now we are a sub domain of The Love Zone.

The problem is I don't know what to call it! Calling the page Project504.com won't work. In 6 month 504Mhz will be too slow and I most likely will not be running that slow. In fact I KNOW I will not be running that slow!

So I'm having a naming contest! Send me your name recommendations for this page. If I chose your name, you'll win a MP3 CD with over 140 songs on it!

There are 4 rules for this contest.

1. Must be a domain name that is available. MotoTech.com is taken (I've checked). You can see if a domain is taken by going to Internic and using their search engine.

2. Only .com or .net domain names will be accepted

3. The name should be related to what this page is about.

4. If 2 or more people send in the same name, I will credit the entry to the first person who sends in that name.

This contest closes when I say so. Thank you. Send in your name entry to [email protected]

Hey There! I want to thank everyone for coming to my page since I open Project 504. Today the page went pass the 50,000 mark! Thanks allot! :-)

The Heatsink Guide has put up a comparison of 5 Celeron heatsinks. Check it out here.

Overclockers.com has put a review of 9 CPU coolers. Which one is the best? Head on over there and find out.

Mike Chambers of Viper3D sends word that a new version of the TNT overclocking utility, MaxClock has been released.  Here's a snip:

The compatibility with different TNT Cards is improved and there is the new PANIC Button! Push it to restore your last Clock setting in case you go to far.

The Brotherhood of the CPU has put up a comparison of Intel's Pentium III and AMD's K6-III.  Great bit here, taking into account business apps, non-enhanced (SSE/3DNow optimized), optimized, etc.

So how fast is the new Voodoo 3 you ask? Here are some benchmarks for the models 3000 and 3500 from Maximum PC.

You want one don't you? 3Dfx and several online vendors are pre-booking orders

Say it aint so. AMD's plans to outperform its arch Intel-based nemesis CPUs may have finally come true, according to the April issue of Maximum PC.

"In evaluating 450MHz versions of both CPU families, we found that the K6-III outperformed the Pentium III by 21 points in the bootMark. In fact, the 450MHz K6-III's equaled that of a 500MHz Pentium III," writes the editor of the piece.

Or has it? In the Direct3D benchmarks, the K6-III is within spitting distance of it's Slot 1 enemy. But floating point has always been AMD's Achilles heel. How did the K6-III perform in Maximum PC's benchmarks? For the full story, you'll have to see the April edition of Maximum PC.

Brian Hook updated his .plan with more info on Quake 3 Arena and 3D support. Here's a snip:

- "Is a V2 SLI going to have any benefits for Q3"

Obviously, more fill rate is better, but a lot will depend on the screen resolution you're running at and the quality of 3Dfx's OpenGL drivers when we ship. If their drivers aren't performing well, then a V2 SLI isn't going to be much help since we won't be fill rate limited. If their drivers are performing well, then yeah, the V2 SLI should kick ass. Keep in mind that a V2 SLI in our lightmapped case provides the equivalent of 360Mpixels/ second of rendering, which is REALLY REALLY fast.

Looks like everyone is jumping on the SLIl TNT bandwagon, This time it's Hercules.  Here's a little blurb from Sharkyextreme.

Hercules has considered the possibility of doing Non-3Dfx based SLI products. Currently, we're working on a number of other enhancements that we're very excited about as well. Stay tuned...

Feb 24, 1999: Some information has leaked about the future of the K7 processor from AMD. It seems that the initial K7 chips will run on Digital's EV-6 Bus, running at 200 MHz front side speed. Now info has surfaced that the second line of K7's will run on the same bus, but running twice as fast (400 MHz). Considering the second revisions of the Pentium III will run at 133 MHz bus speed, this will be a big step-up for AMD. For more, check out U.Geek

NVIDIA Corp. is reporting record revenues and profits for their fourth quarter. This has sent their stock price up 20% increase since the beginning of the week. Check out their press release:

NVIDIA(tm) Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA - news) today reported record revenue and profit for its fourth quarter of fiscal 1999 and for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1999.

Revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter ended January 31, 1999 was $65.5 million, an increase of 178 percent compared to revenue of $23.5 million for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 1997. Net income for the fiscal fourth quarter was $7.7 million, compared to $1.4 million for the fourth quarter of 1997. Diluted net income per share for the fiscal fourth quarter ended January 31, 1999 was $0.27, compared to $0.06 for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 1997.

Revenue for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1999 was $158.2 million, an increase of 444 percent compared to revenue of $29.1 million for the year ended December 31, 1997. Net income for the year ended January 31, 1999 was $4.1 million, compared to a net loss of $(3.6) million for the previous fiscal year. Diluted net income per share for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1999 was $0.15, compared to a diluted net loss per share of $(0.28) for the year ended December 31, 1997

Metabyte has responded to the SLI TNT story that was posted on Sharkyextreme. Looks like SLI TNT is for real!

It has come to my attention that there has been an article posted on Sharky Extreme referring to our future plans for a TNT 'SLI' graphics configuration. I have to apologize that this information was made available to Sharky Extreme without authorization from us.

Having said that, we are very excited about this new technology and I look forward to showing you the full monty as soon as possible. While I cannot comment on this technology at this time, on Friday (Feb 26th) I will send you a sneak peek of the official Technology Announcement to be sent to the wire on Monday morning (Mar 1st).

If you have any questions or comments, please respond to [email protected].

Best Regards,

Kerry Philpott

National Sales & Marketing Manager
The Wicked3D Board Company
A Division of Metabyte

Feb 23, 1999: Mike Chambers of Viper 3D has a new web host. His old one was driving him nuts. Visit Mike and his great website at www.viper3d.com. Tell him Moto sent ya. :-)

Looking for a good way to cool your hot video card(s)? Check out the card cooler. This is one of the coolest looking devices I've seen in awhile. Only $20 direct from the manufacturer. Check out the test of it at Tweak 3D and Planet Hardware.

Just got this in  my Email. Skarkyextreme has posted an article about Metabyte next video card. What's so special about it? It's a TNT card that can be SLIed like the Voodoo2! Here's a clip:

This is really incredible, as the published specifications on even the base TNT2 chip indicate a 250 MPixel per second fill rate at the chip's core speed of 125MHz. Pairing up another 125MHz TNT2 card with the first via SLI would take the lone card's fill rate figure up to a staggering 500 MPixels per second.

And with a 166MHz version of the TNT2 looming for a late April/early May release, we're not far from a 650+ MPixel/per second video solution in an SLI format.

That's a large jump beyond the highest Voodoo3-based card's current specs, (366 MPixels/sec) and also a large jump beyond any other video accelerator chip's proposed specs for 1999. To think that Metabyte and others could conceivably launch a TNT2 SLI-able product line as early as late April that offers that massive of a level of performance jump completely floors us, and it should floor you.

Feb 22, 1999: ICQ has officially released ICQ99a Beta V2.13 Build 1700. You can get it at the download page or on ICQ's web site.

Today is 3D-day! 3Dfx and STB teamed up with some of the most influential high tech sites on the World Wide Web to bring you the first in-depth previews of the Voodoo3 3000 and Voodoo3 3500. The Voodoo3 product line is one of the most anticipated hardware releases of the year and this is your first opportunity see what the Voodoo3 will do. After a weekend of extensive, hands-on testing these web sites have posted their impressions of the latest addition to the highly acclaimed Voodoo family of graphics accelerators at high noon PST on 3D-day:

"blank"3D
Sharkyextreme
Shugashack
All Games Network
Thresh's Firing Squad
Voodoo3.net
Blue's News
MaximumPC
Gamespot
Voodoo Magazine

Feb 21, 1999: Mike Chambers of Viper 3D sent words of a new overclocking program for the Riva TNT card.

Maxclock is a Util for overclocking the RIVA TNT and RIVA 128. It is only a 15k, yes thats right, a  15K! byte dowload.  All it does is overclock, no messing with refresh rates or anything else. It was tested and approved by the vast D128 QA labs and found that it works fine with the STB TNT card, the only utility so far that we know of (besides powerstrip) that passed our rigorous testing procedures. The author wrote it for a viper550 so it should work fine with that card also. Our discussion board has messages which say that Maxclock also works for the Riva128.

Oh, I almost forgot, its FREE

You can download MAXCLOCK at their web site.

Feb 20, 1999: Just days after Qtalk release version 1, they now have Qtalk 1.01. It is available now on the download page. Qtalk released veris the only program of its type developed specifically to enhance ICQ users with the power of speech. You can actually TALK live with  your ICQ friends, no long distance phone charges and no server directories full of weirdoes to negotiate through. Click here to download Qtalk 1.01.

Feb 19, 1999: Being playing allot of Rollcage tonight. For those that don't know what that is, it's a racing game. Really good one too! And it looks great, as these screen shots will show. Be warn, they were taken at 1600x1200 resolution so they will take awhile to load if you have a slow connection. The game is quite playable at that resolution. However I would play it at 1280x1024. The game is screaming fast with the Viper 550 and PII-504.

Xara 3D version 3 is now available on the download page. This is the latest update to Xara 3D, the program used to create the Project 504 logo. Click here to download it.

Come next week, Mirabilis will finally release ICQ99a to the general net users.

When AOL first acquired the company last June, more than 13 million people were already registered as ICQ users. Today, there are more than 28 million. These huge numbers aren't lost on corporate owner AOL, who would dearly like to capitalize on the potential revenue stream. As a result, paid advertisements will now appear on a number of ICQ "content" or "member interest" pages, while ICQ and AOL explore other options, including a way for users to conduct personal, one-on-one transactions through the client directly.

The new version, called ICQ99a, will be available for downloading early next week from ICQ's web sit. However I'm sure most of you who come here has been using ICQ99a for months now. You can always get the latest version of ICQ on the download page.

BX Boards has posted a review of Intel's new PIII-500. The results are about what I expected, which was no faster than my PII-300 running at 504Mhz. Check it out here.

Fixofiles has posted an interview with Realityman, one of the co-authors of the UltraHLE N64 emulator for the PC. Here is a bit from the interview:

How exactly did you come up with the idea to start a N64 emu : did you just thought from the very beginning that you would be able to see commercial games running on the emulator or had more like an opinion as "well lets go ahead and see what's coming up"?

I was originally inspired by Mike Tedders Project Unreality. At the time it was the first real attempt to do an N64 emulator and he started to prove that it really could be done despite the general consensus that it could not. Around the release of PUR v0.2a I started to research the N64 myself, initially just out of interest, and found that fundamentally the core stuff was not that difficult. It was only when Mike was hired by a games company and subsequently had to stop the emulator that I started to seriously think about trying it myself.

Looking to start you own computer web site or maybe sell computer stuff on the net? How would you like to have the domain name www.computer.com? That would be cool huh? Well the name is for sale! Bidding will start at a cool $500,000. :-)