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OCAU News |
Tuesday Midday
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Tuesday, 9-October-2001 12:24:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Today sees the release of the SiS 645 Pentium4 chipset. This is the first chipset to support the new DDR-333 memory standard. More info here on Accelenation, here on AnandTech, here (preview) on OCdCafe, here on HardOCP, here on TomsHardware, here on LostCircuits and here (preview) on FiringSquad. General impression seems to be good, DDR + P4 becoming a reality in a way that i845 utterly failed to deliver (despite supporting both DDR and SDR SDRAM, Intel have only allowed it to be used for SDR and performance has suffered). It also doesn't have the legal complications associated with VIA's P4X266 chipset, which DOES use DDR - 266, not the 333 of this new chipset.
More info on the P4 + AGP issue. If you remember, we linked a warning image a few days ago. Adrie notes a similar warning on Asus's P4B site. Daemon received a similar warning in a .DOC from GigaByte, listing much the same scenarious as our warning image and even noting they will be including a warning note with their motherboards from now on. Nathan noticed a diagram explaining it on Intel's site. How to avoid the problem? Well, make sure the video card you want to use with your i845 or i850 based P4 system supports AGP4X. If it supports both AGP4X and AGP2X, make sure it's set to AGP4X mode. Most cards these days will switch between the two modes automatically, but older cards like the Viper V770 have a jumper you must set. Cards that only support AGP2X (or 1X) will blow the board, but generally will not fit into the slot because of the notching. That's presuming your motherboard manufacturer used the appropriate slot.. definitely worth checking your card anyway, a couple of minute's investigation could save your motherboard and video card. From Glenn: I have fried a P4B Asus motherboard by putting a older Asus AGP card into it. Lots of smoke from the d845 chip!. From David: we like blew 10 mainboards by putting the 2x Video Cards like the Sis305 into any intel board with the 845 and the 850 chipset. Most people would have stopped at 3. :)
As more people are getting their hands on AthlonXP chips, some are concerned that the infamous pencil trick (to "unlock" the multiplier and voltage, allowing it to be set on the motherboard) may not work on these newer chips. Apparently the bridges that you would normally close with a pencil are covered on the new "organic" chips. DSH notes this article but there's a thread here explaining that it can be done with a little work. VooDoo notes this thread with good news on the SocketA SMP front. Seems most SocketA chips will work, but only AthlonMP are supported. Sounds familiar - this page is being served to you from a dual mendocino Celeron box, and those chips were in a similar "it works but Intel don't wanna know" situation.
Wokket sent in this Solar System Simulator. It looks pretty amazing, the graphics are incredible.. and it's open source.
From Dicey, who seems to have gotten the ICQ 2001b Alpha working: ICQ now stores everyone's contacts onto their servers. If you have your own existing ICQ contacts from older version, you can simply import them there and the ICQ itself will automatically upload the contact list to the server. It's great for people like me who always forget to backup the ICQ folder before format!
Greg noticed that the 2001 Ig Nobel Prizes have been awarded. TECHNOLOGY: Awarded jointly to John Keogh of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, for patenting the wheel in the year 2001, and to the Australian Patent Office for granting him Innovation Patent #2001100012.
Your herb garden in tatters? Maybe you need SlugBot! The world's first fully autonomous robot is being developed by a team of British scientists. The SlugBot eats slugs and uses their decomposing bodies to generate electricity.
Apparently Escalade, once makers of some pretty hardcore IDE RAID devices, are exiting the market to concentrate on SAN products. We have an Intro to SAN article here, serious storage for people with too much money. :)
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