iXBT Labs - News Archive

« Previous Day

News Archive

Next Day »

Headlines

InnoVISION announces Tornado GeForce4 Ti 4800SE AGP 8x

An addition to the post about SoftR9x00 scripts for Catalyst 3.1

New article at MonkeyReview: SunbeamTech UV CCFL Fans

Hot article: the EARL Project continues

Intel PXA800F (Manitoba) officially announced

New SoftR9x00 scripts to handle Catalyst 3.1!

Hot review: Tweakmonster Ramsinks & Videocard Modding

February 13, 2003

InnoVISION announces Tornado GeForce4 Ti 4800SE AGP 8x

InnoVISION announced new Inno3D Tornado Geforce4 Ti4800SE AGP 8X graphics card on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4800SE 8X GPU (i.e. GeForce4 Ti4400 with AGP 8X).

Inno3D Tornado GeForce4 Ti4800 AGP 8X DDR features 64 or 128Mb DDR SDRAM, 275/550MHz GPU/memory clock speeds. The also has analog, DVI and TV out, some models also support VIVO. Software bundle includes Intervideo WinDVD2000 Software DVD Player, CyberLink PowerDirector, Interplay Formula One of the Future.

An addition to the post about SoftR9x00 scripts for Catalyst 3.1

More comments follow from RivaTuner creator, Alexey Nikolaychuk AKA Unwinder.

"…To all having problems with Bugcheck 0x8E (self-reboot in 2D with Catalyst 3.1 after script installation). We found another trap embedded by ATI programmers. They’ve added spontaneous reboots for SoftR9x00 patching... It’s now obviated.

Create a NEW SoftR9x00 file w2k.rts with the following strings and then just run it:

[Common] SrcFile = ati2mtag.sys BakFile = ati2mtag.old HlpFile = SoftR9x00.rth MakeCRC = 1 Packed = 1 ;common script for 629x+ DstVar0 = force RADEON 9700 capabilities DstVar1 = force RADEON 9500 capabilities Src0 = C1 E8 10 3B 46 10 74 Dst0_0 = C1 E8 10 3B 46 10 EB Dst0_1 = C1 E8 10 3B 46 10 EB Src1 = 6A 01 68 C0 03 00 00 FF B6 00 00 00 00 E8 00 00 00 00 SCM1 = FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 00 00 00 FF 00 00 00 00 Dst1_0 = 66 8B 46 04 66 25 F0 F0 66 0D 04 0E 66 89 46 04 90 90 Dst1_1 = 66 8B 46 04 66 25 F0 F0 66 0D 04 01 66 89 46 04 90 90 Src2 = 8B 56 10 C1 E2 10 25 FF FF 00 00 03 D0 89 Dst2_0 = 8B 56 10 C1 E2 10 25 FF FF FF FF 89 C2 89 Dst2_1 = 8B 56 10 C1 E2 10 25 FF FF FF FF 89 C2 89 Num2 = 2

This solved all problems in the system I tried this on."

P.S. The script is here.

New article at MonkeyReview: SunbeamTech UV CCFL Fans

"As you can see, these units will please many. They’re the brightest and most visually appealing fans I’ve seen yet and really sweep the LED fans out of our minds. I would have liked to put them in our main system but they look great in the other system as well. Like similar fans the purpose isn’t high CFM, its more of an esthetics unit with a happy medium, decent CFM with decent sound."

Read more at OCWarehouse!

Intel PXA800F (Manitoba) officially announced

Intel´s smartphone processor formerly codenamed Manitoba was officially announced in Asia. At least Reuters informed about this referring to its Hong Kong branch. As official website haven’t provided information about the new chip yet, we had to refer to some south-eastern Asian sources.

So, Manitoba was given its marketing name – PXA800F. It is designed for new mobile handsets supporting content like online games and videoconferencing. First models on PXA800F are expected already in 2003 and the massive market attack is scheduled to 2004.

Taiwanese MiTAC and Wistron, Korean Maxon and Chinese Ningbo Bird, TCL and Legend Group became the first to declare the intention to use PXA800F in their handsets. Besides, currently Intel is negotiating with five mobile market leaders: Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. Despite none of these has officially agreed to use PXA800F yet, the chances are great, as these companies purchase Intel’s flash memory and other chips for their products.

According to Intel an PXA800F-based phone will cost about $100-200.

Despite Intel is to publish Manitoba specigications next week at 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, we can shed some light about some of them already now. Shipments of Intel PXA800F processors for GSM/GPRS handsets will start within several days, volume production is scheduled to Q3 2003. In over 10,000-unit quantities the processor will cost $35 per chip.

PXA800F is based on a low-power version of XScale core with 312MHz clock, GSM/GPRS analog module, 104MHz DSP, 4Mb Intel Strataflash NOR flash and 512Kb SRAM.

The chip is to be made using 0.13-micron process technology and a complex technique of making mixed analog-digital components.

According to provisional data, PXA800F-based phone with a standard 600 mAh battery will actively operate up to 3 hours and up to 300 hours in standby. Such handsets will feature color LCD displays, will support Java, Bluetooth, MP3 playback, PIM, flash cards. Some will also feature digital cameras, video playback, GPS, etc.

I guess more details about PXA800F are to follow these days.

New SoftR9x00 scripts to handle Catalyst 3.1!

Informing our readers that SoftR9x00 scripts for transforming RADEON 9500 into 9700 by software now support recent Catalyst 3.1 drivers and are ready for release.

Naturally, ATI answered to the announcement of SoftR9x00-packed RivaTuner by protecting a new driver from modifications. PCI DeviceID change prevention patch appeared in the miniport – an additional check for correcting driver internals in case actual and read DeviceID differ (as you know, SoftR9x00 patches the latter). However, ATI decided to double-secure in case PCI DeviceID is changed by software and embedded an original "artefact emulator".

We’ve seen something like this in the first SoftQuadro protections in Detonator 14.xx, when after detecting forced properties a driver was disfiguring its internals which resulted in system crashes. This along with information about artefacts on some remade RADEON 9500 cards encouraged ATI to this solution.

The essence of Catalyst 3.1 artefact emu is that a driver checks the original PCI DeviceID after any Direct3D/OpenGL app is initialized and distorts CRT controller’s control register in case any inconsistencies, which results in visual artefacts.

It’s important that both protection schemes awaken only on detecting presence of RADEON 9500(PRO), RADEON 9700(PRO), or RADEON 9800. However, if our readers are fimiliar with RADEON 9500 and 9700, then RADEON 9800 is something new. These are not RV350-based cards, but as ATI is already protecting them from patching PCI DeviceID, you can guess RADEON 9800 is to be based on the same R300 made via pixel shaders and hierarchical Z buffer soft-paring. But let’s wait until these cards are in retail.

All information is provided by RivaTuner´s creator – Alexey Nikolaychuk AKA Unwinder. The script is available here.

Hot review: Tweakmonster Ramsinks & Videocard Modding

"Overclocking is the poor man´s upgrade, and many people have turned overclocking of various computer components into an art. As anyone who has ventured into the complex world of overclocking, the principal enemy of overclockers is HEAT. Today will will show you what some Tweakmonster Ramsinks and a Crystal Orb will do to a normal Geforce 3 and the temperature drops and overclocks it will allow."