HardwareZone's 10th Anniversary: The 1998 - 1999 Era

The Early Years - Singapore Hardware Zone (SHZ)

We did mention we'll be back with more articles to give you further insight as to how our huge HardwareZone portal once looked like in its infancy and some of the more interesting tidbits of yore that should rekindle some past memories for some (and something 'new' for those who weren't aware).

The history and overall evolution of HardwareZone has been well mentioned well in , so we'll move on to concentrate on specific time frames revolving around the progression of the web portal. In this article we'll focus on the first segment of our evolution, the Singapore Hardware Zone (SHZ) days. When www.hardwarezone.com was first established on the 9th of August of 1998, it went by the SHZ moniker until it met its next phase of development towards the end of 1999 when Hardware Zone Pte. Ltd. became an established business and the web portal was renamed to HardwareZone to reach out and influence others beyond its shores.

Ang Chi Hoe, our present Chief Technology Officer, spent several hours to design and render the Singapore Hardware Zone logo on his then advanced P2-400 machine in the early days of the site. The logo was then proudly displayed on the landing page as the gateway to Singapore Hardware Zone:-

Among the highlights that first drew people to this early fledgling site was the fact that the Internet circle was just about expanding at an exponential rate and with that, a sea of folks were looking towards the Internet as a source for knowledge by interacting with others in community groups who had similar interests. HardwareZone being developed and targeted as an integrated IT portal was ideal to such a cause for the hardware enthusiast. With key features like the hottest news, coolest reviews, the most updated computer hardware prices and a comprehensive overclockers database function, HardwareZone became a must stopover place for enthusiasts to get their fix.

Growth of the Pricelist and Promotions Section

In those early days, there was an affiliate site running local hardware pricelist services which had a broader scope of listing and was mostly dedicated for this purpose alone. Known then as Maxxum Interactive, it was run by Matthew Fam who soon worked closely with SHZ and partnered the site to help expand the pricelist coverage on our portal.

 

Birth of the HardwareZone Forums

The forums however didn't start along with the inception of SHZ, but it was added on quite shortly. Growing from just the Hardware Clinic, and then expanded to encompass a Software Clinic, it was jointly known as the PC Clinics for a while before the more laidback Eat-Drink-Man-Woman forum was created to embrace all the 'off-topic' threads which were irrelevant for the main forums. The forums were an integral catalyst to the popularity of the overall SHZ portal as it became a place for techies and novice to gather, learn, share and speculate on the many technology topics that arose. By late 1999, the forums section grew to hold 13 specialized discussion groups:-

Combined with the constant news, reviews and hardware pricelist updates, it kept the cycle of hype, knowledge and discussions ongoing. The overclocking database further asserted the techie factor of the site as those were days when overclocking was attempted only by the elites. In addition, it proved to be useful as people gathered statistics and possibilities to plan their overclocking attempts as well figure out which processor would be a suitable investment for their experimentation and fun factor.

Speaking of fun, we did mention before that a very early version of GameAxis existed since late in 1998 to hold matters pertaining to the gaming world, which naturally is in close symbiosis to the hardware world. After all, a significant reason for upgrading to the latest cutting edge technology was because of the new games that are always on the horizon and always promising a new level of gaming realism and entertainment. Thus HardwareZone's foray into the gaming world was a very logical extension. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get any screenshots of the early GameAxis prior to the year 2000. But hang in there as our next article will touch on Y2K.

So to wrap this time segment, by the end 1999, these are the various sections/services offered by Singapore Hardware Zone:-

• News
• Reviews
• Hardware Price Guide
• Overclocking Database
• Member's Cafe (special information and promotions)
• An unofficial IRC channel
• GameAxis sister site

Technology and Hardware Highlight from 1998 to 1999

What's a look at the retro HardwareZone without delving into some of the cool hardware highlights and technology progression back then? So here's our stash of notable highlights during the 1998 to 1999 period. Have fun!

The CPU Evolution - 1998

Intel's budget processor offering, Celeron was launched in April 1998 and it would grow into a distinct brand representing the most affordable (read: low-end) of Intel's desktop processors despite undergoing various micro-architectural changes over the past ten years. The first Celerons were stripped down Pentium II processors in disguise with less cache memory and this approach of downgrading a mainstream desktop CPU of certain features and cache came to define the brand. Intel intended the Celeron to compete against lower end products from other companies like AMD and Cyrix at that time and though the original failed to live up to its expectations (those without L2 cache), some of the subsequent versions have provided excellent value, especially when overclocked. The most popular of the lot was the beloved Celeron 300A, which easily clocked to 450MHz and faster with hardly any effort.

AMD's excellent Athlon processors released the following year prompted the company to develop a low-end brand of its own known as the Duron in order to preserve the premium Athlon brand name. Following a similar principle as the Celeron, the Duron would also become a recognizable rival to its Intel counterpart and just like the Celeron, there were as many hits as misses in its history, depending on which micro-architecture it was based on.

A HardwareZone article in 2000 by Dr Jimmy Tang gave a clear advantage to the Duron then, a 750MHz version that received a glowing five-star review at the expense of its competition, a Celeron at 900MHz. A prescient quote from the article, "this teaches us one thing, never judge a processor by the MHz as a Duron at a lower speed rating could actually outperform a Celeron at high speed ratings."

A couple of years later, AMD was to counter Intel's NetBurst processors and their high clock speeds with a major marketing campaign that carried a similar message of not judging processor performance solely on clock speeds.

The CPU Evolution - 1999

For AMD, 1999 would be a significant year. It was the year that its new K7 micro-architecture was launched to critical acclaim from hardware enthusiasts and reviewers around the world. We even got hold of the very first version tested and reviewed - the AMD Athlon K7 500MHz . Featuring a new RISC, out-of-order CPU that had a double data rate memory bus and a super-pipelined triple-issue floating point unit among other innovations, the Athlon was clearly faster than Intel's current Pentium III models. As a result, sales of the Athlon were strong and AMD was soon on the lips of enthusiasts.

While we were equally enthusiastic about the Athlon when it was released, we also took the time to explore if its performance was affected by a change in L2 cache speed, a measure which was implemented by AMD with certain of its models due to the cost and the technological limitations of the memory used for that L2 cache. As our HardwareZone article by Dr Jimmy Tang pointed out, there is indeed a slight performance difference, though "the effect of a slower L2 cache is very small, especially in normal office applications. However, if you're using CPU intensive software (e.g. graphics, multimedia or simulation), the performance would be affected."

Obviously, this was a minor issue that did not adversely affect the sales of the Athlon, which grew further in popularity with the debut of the Thunderbird core the following year. Intel's Pentium III was unable to compete, even with the newer Coppermine variants. The undisputed advantage held by AMD was to last until 2001 when the Intel Pentium 4 became available.

The Motherboard Evolution - 1998

Intel was the dominant force in the industry then, with its few rivals like AMD and Cyrix either scrabbling in the low-end segment or unable to provide a viable alternative to the Pentium brand. The Pentium II had just been launched in 1997 and early 1998 saw the introduction of the 440BX chipset from Intel, arguably one of the most popular chipsets ever for any processor. The chipset was capable of being overclocked up to 133MHz from its official 100MHz FSB and even supported the later Pentium III processors that would debut in 1999. Given the high cost of RDRAM that Intel tried to foster onto the public with its later i820 chipset, it was perhaps unsurprising that users stuck with their 440BX boards for a while to come.

One of the excellent motherboards based on the Intel 440BX was the AOpen AX6BC, which was a rather forward looking board with many features that would be found in motherboards today. It was to be AOpen's second attempt at a 440BX board and it offered an extra PCI slot on this board, sacrificing an ISA slot in the process. This was how motherboard vendors have gradually introduced change in their boards, slowly weaning off the older legacy standards, something that has remained true up to this day.

With lots of options for overclocking, stability and decent performance, "the AX6BC was a clear winner among the BX motherboards available in the market. If you are looking around for a good BX motherboard that is both reliable and stable, and providing you 5 PCI slots for your peripherals, the AX6BC would be a good choice."

Of course, not everyone had switched to the Pentium II by 1998. The older Super Socket 7 format probably supported one of the widest varieties of processors, from AMD to Cyrix to Intel, though it was soon fall into disuse as users upgraded. Its original appeal was its versatility and Hardware Zone looked at a few of these boards in 1998. One of the more interesting ones was the ASUS P5A, which used an ALi M1541 Aladdin V chipset and had quite a lot of overclocking options, especially if you were using an AMD K6-2. It also had a wide selection of core voltage settings. Stepping through the 2.0V all the way to 3.5V in 0.1V increments, ASUS seems to have designed this board with the intention of winning the best overclocker's motherboard.

The Motherboard Evolution - 1999

While one of the most important processors, AMD's Athlon would be introduced to the world in June 1999, Intel was still top dog when 1999 dawned. The chip giant would soon launch the Pentium III, with SSE and along with this, a new generation of chipsets was to follow, including the i810 chipset that came with integrated graphics and more significantly from a historical perspective, we saw the first definition of a Memory Controller Hub (MCH), I/O Controller Hub (ICH) on a chipset. And yes, this is a chipset for the low-end.

While the functions of these 'hubs' were not so much different from its former names of North and Southbridge chips, the use of this new terminology would soon be a part of Intel's official nomenclature and frankly, these names were definitely more descriptive than 'North and Southbridge' chips. The i810 chipset also saw the appearance of the Audio Modem Riser (AMR) which 'gives Audio and Modem functionality on the cheap.' This provided integrated audio and modem functionality and removed the need for a full fledged add-on card, appropriate for the i810's target audience of "system-integrators, office PCs and low to medium-home usage (not for hard-core 3D gamers)."

Intel was to follow the i810 with the widely anticipated i820, 'Camino' chipset, which brought some significant technical improvements, including the use of RAMBUS' RDRAM memory. Despite providing better bandwidth on paper, RDRAM would prove to be a failure, due to its high cost and latencies, making it unappealing to consumers. The i820 also saw the increase of the AGP standard to 4x and ATA66 doubled the bandwidth of ATA33.

As a new chipset, the i820 found the going tough against the popular 440BX, no doubt due to the limited and dubious benefits of going the RAMBUS way. We had the same conclusions while testing the ASUS P3C-S, which managed to support both SDRAM and RDRAM through a riser converter. Unfortunately, "in all the three benchmarks, we do see a lot of difference when we use RDRAM instead of SDRAM. I guess RAMBUS does live up to its name, but, the gain in performance is not a lot, and not enough to justify its cost."

Intel was to make a U-turn in the next few years but this decision, together with the recent release of a certain K7 micro-architecture would tilt the scales towards AMD.

We got a glimpse of the potential of the K7 with our testing of the MSI MS-6167, which was a typical AMD-751 board that ran stable and fine. The scores meanwhile, were impressive against the Pentium III, even though this board came with only 2x AGP and even then its AGP was also prone to incompatibility issues. "Overall, the MS-6167 is one of the most stable boards I've ever tested. Its performance is pretty good considering how infant the Athlon and its chipsets were."

Amidst all the excitement generated by the K7, there was a certain motherboard vendor which introduced a new feature on its 440BX board that would become a standard for the company and inspire others to follow. This was the Gigabyte BX2000, which was the first appearance of Gigabyte's DualBIOS feature. As you may know by now, this feature saw the implementation of two Flash BIOS chip onboard, with one acting as the backup in cases where the BIOS got corrupted due to viruses or a bad BIOS update.

Our opinion then was that "The new Dual-Bios feature will really be treasured by important office-PCs with little down-time to spare as well as end-users like us who aren't keen in overclocking but would like to spend on safety and reliability of their system." And thus far, this has been true and Gigabyte would tout this advantage for years to come.

Memories from 1998 - 1999

The dominant memory format in this period was SDRAM or single data rate DRAM and they ranged from the 66MHz to 100MHz range. Intel was to introduce the proprietary RDRAM standard in 1999 with the i820 chipset, due to its licensing agreement with RAMBUS in 1996 that led to Intel buying RAMBUS shares at a discounted rate, along with using RAMBUS on its platform.

The new RDRAM had an advantage of transferring data on both the rising and falling edge of the clock and this double data transfer meant that it had a higher bandwidth than SDRAM. However, RDRAM was significantly more expensive than SDRAM due to a number of reasons.

Increased manufacturing cost from its complexity, warmer operation that necessitated memory heat spreaders, (something that would become the norm in modern memory modules) and increased latencies would hinder the adoption of RDRAM, especially since latency turned out to be the bottleneck for applications then, not memory bandwidth.

The reception from the public was not too welcoming for RAMBUS and RDRAM. This was not helped by a price fixing deal between major memory manufacturers from 1999 to 2002. This cartel included all the big names in the industry, like Infineon, Samsung, Hynix, Micron, etc and while the actual reasons were never revealed, forcing RDRAM out of the market by pricing it out of consumers' reach with relatively inexpensive SDRAM was mooted as a possible reason. In any case, the companies were eventually punished for their actions, though by then, the RAMBUS technology would be dead in the mainstream PC market with even Intel abandoning the technology by 2003.

The successor to SDRAM would emerge in 2000 with DDR SDRAM. Doubling the data rate and increased clock frequencies meant that it could be a viable alternative to SDRAM. However, SDRAM had gone up to 133MHz and with only the AMD platform having DDR support, the older standard continued to hold sway in this period.

The GPU Scene from 1997 to 1998

The GPU evolution and graphics card scene is perhaps the next most exciting of hardware technologies after the CPU in terms of the change in pace and advancements. Interesting events unfolded and companies like the 3dfx entered the scene 1997 that really changed the way games were meant to be played. Because of their significance, we'll start listing events and notable products from the 97-era:-

• This was when 3D graphics cards and accompanying game development took off in a big way. 3dfx released the first true 3D graphics chip, the now legendary Voodoo. It was powerful and included several fundamental 3D effects processing capabilities. This marked the beginning of 3dfx's domination over the graphics card industry (at least before the Y2K era).

• In this year, we also saw the introduction of AGP as the new interface between the graphics card and the motherboard. Intended to replace the older PCI interface, AGP offered as much as 15 times the bandwidth compared to PCI, and will remain dominant for the next few years until the birth of PCI-Express.
• At this point, the main players in the graphics card industry were down to three - 3dfx, ATI and NVIDIA. The sudden interest spike for 3D graphics cards meant that the traditional graphics vendors had to evolve fast, else face elimination from. The three mentioned vendors were able to do just that and their dominance meant that other well known graphics vendors, such as S3, 3Dlabs and Rendition, had little chance for the mainstream performance and enthusiast markets. Matrox though, were still in with a shout with their Millennium series of cards, that consistently offered superior 2D speed and graphics quality for those who are serious about professional work.

The GPU Scene - 1998

• Rendition, left bruised and battered by 3dfx, ATI and Radeon, was eventually acquired by Micron, a semiconductor company. They kept the Rendition in hopes that they could work on embedded graphics for their own line of motherboards. Unfortunately, nothing happened and Rendition just faded away
• 3dfx sought to secure its hold on the 3D graphics card market by introducing the Voodoo 2. It was technologically superior to its competitors as it allowed two textures to be drawn in a single pass, making it vastly faster, especially on games that use lots of textures and/or multi-texturing..

The Canopus Pure3D II 12MB was one of many Voodoo 2 cards we reviewed, and we were completely blown away by its performance. This Canopus card was one of the fastest of the Voodoo 2 bunch, and this was in no small part due to its high quality Silicon Magic 100MHz 25ns EDO DRAM.

• To promote the use of AGP, Intel introduced their own graphics chipset, the i740. We reviewed the ASUS AGP-V2740TV Intel i740 and found its performance to be average and good for video editing and playback of VCDs/DVDs for output to a television. Sadly, the i740 chipset didn't take off and it ended up being Intel's only foray into the dedicated graphics card market thus far (but the Larrabee in development currently might change that statement)

• This year also saw the release of Matrox's highly-hyped G200 chipset. It combined Matrox's renowned 2D performance with a fully-featured 3D accelerator. We managed to get our hands on a Matrox Millennium G200 AGP and thought that it was a competent all-rounder, providing excellent graphic quality and decent frame-rates. This by the way, was also our Editor Mr Vijay's first-ever review for Hardware Zone.
• Towards the later part of 1998, 3dfx introduced its first ever 2D/3D chipset - the Banshee. We reviewed the Creative 3D Blaster Banshee and found it to be a good but ultimately flawed product. It had good 2D performance and was decent in games, but the lack of features like 32-bit color and multi-texture support meant that it wasn't on par with the feature support of many of the newer cards that were appearing then and it would soon be behind the curve.
• Around the same time, NVIDIA launched their RIVA TNT chipset. The RIVA TNT was the first time anyone seriously challenged the Voodoo 2 for the mantle of fastest graphics chipset. It was almost as fast the Voodoo 2, and in addition, it supported 32-bit color and had 2D acceleration - something the Voodoo 2 cards didn't have.

We tested the Canopus Spectra2500 AGP and were thoroughly impressed. The RIVA TNT probably marked the beginning of the end of 3dfx's reign.

 

The GPU Scene - 1999

• Voodoo finally announced the much anticipated Voodoo 3 chipset, which was based heavily on the earlier Banshee and Voodoo 2 chipset. As we noted while testing the Voodoo 3 2D/3D card , it was fast, especially on games that were optimized for the Glide API, but sadly still lacked 32-bit color rendering. Looking back, the card didn't offer much improvement over the earlier Voodoo 2 and was eventually completely outclassed later by the NVIDIA's GeForce 256 and ATI's Radeon.
• NVIDIA later improved on the success of the RIVA TNT chipset by introducing the TNT2. TNT2 is mostly similar to its predecessor, but included support for AGP 4X and up to 32MB of Video RAM. Additionally, the TNT2 was manufactured on a more advanced smaller process technology than the older TNT and could hit much higher clock speeds. We had the Canopus Spectra 5400 Premium Edition AGP in our labs, a really high-end RIVA TNT2 card and were absolutely thrilled with its performance. Its price, however, was just as thrilling, but in a different way - S$550!

• In that same year, Matrox released its G400 chipset, which was essentially a refined and more powerful version of the earlier G200. It included multiple monitor output support and had a new 3D feature known as Environmental Mapped Bump Mapping. We reviewed the Matrox Millennium G400 Dualhead , and although it provided average 3D performance, we were absolutely delighted by its 2D performance and the quality of its graphics, as you would expect from a Matrox card.
• In mid-1999, NVIDIA landed the killer blow to 3dfx by announcing its new GeForce 256 chipset. Along with Microsoft's DirectX 7.0 standard, it ushered in a new era in 3D gaming as Transform & Lighting (T&L) processes were now handled by the GPU. This provided a tremendous boost in the quality of graphics as well as frame rates. We reviewed Creative's 3D Blaster Annihilator , and were impressed with the quality of its graphics and high frame rates.

Events from the Storage World - 1998

• Syquest, who previously had a large share of the removable hard disk market, found itself challenged by Iomega and Superdisk. They eventually filed for bankruptcy and were subsequently acquired by Iomega a year later.
• Iomega themselves were facing problems of their own, namely dwindling sales, competition from Superdisk, and more seriously, reliability issues with their disks. This, coupled with the proliferation of recordable optical discs, and later USB flash drives meant that Iomega probably never had the chance to recover its once glory days.

In addition, Zip drives were not as ubiquitous and cheap as one would have liked. More computers had optical drives installed than Zip drives; and in terms of cost per megabyte, rewritable discs were overwhelmingly cheaper and all of this made Zip disks an unattractive option from this time frame moving forward. They were definitely a hit when they first arrived, but competing technologies and simpler storage options won back the consumers once these had the capacity and cost advantage.

• 1998 also saw the birth of one of the world's first hard drives to employ Giant Magneto-Resistive technology (GMR) - the IBM DeskStar 14GXP 14.4 GB . We had one in our labs and we were pleased by its performance. Not only did it offer huge capacity (at that time), it was also fast and quiet. If there was anything we didn't like, it was its price - S$798.

Events from the Storage World - 1999

• These days, memory cards have become part and parcel of out daily life in some way or another and are omnipresent in several of our daily gadgets. However, Secure Digital, arguably the most popular and widely used format now, was born in 1999. Over the next few years, it will spawn smaller, higher capacity varieties such as the SDHC and microSDHC vairants
• Even with memory cards, storage drives are still a popular means of transporting large amounts of data. One popular format that was often sought after for reliable large capacity storage back in 1999 was magneto-optical drives and we had a Fujitsu DynaMO 640SD/1300SD in our labs for testing.

Mobile Phones Before 2000

Taking a trip down memory lane, we reminisce about the good old monochrome devices that got all the envious stares of most people who might still be pager users back then. This was in an era when Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson (now known as Sony Ericsson) were on top of the game with their offerings. Notably, Nokia had a few definitive devices that made strides in its design. To name a few, the Nokia 6110 was an icon amongst mobile phone enthusiasts at that period, and with the advent of internal cellular antennas within the mobile phone, came the Nokia 3210.

www.hardwarezone.com had its eye on the mobile phone front during this period of time, and as we moved on to bigger things, came the next logical step in our technology chase: mobile phone reviews. As such, you'll find more mobile phone coverage on HardwareZone from 2000 onwards and we'll bring you these highlights in the next coverage segment.

Portable Media Players in 1998

The truth is, portable audio devices have been in existence since the early 1970s thanks to the introduction of the Walkman series by Sony back then. From cassette tapes, compact discs, mini discs and onward to the digital era, it was a time of change for the portable entertainment scene. Just a year before 1998, the first digital audio player (DAP) was created not by the current major players such as Sony, Apple or Creative, but by a South Korean company by the name of SaeHan Information Systems. Introducing its first DAP as the MPMan (Ok, no points there for the "originality" of its branding), Eiger Labs subsequently acquired the license and by 1998, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10 was commercially available to the consumers.

 

In that same year, another company took on the DAP approach and introduced another choice for consumers looking for a portable audio player, and once again, it was not from the big boys of today, but from Diamond Multimedia in the form of its Diamond Rio PMP300 . Though just slightly later than the MPMan, the Rio PMP300 was the centre of attention not for its feature, but the legal ramifications due to the action by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in its move to block its production. This was the precedent incident that brought much media attention to the legalities of digital audio during the online sharing boom. Needless to say, RIAA lost the case, and the golden age of digital audio boomed.

Portable Media Players in 1999

The famous Singapore-based audio card company, Creative Technologies, banked on their forte and started on their own DAPs in the following year when the MPMan came out. The Creative NOMAD received its official unveiling at the 1999 PC Show, and kick started Creative's foray into the portable digital audio business for the years to come.

 

Flash memory, as you might have noticed, hasn't picked up steam as what we see in our present time. At a limited capacity of 32MB and 64MB, with possible expansion via its Smart Media slot, it was a whole different ball game with the introduction of a hard drive based DAP from Compaq's development team. But interestingly, the mandate of its unveiling was taken upon by another South Korean company, HanGo Electronics Co., Ltd. and came into existence as the Personal Jukebox PJB-100.

The infamous Napster came into existence by 1999 when Shawn Fanning created the online file-sharing site that specializes in MP3 distribution. Unsurprisingly, this formed another point of contention with the RIAA, and in a period when DAPs are getting popular, users found themselves embracing the MP3 file-sharing site, though the legalities of it at that time was highly dubious. Nonetheless, this formed the strong basis for future manufacturers to formulate their marketing strategy not only on the device front, but also on the content and services front.

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