PC Sportsgames heeft een review van Johnny Herbert's Grand Prix, waarvan hier wat stuff over de graphics:

To put it mildly, the graphics in JHGPWC are stunning. The game offers a unique feature called "chrome mapping", which gives the cars a very deep shine. This effect is truly amazing, and offers some of the best looking cars I’ve seen in any game.

JHGPWC offers 3d support in 3DFX and Direct 3d. In both modes I was able to obtain frame rates in excess of 45 with all of the graphics options turned on at 800 X 600. Frame rates dropped to a highly acceptable 37FPS in 1024 X 768 in the 3DFX mode. The game offered no pop-ups in either mode, and ran as smooth as silk.

All 15 tracks are beautifully rendered, and accurate to their real-life counterparts. Every landmark is accurately detailed. I highly recommend a slow stroll through all of the circuits, just to admire their beauty.

The cockpit view in the game is also very well done. The drivers hands move the steering wheel on the screen to match your steering. The tires and suspension bounces as the elevation in the road changes. You actually get the feeling of being inside the cockpit in this view. I have never seen a game that pulls this aspect off as nicely as JHGPWC.

Overall, the graphics are the best I’ve seen in any racing game. You’ll definitely "feel" the speed as your F1 racer barrels down a straight at 190 MPH.

Ik zag wat ABIT PR op Coolinfo, hier dus maar gepaste:

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. December 10, 1998—ABIT will begin implementing HighPoint Technology’s XStore Pro® and CD Xpress® in all of our motherboard packages starting at the beginning of 1999. XStore is a new Bus Master Driver and MMX Accelerator for Storage. If you hate to wait then XStore is for you. The XStore Pro is a hard disk enhancement utility which can improve the system performance. The basic concept is using read-ahead caching algorithm to improve the hard disk performance. It offers Performance, Compatibility, and Support. By getting rid of the Bus Master Driver you have now XStore offers better performance than Microsoft's default driver along with these additional features:

Supports and Automatically configures to the Highest Ultra DMA performance mode.

Supports and Automatically configures to the Highest Multiple-Word DMA performance mode.

Automatically recognizes and supports DVD-ROM

Automatically recognizes and supports the Latest Intel Chipsets (TX, LX, BX)

XStore's enhanced performance speed removes the burden from the CPU. Since intervention of the CPU is no longer necessary, data pathways are freed allowing the CPU more time to focus on processing other requests like MMX and AGP.

Anand heeft een review in elkaar geknutseld van FIC's PA-2013 moederplank met 2Mb L2 cache, waarover hier wat info:

he PA-2013's stability was not sacrificed under normal operation as a result of the 2MB of L2 cache, as the AnandTech tests proved, the system crashed a total of 4 times over a 24 hour testing period while running a variety of business and 3D gaming applications.  Like the original PA-2013, the 2MB version does come with Trend's ChipAway BIOS Virus Protection program that prevents boot sector viruses from loading even before your system starts up your operating system, just an added safety feature which may come in handy in this download-driven Internet world.

The PA-2013's performance rose an average of 3% in business applications, with performance increases peaking at the 5 - 7% level, placing it at the top of the Super7 motherboard performance charts.  As you might be able to guess, the improvements in 3D games is virtually un-noticeable, so if you have a PA-2013 or another Super7 board right now that you're happy with, there is no point to upgrading to this 2MB version simply because of the performance increases.  Even L2 cache dependent games such as Unreal didn't receive any improvement in performance as a result of the larger cache, in this case, their performance was being limited by the actual speed of the cache, not the size.

Storage Review heeft een review van Hitachi's 12.000rpm (!) harddrive. Hier wat info over het dat ding presteert in vergelijking met Seagate's Cheetah:

Yes, we've got a new champion here. In its prerelease form, the Pegasus outran the Seagate Cheetah 9LP in most tests. The drive fell just short of breaking 2500 in its Business Disk WinMark 98 figure under Win95, a full 16% increase over the Cheetah. The increase in the High-End WinMark was a bit more modest 10%. The results carried over somewhat to tests under NT, with the Hitachi scoring 13% and 9% higher than the Seagate in the Business and High-End tests respectively. ThreadMark, as usual, presented some interesting results. In Windows 95, the Pegasus actually lagged behind the Cheetah by 14%. Yet in NT, it leapt ahead by a margin of 19%. As usual, however, use in my own personal system once again proved that ZD's WinBench test correlates far more accurately to performance delivered than ThreadMark does.

With a new level in spindle speed, we can expect new frontiers in heat and noise. While being tested in our tesbed's PC Power & Cooling BayCool drive cooler, the drive ran rather cool, just slightly warm to the touch. With the BayCool's fans disabled, the drive ran rather warmly. Interestingly, however, it didn't reach the too-hot-to-touch temp levels delivered by the Cheetah line. Nevertheless, you need a cooler for this drive.

Ook Gamecenter heeft een review van Prince of Persia 3D in elkaar geknutseld.

Doodgaan was altijd erg prettig in PoP (messen waar je lekker in kan vallen enz.), hier daarom wat info:

here are far more--and far more grisly--ways for the Prince to die this time around. Oh sure, the spikes, deadly falls, and collapsing walkways are still around, but that's just the beginning. A wide variety of killer devices await an unwary Prince. Spinning blades chop him to bits. Angle blades cut him off at the knees. There's even a catapult ready to fling him onto yet another set of spikes. But don't worry too much; as in previous Prince titles, if you look carefully enough, you'll find clues that should keep you from ending up on the wrong end of a spike.

AVault heeft een review van King Quest 8: Mask of Eternity. Hier wat inleidende info:

Sierra has put all of this together for this eighth installment, and the result is a massive game with over seven worlds and three dimensions to explore. The story puts you in control of a commoner named Connor, a regal hunter and woodsman living in the Kingdom of Daventry. Daventry is the home of King Graham, who was the primary focus for many of the previous titles. The game begins with a rather impressive introduction sequence that depicts the destruction of The Mask of Eternity. An evil wizard who was a member of the court that protected the Mask has shattered it into five pieces. By chance or fate, one of the pieces has landed in your hands, and is protecting you from the curse that has besieged your homeland. In order to save Daventry and return the balance you will have to find and assemble the remaining four pieces of the mask. The journey to find them is a perilous one: the evil that shattered the mask has cursed all three dimensions and the worlds within them, turning every living human to stone, every dead one undead, and bringing everything that is vile and disgusting to life.

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van Diamond's portable MP3 player. Hier een stukkie over de geluidskwaliteit van het dingetje:

Where the Rio leaves much to be desired however is in its overall music playback quality. Even when the MP3 files are encoded at their maximum quality level (128kbps, which sound exquisite on our standard Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Theater speaker/subwoofer setup), the Rio fails to impress. Bass reproduction is nonexistent, sounds using treble are somewhat flat, and the midrange is relatively muted. It's not "AM Radio" bad, but it isn't the level that readers are used to hearing from their portable CD players either. The Rio does includes a button to change its internally preset equalizer to one of four modes: Normal, Classic, Jazz, and Rock. The problem is that the unit's sound reproduction is so limited that the EQ settings don't make a whole lot of difference to the overall listening experience.

NetExcite heeft een review van de Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Theatre 5.1 speakers. Hier een stukkie:

Now, lets move on to the gaming side. Initially, the FourPointSurround was specially created to suite the SoundBlaster Live! because of its four speaker output with EAX. Now based on that theory, Cambridge SoundWorks added a few functions onto the FourPointSurround and leaves the user with this higher-end model. The speakers are completely identical to the FourPonitSurround except for the amplifier and along with a center channel for Dolby Digital. When playing EAX enabled games such as Unreal SE, World Cup 98 and Need for Speed 3 the sound is so amazing that you might think you are inside the crowd. This set of speaker gave the user a feel of how 3D sound should really be. You'll get 3D sounds no matter where your head is facing towards but make sure you're not sitting too high above the speakers. Even though the subwoofer is not as good as some other subwoofers like the one that comes with the MidiLand / S2 4100, this one should satisfy the desire of most gamers. Generally, in all aspects of a game, the audio quality that is produced by the Desktop Theatre is above average. If you have the SoundBlaster Live! with a DVD kit, you really can't have the true experience without the Desktop Theatre. What I don't like about this unit is that there are too much wiring going around for the rear speakers. It would be excellent if they could have a wireless version of the Desktop Theatre in the future. If you have the SoundBlaster Live! and have some cash to spare, definitely get this speaker unit to go with it. It'll not only give you the best home audio experience in games but also the best home audio experience with DVD movies. If you plan ask St. Nick for something this Christmas, I do not see why you should not add this product to the list. Let's hope that he'll bring it to you.

Planet Hardware heeft een artikel over netwerken met o.a. info over draadloze netwerk verbindingen en USB Ehternet. Hiet wat USB info:

Right now there are two main forms of USB ethernet connectors, Host-to-Host, and Ethernet-to-USB. Both are ungodly simple to set up, you can have a working network within minutes of opening the box. Host-to-Host adapters are made for connecting 2 PC's, no more. They have a USB adapter on both ends of the plug, and an ethernet decoder box somewhere in the middle of the cord, they have no plugs for going to an outside network, it's basically like a null modem concept. Two main products I've seen to use this approach are the Anchor Chips EZ-Link USB Ethernet kit, and the Belkin USB-to-USB ethernet adapter.

The other method is an Ethernet-to-USB adapter, these are made to connect a computer without an ethernet board to an outside network. They usually comprise of a cable, with a USB connector on one end and an RJ-45 10-BaseT connector on the other end. Very cool idea, if you want a quick and easy network setup to your company or home network that's already running on CAT-5 cabling. Some companies who make these products are Belkin, ADS Technologies, and Peracom, with more out there if you look.

Lost Circuits heeft een review gepost van de FIC KA-6100. Het leuke van deze plank is dat je er een PII mee kunt draaien in een ouwe AT kast.

Hier wat info dat ik uit de review geplukt heb:

Upon the first boot, there is a nice surprise, because FIC finally managed to turn the serial presence detect (SPD), a feedback between the BIOS and the memory modules, into something more useful than just a timing device. That is, at the end of the POST screen, a message is displayed which tells the user what kind of memory he has installed in his system and what would be the optimal settings. Looking at this feature, one can only wonder what took everyone so long to come up with a smart solution like this, and FIC (or VIA) deserves a "Two Thumbs Up" for this addition since it takes a lot of guesswork out of the setup process. In addition, the KA-6100 has a setting for the main memory speed to run at standard (AGP) frequency which allows the use of older modules even for the higher bus speeds.

Planet Hardware heeft een review van de AMD K6-2 350. Hier wat handige info:

All in all, my impressions of what AMD can do have changed dramatically over the last few months, and it seems to be the same feeling with many reviewers. After seeing the FPU-lacking ungodly slow K6 chips get crushed by the Pentium and Pentium MMX chips a few years back, it seems AMD has finally put themselves on the right track with the K6-2's. They've created a great processor, considering the price compared to the same model from Intel, which is around $100 more. Although, you get what you pay for, if you run a small business, and need a processor for windows processing and the occasional 3D game, I'd go with the K6-2. But if you're a serious gamer or need a processor for high-end graphics work, going with an Intel Pentium II or Celeron. Here's the bottom line, after using both processors at the same clock speeds, I'd rather use the Pentium II machine, it's as easy as that. Let's hope the K6-3 and K7 can give Intel a better run for their money in the next year, I think we'd all love to see some high-speed processor price wars.

AMD Zone heeft een review van de Asus P5A. Hier het goede over dus Socket 7 moederplank:

So far the things that impress me about the board the most are the 5 PCI slots, multipliers up to 5.0, and a ton of bus speeds ranging from 60 MHz to 133 MHz with almost everything else between.  You can also increase the core voltage in 0.1 increments.  This is a great help in overclocking as I had to increase the core voltage to 2.3 to get it to run stably at 330 MHz.  It has impressed me with it's ability to run the K6-2 266 at 330 MHz  (3X110) without so much as a crash of windows.   That's what I call stability. 

Singapore Hardware Zone heeft een review van een vage Banshee plank van Skywell. Waarom dat ding TwinPower heet weet ik ook niet (Banshee heeft maar 1 TMU, in tegenstelling tot de Voodoo2).

Omdat er verder niet al teveel bijzonders in deze review staat hier maar wat spul over de performance:

The results from WT98 for OpenGL are extremely low but that's because 3Dfx has not made any yet. Meanwhile for games that can use OpenGL, 3Dfx has made available a Mini-OpenGL which is available in the installation CD and on 3Dfx web-site. I've use the latest version 1.43 from the web because the CD's version is 1.3 and 3Dfx is constantly making it better. I also used the latest 3Dfx reference drivers instead of the one given by Skywell and it makes a big improvement in some games. You can compare the difference by looking at the benchmarks from this Skywell Banshee against the Creative Banshee using Creative's latest drivers which aren't as new as the ones on 3Dfx web-site. Overall, the results are very good considering it's an affordable Banshee running on a K6-2.

Bjorn van Bjorn's 3D World heeft wat info over de Rendtion V4k:

I guess this is a good place to share some general thoughts of mine (it's the middle of the night here so I might wander off a bit sleepwalking ..). I've come to terms with that there almost 100% won't be a new board from Rendition until Q2-99. Ok, Rendition has stepped out of the race for now. A decision has been made at Micron and it might be good or bad - that's hard to decide right now. If the V3k really was as good as the specs showed I definitley would have liked to see it out now going head to head against the ATI128 - a chip that seems to have much of what the RRedline was promising. Alas - this is not to be. While I might have doubts that they will be able to make a good comeback there is no doubt in my mind that Micron/Rendition is beeing serious about entering the race again with the V4k. They are hiring a lot of new engineers, they are opening up new design centers, they do have a solid plan for the V4k. Everything so far indicates that the long term plan might be quite sound. I'm also not doubting that they can get back into the race. If the V4k turns out to be a killer chipset it will be talked about on the net as well as in magazines. The 3D arena no longer belongs only to 3dfx. My biggest fear though is that they can't get OEM's to use the new chipset. That will be a major hurdle.

All in all I'm quite positive to what we might see next year. I hope Rendition can get their act together now though and use this "free time" to fix the website, set up some .plan files, fix V2k drivers and so on.

GaGames heeft ook nog een preview van Prince of Persia 3D in elkaar gedraaid met naast een zooi info ook nog wat screenshots. Hier wat info over het spel:

Prince of Persia 3D is a third person point-of-view, real-time adventure/action game which is a sequel to the best-selling Prince of Persia games originally created by Jordan Mechner. Prince of Persia 3D includes all the features which made Prince of Persia so popular, including fluid, realistic animation, devious traps, and an elegantly simple interface for running, jumping, climbing, and sword fighting. The new version of Prince of Persia uses advanced 3D technology to combine the fast-action combat of a fighting game with the depth and immersion of a classic adventure/action game. The story line, co-authored by Mechner, is in the rich tradition of the Arabian Nights and pulls the player through the exotic and fantastic locales of ancient Persia. Environments will include ornate palaces, labyrinthine caverns, mystical ruins, and bizarre fortresses, all of which will be vividly portrayed in the rich aesthetic characteristic of Middle Eastern culture.

Gamer's Alliance heeft een review gepost van Rogue Squadron. Hier een plak info over dit Star Wars spel:

Rogue Squadron takes place in the time directly after the Battle of Yavin (when the first Death Star was destroyed) and before the battle of Hoth. Luke Skywalker has assembled Rogue Squadron with the help of his buddy Wedge Antilles. Rogue Squadron consists of the twelve best pilots that the Rebellion has to offer.

Basically, General Rieekan will assign tasks to the squadron and you will carry them out. There is a thin plot line that develops, but I don’t want to spoil it. A better, more developed plot would have been better – it might have taken this game to the next level – but the lack of one doesn’t hurt the game, either. As an example of the effect of a well-developed story on a game, Jedi Knight wouldn’t have been half the game it was without one.

Throughout the course of sixteen missions, you’ll have the opportunity to fly different Rebellion crafts. Depending on your rank, you may or may not have more than one to choose from, and the structure of the level itself can sometimes determine the selection you have. Obviously, if the level has AT-ATs, then you will have to fly the Airspeeder because any Star Wars fan worth his salt knows that you can only destroy them using the tow cable! (Shhh…don’t tell anybody about the awesome Atari 2600 game, The Empire Strikes Back!)