In een interview met Alienware (die gasten die de MetaByte Stephsister gebruiken om coole dingen te doen) staat oa. dit :

Tweak3D: How does your company propose to overcome the single AGP port problem for using "Stepsister" or PGC technology with two AGP cards?

Alex: Currently PGC is being offered in Voodoo3 PCI, and it is yielding frame rates in excess of 63 FPS in Q2 at 1600X1200 resolution. I really can not comment on AGP PCG . All I can really say is that PCI based PGC is quite amazing and we will be working hard to improve it even further. We also have yet another driver that will allow you the to use your AGP slot, for example: TNT2 in the agp slot and dual Voodoo3's in PCI mode.

Wow. Een TNT2 en 2 Voodoo3's in je systeem? Niet misselijk...

Op RivaZone hebben ze een handig proggie om je TNT of TNT2 over te klokken. Een geript stukje van D128 :

Chris Groenveld sent in a cool utility that he whipped up that allows overclocking of the TNT and TNT2. I have tested this one and it doesn't put new keys in the registry, it overclocks without a reboot too. It is called tntclk. It will also restore your core/mem speeds on reboot too. There are also some memory timing and other tweaks in it as well.

Kryotech gaat een de Renegade en een speciale ATX kast bundelen tot de Kool Kit. Hier wat info van de page van Kryotech :

The "Universal" Socket7/370 is designed to work with any Socket7 or Socket370, including the "new" version of the Celeron. The price of this model is lower because its cold plate is the smaller and less elaborate than the Slot1 Universal. The "Universal" Slot 1 works with the "old" version of the Celeron as well as Pentium II and Pentium III. It is priced slightly higher than Socket7/370 because its cold plate is larger and more mechanically complex than its Socket7/370 counterpart. This version also includes:

• mounting brackets for attaching to the Pentium III.
• a high-torque bolt driver for removing the heatsink that normally is bolted to the side of the Pentium II cartridge, and hardware for mounting to the Pentium II. The standard Pentium II heatsink must be removed from the Pentium II cartridge by the user, to connect Renegade properly to the Pentium II and ensure thermal transfer.
• a metal clip for mounting to the Celeron (Slot 1 version).

WickedPC heeft een review gepost van de Plextor Plexwriter 8/20, dat is een dikke CD-Rewriter waarmee je in 9 minuutjes een volle CD gebakken hebt. Errug handig als het je volledig ontbreekt aan geduld (maar niet aan geld...):

Of 10 test burns, all of the CDs made it, and all of them were readable after burning. Not a single one failed. When I started to test stability with burning, I had expected about 7 of the CDs to actually write without any errors. On my old 4x burner, it seemed that one of every three CDs would die due to various reasons. The change to 100% of them working not only saves me a lot of time, but it saves money too. One thing that I'm positive attributed to the successful burning was the 4Mb buffer on the burner. The buffer is what enables a steady write to the CD, and makes any burner more stable. Normally a burner will have 1Mb of buffer on the burner, whereas higher quality burners will have 2Mb. Needless to say, more memory is always better, and the PleXWriter 8/20's 4Mb of buffer space was well used. Burning went great. I could not even consider using my old 4x burner any longer, and it was sold a day after these benchmarks. All of the blank CDs we used were only certified to 4x or 6x writing speeds, however they all worked like a champ at even faster speeds. Contrary to popular belief, there is no need for a special blank CD to work with this drive.

Hmm...ja, lekker. Daar betaal je dan FL 962,- voor.

Gamecenter heeft een testje met 7 high-end speakers bij elkaar gebouwd. Hier heb je een lijstje met links:

- Altec Lansing ADA880

- Boston Acoustics MediaTheater

- Cambridge SoundWorks FPS2000

- Labtec ATX-5820

- MidiLand S2/4100

- Monsoon MM-700

- Philips DSS 330 [break]Uiteraard zijn wij Nederlanders allemaal bijzonder geïnteresseerd in de resultaten van de Philips speaker. Laat ik nou net slim genoeg zijn om daar iets van te copy/pasten:[/break] The DSS330 delivers pretty dramatic expansion of the soundscape in its "Incredible Surround" mode. When applying it to a game like Quake II that doesn't support 3D positional audio, battles rage from side to side, and directional cues are excellent. In Unreal, which supports 3D audio, the waterfall sounded so huge that I felt like wiping the spray from my face. Also like the MM-700s, the DSS 330 tracks the direction of discharging shells accurately and realistically. The subwoofer pumps out some deep bass, making explosions and firefights seem all the more deadly.

Erg weinig nieuws vandaag, laat ik uit verveling deze blurb van Jeremy Allford / AGN 3D maar overpeesten:

Well folks it looks like I finally found a replacement for a new card, the G400Max. I have a 21" Viewsonic P815 monitor with support for up to 1800x1440 resolution. As nice as that resolution sounds, so far every card I have cranked up to that resolution has left a blurry looking image that has left me wondering what I did wrong. TNT2 Ultra, Voodoo3, TNT, Savage 4 and every other card I have tried have all left me wondering what is up. Once again Matrox has done it because the G400 manages to look terrific at the 1800x1440 resolution as 32bit color depth! The quality of the image is as good as what my 1600x1200 desktop was, with quite a bit more desktop space to play with. Once again it looks like Matrox has taken the lead as the #1 2D image producer on the market... viva la Matrox.

Met een beetje geluk staat z'n G400 review over een paar uur op AGN Hardware

AVault heeft onze vriend Tim Sweeney geinterviewd, met vragen over Epic, Unreal en meer. Ik pak maar meteen de langste vraag:

AVault: With the emergence of sophisticated graphics acceleration, has some of the motivation been removed for a programmer to create something unique, or does the technology offer more freedom of expression?

Sweeney: You see convergence every so often. For a long time, everyone was converging on the Doom style of engine, with the software rendering and the 2.5 degrees of freedom. Then everyone had a 3dfx visual style, with super fast graphics but washed out colors. Hardware is getting fast enough and there has been enough evolution of 3D graphics that programmers can do whatever they want and create engines that are unique and distinguish themselves visually. If you compare Unreal, Quake 3 Arena, Drakan and some of the real-time strategy games coming out, they are very unique, so I believe there is a lot of room for differentiation. That’s going to improve even more in the future, because the reason all games were so similar in appearance when 3dfx came out was we were very limited in how many polygons we would render, so everything had this fixed, flat appearance, and everything was angular and polygonal and jagged.

Now we can use tons more polygons, and there is going to be more curved surfaces and organic detail, with big boulders that have tons of polygons and are rugged, not flat. You are also going to see people creating more sophisticated lighting effects. For instance, Quake 3 Arena is doing specular lighting and we’re doing a lot of other lightmap techniques for smooth dynamic lighting. Everyone is doing some interesting research in these areas, and that is what is going to define the next generation of 3D graphics engines. Even now, if you compare Unreal and Quake 3 Arena, you see a lot of visual aspects that are cool, but they are both very different engines. For example, id is doing more with ground fog and we’re doing more with super high-resolution textures on surfaces. Most important of all, the game designs are very different. Deus Ex and Wheel of Time are good examples of games using the same engine but going in very different design directions.

Check het interview bij AVault voor de complete info.

John Carmack heeft z'n .plan geupdate met info over SMP support in Quake3. Zo te zien begint dat aardig te lukken:

The SMP support is solid enough to play with now. The only feature that is still broken is light flares.

As a happy consequence, some of the cleanup work I did for SMP gave a couple percent speedup even when running without the separate thread.

On my development system, a dual 300 mhz intergraph realizm II, the low res timedemo scores went from 27.8 to 37.8 with "r_smp 1". This is only a 35% average speedup, but at some times (lots of dynamic lights in complex scenes) the speedup is 90%+. Gameplay is noticably smoother.

The rendering thread is almost always the blocking factor, so the faster the card and OpenGL driver, the larger the speedup will be.

This is explicitly a two thread producer / consumer, so there is no benefit to more than two processors. The app is well behaved, using sleeping syncronization so that you usually still have half a processor free for other operating system functions.

Hopefully we will be able to test with some fast consumer cards sometime soon.

Er staat nog veel meer spul in z'n .plan, dus als je geïnteresseerd bent mot je maar ff gaan kijken.

Ik lees bij Betanews dat er een nieuw (althans, daar lijkt het op) BIOS voor de AOpen AX6BC gereleased is:

On the AOpen beta BIOS download page. a new BIOS for the AX6BC has been posted. The revision number is new, but somehow the file date is older than the previous beta!

Je kunt het ding hier naar beneden gaan halen.

Brian Hook heeft z'n .plan geupdate met een dikke berg erg goede Q3 benchmarks. Check dit lijstje: performance hit bij 32-bit rendering:

Rage128 @ 640x480: 12%
Rage128 @ 1280x1024: 28%
RivaTNT @ 640x480: 12%
RivaTNT @ 1280x1024: 48%
RivaTNT2 @ 640x480: 4%
RivaTNT2 @ 1280x1024: 40%
Matrox G200 @ 640x480: 0% (driver maxed out?)
Matrox G200 @ 1280x1024: 28%
Matrox G400 MAX @ 1280x1024:13% (16-bit Z-buffer)
S3 Savage3D @ 640x480: 36% [break]zie je die 13% bij de G400! Dit zegt Brian over:[/break] Holy Mother of Moses, did you see those G400 MAX scores at 1280x1024?! That is pure devastation in fill rate the likes we have not seen in years. Now, granted, they are running with a 16-bit Z-buffer, but still...those are pretty awe inspiring numbers.

Now, the flip side is that they're NOT the fastest at 640x480, which means that their throughput (i.e. drivers) could use some work. The Savage4 made a good showing, however we have the caveat that this was using pre-production drivers delivered directly from S3. We hope that they will release up to date drivers soon for the Savage4. Also, the Savage4 numbers at 32-bit were using a 16-bit Z-buffer, so they had a slight advantage there also.

TNT2 didn't take top honors in many of the fields, just the 640x480x32bpp numbers, however it has the distinction of being very close to the top in nearly all tests, so it's probably the best all around board if you care about high res and 32bpp. TNT still is putting a way respectable showing, and I've seen those Creative TNT boards now for as low as $79. That is as close to a no-brainer as I've seen in a long time.

Voodoo2/3 is still putting in a very admirable show, albeit only in low res modes (Voodoo2) and 16-bit. While its performance is above that of the TNT2 in the 16bpp modes, it's not so far ahead as to have a dominating lead. And it still pales in comparison to the G400 MAX.

We received some TNT2 Ultra boards, but I couldn't get them to work. When those fire up for us I'll post the numbers, and maybe the landscape will change.

Those G400 MAX numbers are high enough that I'm nervous about them, as in maybe I did something wrong, but so far I've run the tests on several machines, and it's pretty difficult to cheat with your drivers when you're fill rate bound.

G400 kickt ass!

Voor een vriendelijker overzicht van de benchmarks moet je ff op deze page bij id Software kijken, daar staan ze netjes in een tabel.

Planet Riva heeft een Asus V3800TVR kaart met Riva TNT2 gereviewed. De kaart draait op standaard 125/150MHz en heeft een TV/in en TV/out. Hier een stuk uit de 'review' (die zo kort is dat het in feite niet meer is dan een opsomming van de specsheet + benchmarks):

First impressions of the card were pretty good with equally impressive manual. BTW - We had a good laugh at the spelling and gramatical errors on the box. This is officially according to ASUS my first 'Invinciable' video card. The manual covered installing all the drivers as well as operation of all the software on the Driver CD. After working out some problems with my old driver conflicts we were on the way.

The drivers supplied with the card looked OK, but soon after testing began it was revealed that I had better look for something better. The utilities are great, but you can't use them without the ASUS drivers loaded. I loaded up the reference 1.76 drivers and got an immediate performance boost. I didn't even bother to go back and benchmark the performance of the old driver.

Mortyr.net heeft een interview met Vince Matthews, product mananger bij Interactive Magic, op het net gepleurd. Hieronder heb je de eerste paar vragen:

Q) What type of multiplayer games forms are available? That is LAN (IPX or other?), TCP/IP Internet, modem, serial cable (anybody use serial anymore?), etc?

All of the above.

Q) Will some new weapons be added to multiplayer that are not available in singleplayer?

No.

Q) Can people rocket jump safely in Mortyr?

No, the panzerfaust wipes out a room of enemies at a time, there's no way that you could avoid killing yourself.

Q) How many deathmatch maps will there be in the final game? How many CTF maps (if they use their own map set)?

5 deathmatch

1 CTF

Q) What is Vampire Deathmatch? Does it use it's own map set?

Vampire Deathmatch, unfortunately will not ship with the game.

Q) How many players should the multiplayer game handle at a time?

16

Q) How will players find Mortyr servers? Will it be via a Half-Life like built in tool, GameSpy, or some new method?

It will basically be old school Quake style. You'll have to know the I.P. address of the server that you wish to join.

Voor de rest moet je ff langs fietsen bij Mortyr.net

Gamespot UK heeft een preview van Team Fortress 2 gepost:

What is most striking about the game is the animation. The game uses MRM (multiresolution mesh) technology to create detailed characters that are lifelike, and the parametric animation system ensures that movement is fluid.

Team Fortress 2 also employs a true particle system (which Valve founder Gabe Newell claims is the first such system to be used in a game). The particle system allows for very realistic smoke and fog effects that have direction and dissipate. As an example, the demo showed a smoke screen being used to conceal troop advancement.

Ook hebben ze 7 screenshots van TF2, maar de meeste daarvan zijn al bekend. Hier heb je alvast 3 tumbnails:

AMD lanceert maandag de K6-III P voor laptops, in de snelheden 350, 366 en 380.

AMD offers a higher-speed memory bus for notebooks, at 100MHz, vs. Intel's 66MHz. K6-III P also supports AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) and offser AMD's 3DNow set of instructions to enhance 3-D graphics performance.

Intel will not offer its enhanced instruction set fot notebooks until the debut of the mobile Pentium III at 450MHz in September.

By that time, AMD will have increased the K6-III P's clock speed again. Company officials would not say how fast K6-III P is capable of going, but a higher performing version of the chip, code-named Sharptooth CS50 and based on AMD's 0.18 micron manufacturing process, is due in the second half. The chip is currently at .25 micron.

Klinkt allemaal erg veelbelovend. Lees het hele verhaal hier.

Ik heb weer een zooitje screenshots bij elkaar geraapt:

Grand Turismo (PSX) op Bleem! (AGN 3D)

Battlezone II (AGN 3D)

Soldier of Fortune (AGN 3D)

Babylon 5 (GA-Source)

Star Wars - Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (Screenshots.net)

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Ik lees bij AGN Hardware dat Corsair is begonnen met het shippen van de eerste PC133 DIMMen:

Corsair Memory Inc., the industry leader in high density DRAM Dual In-Line Memory Modules (DIMMs) has announced that it is now shipping fully qualified production units of PC133 memory modules. These modules have passed Corsair’s extensive qualification procedure on a pre-production Asus motherboard using the new VIA chipset - PC133 Enhanced Apollo Pro +. This chipset is designed to run at a standard 133MHz memory bus without the need for over-clocking.

The current module sizes are 64Mbyte (CM654S64-133), and 128MByte (CM654S128-133) non-ECC modules. The PC133 modules from Corsair use the latest PC133 compliant Micron 7.5 nanosecond RAMs. The qualified Micron PC133 RAM part number is - MT48LC8M8A2-75 Die Rev B.

O.a. de K7 zal PC133 SDRAM nodig hebben, later ook de Coppermine. Natuurlijk zijn ze ook leuk bij het oc'en.