Alex van Sharky Extreme heeft een geschreven over de Asus V3800 Deluxe, dat is de Ultra TNT2 versie van de V3800. Het ding heeft bovendien een TV-Out, LCD port en wordt geleverd met 3D Glasses. Die 3D bril lijkt me wel interessant:

Along with the launch of the AGP-V3800, ASUS is introducing the Virtual Reality (VR) Stereoscope set of 3D glasses. The VR Stereoscope technology is designed in-house by the ASUS' R&D team and is much the same as any other set of 3D Glasses- except ASUS' set doesn't quite look as dorky (yes we're getting VERY technical here) as some of the others we've seen. As novel as the idea of 3D glasses is right now we can't help feeling that the time isn't quite right just yet. Even with full D3D support, we're hanging on for OpenGL support (as and when it happens). Only then will we start to take the technology more seriously. And no, before you get any 'bright' ideas these glasses are NOT (we repeat NOT) Ray Ban's or Georgio Armani's. So don't go wearing them in the sun- you'll look a dork and probably ruin your eyes as well. The plastic, whilst robust and of good quality, isn't exactly 'Gucci' either.

En de prijs van dit grapje?: 239 dollar, niet slecht voor zo'n uitgebreide combo.

Bij Stratics Network hebben ze een preview van TA: Kingdoms online gepleurd. Het ding is errug uitgebreid, met een duidelijke omschrijving van alle units en flinke berg screenshots. Hier heb je een stuk info over de gameplay in Kingdoms:

Quite a few details have been addressed as Cavedog was creating TA: Kingdoms. Very pleasing features included the loading and unloading of men into a transport ship. When the units got close enough to the transport, a yellowish glow/field appeared around the unit, and was "beamed" on to the ship. With this minor addition, it created a great magical element to the gameplay. This wasn't the only improvement that was made to the ships in the game. The battleships had onboard cannons which actually swivelled individually, in the direction of an enemy ship. In addition, when a ship was hit, it rocked back and forth as would a real ship. With respect to each unit, as they gain experience throughout the game from battle, they will change their appearance according to the level they have reached - this was really cool to witness, as the veteran units that you have will stand out on the battlefield.

De screenshots zijn erg mooi. Hier zijn 3 tumbnails:

Bij Savage World las ik dat iemand een Voodoo 3 en een Savage3D met elkaar heeft vergeleken met 3DMark99 MAX (800x600x16) op een K6-2 300 @ 336. Hier is het resultaat.

Dat kan haast niet kloppen, zulke lage framerates bij de Voodoo 3, lijkt mij. (28.8 en 21.7 in game 1 en 2)

Wat me ook opvalt is dat de Synthetic CPU 3D speed bij de Voodoo 3 lager is dan bij de Savage3D. Hoe kan dat?

Ik weet niet of het aan de SURFnet verbinding hier bij mij ligt, maar Tweakers.net gaat hier ontzettend [bagger - irriterend - klote @#$@$] traag, evenals Sharky Extreme en THG (allemaal gehost door Pair Networks). Pair meldt dat er problemen zijn met UUnet, zou daar aan kunnen liggen:

At this time, a UUnet customer is causing massive routing problems in UUnet's network which is affecting our traffic. We are working to determine if the problem is specific to our routes (ie, they are announcing more specific routes for our netblocks), or more general. In either case, we are working with UUnet's NOC to have this corrected immediately.

Ik mag hopen dat die netwerk problemen snel gefixt gaan worden...

AGN 3D heeft een preview gepost van SWAT 3. Hiero een stuk uit de preview:

The player’s role in SWAT 3 is as team commander. Under his control are red and blue teams each consisting of 2 computer-controlled members. Commands are issued easily with a cascading menu system that is displayed in the upper left area of the screen. By highlighting items with your team commanders targeting reticule, the commands for the menus will follow accordingly. Highlighting a door for instance brings up options for opening the door in several ways, including blowing it open with C2, or making a breach entry with flashbangs. Once inside, the team members can be ordered to clear the room of any terrorists. Although the computer controls the two teams, their actions are very realistic and reliable. With stealthy movements and careful tactics such as “cutting the pie” where doorways are systematically scanned to ensure safety within. There is no switching possible from person to person as in Rainbow 6, but I found this more realistic. Tighter control over team members also made switching unnecessary.

En drie screenshots om het geheel wat op te vrolijken:

Shugashack heeft een G400 preview gepost. Naast info vind je er een paar errug wrede bumpmapping screenshots. Ik heb er 4 bij elkaar gezet (links is dus mét bumpmapping):

HardOCP heeft een Voodoo3-2000 onder handen genomen. Overklokken dus:

We also had pretty good success overclocking this card. We were able to attain a STABLE core/mem speed of 168MHz without any extra cooling at all. Default is 143MHz.... Now you may be asking yourself, "No EXTRA cooling? That is not the FrgMsterly thing to do! Our boy is ripping us off." Well yes and no. I felt since this is an low-cost unit, we would keep the review low-cost. Don't worry we will stick a Peltier on it next week and see it fry.

De webmaster van Gamer's Digest heeft een artikel gepost over het 'hebben' van een eigen games site. Als je zelf fanatiek een site onderhoudt dan zul je veel dingen herkennen in dit artikel:

Now, if you are still considering doing a "major" gaming website after reading that, I have to ask you: Are you crazy!? To become a popular site rivaling that of Avault, AGN3D, and all the others, it will take daily work and extreme dedication. If a webmaster slacks off a day, it could mean the loss of hits, hits which will probably never return. Being the webmaster of a gaming website that strives to be the greatest is almost a 24/7 job, which doesn't offer any benefits except for maybe free games now and then for review. Money won't come for a long time, and if a person just wants to do a gaming website, or any website for that matter, just to receive money, then they will fail quicker than even I did. [break]Ik kan je verzekeren dat het extreem moeilijk is om een populaire site op te zetten. Het gaat je ontzettend veel tijd kosten, en als het dan eindelijk een beetje gaat lukken dan zul je het alleen nog maar drukker krijgen...[/break] Webmasters who wish to start gaming websites will admit that they are mainly doing it for fun, but this is to those out there who want to have fun, but also want to become popular and well known throughout the gaming community. And, as I found out, once you do become decently popular, a webmaster is forced to work even harder then ever before, and it can become a tedious, painstaking process.

Het leven van de webmaster is hard, heb respect .

Niet echt relevant maar wel komisch: meneer Timmer heeft het midden- en kleinbedrijf slachtoffer gemaakt van zijn met het "W97M.Ethan.A" virus besmette diskettes:

Het Millennium Platform is er in geslaagd om een diskette voor het midden- en kleinbedrijf te distribueren met een virus.

De volgende boodschap is daarover verspreid:

'In de derde disketteversie van het Werkboek MKB is het W97M.Ethan.A virus gevonden. Voor zover bekend leidt dit macrovirus alleen binnen Microsoft Word 97 tot problemen.

Het Millennium Platform adviseert u de diskette met het Werkboek niet meer te gebruiken en het bestand te vernietigen. Daarnaast is het noodzakelijk uw computersysteem met een recente virusscanner te controleren en zo nodig te repareren.

Check Planet Multimedia voor het volledige bericht.

Yep, alweer een TNT2 review. Alex "Sharky" Ross heeft nu de Ultra TNT2 kaart van Asus getest. Zoals we eigenlijk al wisten is het een vrij standaard TNT2 model, Asus heeft zich gewoon aan het reference design gehouden.

Although the 'branding' isn't quite as snazzy as the 'Viper' or the 'Dynamite' range, what matters is- what's under the hood. The AGP V3800 TVR and BASIC both use NVIDIA's TNT2 chipset, which is clocked at the default 125MHz speed. They both sport a 32MB SGRAM layout (clocked at 150MHz). The DELUXE version differs considerably, in that the UltraTNT2 chipset is used, clocked at 150MHz. In addition to the TV-Out and LCD port it also comes with a set of 3D Glasses. For the purpose of this review, we took the 'DELUXE' version for a spin.

ASUS has stuck by NVIDIA's reference design and other than the heat sink and fan combination, there's nothing too dramatic to report. The UltraTNT2 chipset remains extremely cool and its safe to say that NVIDIA's die-shrink to .25micron was a success. Most UltraTNT2 parts will ship out of the box at 150MHz/183MHz and indeed the ASUS 3800 DELUXE falls into this category. That's not to say that one can't overclock the product to 175MHz/200MHz because we very capably did just that- there were absolutely no lock ups, we might add. But for the purpose of this review we'll stick to the 'default' speed because that is the state the board will be in when you install it.

Lees hier verder!

HP heeft als eerste een DVD rewriter aangekondigd, da's een vette 3Gig aan rewritable storage! Check de press release (bruut geript van AGN Hardware):

Hewlett-Packard, the marketshare leader in CD-ReWritable (CD-RW) drives, today announced the first rewritable DVD drive using DVD+RW technology: the HP DVD Writer 3100i. As the growing use of multimedia spurs on the need for more disc space, DVD+RW offers business and home PC users the ability to create, share, store and access content-rich documents easily using a single disc, without sacrificing compatibility.

The new HP DVD Writer 3100i drive will read and write to DVD+RW discs, which have 3.0GB of storage capacity - equivalent to 100 minutes of high-quality digital video or 2,000 floppies. In addition to DVD+RW media, the HP DVD Writer 3100i can read DVD-ROM, DVD movie, CD-RW, CD- Recordable (CD-R), CD-ROM and CD audio discs. DVD+RW discs can be read by DVD-ROM drives at virtually no additional cost. HP is working with DVD-ROM and chip manufacturers to create or adapt products to take full advantage of DVD+RW capabilities.

DVD+RW discs are just like CDs. Other rewritable DVD formats, such as DVD-RAM, use a media cartridge, which limits their compatibility since they cannot be read in DVD-ROM drives unless the drive is altered to accept a cartridge or the cartridge is removed (which compromises the integrity of the disc). DVD+RW media provides users with a huge cost benefit over other storage alternatives, based on capacity per disc.

Anand heeft twee nieuwe reviews gepost. De eerste gaat over de Leadtek Winfast S320 II TNT2 kaart. Laat ik me maar focusen op de overklokbaarheid, verder valt er toch niet meer veel nieuws te melden over de TNT2:

A nice feature Leadtek included with the S320 II is an overclocking utility that allows you to set the core frequency and the memory clock of the board in 1MHz increments up to 160MHz core frequency and 180MHz memory clock. Using this utility and no additional cooling, AnandTech was able to overclock a sample S320 II-32 to 160MHz core and 175MHz memory, while remaining fairly stable. A slightly more conservative 150/170MHz core/memory was rock solid. These speeds approach the defaults of ultra TNT2 cards - remember, this is just the standard TNT2. As always, results will vary from card to card when overclocking. [break]En alsof het nog niet is gooit Anand er ook nog een review van de DFI Pw65-D 810 (i810 moederplank) tegenaan. Het ding ding is jumperless en heeft een gezellige voorraad busspeeds:[/break] The Award BIOS v6.00PG setup utility located on the Firmware Hub (FWH) of the PW65-D powers a fully jumperless CPU setup. The clock generator on the PW65-D supports the standard 66/100MHz FSB frequencies, in addition to the 75/83/95/112/117/124/133/138/143/150MHz settings. Courtesy of the 810 chipset, the memory bus always operates at 100MHz regardless of the FSB frequency resulting in the increased ability to overclock due to a lack of dependence on the quality of your SDRAM. The Award BIOS setup features a handful of options including the ability to enable/disable the AC'97 codecs on-board, set DC latency timings, and configure such options as the Processor Serial Number enable/disable.

Hmm...95Mhz FSB? Dat is _erg_ handig, hopelijk hebben de nieuwe Abit borden ook zo'n setting (dual C366 op 522Mhz - Jammie )

IGN.PC heeft een preview van Half-Life: Opposing Force gepost. Hier heb je wat info over dit expansion pack voor HL:

There will be a whole slew of new weapons at your disposal in Opposing Force, seven in all. For starters, the folks at Gearbox have replaced that wimpy crowbar with a real weapon: a pipe wrench. Now you can pretend like you're Mario running amok in an alien-infested research complex until you find a good gun. And speaking of good guns, Randall showed us at least one of the new alien techs that is going to be introduced in Opposing Force: the Barnacle shooter. If you've played the original, you'll remember the Barnacles as those cute little aliens with the long tongues that hung from the ceiling and enjoyed dinning on Gordon's scalp. Well, in Opposing Force you'll be able to strap one of those bad boys on your arm and do some tongue lashing of your own.

...en hier zijn een paar screenshots, voor het geval je die nog niet eerder gezien hebt:

Next Generation Online heeft een artikel gebouwd met een vergelijking van de drie belangrijkste multiplayer deathmatch games die de komende maanden gereleased zullen worden:

uake 3: Arena from id Software, isn't so much revolutionary, as evolutionary. And it's a minor step at that. With Quake 3: Arena, id Software has finally accepted its limitations, and has perfected its craft. Indeed, this could be the best deathmatch game of all time. But for those who crave more than just senseless violence, Quake 3: Arena won't be much fun at all. The bots included (which were shown briefly at E3) appear to be decent, although they've got a long ways to go before they'll pass as actual human players.

Ok, deze info staat al twee dagen op JC's site, maar is zo goed dat ik het toch nog ff post. Ik heb geen idee of onderstaande info betrouwbaar is, het klinkt in ieder geval wel lekker:

Oooohhh.... Got a really neat email just a few minutes ago. Contains info from Prudential Securities, an analyst, regarding AMD's near term goals. I'm reading it as I report on it so I'll just bullet the interesting stuff:

-at this early stage in the new K7 processor ramp things look very good. K7 units are good, yields appear to be very good, and for the first time AMD may actually lead Intel in the 32-bit x86 arena from an architectural standpoint.

-We believe AMD has shipped already between 1K-2K K7s and is set to ship in excess of 40K for the second-quarter as a whole. This is much better than our conservatively modeled K7 5K units for the quarter.

-Assuming a ramp similar to the K6, the K7 could hit 350K-400K units in Q3 and 1 million in Q4. yields are very good at the targeted 500 MHz, 550 MHz, and 600 MHz speeds at 0.25 micron.

-we believe that some K7 samples much higher than 600 MHz are available, possibly up to 700 MHz (likely using 0.18 micron). We feel this boosts the confidence of PC OEMs that engage early on with AMD as it demonstrates a "real" product roadmap.

-[K7] performance should exceed that of an equivalently clocked Intel PIII. It is not clear by how much at this time, however the company appears to be very confident with the "significantly faster" qualifier.

- If this holds, K7 ASPs would be well above $200 in the second half of the year and longer term enhances AMD's ability to meet its overall $100 processor ASP target, which is $10 above our modeled $90 ASP in 2000.

- AMD is positioned to offer the PC market four processors for three general segments: the K6-2 for the basic PC, the K6-3 for low-end desktop, the K7 for mainstream desktop, and the code named K7-Viper for the high end desktop or workstations.

- We believe Compaq, IBM and Gateway will be early adopters of the K7.

- We believe that Flash memories are coming back and this clearly helps AMD given that the company has nearly a 20% exposure in this area. High density Flash pricing is going up and we expect visibility here to increase substantially.

JC heeft ook nog een posting over de K7 preview bij Firingsquad. De benchmarks in die preview waren erg teleurstellend, maar waarschijnlijk ging het om een oude revisie van de K7 waar nog veel bugs in zaten, waardoor nogal wat functies noodgedwongen gedisabled zouden zijn geweest.

Ik kreeg net van Abit deze press release over hun nieuwe BP6 dual socket370 moederbord binnen. Hier heb je 'm helemaal:

ABIT announces the release of the World’s First Dual Socket 370 motherboard, the BP6. The ABIT BP6 doubly defies conventional limitations by offering both Dual Socket 370 and UDMA/66 on a BX chipset board, once again proving that with ABIT, “Yes, It’s possible”. The BP6 is based on the award winning design of ABIT’s BX line of motherboards. All the great features of our flagship models have been kept, and a lot of amazing new features have been added.

What’s different?

The obvious difference the BP6 offers, which the BX chipset was not designed to support, is UDMA/66. Although the BX chipset was designed to be compatible with this specification, it is only capable of running at a maximum of 33 Mbytes/sec, thus offering no advantage over UDMA/33. With the help of specially designed ABIT hardware additions, the BP6 can support this specification at its intended 66 Mbytes/sec of data throughput. With the Ultra ATA/66 (Also known as Ultra DMA/66) specification, this new high-speed interface doubles the Ultra ATA/33 burst data transfer rate to 66.6 Mbytes/sec. The result is maximum disc performance using the current PCI local bus environment. Ultra ATA/66 hard drives are 100 percent backward compatible with both Ultra ATA/33 and DMA and with existing ATA (IDE) hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and host systems and the Ultra ATA/66 protocol and commands are designed to be compatible with existing ATA (IDE) devices and systems.

On Now!

With the BP6, ABIT is implementing our OnNow (STR/STD) Initiative which allows you to suspend your computer with out closing you’re desktop applications, allowing you to find everything the way you left it while using a minimum of power. No need to close and reopen all those applications any more. The BP6 also supports up to 256 SDRAM modules, permitting up to 768MB of memory.

PC 99 Compliant

The BP6 is also among the first to proudly meet the coming PC99 specification. Connectors are color coded to be identified and hooked up easily.

What’s the same?

ABIT's new BP6 has One AGP, Five PCI and Two ISA slots to handle all of your expansion needs. It also offers official support for Intel's newest Celeron® processors. Furthermore, it comes with the following features: all the specifications for AGP spec Rev. 1.0 for improved 3D graphics performance at a lower cost, APM/ACPI power management, USB, PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, CPU auto-detect, AWARD write protect anti-virus, Wake On LAN, Suspend to RAM, and hardware health monitoring. APM is there also which stands for Advanced Power Management. It is a feature rich power management function for a more energy efficient P.C. It includes Soft Power On/Off, Sleep, Suspend and Stand-By mode, Real Time Clock (RTC) Alarm and RTC Power On, and Modem Ring On. The networking standards Wake On Lan (WOL) and Wake on Ring are also supported.

WindBond Hardware Monitoring

Winbond Hardware Doctor is a self-diagnostic system for PCs and must be used with Winbond chipsets. It protects PC hardware by monitoring several critical items including power supply voltages, CPU & system fan speeds, and CPU and system temperatures. Once any item is out of its normal range, a warning window will pop up and remind the user to take proper measures. It will protect PC hardware by monitoring the most critical items. These items are important for the operation of the system, as errors may result in permanent damage of the PC.

Soft Menu™ II

Included with the BP6 is ABIT's award winning Soft Menu™ CPU configuration, Soft Menu™ II. The BP6 implements Soft Menu™ II technology that eliminates all jumpers on the mainboard that set CPU parameters, allowing end-users to easily and correctly install or upgrade their own CPU. The BP6 BIOS supports a wide range of external clock settings, multipliers from 2 to 8 and special PCI and AGP clock dividers. For more information o the BP6 check out our web site at, www.abit.com.tw

Shugashack heeft een preview van Soldier of Fortune in elkaar gedraaid. Check deze info:

When I was last at Raven Software in October to see Heretic II, we got to see a very small glimpse of Soldier of Fortune. They had less than 1/10 of a map done, but what they could show us made my jaw drop! I obviously had high expectations for this game when we went back last Friday, and I was not dissapointed (except that I couldn't actually play it). What I saw was a game that is a few steps beyond Half Life, which is the new industry standard. Half Life is a great game, and Soldier of Fortune is looking like it can be just as good, if not better. I am a hardcore deathmatch player, but I still enjoy playing a game single player. I have played many FPS games all the way through in single player mode, and definately plan on playing and finishing Soldier of Fortune.

Hmm...best wel wreed. Zie ook deze screenshots. Nie slecht:

Ik ben er een beetje laat mee, maar er zijn dus nieuwe drivers voor de V3400TNT Asus:

AGP-V3400TNT driver for Win95/98 Ver. 2.17 3400drv.exe and AGP-V3400TNT Tweak utility Ver. 2.00 tweak.exe

Bij 3DNews.net kwam ik deze newsposting tegen met info over een convertor die Quake II maps omzet naar Q3 formaat:

I've gotten word from a number of people about the Quake2 to Quake3 map converter that was posted on the Quake3 messageboard page which will of course take existing Quake2 maps that you have and convert them over to Quake3 format compatible with the v1.05 Q3Test so many of us are currently playing. Thanks to Lake for the first word. If you have a problem getting to the ftp try getting it from the PlanetQuake mirror list. Note that this version only converts Q2DM1.

Games Domain heeft een pagina geupt met info (een review kun je het niet noemen) over de Revelator 3D glasses van Elsa:

It's been awhile since I've seen a new set of shutter glasses* on the market. The 3D Revelator from Elsa promises to bring new technology to this gaming peripheral. In the past, shutter glasses have suffered from an utter lack of compatible software. Often when you bought a set of glasses, they came with two or three 3D enhanced versions of popular games, and that was it. Once you got tired of the free games, you couldn't find any other compatible games to use with the glasses.

According to the press kit, Elsa has adapted their Direct3D driver in such a way that it works with any game that uses Z values. Z values are used in the game programming to control which graphics are suppose to be close to the player and which are in the background or further away from the player. Games which don't use Z buffers, such as flight sims like Microsoft Flight Simulator 98, Falcon 4.0 or F22 Air Dominance Fighter, won't work with the glasses. Most other games will work, including all OpenGL games such as Quake II and Sin as well as your other first-person action and racing games. This is certainly a big improvement over the shutter glasses that came before.

Computer Gaming Review heeft een review gepost van het Wingman Formula Force stuurwiel van Logitech. Hier heb je wat info uit de review:

Logitech did a great job in designing the cable system for the wheel. One cable runs from the pedal base to the wheel unit. Half way up the cable, it splits into two: wheel unit connection and computer connection. The unit can plug into you computer via the serial port or the USB port with a serial to USB converter provided by Logitech. I’m really happy to see Logitech providing a choice in how you want to connect the peripheral to your machine and having the USB option makes installation a lot simpler with the hot swap ability of USB. With USB, you don’t take up another resource on your computer (IRQ, COM) nor will you be out of luck if both of your serial ports are in use.

Kom weer een lijstje; de oogst van vannacht:

Braveheart sneak peek (C|Net Gamecenter)

Deus EX developer report (3D Unlimited)

Gabriel Knight III interview (GA-Source)

Diablo II 3Dfx screenshot (Blizzard)

GP500 screenshots (The Torps)

Sinistar: Unleashed first look (GA-Source)

FLY! screenshots (GA-Source)

Alien vs Predator screenshots (AGN 3D)

Midtown Madness review (PC Sports Daily)

Jeff Gordon XS Racing review (3D Files)

Blood 2: The Nightmare Levels review (Gamesmania)

Q3Test LAN Tutorial (Q3Center)

Lionhead chat log (Black&White Wire)

Bij AGN 3D hebben ze een paar vragen op Matrox afgevuurd met de betrekking tot de slechte performance van de G400 OpenGL drivers:

1) When will there be a final (or very well performing) OpenGL driver for the G400/MAX?

There will be an Open GL driver shipping in the box with the Millennium G400 and Millennium G400 MAX boards. While this solution will be very good, we won't call this a final driver, as we will continue to optimize performance levels on the drivers after the card ships.

2) On Sharky Extreme's review, the G400 MAX scored 22 frames per second on the blowout demo for Half-life. Will that ever improve to the performance of the Voodoo3 or TNT2 (about 40 frames per second)?

We are still optimizing performance with our drivers, so I'm sure you will see an increase in frame rates with a number of titles, including Half-Life. The optimizations will also include an increase in frame rates for multi-player environments.

EB News heeft een verhaaltje over chipsets voor de K7. Ze zeggen dat VIA en ALi single-processor-chipsets gaan maken, en dat AMD zorgt voor de multi-processor-chipsets.

According to executives at chipset maker Via Technologies Inc., AMD will develop and ship a small number of high-end core logic chipsets for systems that use two or more K7s running in parallel. Via, meanwhile, will design and supply single-processor chipsets for the higher-volume, "value-oriented" mass market, according to Dean Hays, director of marketing for Via's U.S. operations in Fremont, Calif.

Likewise, Acer Laboratories Inc. (ALi) will also focus on uniprocessor K7 chipsets. "It probably won't be in the multiprocessor market, since our focus is on the mainstream, high-volume market," said Nancy Hartsoch, vice-president of sales and marketing for ALi, San Jose.

Combatsim.com heeft een 3D accelerator comparison bij elkaar gebakken. Het is meer een algemeen lulverhaaltje gebaseerd op reviews van andere sites, ze hebben de kaarten niet zelf getest en hebben daarom ook geen benchmarks. Hier heb je een stuk over de G400 en bumpmapping:

This year's G400 is, in my opinion, the most surprising entry into the acceleration arena; I honestly didn't expect Matrox to ship a compelling product.

But they have, and the G400 sports outstanding 2d quality, 16-32mg of onboard memory, an actual working ICD, and unparalleled 32-bit performance. The G400 is also the first chip that supports environmental bump-mapping, a feature that's incorporated in MS' DX6.0 and that allows developers to basically texture their textures.

In other words, a high texture size and 32-bit rendering is one thing, but bump-mapping then allows for artists to go back over the surface of a building, object, or character/player model and richly add graphical details such as nicks, ridges, scars, and so on, all of which helps to remove the flat surface appearance so prevalent in today's games. From a performance perspective, bump-mapping doesn't come free, but if used wisely it could certainly lend a wonderful touch of graphical immersion to many games.

De G400 is toch wel de heetste kaart van dit moment. GA-Source doet een review van het ding, en net zoals andere sites zijn ze erg positief over het ding. Vooral de snelle handling van grote textures en het vrijwel ontbreken van een performance hit bij het switchen van 16 naar 32-bit kleurdiepte:

This is most likely due to the internal 256 bit memory pipeline of the G400. With it able to pass textures more rapidly internally, a larger texture does not cause as much of a performance hit. Definitely 32mb is well worth it on the G400, and in some ways I would really like to see a 64mb version, if the chipset supported it. The other thing that this tells me I need to do (as well as the processor/memory upgrade I mentioned before) is test in multiple resolutions. I think that the G400 MAX would outperform the Ultra TNT/2 in 3D Winbench and 3D Mark99 at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200.

This memory pipeline is also the reason that the 16-32 bit color switch caused almost no performance loss (especially compared to the competition). Looking at all of the numbers, you can see that the jump from 640x480 to 1024x768 caused much less of a performance drop (on average) than with the other cards. By having so much more internal memory bandwidth than most other cards, the G400 is limited only by its (and the CPU of the computer it is in) processing speed, not by memory access speeds.

De benchmarks van GA-Source laten het bekende beeld zien: G400 relatief traag op lage resoluties, maar snel op hoge resoluties en bij 32-bit kleur, de OpenGL driver suckt nog.