Unreal Universe en Shugashack hebben een aantal toffe screenshots van Unreal Tournament gepost.

Allereerste de screenshots van Shugashack:

I went ahead and grabbed the new Unreal Tournament screenshots that came out on UT.net yesterday and continue to re-work the screenshots section here on the page. Here are 10 of the screenshots hosted locally for you to look at: utnet1 , utnet2 , utnet3 , utnet4 , utnet5 , utnet6 , utnet7 , utnet8 , utnet9 , utnet10

En Unreal Universe:

AGN Hardware heeft de Creative Labs Optical Digital I/O gereviewed. Met deze uitbreidingskaart kun je je SBLive! of SBLive! Value van een digitale uitgang kunt voorzien:

There are a lot of SoundBlaster Live! and Live! Value owners who want the most from their new sound cards. For some, this means great 3D positional sound in games; for others it means great sound quality in DVD's; for a lot of people it means doing more things musically, with your computer. In a nutshell, the Optical Digital I/O card provides digital connectors found in professional audio systems and Mini-Disc and it also enables SB Live! Value owners to hook up Creative's FPS 2000 speakers through the Digital DIN connection.

Wat-ie precies allemaal doet lees in je in de review.

Ik zag bij JC nog meer info ver de K7 presentatie van gisteren. De info hieronder zul je deels al zijn tegengekomen in een nieuwsposting eerder vandaag. Echter ook een aantal nieuwtjes die denk ik wel interessant zijn:

hi, I've just returned the dinner meeting at which Dirk Meyer (VP of Eng. AMD) had a presentation. My first impression is that K7 looks very promising. Mr. Meyer told us that AMD was indeed announcing K7 this month (June '99) at 500, 550 and 600 Mhz. It has 22 Million transistors on a 184 mm square die at .25 micron process.

The first release of K7 will have 512K of L2 cache at half-speed. At 600 MHz, K7 is %115 faster in SpecInt95 than a PIII Xeon 550Mhz with 512K full speed cache. At 550 K7 is %106 faster in SpecInt. At 600MHz, K7 is %143 faster than the same PIII Xeon at SpecFPBase.

At 550Mhz, K7 is %136 faster (these numbers are interpolated visually from a slide which means 143 was closer to 140 than 150). At 3D Winbench 99 V1.2 (null driver) on win98, K7 600 is at %146 faster than the said PIII Xeon using SSE optimizations.

There are new Integer SIMD instructions, DSP type instructions for MP3, AC (audio) etc. and cache prefetch instructions. Microsoft will support 3DNow in an upcoming Visual Studio release.

At the initial launch, there won't be any MP systems. All motherboards (from Asus, Biostar, Gigabyte, FIC and one other I couldn't catch) will use AMD chipset. Via, ALI and SIS are designing their own chipsets to be released before the end of this year.

These are most of my notes during the one hour presentation and Q&A afterwards. All errors are my own. I speak only for myself etc., etc. muzo

Update: AMD Zone heeft nog meer info bijeen geraapt in dit handige artikel.

Dansdata heeft een review van de Asus VR-100 3D bril in elkaar geknutseld. De bril kan gebruikt worden in combinatie met de V3400 en V3800 TNT/TNT2 kaarten van Asus. De reviewer doet niet erg blij over de bijgeleverde software:

All of this means that setting up the glasses for any given game is an exercise in frustration. Assuming your monitor works with the VR-100 (which, to be fair, it probably does), some or all of your games are likely to be OpenGL-only, and therefore complete non-starters. For Direct3D games, you twiddle the utterly undescribed sliders, run your game, peer at the screen, quit out, change the settings again, run the game again, lather, rinse and repeat. The manual doesn't tell you what to do, the effects of your changes are hard to see, there's no way to save the settings that work for a particular game, and, as if that's not enough, the software is rather unstable and crashes regularly. Of course, running and quitting and running and quitting system-hog 3D games isn't the greatest recipe for Windows box stability at the best of times.

En de bril zelf, die ziet er nogal maf uit :

De lijst met 3DNow geoptimaliseerde producten is weer aangevuld, volgens AnandTech. Er zijn nu zo'n 40+ software titels en 16 hardware producten. Hier kun je hem vinden.

Niet zoveel nieuws vandaag, wel weer een vette stapel game reviews:

SARAC screenshots (screenshots.net)
Nomad of Klanth screenshots (screenshots.net)
Amen screenshots (Shugashack)
Messiah screenshots (Developers Corner)
Revenant preview (Thresh's Firingsquad)
Wheel of Time preview (PC Paradox)
Hidden & Dangerous preview (Gamespot)
Slave Zero interview (FullOn3D)
Re-Volt screenshots (GA-Source)
Phantom Menace demo screenshots (GA-Source)
10six preview (GA-Source)
No One Lives Forever preview (Gaming Age)
Alien vs Predator walk-through (Gamesdomain)
Alien vs Predator review (GE-Monthly)
Boss Rally review (AVault)
Sports Car GT review (Voodoo Extreme)
Half-Life TFC review (Gamespot UK)

Systemlogic heeft een review geplant van de Maxi Gamer Xentor. Het gaat hier om de vanilla-TNT2 versie op een snelheid van 135/166Mhz, iets hoger dan gebruikelijk. Uiteraard valt er dmv overclocking nog wat extra performance uit de kaart te halen:

I felt that this card should still have some juice left in it, so I decided to give it a little run for its money. I upped the card to 175/145, and luckily I had no problems with the card. I then tried getting the clock speed a little higher so I set it two 175/150 where I still wasn't getting any problems, but I noticed a slow down in some video in Quake 2, so I realized it was starting to get a little unstable. I then went all out and put it up to 185/165 to see if it could handle those speeds, which I then succesfully opened Quake 2, but froze after about 3 seconds into the game. Because Guillemot is known for using quality RAM, and using SGRAM for this card, helped all the better. Also because it was faster RAM then the recently reviewed Magic TNT2, it outperformed the other card in some benchmarks. Even being able to overclock the card to 175/150 is very good, and who knows what you can do if you have a TNT2 cooler.

3dfx is duidelijk niet blij met de ingebakken Glide wrapper van de Creative Labs Unified drivers (waarmee je Glide spellen kunt draaien op je CL TNT2 kaart):

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 11 /PRNewswire/ -- 3dfx Interactive® Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX - news) today announced that it has filed suit against Creative Labs, Inc. and Creative Technology, Ltd. (Nasdaq: CREAF - news) in the Federal Court for the Northern District of California. The suit asserts claims for copyright infringement and breach of contract. 3dfx claims that Creative breached a licensing agreement and infringed 3dfx copyrights by incorporating 3dfx Glide® source code into Unified, its recently announced technology designed to run ``Glide-only'' software titles on Creative TNT and TNT2-based graphics accelerator products. The license agreement prohibits the use and modification of any 3dfx source code to operate with non-3dfx acceleration technology. 3dfx also asserted a claim against Creative Technology for unpaid amounts owed for 3dfx products.

Bij BXBoards vind je een review van de 3D Cool Super Slot Cooler. Dit ding parkeer je op de plek van een vrij ISA of PCI slot en helpt de airflow in je kast te verbeteren:

The Super Slot cooler reduces video card temperature, which has the desired side effect of reducing ambient temperature build up within the case. The result? All components within the case run cooler and benefit from the increased air flow offers by the cooler. If your ATX fan already sucks air out, then you won't see much reduction in heat in overall case temperature, but the video card will still run much cooler!

Een interessant bericht bij Planet Multimedia: Superweg, een of ander wazig bedrjif uit Rotterdam, wil internet toegang gaan aanbieden voor FL 35,- per maand, zonder telefoonkosten! De kosten zouden gefinancierd moeten worden met de reclame inkomsten van de eigen portaalsite:

Superweb wil zowel inbellen met 56K modems als met ISDN gaan aanbieden. Een restrictie op het aantal uren is volgens Ravensberg niet wenselijk: 'In Engeland is het maximum 2 uur per dag. Dat is niet klantvriendelijk. We willen wel de verbinding stoppen als er geen dataverkeer meer is.'

Leuk .

Andy van BXBoards heeft navraag gedaan bij QDI over de werking van hun Twinmagic dual celeron socket. Blijkt dus dat het ding _niet_ werkt met borden van andere fabrikanten (lang leve de BP6?):

The dual "Slotket" I featured a few days ago has generated more review requests here at BXB than anything else to date... don't worry I am working on it I got a mail back from QDI which should quell some of the rumours - the board will NOT work in any other board (which I initially suggested anyway) and therefore -requires- the use of QDI's product... Here's the info from the horse's mouth... The TwinMagic is not just the card in the Slot 1 CPU-slot but also the accompanying motherboard because dual processing needs the North Bridge, I/O APIC( this is a component for dual CPU MB, to judge the job should be done by which CPU) and the existing single Slot 1 motherboards do not have that component. In addition, QDI will not sell the adapter on its own in any case...

En om je geheugen even te refreshen: zo zit het ding er dus uit:

WickedPC heeft een Riva TNT2 review gepost. Geen merk, gewoon een 'Riva TNT2' review. Wel wordt er hier en daar een vergelijking getrokken met de Voodoo3-3000 en verder hebben ze een flinke berg benchmarks. Hier heb je een stuk over beeldkwaliteit:

One of the debated issues with the TNT2 Ultra and the Voodoo3 is the texture sizes. The Voodoo3 can only support textures of up to 256x256, whereas the TNT2 Ultra can support ungodly sized textures. This is a great advantage and disadvantage for the TNT2 Ultra, as it both hurts the board and helps it at the same time. In games like Quake II textures are small and tiny. This will make the Voodoo3 3000 perform faster than the TNT2 Ultra, just because of that reason. However, once you get into games and benchmark suites that support any kind of larger textures, you'll see the Voodoo3 3000's scores start to diminish quite rapidly. The TNT2 Ultra wins in benchmarks like 3D Mark 99 MAX most of the time because 3D Mark 99 MAX tests the texture performance as a pretty big issue. There aren't too many games right now that require larger textures, however there is no question that they are indeed coming. They will be here, it's just a matter of time. How long? Who knows. Rest assured game developers will not let their games perform poorly on the Voodoo3 3000, so this is a factor that can't be ignored.

CGO heeft een review van de Diamond Stealth III S540. Deze Savage4 plank draait op 125/143MHz en is wat vriendelijker geprijst dan de TNT2, V3 en G400 kaarten:

The Stealth III S540 is targeted at the gamer on a budget, and for them it's not a bad choice. It outperforms cards based on the Riva TNT chipset and costs less than TNT2 or Voodoo3 cards. The driver situation is a little bit worrisome, however. Though the only games that have problems are a small handful of demos and test releases, its important that a card work well with more than just full release versions of games—demos and test releases are popular, after all. This is a recommended card for those with a 350MHz or slower machine who don't want to spend a lot of money on a card they won't even maximize the potential of their slower machines. Those with more meaty processors are probably better off spending a bit more on a card with more muscle.

Gure3D heeft de Gigabyte GA-660 gereviewed. De Gigabyte videokaarten zijn in Nederland nauwelijks verkrijgbaar (ik heb ze althans nog nergens gezien), maar laat ik voor de volledigheid de review toch maar posten. De GA-660 is Gigabyte's non-Ultra TNT2 kaart en is geklokt op 156,6Mhz (zowel memory als core). Uiteraard heeft Guru3D wat zitten pielen aan de clocksettings van de kaart, met als resultaat een stabiele 166/166MHz:

The GA-660 runs very steady, as with all cards i test, it had been running continuesly for 24 hours (i loop some 3D timedemo's). No flaws occured and the chip does not run hot at all !, compared to the Voodoo3 3000 (on which you can fry some eggs, believe me i tried!) thats an advantage. I overclocked the card with ease towards 166/166 MHz and it ran excelent. On 178/178 the card halted.

Matrox Users heeft van Matrox te horen gekregen dat de G400 in juni te koop zal zijn - in de VS. Ik weet niet hoeveel vertraging er zal optreden om dat ding ook naar Nederland te krijgen (daar weten Narwal en CTW tegen die tijd vast wel wat meer over te zeggen):

I've spoken to Matrox about the G400 shipping dates reported on Sharkyextreme. Matrox say they will be shipping Millennium G400 Series products by the end of the month to their distributors. This should place cards on store shelves by mid- July. However, customers who have pre-ordered their Millennium G400 16MB and 32MB boards through the Matrox On-line Store, will receive their boards 3-4 weeks from the time of their order (as originally indicated). Customers who have pre-ordered their Millennium G400 MAX boards should receive them 4-5 weeks from the time of their original order.

De eerste officiële K7 benchmarks zijn gisteren door AMD gepresenteerd op de 'K7 dinner party'. Hier heb je de belangrijkste info:

The key points of Dirk's presentation
[. . .]
- Large volume shipments [of K7] begins this month at 600 Mhz
- The design methodology was very conversative. . . did not push. . . very hard to get to 600 Mhz. . . "a lot of leg room" in the design.
- The 3DNow! implementation "pretty dramatically" increases performance relative to K6-2.
- The point-to-point connections on the bus allow for much higher speeds than Intel CPUs. 400 Mhz is easily obtainable.
- No third party chipsets until the end of the year. . . VIA, SiS, etc.
- 22 million transistors
- 0.18u in Q4

Now the fun stuff. . .
specInt K7 w/half speed L2 vs. 550 MHz PIII Xeon w/full speed L2
At 550 MHz, K7 is 5% faster. At 600 MHz, K7 is 15% faster.
specFP K7 w/half speed L2 vs. 550 MHz PIII Xeon w/full speed L2
At 550 MHz, K7 is 38% faster. At 600 MHz, K7 is 43% faster.

Get a load of this...
3D Winbench K7 w/half speed L2 vs. 550 MHz PIII
Fully optimized SSE and 3DNow!
At 550 MHz, K7 is 40% faster. At 600 MHz, K7 is 50% faster.

Meer info over die Dinner party vind je bij Ace's Hardware en JC.

CNN meldt dat er weer een nieuwe Melissa-achtige worm in de omloop, en net zoals bij Melissa heeft de Worm het gericht op de lekke zachtwaar van ome Bill:

Tentatively called the Worm.ExplorerZip virus, it is propagating itself using the same API as Melissa, and a message stating:

"Hi [Name] ! I received your email and I shall send you a reply ASAP. Till then, take a look at the attached zipped docs. bye."

The message comes along with a zip file named Zip_files.exe, which if activated, will show a fake error message to the user.

An executable file will then alter the Win.ini file, instructing the client to run an explorer.exe file which is delivered by the virus in place of the standard operating system when the user reboots. The worm then searches the local file drive for the following file types and deletes them: .c, .cpp, .asm, .doc, .sls, and .ptp, thereby deleting Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

The Register wist twee dagen geleden te vertellen dat S3 wellicht zou worden overgenomen door 3dfx. Zoals wel vaker met die berichten van de The Register klopt er weer niets van (zegt een S3 mannetje, maar kun je die vertrouwen?):

Regarding the rumors that were floating around on other publications today, stating that 3dfx might be acquiring S3, Inc., well we spoke to PAUL CROSSLEY, the PR Manager at S3, Inc. who said the following: The register has probably better sources than he does, as he is not aware of such an acquisition/takeover.

If you have been following the news in the past year, you may have noticed that it has been rumored that S3 was to be acquired by AMD, Intel and many others. All rumors - nothing more.

Ik lees bij GA-Source dat Sony in september de PSX II (die super 128-bits console waarvan Danny denkt dat-ie de pc gaat crushen ) zal demonstreren op een game beurs in Tokyo:

Sony Computer Entertainment, the videogames unit of Sony Corp , said today it would exhibit a new version of its PlayStation game terminal in a game exhibition in September.

The next-generation game machine, to be unveiled at an exhibition in the Tokyo area from September 17, uses 128-bit technology which makes possible more realistic graphics, such as detailed facial expressions, a spokesman said.

The new version enable users to also play music and movies on the machine, he said.

Sales of the new PlayStation along with software will start this winter in Japan and in the autumn of 2000 overseas.

The price of the new PlayStation will be announced at the game exhibition in September, the spokesman said.

Wacht maar tot wij pc gebruikers de NV10 (en S3 GX4, V4 enz.) hebben

Ach dan zet ik (Danny) er maar effe en in-game screenshot van Gran Turismo op de PSX-2 bij.
Dit is dus IN-GAME he, dat dat effe duidelijk is.

Windows 98 SE, de veredelde bugfix voor Win98, is nu te koop. Althans in de VS, k'weenie hoe dat hier in Nederland zit. Je kunt 'm gaan kopen op de Microsoft site, die trouwens vriendelijk genoeg was om mijn browser te laten crashen (ja, dat is geen Internet Exploiter wat ik hier gebruik ).

Nog maar weer eens een review van de Elsa 3D Revelator (zo'n leuke 3D bril). Deze is van Review Zone:

The foreseeable question from gamers is, of course, how much of a performance drop in gameplay is there? Fortunately, little to none- though of course it will depend on your own system, which Elsa card you’re using with what game, how good it looks will largely be dependent on your monitor. Note that you need either an AMD K6-2 processor or an Intel Celeron or Pentium II/III processor for the Revelator, and that your monitor has to be capable of a 100MHz (120MHz recommended) minimum refresh rate at the resolution you want to play it, so as to avoid flickering. Needless to say, you need a good monitor for that. And you might experience a drop in framerates if you’re playing up-to-date games with the Erazor II card, for example.

News.com heeft een artikel over de AMD K7 bij elkaar geraapt. Hier heb je een stuk:

Analysts say the K7 looks good on paper. The first versions are expected to run as fast as 600 megahertz, compared with 550MHz for Intel's fastest Pentium III. Megahertz is a measure of how fast a microprocessor can perform its computations.

AMD won't say how much it will charge for the K7. Some analysts expect it to sell for as much as $700 when it rolls out, compared with $220 for its highest-powered K6. More powerful K7s for corporate computers could cost much more.

The K7 ``has every appearance of being a part that can radically change their position in the marketplace,'' said Michael Slater, principal analyst at Cahners MicroDesign Resources, a consulting firm based in Sebastopol, California.

The question, according to Slater and others, is whether AMD can overcome its track record and make the ``part,'' as semiconductors are known in the industry.

The company was a year late with the K5 processor in 1996, and it struggled to get its successor, the K6, to market as well. Design problems and production glitches with the K6 left AMD with losses totaling $125 million in 1997 and 1998.