PC Zone UK heeft een preview van Carmageddon III op het net gezet. De graphics van Carma III zien er op het eerste gezicht nogal 'anders' uit:

Nu ga je je uiteraard afvragen waar al dat voetvolk is gebleven. Volgens de preview gaan dat zombies worden, intelligente zombies nog wel:

Gorehounds might be a tad alarmed that so far there's no sign of human pedestrians; instead there's much talk of censor-pleasing zombies. Intelligent zombies, mind. Whereas in Carma I and II the hapless bystanders were little more than brainless bumper fodder who spent their time milling aimlessly around and occasionally running away, this time around we're promised 'proper' behaviour - crossing the road and moving in packs, in other words. They'll also be more aggressive - and anyone who's ever watched a George Romero zombie movie knows what that means: overwhelming hordes of slavering zombies relentlessly attacking your car and trying to chew off your limbs and suck out your guts. The cheeky monkeys.

Nog maar weer eens een review van de Viper V770, grote kans dat dit de meest populaire TNT2 kaart in Nederland gaat worden. FullOn3D geeft de kaart in ieder geval al een rating van 92%:

The Diamond Viper V770 Ultra is PERFECT for the gamer that wants no less than 1024x768 with all the extras and the best possible visuals. With this card you get it. In fact, you get 1152x864 in 32bit color for every game aside from Q3test. Not to mention that you can expect more performance when you upgrade the CPU to a K7 or P3 with AGP4X support.

Gamers Central heeft een preview van Quake 3 in elkaar gefixt. Gamers Central klaagt over een gebrek aan originiliteit in Q3:

The unfortunate aspect of Quake 3: Arena was the overall lack of creativity for weaponry. Although there is talk of a flame thrower being thrown in the mix, the Q3A weaponry is the same as it has always been: rail gun, shot gun, super shot gun, rocket launcher and couple more old stand-byes. Sure they look different but they do the same things they have always done

CGO heeft een preview van Soldier of Fortune op de site gezet. Hier heb je een plak info over het spel:

One shortcoming shared by most 3D shooters is the "clone syndrome." Only so many models can be used in a given game, but repetition of character models—especially those depicting human characters—can be a little disconcerting (the hordes of identical guards and scientists in Half-Life provide a good example). Soldier of Fortune offers an interesting fix for the problem—the engine supports over 100 skin pages on three different model sizes. In addition to detailed damage skins, models will feature a number of variations on basic appearance, allowing mixed crowds to be represented with a single character model. The game's environments will receive the same GHOULish attention to detail—the engine allows for a high degree of interactivity and destructibility, and Raven has added their own terrain engine to the Quake II framework to make open, realistic terrain a feasible level design option.

Ik zag bij AGN 3D deze info over een fix voor hakkende TNT framerates in Q3Test:

A few people have been complaining to me about stuttering and sluggishness in Quake3. We found out what's going on. In short, in the 188 release we changed the renderer string so that it could display TNT or TNT2, and show when SSE (Pentium3) or 3DNOW!optimizations. Q3Test looks at that string and pattern matches it to see if you were on a TNT-class board. It turns out that because we changed the format of that string, Quake3 was incorrectly setting one of its game variables, and so performance was slower than it should be. To fix the problem, you can bring up the Q3 console, and type r_picmip 1. That should force things back to the way they are supposed to be, and hopefully relieve some of the sluggishness y'all were seeing.

Sorry.

Super7.net heeft een review van de Asus V3800-TVR gepost. De kaart is voorzien van een TV/in en TV/out, maar daar wordt in de review helaas geen aandacht aan besteed. Wel hebben ze info over het overklokken van de V3800 (standaard op 125/150Mhz):

The Asus Tweaking utility allows you to push the engine and memory clock to amazingly high levels in the case of the engine and to somewhat disappointing levels for the memory. The SGRAM chips on the V3800-TVR are only rated at -7ns and so even pushing the memory speed up to 160MHz started to generate errors and strange behavior. On the other hand I could push the engine clock uo to 160MHz without any difficulty at all. Even at the higher clock speed the card ran remakably cool never passing 92ºF. The 3D test did cause lockups for the Aladdin V-based boards even without overclocking. Setting both the memory and engine clocks to 155MHz seemed to be the sweet spot for stability generating an 8-10% increase in performance across the board in D3D applications and about 4.5-5% increase in OpenGL apps.

3DRant weet te vertellen dat Real 3D (ontwikkelaars van de Intel i740) gestopt met de produktie van 3D accelators:

Well I knew it was coming but last week it became pretty damn official. The majority of the company was laid off last week. Real 3D will no longer be making 3D accelerators and from what I hear, the skeleton crew that remains (about 60 people) will be working on set top box type devices as well as suing anyone that looks at them funny (f''ing lawyers!) . I'm saddened to say the "Cobra" chip will never see the light of day. That's pretty disheartening since I spent a good 8 months of my life working on it. Luckily several companies (3dfx, S3, ATI, etc) have swooped in to grab some of Real 3D's talented people. Bid high boys, these are good people (check out my resume too damnit!).

Houdt er wel rekening mee dat het hier nog om onbevestigd gerucht gaat...

3DHardware.net heeft drie TNT2 kaarten op een rijtje gezet: de Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra, de Leadtek S320 II 32Mb Pro en de AOpen PA3010A - 16Mb. Van deze drie kaarten heeft de Creative als enige een Ultra TNT2 aan boord, op de standaard kloksnelheid van 150/183MHz. Deze kaart zal van de drie geteste TNT2's waarschijnlijk ook het best verkrijgbaar zijn in Nederland, daarom wat info over het ding:

The 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra is a cultivated gaming board, being based on the TNT2 Ultra chip clocked at 150MHz for core and a massive 183MHz for the memory. The TV-Out function works just fine, and a S-Video cable is included in the box. With the drivers, which are based on the 1.81s (still in BETA though), come the Creative Labs "Blaster Controls", their version of the control panel applet. It houses all the tweaks found in the Leadtek and AOpen applets, and also offers a overclocking slider, but only for the memory. Instead, Creative Labs have a separate applet for overclocking, which limits core tweaking up to a maximum of 175MHz, and memory up to a speed of 200MHz. Of course, by editing with the registry settings, you can bypass those restrictions and set the speed to whatever you may want to. Being an TNT2 Ultra board, we set out to see how much we could get out from the 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra, and we were pleasantly surprised. Although others have failed in overclocking this board, we did not encounter that problem. We could run the card at a whopping 190/210 (core/mem), without extra cooling. There is no doubt that we can go even higher, although we suspect more cooling would be needed for that task.

...Ja goede vraag hè? Nou op FiringSquad hebben ze voor de verandering een keer een guide gemaakt, en wel over het in elkaar zetten van een PC. Heel uitgebreid, een must voor Newbies!

Building your own system is like a rite of passage. It's not too difficult, but it'll give you a sense of accomplishment. You will become a "hardware expert" in the eyes of technophobes everywhere. Your proud mother will offer your computer expertise to friends, family, and complete strangers.

Building a computer is actually an easy task now. You can buy everything you need online or from a local shop, and look on the Internet for instructions on how to build a computer. Well kids, there's something terribly wrong in Internet-land. No, it's not the blatant exploitation of a mouse by a gaming and hardware website. It's the fact that there are very few up-to-date system-building guides out there. Sure, you can find tons of reviews and recommendations, but with all the information the Internet has to offer, it still lacks a library of comprehensive system building resources.

Check hem hier!

Het volk bij Gamelinks.net heeft een review van de Erazor III TNT2 in elkaar gedraaid. Ze geven de kaart een bedoordeling van 91%, dus iets met erg goed aan het ding zijn...

With the original TNT I could get 1024X768 in any game, but it was somewhat choppy, teetering in the upper 20's as far as framerates go. Now, 1024X768 screams by in almost all games at a smooth 40-50 fps. It even nailed Kingpin running 1152X864 at 38 fps in 16 bit color. Jesus, and the image quality is just phenominal, about the same as TNT if not a bit sharper. Although 32 bit did take a nose dive in Kingpin, it was almost baffeling that every resolution had the same fps (save 1152X768 which was chop as hell). I'm still trying to figure out that one.

With the additional pack in of the 3d Revelator Glasses, this package is one of the best multimedia gaming products one could hope for in the new plethora of TNT2 competition.

Oh ooh, Compaq verwacht verliezen voor het tweede kwartaal '99. Omdat we hier altijd bijzonder meelevend zijn met de handel en wandel van Compaq kan ik het uiteraard niet laten om wat info te posten:

Compaq Computer Corp. Thursday warned of a second-quarter loss as pricing pressures slammed its business, but the personal computer maker unveiled a restructuring plan that included job cuts and heavy investments in Internet and telephone sales.

Compaq's share price tumbled then recovered as investors tried to digest news of the unexpected loss and the promise of a leaner computer company.

Shares of Compaq have fallen more than 50 percent this year as the Houston-based company shocked Wall Street with a slack first quarter and a string of executive departures.

Compaq stock closed up 25 cents at $22.50 in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange, where it was the most actively traded issue on volume of more than 25 million shares.

Het complete artikel vind je bij GA-Source.

Hmm, zag bij Betanews deze post over WinNT6, de opvolger van Win2000:

Something I thought was quite interesting is the word going around about the next version of Windows NT. Word has it that Windows NT6 or Windows 2005 - whatever it will be called - already is being written. Some select few at Microsoft apparently already have some of the alpha code in use. Apparently a feature list isn't known yet, as it is a concept and not a full product at the current time. Possibly Active Directory and the new UI options hidden (and not usable) within Windows 2000 will be taken to new levels. Don't you think this is a bit premature, Windows 2000 isn't even done yet!

Aargh, slecht nieuws: Abit zal _geen_ K7 moederplanken gaan bouwen Hier heb je de info afkomstig uit een mailtje dat Upgrade Center van Abit ontving:

From: "Harry Yen"

Sorry Abit will not manufacture K7 motherboards. Big disappoinment to me as well =(

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABIT Computer www.abit-usa.com
Harry Yen Application Engineer
*****@abit-usa.com Nathan Testa

Overclockers Workbench weet te vertellen dat Abit nieuwe BIOSsen heeft gereleased voor de BE6, BP6 en LX6:

- BE6 BIOS-BE6LQ.EXE
- BP6 BIOS-BP6LP.EXE
- LX6 BIOS-LX6CLY.EXE

Leuk dat we al een BP6 BIOS kunnen downen, nu alleen nog wachten tot de plank zelf te koop is .

3D Soundsurge heeft een review van de Yamaha Waveforce 192 op z'n site geparkeerd. De kaart heeft een digitale S/PDIF interface en biedt naast native ondersteuning voor Sensaura's 3D audio technology ook support voor A3D1.0 en EAX:

A3D 1.x support was also good as illustrated by the included Jedi Knight: Pathways to the Force demo, the Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace demo, full versions of Battlezone and on Mikael’s machine the full versions of Outlaws and Jedi Knight. Incoming exhibited pops and clicks but its known to do that on sound cards with official A3D support so this was not a big surprise.

Titles with EAX support are a bit different as we were not finding consistent performance across titles. First off, the EAX reverb produced by the Yamaha 192d under any circumstances is not as good as the Sound Blaster Live line of cards. The best EAX performers for this card were Half-Life where it sounded quite good to both of us and Unreal but while my Unreal EAX test worked fine and sounded good, Mikael’s crashed as soon as he started to play. I also found the audio in Unreal to be not nearly as crisp as with the SB Live (with EAX) or the MX300 (without EAX). Using Thief: The Dark Project with the 1.33 patch that enables EAX, I found the EAX pretty good except that it seems to lag behind the odd time. 3D sound was good on the Waveforce, even with EAX enabled.

Goed nieuws voor AMD / slecht nieuws voor Intel: volgens MaximumPC is de release van de Coppermine met minimaal twee maanden vooruit geschoven:

Intel originally planned to release the Coppermine CPUs - 0.18 micron Pentium IIIs with on-die L2 cache - in September, but the company says the chip will now be released in November. Not all is lost however, as Intel plans to release a 600MHz Pentium III in September, but it will be like the current 0.25 micron chips, not 0.18 Coppermines.

Intel also announced that the portable Pentium III will debut at 500MHz, not 600MHz as originally planned, and that the company is scheduling a round of price cuts for Pentium II processors. Analysts said the price cuts could come as soon as next week.

Intel's production problems come at a bad time for the company as competitor AMD prepares to unleash its high-end CPU code-named "K7."

PC Velocity heeft een interview gepost met Brian Burke van 3dfx. In het interview stelt PC Velocity o.a. vragen over het gebrek aan 32-bit en AGP texturing support op de Voodoo3. Best wel grappig om te lezen hoe die gozer van 3dfx zich daar onderuit probeert te lullen:

PCV: Performance vs. image quality. What is 3dfx's position on this topic?

3dfx: Simple, gamers need both, but should not be forced to compromise either. Without performance, image quality means very little and visa versa. 32-bit color is a perfect example. Compare two images side by side, one using 3dfx Voodoo3 at 16-bit, the other with a competitors card at 32-bit. If you freeze a frame and blow it up 200% you can see some very subtle differences in image quality. But if you play the game, the difference in the frame rates are obvious. To really get a true measure, you have to include frame rates

Tja, je zou ons gamers natuurlijk ook zelf de keuze kunnen geven om voor 16 of 32-bit kleurdiepte te kiezen?

Oh ooh, er zitten weer een paar foutjes in de PIII, 46 maar liefst:

Intel has released the latest update to the Pentium III specification and has published a list of 46 errata. Erratum is Intel's marchitecture-speak for a bug.

But the majority of the 46 bugs shown are unlikely to be fixed, according to the document. That is likely to be because there are either workarounds for the bugs or they are non-significant.

Voor meer info kun je bij Intel een .pdfje neer halen.

PC Benchmarks heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid waarin ze de performance van een V3-2000 en Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor TNT2 vergelijken op een zogenaamd 'trage' PII-233:

It gets said often, but it still bears repeating. Never rely on any one (or even 2!) benchmarks to make the case. In Quake II, the Voodoo3 has the advantage at low resolutions, but loses ground at higher resolutions on faster CPUs. In contrast, in Expendable, the Voodoo3 has the advantage at higher resolutions on a faster CPU. Some games will work better on a Voodoo3, some on a TNT2. It will all depend on which features are stressed in that particular game.

Oftewel: uit de benchmarks viel weinig soep te koken, bij het ene spel was de V3 sneller en bij het andere de TNT2.

Hmmm, ik was er al bang voor: Matrox schijnt wel drivers voor Windows NT te hebben, maar ze doen er erg geheimzinnig over. Ze willen ze in ieder geval niet vrijgeven voor review-doeleinden. Over een NT ICD wordt al helemaal niet gesproken, maar ik vrees het ergste:

Over the last three weeks I have made numerous requests for Windows NT beta drivers for review purposes. Each time I have made a request Matrox have informed me that no beta drivers were available. I have also asked that if, given the fact no beta drivers were available to reviewers, the G400s would actually ship with NT drivers as Matrox had stated they would, I was not given an answer to this question. As someone who has been enthusiastically recommending the G400s I felt that I should now inform you of this situation and told Matrox I would be doing so today. I have just received word from Matrox that Windows NT drivers are indeed shipping with the G400s BUT they still will not supply me with the drivers for review purposes. I am not going to make any comment on why they will not let me test drivers that are actually being shipped out with the G400s, I'll leave that for you to make up your own minds. But I will say personally that I cannot recommend a G400 to anyone who's prime need is Windows NT until such a time Matrox make drivers available to reviewers and we can test them.

Overigens schijnen ze in Hong Kong al te koop te zijn. Hier kan je het hele verhaal lezen. (O ja, dit gaat natuurlijk over de G400)

NEC heeft een iMac achtige Wintel pc aangekondigd. Het ding heeft de naam 'Z1' mee gekregen en ziet er best wel cool uit:

Dat ziet er al een stuk beter uit dan zo'n AaiMek of nie? Hier heb je wat info over het apparaat, afkomstig uit een artikel van PC World:

The $2499 model has a 15-inch screen and is scheduled to be available in August. An 18-inch Z1 will follow before year's end, with pricing to be announced upon release. NEC's Z1 costs $500 more than Gateway's Profile, but it offers more robust features.

The Z1 runs on a 450-MHz Intel Pentium III processor and comes with 96MB of memory, an 8.4GB hard disk, DVD-ROM drive, floppy drive, and a modem. The system ships with a wireless keyboard with built-in point-and-click mouse controls--and it comes with a USB mouse that plugs into the display base.

Yup, nog meer DNF Q&A bij AGN 3D:

Aside from the fact that this game should be insanely fun single player, how much effort will there be on the multiplayer side of DNF such as extra modes of play like Capture the Flag and Co-Op?

We believe strongly in creating a single play AND multiplay game. We will put tremendous efforts into that side of the game. In fact we can deathmatch DNF now and play it. There is a reason most FPS games aren't doing co-op though. The levels just aren't designed for that type of gameplay anymore and it's too complex to try to deal with. But we do intend to hook people with DNF's single player, then keep them playing for 2 years with the multiplayer game.

Check AGN 3D voor de overige 3 vragen.

Viper3D heeft een zooitje info over de next-generation 3D accelerator van 3dfx op het net gezet. Hier heb je de specs van het ding (dat voorlopig de naam 'Napalm' heeft). Uiteraard gaat het hier om onbevestigde info, dus het kan net zo goed onzin zijn:

- Code-name 'Napalm'.
- 0.25u die-fab integration.
- Banshee 2D core, new 3D core, 3rd-party Geometry engine.
- 4 to 128 MB SDRAM on-card. (4MB?? OEM product perhaps?)
- 32-bit true color, 24-bit Z and W-Buffer, 8-bit Stencil.
- 32-bit 2K x 2K texture support, Texture compression capable.
- SLI Scalable via single or multiple Chips. (Upgrade Sockets?)
- 400 to 1600 MTexels/sec. (Multiple card models? Sockets?)
- 4 Million sustained transformed Triangles/sec.

Ok, ziet er leuk uit (en klinkt redelijk realistisch). Nu nog wachten wat de nVidia NV10, S3 GX4 gaan bieden. In de tussen tijd kun je bij Viper3D terecht voor meer info over 'Napalm'.

AVault heeft een update over Unreal Tournament geplaatst, waaruit we kunnen opmaken dat de release date erg close is:

A recent update to the Unreal Universe web site indicated that Epic Games considered its upcoming 3D action game Unreal Tournament finished and in the hands of publisher GT Interactive. GT confirmed with the Adrenaline Vault that the game is “practically done” and that it could emerge close to the end of June or beginning of July. The company representative we questioned said, “I have to qualify that as Epic says they will ship no product before its time. It will be done when it's done, which is a good thing because players get the best game possible.” We seem to remember Epic stating something similar to “When it’s done” once, too.

Hyundai heeft vandaag bekend gemaakt dat de eerste PC266 DDR SDRAM samples gereleased heeft. De samples gaan tot 143MHz en omdat het hier om Double Data Rata SDRAM gaat zijn de prestaties in theorie dubbel zo hoog als die van standaard SDRAM (vandaar de benaming 'PC266' voor 133Mhz DDR SDRAM):

HEI (President : Kim Young-Hwan) has released the samples of 128 DDR (Double Data Rate) Synchronous DRAM, the newly standardized next-generation high-speed memory for the first time.

The product released by HEI is the first product produced for the first time that meets the standardization of PC266A(CL2). HEI has risen as the leading company in the DDR Synchronous DRAM market by releasing the samples of 128M DDR Synchronous DRAM only three months after it was designated as the supplier of DDR SDRAM based upon the fact that its superiority in quality was proven while it supplied IBM and Hewlett-Packard with 64M DDR Synchronous DRAM chips and modules (DDR SDRAM hereafter) earlier this year.

The 128M DDR Synchronous DRAM developed and produced by HEI has its width of circuit of 0.22 micron (1 micron=1/a million meter), and has its consuming voltage as low as 2.5 v., and meets the standardization of PC266A(CLC) finalized by JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council).

Also, it supports various width of data bus such as 4,8, and 16 bit, supports the KLUK frequency as high as 143 MHz covering 133 MHz, and fits the products which need a large amount of memory such as PC servers and highly capable workstations since its transmitting speed is 286 Mbps (143MHz X 2) at 266Mbps (bit per second, 133 MHz X 2), more than twice as fast as the DRAMs are at the same frequency.

De K7 chipsets zullen in ieder geval support krijgen voor DDR SDRAM. Van Intel hoef je dat niet zo snel te verwachten, want die zitten in het vijandige Rambus kamp.

The Techzone heeft een review van de Global Win VES 20 heatsink op hun site gepleurd. De cooler ziet er ongeveer zo uit:

Hier was info uit de review:

The first thing I noticed with the VES 20 is that the system ran cooler than the stock Intel heatsink. With the Intel heatsink, the system temp measure 93 to 96F when running at 585Mhz. Once the VES 20 was installed, it drop down to 89 and never once went over 92F. Not bad at all.

The unit is more noisier than the stock heatsink. However it's not really that noticeable. The case fans in the test system make more noise anyway.