Vandaag was het in de USA de nationale TA: Kingdoms review dag, wist je niet hè? Er zijn vandaag namelijk 4 sites die hun review van deze gloedje nieuwe Real Time Strategy game hebben gepost, namelijk:

The Adrenaline Vault
Gameprix
UGN3D
3DGameGeek

Hier onder heb je een stukkie geplakt uit de review van The Adrenaline Vault...

While based on the same engine, the graphics in TA:K were surprisingly different. The terrain and various units had a more mythical, fantasy-based look than TA, although some similar terrain characteristics were easy to spot. Each of the four sides had a different tileset that reflected the characteristics of that location. Battlefields were littered with ruined buildings and rotting corpses, which nicely added to the atmosphere of the missions. One of the things I liked most was that the different types of terrain seamlessly fit together in a real-world manner. So rather than having water come up to land, but not really create any kind of horeline, my units could walk along a beach or in the shallow water from one place to the next. The unit animations were well done and the combat featured textbook graphics, such as fiery explosions and burning trees. Ground-based units moved realistically over the terrain and the flying and naval units moved realistically as well.

Ace's Hardware heeft het tweede deel van z'n "Choosing the right CPU" artikel gepost. In part 2 is gefocust op games en overclocking:

Both the K6-2 and the Celeron over clock by 10 % with no problem at all. However, the K6-2 has a slight advantage because you can choose the bus speed AND multiplier. The K6-3 is producing way too much heat to over clock efficiently. The K6-III 400 can be over clocked, but most K6-III 450 won't go any higher. The PIII-450 is one of the best over clockers, and performs well at 527 mhz, when your driven to put the "petal to the metal, so to speak.

De info (met veel benchmarks) vind je hier.

Ojee, nog een een Dynamite TNT2 review (ik schat dat we aan numero 28 zitten). Voor de verandering gaat 't wel om de op 145/170Mhz geklokte 'vanilla' TNT2 versie:

Hercules' drivers and utilities are top notch. Driver updates are actually fun, as the driver update program actually automates all the selection screens and check boxes of Windows 98, as if you had your own personal Hercules Technician doing it for you. Very cool! You also get all the D3D and OpenGL settings tabs in your Monitors control panel, as well as gamma settings, etc. The Herculometer overclocking utility would be considered the centerpeice, and allows a tweaker to have a hayday when pushing the card to its limits. And you can do this with both the Ultra and non-Ultra Dynamite cards. I was quite surprised to see the standard card easily being clocked to 150/183, which is the speed that NVIDIA originally set for their Ultra cards. In fact, even with only 16 megs of RAM, you'd be hard pressed in most situations to tell the difference between Hercules' standard TNT2 card and just about any competitor's TNT2 Ultra. Budget-minded individuals will be thrilled with this type of performance.

IGN.PSX heeft op de Sony Developers Conference in San Mateo een berg sappige info over de PSX2 geoogst. Check it:

"Overall, I was really impressed with what Sony showed, and the conference overall," said the source. "I think that development for the next generation PlayStation is going to have steep learning curves. The first games will be difficult, they may be odd. Overall, it's easier to develop for the Dreamcast than the PlayStation 2.

"Having said that, there are things you can do on the PlayStation 2 you can't do on the Dreamcast. You have access to a raw, deeper rendering pipeline on PS2 than in Dreamcast. Real tessellation can't be done on Dreamcast. Bezier Curves are going to be awesome. And you have the raw access to create transformations and morphs unlike that on the Dreamcast. You will have the transformation code.

"I was most impressed with the sheer power and the sheer flexibility of that power. Unlike what's been said by another developer [who said the PlayStation 2 had the worst development qualities of both the Saturn and the Nintendo 64], I don't think the N64 enters into it at all. There's nothing bad like the N64 on this system. There are multiple processors, and those who've developed for the Saturn may have a headstart on others. Overall, leveraging the power of the system is most important, that was a big point.

"I guess the lack of Ram worries me a little. There are 32 megabytes of main RAM, and 4 megabytes of VRAM. Folks on the PC might have difficulty with this. There may not be enough. Yeah, it's kind of skimpy."

"A couple of interesting side notes caught my attention. You can use the R3000 on the PS (the main chip on the PlayStation that will appear on the PlayStation 2 as the I/O processor) as an additional general-purpose processor. Now it's called the R3300 on PS2. Also, the system didn't appear in a final shell. It's still a desktop PC case unit, no shell was demonstrated. The PS2 shell was supposed to appear at E3 at the top of the pyramid in its booth, but a few days before the show Sony decided to take it down."

Moeten wij PC gebruikers nu massaal in onze broekjes plassen!?

DanWu.com heeft een review geupt van de Plextor Plexwriter 8/20 CD-Recorder. Branden op 8-speed, da's snel!

All I can say is "WOW!" When I first got the 4x CDR, I thought that was fast, as I could burn any CD in under 20 minutes. With the arrival of this PlexWriter though, sub-10 minute burns are now the norm. It is quite a jump when burn time is cut in half. I can understand how some would say that any burn under 20 minutes would do fine, but if you have ever had to burn a lot of CDs for friends, backup, etc., time makes a big difference. I tried several kinds of media while burning, initially afraid that the CDs would not be properly burned at 8-speed if the CDR discs were not certified for 8x burning. However, this was not the case, as I tried 5 various brands of CDRs, from the brand names to the no-name generics and have not had a problem with any of them!

Bill C. en kornuiten gaan de Amerikaanse export beperkingen voor super computers aanpassen. Die beperkingen waren nogal lullig voor o.a. Sony, omdat de nieuwe PSX2 onder deze regeling als een 'super computer' zou worden gezien. Hier heb je de info van GA-Source:

Faced with video games that pack more computing power than supercomputers did a few years ago, the Clinton administration said Thursday it will ease restrictions on the types of technology U.S. companies can export to nations like India, China and Russia.

Bowing to the wishes of manufacturers, the administration relaxed a series of export limits. Unless Congress takes action to block the changes, most will take effect within about six months.

Had the export limits not been raised, non-U.S. computer vendors were poised to grab business totaling $4 billion over the next four years, White House officials said. The rules also would have begun to apply to a host of consumer products like the upcoming Sony Playstation II video game machine. ``If the president had not taken this step, this Playstation, which will be available at the holiday season this year, would be controlled,'' said Secretary of Commerce William Daley, holding up the purple, plastic machine at a White House press briefing.

AGN Hardware heeft een review gepost van de 13Gig dikke WD Caviar. Deze schijf draait op 5400rpm en is daarom wat vriendelijker geprijst dan zijn snellere 7200rpm broertje:

There will always be drives that are faster or less expensive, but few companies offer the same value as Western Digital does. The Caviar 13.0 GB combines good performance, excellent reliability, and Ultra ATA/66 support at a competitive price. What makes this drive even more appealing is the fact that Western Digital is currently offering a $30 rebate on the retail Caviar 13.0 GB drive. So long as you remember to send it in, the $30 rebate brings the price of this drive down to the level of the Fujitsu drives, which do not offer the same level of performance and reliability.

Andy van BXBoards heeft een PC133 Memory Roundup in elkaar gedraaid, waarin een aantal PC133 DIMMen werden mishandeld op busspeeds tot 150MHz. Andy heeft benchmarks van een niet-gelockte Celeron op 400/66, 400/100 en 400/133, waaruit blijkt dat een hogere busspeed wel degelijk helpt. Hier heb je een stukje uit de conclusie:

There is no doubt that, at the moment, PC133 memory offers much greater stability at 133Mhz and beyond than is offered by PC100 memory. Right now it probably isn't worth selling your PC100 memory and getting PC133 memory, purely because you will only see this RAM at its best if you can actually get to 133Mhz, which is problematic due to the locking issues previously discussed.

For those of you in the market for some new memory right now, then it seems crazy not to buy PC133 memory, purely because of the future proofing this offers. The stability is offered is awesome, and its nice to actually see 153Mhz in action as well!

Gamespot TV heeft een Realvideo interview met onze vriend John Romero online gezet. In het interview wordt er wat gechat over Daikatana (en first persoon shooters in het algemeen). Hier heb je een stuk uit de text versie:

GSTV: You mentioned Quake III. How do you feel about the new batch of multiplayer focused shooters?

Romero: I love multiplayer gaming obviously. I think that they're great games. I'll play 'em over and over again. You know they're really cool. They're basically part of the, the new wave of, of online gaming that we saw with the start of Ultima On-Line and now we have Everquest out there. I think we're gonna see more genres breaking into the online, multiplayer-type games. Some time in the future I believe though that those games might converge back to their roots with the way that first-person shooter started with single-player as having a beginning and an end goal. And now it's going fully multiplayer. I think that at some point in the future you're gonna see it come back to-- you start this massively multiplayer shooter, but you have a goal and you get to the end like you do in single-player.

CPU Review heeft een interview gepost met een ventje van AMD. Hier heb je een quote:

[CPUReview] When do you expect to hit 1Ghz?

[AMD] We expect 650Mhz in Q3; 700Mhz in Q4 - SiS and Kryotech have shown an 800Mhz Athlon system. We expect to hit 1Ghz in 2000.

Echt veel nieuwe info valt er verder niet te halen.

Tim Sweeney heeft weer een update gepost op de Unreal Technology Page, met info over de 226 patch status:

226 Progress

Testing of 226a brought in mixed results: Direct3D performance improved for most testers, but some had crashes and other weirdness. I'm looking into all of this now; I think most of the problems are driver/hardware related, but I should be able to work around most of them in the code. We'll definitely go through a couple more internal test versions before releasing 226 though.

I'm also adding a new "wizard" based user-interface for switching 3D drivers and changing "safe mode" settings, to improve the user-friendlyness of the Direct3D/OpenGL/Glide/Software switching.

Recommended Reading

A Theory of Objects is an excellent book for people trying to design object-oriented programming languages (or just learn the theoretical background of OOP). It does get pretty technical, defining a lambda-calculus variant in terms of objects, and analyzing OOP concepts within that framework. But it sheds a lot of light on the general language-design problems that UnrealScript faced.

After writing a big piece of code like the UnrealScript compiler, it's cool to examine some of the design decisions that I made without really knowing what I was doing, only to discover there's a well-developed theoretical foundation for what I basically hacked together until I felt it worked right. For example, it turns out that UnrealScript's type-compatibility checking (the rules for determining whether a variable is compatible as an assignment parameter or function call parameter), exactly follow the rules of type covariance, contravariance, and invariance.

JC en AMD Zone berichten beide over geruchten dat de Athlon zowel clock- als multiplier-locked zal worden. Op dit moment valt er eigenlijk nog niets te zeggen over de betrouwbaarheid van deze geruchten:

K7 to be clock locked? Well, no, that was just my way of getting your attention. We've basically been assured time and time again that K7 would not be clock, bus, or multiplier locked. And barring that the first few motherboards may not offer extra bus speeds, it is looking to be true that the K7 will not be locked. But (and there's always a "but"....

"Remember the gold finger? Well i was kind of right it programs the multiplier and l2 cache speed so we will need a device to change the multiplier in order to overclock, which is why it is almost impossible currently only amd, chipset and mobo vendors have those devices for now"

Okay, so this may be a "we are screwed" problem. I don't think it will be such a situation; I think that later models will be put together a lot more easily for us folks who like to overclock. At the least, I know a couple people I might beat over the head if they make this difficult for all of us. Yikes, I think this may cause a small furor. Don't panic yet, everybody! Heh...I can see it now --

Abit still won't make motherboards for AMD, but they'll make a fortune with "K7 overclocking units".

Hou amdzone.com in de gaten, want zij zeggen vandaag over meer info te kunnen beschikken.

Inderdaad, het was al een tijdje bekent, maar ABIT heeft het mij nu rechtstreeks bevestigd.

For the moment the quote about K7 is true. We do not want waist engineering effors for this new products which is not 100% sure in its capabilities and compabilities (we do not want to do the debugging for AMD). That's why we contiue our efforts in developing top products for the new Intel chipsets. But if K7 show to be areally competitive product, we might change our strategy.

dezelfde twijfels die ik al had... geeft toe, het heeft logica.

Ik kreeg weer eens een mailtje van Glenn / FPS3D. Dit keer blijkt-ie een review van de Elsa Erazor III gepost te hebben. Hier heppie een stuk over de performance:

First let's start off with Quake2... The TNT2's fillrate can run free in Demo1 low-res because it doesn't have that many polygons to fill, but as soon as you start adding in tons of polys, like Crusher does, the extra fillrate can't be used, since more polys have to be setup. However, jack up the res in Demo1, and the fillrate gets used up more quickly for each frame, which brings the scores closer to Crusher's. Finally, at 1600x1200, the two demos almost meet, a small 2.5 frames apart. This shows that the TNT2's weakness is definitely not in it's fill rate, but in it's requirement for even faster CPU's and triengle setup. It's polygon throughput just can't keep up as Crusher shows. One thing that cannot be forgotten is that this non-Ultra TNT2 scored above 35fps in Crusher at 1024x768. Now that is just simply rocking good. Crusher is worst-case situation, so the Erazor III has plenty of breathing room throughout QuakeII.

Ik kwam via Voodoo Extreme bij de Weslovian Gazette. Daar hebben ze een artikeltje over problemen met de LX chipset, die te weinig power levert om sommige Voodoo3 en TNT2 kaarten vooruit te kachelen. Abit heeft inmiddels een fix gepost:

ABIT has confirmed a problem discovered by the weslovian gazette this past April. While trying to review the Voodoo3 card, an apparent incompatibility was found with the Voodoo3 and the LX chipset. ABIT has now informed the weslovian gazette that a fix is available for ABIT LX6 motherboards that have problems with the Voodoo3 and TNT2 AGP2x cards. The problem has been discussed in the alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit newsgroup, and a fix has been identified by ABIT engineers.

The problem does indeed stem from the LX chipset's inability to feed the AGP 2x cards enough power to sustain good health. This would be a generic LX chipset errata, not specific to ABIT.

Rivarave heeft een reviewtje gebouwd rondom de Elsa 3D Revelator shutter glasses. Does it really look 3D?

Personally, my short answer is yes. There's "enough" information for your brain to percieve depth in the 3D image. This is 50% of the effect. Some of you may have to convince yourself that what you're seeing is actually three dimensional. I say this because some people won't feel the effect or won't think much of it if they aren't convinced at what they are seeing is three dimensional. In my instance, I wasn't exactly "floored" by the effect I saw the first time I saw it. Things kept convincing me that what I was seeing wasn't "immersive" 3D. The first thing was that I could still see everything outside the monitor and my surroundings. Second, I naturally knew that the monitor screen was flat and the image was two dimensional. I eventually convinced myself and the 3D effect actually helped me play games.

Yup, en deze is van GamePC. Hier heb je wat knip'n'plak over de performance:

I was pleasantly surprised at the speed of the card, especially at higher resolutions. With more games including the recently released Heavy Gear 2 by Activision and Descent 3 by Interplay supporting 32-bit color, it looks like those who really want the output to look good now have a reason to run in 32-bit modes. The fact that a minimal performance hit is taken when moving to 32-bit with the G400 makes using this feature that much more appealing. While OpenGL support is still a little on the weak side, I would have to say, at this point, that they do maintain their title as the king of image quality. Matrox has been working feverishly on improving their OpenGL support and it looks like they are on the right path. Again, their numbers approach the TNT2's at higher resolutions. Under Direct3D, the G400 truly shines. Matrox has really increased the performance of their Direct3D driver. It will be interesting to see how much faster the G400 MAX is. If these results are any indication, then the 33% increase in speed with the G400 MAX will push it over most TNT2 Ultras.

Rivastation heeft een vergelijkingstest gepost waarin 8 videoplanken worden gereviewed:

- 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000
- V3 ASUS AGP-V3800 TVR - TNT2
- ASUS AGP-V3800 Ultra Deluxe - TNT2 Ultra
- Diamond Stealth S540 III - Savage4 Pro+
- Diamond Viper V770 Ultra - TNT2 Ultra
- ELSA Erazor III Video - TNT2
- ELSA Winner II - Savage4 Pro+
- Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor - TNT2

Op dit moment is het artikel alleen in het deutsch beschikbaar, aan een vertaling wordt gewerkt. Dit stukje heb ik uit de conclusie gerukt:

Die Voodoo3 3000 bietet durchaus gute Leistungen. Allerdings ist dies der einzige Punkt in dem sie mit der Konkurenz mithalten kann. In der Bildqualität muss man allein schon Feature-bedingt starke Abstriche machen. Kein 32Bit Rendering, 16Bit Z-Buffer, kein AGP Texturing und zu kleine Texturen. Dies sind Punkte die schon in kürze in neuen Spielen zu starken Abstrichen führen werden. 3Dfx hat diese Features schon für den Nachfolger angekündigt. Die Voodoo3 kann also nur eine Übergangslösung sein. Ein Austausch erfolgt sicherlich früher als bei anderen Karten. Sicherer für die Zukunft ist man auf jeden Fall mit einer TNT2.

Gurutech heeft een interview gepost met Paul Crossley, PR ventje van S3. In het interview wordt er gebabbeld over de overname van Diamond. Ik hak er hier ff een stuk uit:

4) What was the thinking behind acquiring a company which sells products on such a different level of those from S3?

A)- On the graphics front, S3 could already be considered a board supplier, given the software and board layout effort we currently offer our AIC partners. Diamond simply builds on our strengths with further software know-how, an end-user support base and a strong distribution infrastructure.

B)- On other fronts, the merger allows S3 to diversify into new high-growth areas in which Diamond already has successful product efforts underway that will benefit from additional financial and technical resources.

Apple blijkt niet erg ingetogen te zijn met het idee van Future Power om een sterk op de iMac lijkende pc box te bouwen. Laten wij kijken naar onderstaand plaatje:

Tja, Bill zou het gejat kunnen hebben... Apple gaat nu een rechtszaak aanspannen tegen Future Power, zo bericht ZDNet:

Apple Computer Corp. has filed suit against the makers of an iMac look-alike, asking that they be prohibited from distributing the system.

The suit, filed in federal court against Future Power and Daewoo Telecom, complains that the E-Power systems, which are Intel-based, "illegally copy Apple's designs."

"There is a universe of original designs that Future Power and Daewoo could have created for their computers, but instead they chose to copy Apple's designs," Steve Jobs, Apple's interim CEO said in a release. "We've invested a lot of money and effort to create and market our award-winning designs, and we intend to vigorously protect them under the law."

I/OMagic heeft een 56-speed CD-Rommeke gebouwd. K'weenie of dit handig is (ik leef nog steeds in vrede met een 24-speed). Misschien leuk voor de burn-freaks? Anyway, hier heb je de press release, bruut gejat van AnandTech Webnews:

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 1, 1999--I/OMagic Corp. (OTC BB:IOMC), a leading developer and marketer of peripheral PC products, Thursday announced the release of the fastest CD-ROM player to hit the computer marketplace -- the "MagicSpin 56X."

The MagicSpin 56X is the first internal IDE CD-ROM kit to achieve a maximum transfer rate of 8400 KB/SEC. It is also 130 percent faster than 24X drives. The MagicSpin 56X has high-speed audio extraction and is compatible with all CD formats, including CD-RW media. It is simple to install due to its Windows(R)98/95 Plug & Play compatibility.

"CD-ROM sales are expected to surpass 100 million units in 1999," said Tony Shahbaz, president and chief executive officer of I/OMagic. "I/OMagic will continue to penetrate this arena by providing cutting edge products that meet market demands."

The MagicSpin 56X has an average access time of 80ms and it supports Ultra-DMA Mode 2 with transfer rates up to 33MB/sec. The Ultra DMA support will consume less processor bandwidth, which frees the processor for other tasks.

The MagicSpin 56X is expected to have a retail shelf price of $89 and is available now in national computer retail outlets.

About I/OMagic I/OMagic develops and markets a variety of peripheral PC products designed to allow connectivity and increase the functionality of both portable and desktop computers. Product categories include high-speed data/fax/voice modems, scanners, CD-ROM drives, audio cards and video graphics accelerators. The company sells its many products through nationally recognized computer retail outlets.

Ik lees bij GA-Source dat Gamer's Alliance een Rally Championship '99 (rally game met de meest wrede graphics to date) site heeft geopend:

We are pleased to announce the launch of Rally Championship Online. The new site, located at www.rallychamp.com, is dedicated to what we expect to be the best 3D Rally simulation to date, Rally Championship.

The launch includes an interview with Richard Vanner, the Project Manager at Europress Australia, as well as a first look article loaded with information on the features we can expect. Check out the new site over here. Enjoy! [break]Hier heb je een quote uit dat interview met Richard Vanner / Europress:[/break] Gary (GA-Sports): Have any of the series drivers had the opportunity to play RC99? If So, what are their initial impressions?

Richard (Europress): Martin Rowe the rally champion of '98 has played the game a number of times, he's astounded by what we're doing. He couldn't believe how real his Renault Megane looked in the game, all the buttons and dials that are in the real rally car are visible in the model. As the game is still undergoing development, with the car's playability being something we're focussing on now, I'd rather leave this judgement up to the game players and game reviewers. It's our intention to get this playability spot on.

iXBT Labs heeft een review gepost van errug prettige Matrox G400. Beste video accelerator van dit moment? iXBT heeft veel info en benchmarks:

So, what can we conclude judging by these benchmarks? Well, Matrox Millennium G400 proved to be an indisputable leader over nVidia Riva TNT2 and 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 in Direct3D (G400 managed to stay on a level with nVidia Riva TNT2 Ultra and even to leave it a bit behind in Expendable and Incoming). However, in OpenGL G400 suffered a shattering defeat. Here the performance of Matrox Millennium G400 needs absolutely no comments: the diagram shows more than enough. Hm, remember the numerous forecasts saying that Matrox will succeed in everything except OpenGL support! Well, those pessimistic predictions came true. But we have to be fair: the gaming quality remains on a quite acceptable level in all the leading resolutions (up to 1024x768 including). We may actually blame the beta-version of the drivers for the inability of the graphics card to work at 1280x960 even in a window (Matrox Millenium G400 hadn't been launched yet, while we were working on the review, and hence the drivers release was still unavailable).

Check de review bij iXBT-Labs.