PC Paradox heeft een interview gehad met AMD, over de Athlon (uiteraard). Hier heb je een snip, en hier staat de rest.

[Q] When is the Athlon moving to 0.18-micron process technology and will it be copper based like the Intel PIII Coppermine?

[A] PIII coppermine does not use copper interconnect technology. Athlon will use 0.18 technology at the turn of the year with copper interconnect soon after that.

[Q] Does the release of the PIII Coppermine worry you at all, regarding the speed increases that Intel will get with its move to on-die cache and Copper technology?

[A] No. Athlon has 128k of on-die cache and as you will see from the performance metrics which we have already published on our web site, we expect to outperform coppermine when it finally comes out in November. Also coppermine will debut at 600 Mhz, we have 600 Mhz now. Again, coppermine does not use copper interconnect.

FullOn3D heeft een artikeltje gepost waarin ze de performance van een aantal 3D audio API's vergelijken. Hier een stukje:

Basically however, A3D is to Aureal, what Glide™ is to 3dfx, i.e. A3D is Aureal’s own API, whereas DirectSound3D is part of Microsft’s DirectX API which performs a similar function (they both use the same sound hardware in the same way that Glide and Direct3D use the same graphic hardware). The DirectSound API simply produces 'wave' audio without any 3D processing and the A3D2.0 API is an extension to the basic A3D API that incorporates such things as Aureal’s Wavetracing™ technology (Aureal’s implementation of Environmental Audio). Unfortunately Descent3 only supports the A3D API, not the full A3D2.0 functions of which the Vortex2 chip is capable (fancy things like Wavetracing must usually be designed into a game from ‘day one’).

HardOCP heeft een review van de Dynamite TNT2 Ultra op het net gekwakt. HardOCP style, dus veel overclockers info:

We found that we could bring the memory up to a stable 230MHz depending on the AGP bus speed. Meaning that when we ran AGP bus higher than 77MHz mark the memory would only be stable to about 225MHz. Still not shabby by anybody's standard.

As for the core, it was not as limber. In any of the tests, we could not get it up above the 189MHz mark with any semblance of stability. At 185MHz it seemed to be right at home

[...]One thing that you cannot see from the FPS stats above is the stability with which this card performed. As I type this, the Hercules is sitting on the test bench running on a 97MHz AGP Bus. Now it is NOT running a 3D engine, but not any other TNT2 card I have here will do that. I have run this card overclocked on a 82MHz bus running Q3A and Unreal Tourney without crashes.

En dan nog een derde artikel op Hardwareinfo.nl, over het overklokken van de socket370 C366. Met behulp van wat extra koeling was Koen in staat om z'n C366 richting 550MHz te knutselen:

Zoals ik in het vorige overklok artikel (Celeron 500 MHz project - Deel 1 / Deel 2) al schreef is er bij overklokken een ding echt zeer belangrijk: een geforceerde luchtstroom. Als werkt de CPU-cooler nog zo goed, als de warme lucht niet snel uit de computer-kast kan vertrekken zal een overgeklokte processor nooit stabiel functioneren. In dit project hebben we een Socket370 Celeron overgeklokt naar 550 MHz. Bij deze snelheden wordt de processor ongekend heet: deze hete lucht zo snel mogelijk afvoeren is de enige manier tot succesvol overklokken. Dit artikel is dus te zien als een voorbeeld van geforceerde luchtstroom.

Lees 't hier.

Nog een review van Hardwareinfo.nl, met dit keer de Viper V770 als slachtoffer. De V770 draait standaard op 125/150Mhz en wordt geleverd zonder actieve koeling (alleen een heatsinkje). Met behulp van een extra ventilator kan de kaart tot Ultra TNT2 snelheden (150/183Mhz) overgeklokt worden:

Met de extra cooler van twee tientjes spaar je je zo weer ca. Fl. 100 uit voor de duurdere UltraTNT2 versie van de Viper V770. Zelfs na zeer lange tijd Quake II demo's draaien bleef de kaart stabiel op de UltraTNT2 kloksnelheden. De performance winst van bijna 13% is zeer hoog in vergelijking met de andere TNT2 kaarten.

Check Hardwareinfo.nl voor info, benchmarks en pics.

Koen van Hardwareinfo.nl heeft een review van de Asus V3800 Ultra Deluxe op z'n site gezet. De kaart is geklokt op 150/183MHz (nieuwe revisies draaien geloof ik op 175/200) en wordt geleverd met een 3D shutterbril, waarover hier een stukje uit de review:

Het effect is maar zeer magertjes en het beeld trilt zeer erg als je de bril gebruikt: na 2 minuten had ik al genoeg hoofdpijn om te stoppen met spelen. De bril heeft verder geen enkel draag-comfort en ziet eruit alsof hij ieder moment uit elkaar kan vallen. Echt een extraatje dus, maar verder weinig bruikbaar. Om deze functie te kunnen gebruiken moet je overigens een monitor hebben die een verversings-frequentie van 120 Hz interlaced kan verwerken. 14", 15" en goedkope 17" monitoren zijn dus niet te gebruiken bij dit systeem.

Hot Hardware heeft een hete Elsa Erazor III met bijgeleverde 3D Revelator getest. Hier een stukkie plakwerk over de performance van de 3D bril:

We tested the glasses on a Sony Trinitron 400PS 19" Monitor at 1024X768 at 100 Hz. This was actually high enough to provide good 3D viewing for over 1/2 hour without too much eye fatigue. We did mention that you look through these glasses at your monitor, right? Remember the good ol' days of the green and red 3D Movies? Say hello again to the Creature from The Black Lagoon! It brought back memories! In any event, for our younger crowd here, let's just say they work the same way as those old movie type 3D Glasses only they are LCDs and block the image totally from your site during a screen refresh.

All in all, the effect was absolutely fantastic! The 3D effect these bring on will blow your mind. Today's 3D Accelerators give you the effect on a 2 dimensional plane. These glasses give you the sense that your could jump right in a join the action, something we were glad was not reality while testing them on Unreal! By the way, remember, these glasses work on D3D titles only now. This is a very large percentage of games, so you should get plenty of use out of them.

Voor de review moet je je surfplank ff richting Hot Hardware pointen.

Ken Yi van Hardware Extreme heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid over het optimaliseren van je windoos swapfile. Zijn twee gouden tips:

1.Creating a permanent swapfile, which frezzes your swapfile at a certain size.

2.Moving the swapfile to the outer tracks of the hard disk. The outer tracks of the hard disk are larger and have lower seek times than the inner tracks. Moving the swapfile to the outer tracks will improve performance.

Daar kan ik nog een derde tip aan toevoegen: koop net zoveel RAM tot je geen swapfile meer nodig hebt (384Meg ofzo). Anyway, in het artikel wordt je voorgevogeld (hmm, nieuw woord ) hoe je bovenstaand trucjes uit kunt voeren.

iXBT heeft een interview gepost met Juan Guardado, '3D Architecture Analysis Engineer' van Matrox. Uiteraard komt er in dit interview ook wat leuke info over de G400 voorbij fietsen, zoals deze vraag over de (momenteel in staat van brakheid verkerende) OpenGL driver:

Q: The first question, which occupies everyone's minds, is about the G400 supply, namely about the presence of OpenGL ICD in the G400 package. This matter is being rumored all over, and sometimes the forecasts are not that optimistic. And what's going on in reality?

A: At present there is just a beta-version of the drivers available. However, we expect the completed drivers version to be ready when they start mass sales of G400 based cards. [break]Verder een vraag over onboard geometrie acceleratie, is ook wel interessant ivm het recente speculaties over de nVidia NV10 en 3dfx Napalm:[/break] Q: What can you say regarding the recent plans of nVidia and 3dfx to use a geometric coprocessor in their next generation accelerators? Is Matrox going to undertake anything in this respect?

A: We are also working in this direction. And when the right time comes we'll introduce them into the market.

Handige info. Check iXBT voor het interview.

AGN Hardware heeft errug heftige speculaties over de 3dfx Napalm gepost. De erg lekker klinkende info is afkomstig uit een artikel van Computer Gaming World. Check it:

Nice little half page news item in the August issue of Computer Gaming World on the Voodoo 4. They are claiming the info is from an "industry source who requested anonymity". It does say that T&L won't be directly supported as initially shipped BUT there will be a socket on the card for a T&L co-processor.

"Much of the criticism of the Voodoo-3 has focused on its lack of some advanced rendering features (bump-mapping, stencil buffer) and its lack of 32-bit color support. The latter shortcoming will become more critical when games like Quake3:Arena ship later this year. It appears that the Napalm will address most of the criticisms leveled against the Voodoo-3."

"For starters, Napalm, like nearly all 3dfx chips to precede it, will be damned fast. How fast? According to an industry source who requested anonymity, they're aiming for 800 MPixels/sec. At that rate , Napalm will be more than double the fastest current shipping parts. That much processing power should deliver resolutions of 1600x1200x32 at decent frame rates. How are they going to do that? Our speculation is that Napalm will have an architecture with two rendering pipelines, and that each one will be able to handle one pixel per clock. A clock rate set to 200MHz would yield 400 MPixels/sec."

"In addition to speed and lots of it, Napalm will be capable of handling 32-bit textures, and it will have a plug in socket for a transform-and-lighting coprocessor in preparation for DirectX 7, where that part of the pipeline will be exposed for acceleration. nVidia has also announced its intent to inorporate T/L acceleration in their next chipset, due out sometime this fall."

"We've even heard a rumor that 3dfx's Napalm may be SLI-capable when it debuts, allowing two boards to work in parallel. The net result is those gamers who are truly performance-obsessed may be able to get a fill rate of 800 MPixels/sec. To help keep this pipeline moving, Napalm will also support AGP 4X. This may seem like an insane amount of rendering horsepower, but Sony has announced PlayStation 2's specs, and is claiming a fill-rate of about 1.2 GPixels/sec."

So the race is on the break the 1 GigaPixel/sec barrier, and 3dfx is pulling out all the stops to be the first company to get there. But it won't be alone. We've heard distant rumblings that nVidia is also working towards being one of the first to pass that milestone. In the 3D graphics business, there's just no rest for the wicked."

Hmm, persoonlijk zie ik de NV10 toch sneller zijn met z'n (standaard) onboard T&L engine. Trouwens: wat is Sony (PSXII) van plan met een fillrate van 1,2GPixels/sec, als een TV maar een resolutie van 768x576px weer kan geven, met een maximale framerate van 25-30fps?

WickedPC heeft een review van de Logitech Quickcam Pro neer gepleurd. Plaatje:

Nah, ik vinnum lelijk . Hier een blurb over de werking van het dingetje:

At first we had to do some tweaking to get the picture quality just as we liked. Its software defaults to the medium resolution with normal lighting. In the home-office here we found a bunch of colored specs on the video images it produced, and it drove it nuts! We found from Logitech's excellent support staff that it was from the low light in the office. So, one check of a box in the settings and the pictures remained movement-crisp as we call them. If the picture was fuzzy when we first used it, the turntable lens on the camera itself clears that up right away. Once configured, expect excellent quality.

Scott van SysOpt.com heeft een artikeltje gebakken over het overklokken van de Voodoo3. Dankzij wat extra sloop & koelwerk was-ie in staat om z'n V3-3000 naar 189Mhz over te klokken. Da's maar liefst 4Mhz meer dan voor de sloop operatie! Poehee . Het probleem zit 'm hier waarschijnlijk bij de geheugen chips die aan hun limiet zitten (de V3 heeft namelijk de nare eigenschappen de core en memory clock op de dezelfde draaien). Conclusie:

Probably the most basic underlying factor in the overclockability of each Voodoo3 3000 would have to lie in the hands of the quality of the RAM on each individual board. It is possible for the overclocking results to vary greatly ranging from next to nothing to possibly beyond 200Mhz (doubtful, but still a possibility.) Heat dissipation being the second factor is just as important as the Voodoo3 3000 runs extremely hot even at its default speed of 166Mhz.

Brandon James aka "KillMe" verlaat id Software, zo maakt Paul Jaquays (id designer) bekend op het Shugashack messageboard:

We didn't mention Brandon James' departure from id because that was his news to tell or not to tell; and to tell in his own words and timing.

Why did he go? I don't know. That was his personal decision. But he wasn't fired or anything even close to that. Let's make that clear. Frankly, we we're all pretty stunned by both his decision to leave and the timing of the decision. I didn't find out until the following Monday. Brandon has alot of varied talents and I wish him well in whatever he chooses to doin the future. [break]...en dan de voor ons belangrijke info: gaat dit gevolgen heben voor Quake III Arena?[/break]

How will this affect Quake 3? Brandon James's incomplete maps and other responsibilities will be divided up between us. It does mean a bigger work load for the rest ofus, but that's what we get paid to do.

Other Stuff Christian "Xian/Disruptor" Antkow is still very much with id and is slamming away on maps. He does not have a bio on the id web site.

Graeme Devine just hasn't gotten around to filling out a bio.

Paul Jaquays
designer
id Software [break]Oxygen Tank heeft een Q&A'tje gepost met Brandon. Hier heb je alvast een vraag:[/break] ben: Why did you leave id software?

KillMe: Why did I leave id Software? I'm not going to answer that. However, I will say that I really needed time to get by myself, to pick up the hobbies (music, gaming, etc) that I had put aside for far too long. As for any other reasons, I will not talk about or answer those now or in the future.

Gamecenter heeft een vrolijk rijtje videokaarten op de testbank gelegd:

3dfx Voodoo 3 3000
Creative Labs 3D Blaster RIVA TNT 2 Ultra
Diamond Multimedia Stealth III S540
Diamond Multimedia Viper V770 Ultra
Guillemot Xentor
Matrox Millennium G400 Max

Hier een stukkie ctrl-v over de laatstegenoemde kaart:

If you're looking to drop some big bucks, the Matrox Millennium G400 Max delivers a very exciting package. It meets our basic requirements of excellent performance and image quality and blows us away with built-in multimonitor support and very good TV-out. The environment-mapped bump mapping may even come in handy down the road.

Tech Review heeft een review van de Labtec APX 4620 speakerset neer gekwakt. Aan het plaatje te zien wordt er een behoorlijk heftige subwoofer meegeleverd. Hoe is de performance?:

To test the subwoofer we have three tracks that we like to listen to that produce excellent low frequency output and tight bass. Techmaster PEB - Bassgasm is a track specifically made to test subwoofers by producing an excellent range of low frequencies. The 4620 subwoofer performed very well, except under extra low and high bass. For frequencies under 25Hz the subwoofer doesn't respond, yet we also found the higher frequency response of the subwoofer to be slightly lacking. There was a noticeable difference when comparing this subwoofer to other subwoofers that handle sounds down to 20Hz, but the 4620 sub is still an excellent subwoofer that pumps out powerful, wall shaking bass with tight response. Overall the sub is great, but would benefit from being able to handle 20Hz frequencies.

Billy van Voodoo Extreme heeft een mailtje gedropt bij Tim Sweeney, met een vraag over de ontwikkelings status van Unreal Tourney. Zo te lezen issie nog niet zo 'af' als eerder gesuggereerd werd:

Whoever said UT was done was smoking crack. We're still doing minor tweaking to the levels and AI, and still testing and improving parts of the Direct3D code and server code. It's very close, but it's not done yet.

-Tim

Het volk van PC Paradox heeft een preview van Team Fortress 2 op hun site gekwakt. De graphics in TF2 zijn verbeterd en Valve heeft nieuwe gameplay elementen toegevoegd, zoals de 'Commander':

One of the largest problems with online (cooperative) gaming, is getting people to work together. Now some of you who play Tribes and TFC and games like that will notice that it is a daunting task to get even 4 people to work together, let alone 32! (Valve is looking at a 64 player cap). So, with their years of experience with online gaming, they have come up with quite an ingenious solution. In Team Fortress 2 there will be a 9th player class (sorta) which will be called the Commander. In this position, you will have no "physical" effect upon the players in the game. This means you can't kill anyone, or collect flags, or help your team in any tangible way. So why on earth would anyone want to be a commander? Because as a commander you have the ability to see through the eye's of everyone else on your team. Your entire point in life is to help, direct, and coordinate the teams operation. So as you can see, the Commanders role will be a pivital and not to mention quite hard one to play. The Commander will have a multitude of options including way point setting for individuals or the whole team, control over who can talk to who, and many others. The Commander allows 32 people to actually break up into squads of any number and work efficently together. I think the Commander is going to be the most welcome addition to the Team Fortress line.

GA-Source heeft een interview in elkaar gedraaid met de managing Director van Reflections Interactive, over het spel Driver. Hier heb je de eerste vraag:

I understand that Reflections' upcoming car-chase simulation, Driver, is set for release on the PlayStation and PC. Will there be any gameplay difference between the two versions? Did you have to "dumb-down" the Playstion version?

Actually the difference between the two in terms of gameplay is minimal. The PC version has an extra driving game mode called carnage in which the player has 60 seconds to do as much damage in the city as possible. The main differences between the two are graphics - there are a few more details in scattered around the city and obviously the graphics benefit from perspective and filtered texture mapping. The two versions were actually developed in parallel so we were trying to use the best of both machines capabilities. I think Driver is the first ever simulation of film and TV car chases and this was very much the aim of the game. Most other driving games place you on a looping track where as in Driver you have the free roam of a pretty realistic city complete with working traffic lights and civilian cars. It is actually quite interesting sometimes to just park up and watch the world go by.

Hmm, zou best wel eens wreed kunnen worden. Graphics zien er ook niet slecht uit:

FullOn3D heeft een interview gepost met George Alfs, een ventje van Intel. Echt spraakzaam issie niet, desondanks heeft FullOn3D er toch wat interessante info uit weten te peuteren. Deze twee vragen zijn wel leuk voor de overklokkende & Celeron-dualerende tweaker:

FullOn3D: Does Intel plan on overclocking-locking future processors (not just multiplier lock)?

Intel: We will explore all opportunities to prevent remarking. No issues with hobbyists but we want to stop remarking, which is a crime. As a rule we don't publicly discuss our efforts in this area. BTW, we don't recommend overclocking (But you already knew that).

FullOn3D: What do you think about dual Celeron motherboards coming out? Is it true that Intel plans to SMP-lock the Celeron line of processors and if it is, starting when?

Intel: Celeron is not spec'd for dual processor mode. If we change features that don't affect the spec then users shouldn't care. If users are running parts out of spec they do so at their own risk.

The Register heeft een mistig nieuwsberichtje over een deal tussen Compaq en IBM, ivm de produktie van koperen Alpha's. Volgend jaar zou het ding dan op 1,4GHz kunnen lopen:

IBM is close to striking a deal with Compaq to make copper Alphas. We predicted that last February, but yesterday US magazine CRN got confirmation from an IBM group VP of worldwide marketing. He said that IBM and Compaq had been in discussion for some time over the move. Both Compaq and API say they will produce copper Alpha processors in the near future.

Next year, Alpha is likely to hit 1.4GHz, according to our sources.

PC Paradox heeft de primeur met een review van de 3DLabs Permedia Create!. Eerder deze week kwam Sharky Extreme tot de conclusie dat de performance van de 3DLabs Oxygen VX1 - volgens 3DLabs qua prestaties gelijk aan de Permedia3 Create! - baggerslecht was, zo'n 50% onder die van een Ultra TNT2. PC Paradox heeft ook benchmarks, alleen geen vergelijking met andere kaarten Wel hebben ze een duidelijk stukkie uitleg over de features van de Permedia3, waaronder 'Virtual Textures':

The Permedia3 includes a unique hardware texture memory management system called Virtual Textures. This system does not require any specific support from developers. It is transparently compatible with existing as well as future Direct3D and OpenGL applications. The Permedia3's texture memory management system is a virtual texture memory and paging system. The Permedia3 has the ability to work with a texture memory space much larger than physical on-board graphics memory. In other words, the Permedia3 has a virtual texture memory which is much larger than the amount of physical graphics memory that it supports (32 MB). Initially, textures are created in system memory, and "broken" down into 4KBytes pages. When some of the data stored in one of these pages is needed for texturing, the page in question, rather than the whole texture, is loaded. Only those pages which are being used are stored in graphics memory. This also applies to mipmaps: mipmap levels which are not required are not downloaded. Page faults and texture downloads are handled by a dedicated DMA controller. No driver intervention or assistance is required, so that no extra load is placed on the CPU.