Jeez, nVidia houdt de vaart er wel in. Op AGN Hardware lees ik namelijk net dat de "Unofficial Detonator 2.08 reference drivers" er alweer zijn. Deze kun je hier downloaden. Het downloaden gaat bij mij wel super traag, dus misschien kun je beter even wachten tot er wat meer locaties zijn. (op de discussion boards zijn meestal een paar mirrors te vinden)

Omdat ze niet-officieel zijn, pas wel op! Voor 100% zekerheid kun je beter de iets oudere drivers houden.

BetaNews meldt dat Paint Shop Pro 6 Beta uit is:

Jasc has announced the availability of Paint Shop Pro 6 Beta including Animation Shop 2 Beta. Paint Shop Pro 6 features powerful new editable text and graphic design tools that enable users to easily create, edit and produce professional-quality graphics that were previously only available by importing graphics created in a separate illustration program or by using expensive plug-in products. For a complete list of what's new, go here. Check out this great public beta:

Download Paint Shop Pro 6 Beta

FPS3D heeft de 32 MB Savage 4 kaart van Diamond gereviewed, de Diamond Stealth III S540. Het meeste weten we wel over deze chipset, maar als je toch voor een Savage 4 kiest, is die van Diamond een betere keus dan die van Creative, aldus ook deze review.

The Diamond S540 is a great value. It performs wonderfully in low resolutions, as well as in MeTaL. Where the Creative Savage4 lacked strength, the S540 conquers. The driver bugs on both Savage4 cards were a little depressing, but Diamond should be working on a fix soon. If you are in the market for a card to replace your TNT/Banshee, the S540 is for you. S3TC will be a wonderful feature to have when Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament hit the store shelves, and for around $100, it's a simple upgrade. The Creative Savage4 just can't compete with the S540's amazing performance and drivers. If you are stuck between which Savage4 PRO to buy, go with the Diamond, you wont be disapointed.

Tech Junkie heeft de Yamaha CRW6416 gereviewd. Dit is een (SCSI) CD-Rewritable die schrijft op 6X, herschrijft op 4X en leest op 16X. De review zelf stelt weinig voor, alleen het leuke is dat hij in een Flash animatie gestoken is. (dus je moet wel de flash plug-in hebben.) Nou ja leuk, ik kan nu dus niks kopiëren en plakken, dus je moet hem wel zelf helemaal lezen.

Viper 3D heeft als naslagwerk alle TNT2 reviews verzameld, tenminste, hij is vandaag bijgewerkt, tot rond de 145 (ik ga ze niet tellen!) Ze staan ook mooi op datum gesorteed enzo...

Naja check de lijst hier.

BXBoards heeft een korte review van de Montego 2 Quadzilla gepost. Dit is weer zo'n Aureal Vortex II kaart met quad speaker support.

First, the Montego II Quadzilla uses the A3D 2 chipset, just like the cards from Xitel, Diamond, and others. However, it differs in that Turtle Beach manufactures their own boards and the BIGGEST difference is that Turtle Beach doesn't use the reference design and drivers. This harkens back to the days of Canopus and 3DFX, when Canopus used it's own design for the Voodoo 1 & 2 which meant that while Canopus's custom drivers often offered a speed boost, gamers had to wait for the latest version when the reference drivers had long been released. The Montego II has the same benefits and shortcomings of this. While it uses a few higher quality parts, and it's drivers are more highly optimized, owners often have to wait for the latest drivers. Such was the case with the newest Aureal drivers (v.208), which have been available from Aureal since April 29th, came out for the Turtle Beach cards June 26th.

Guillemot heeft voor haar Xentor TNT2 kaarten een handig overclock proggie in elkaar geknutseld, ze noemen het de "Xentor PowerSprinter". Je kunt er de core en memory snelheid mee tweaken.

Xentor PowerSprinter (619kB)

Volgens Billy van VoodooExtreme zijn er weer een paar Messiah screenshots bijgekomen, zoals deze:

Tim Sweeny heeft een AMD Athlon getest op de Unreal engine. Hij wordt er erg vrolijk van...

My new 550 MHz AMD Athlon (K7) just clocked a jaw-dropping 68.5 Unreal timedemo at 1024x768, running on a Voodoo3 3000 card. Even more telling, at no point did the frame rate ever drop below 38.0 fps. That's astounding, considering the intense lightmap and geometry usage in the timedemo level. Even while playing Unreal Tournament's most texture and polygon intensive level (Shane Caudle's DmGothic), the frame rate hardly ever went below 60 fps.

The Athlon's 128K L1 cache is awesome for memory-intensive games like Unreal. Operations like visibility determination, which thrash on the Pentium III's 32K cache, now run at full speed on the Athlon. This CPU truly shows a generational performance improvement, like going from my old 486 to my first Pentium.

When I saw AMD's K7 spec, I was pretty skeptical. The K6 had been hyped up, but in reality it was slower for Unreal than a Pentium II of comparable clock rate, due to its poor non-SIMD floating point performance. The K7 claimed to fix all of that, and debut a new architecture with 3 execution pipelines. I decided to wait and see, without getting my hopes up.

Bottom line: I waited, and now I have seen! The Athlon is clearly the fastest x86 CPU at any clock speed.

Congratulations go to AMD.

Zie de Unreal Technology Page.

SystemLogic heeft een review van de Permedia3 Create! 32MB op hun site gekwakt. Best wel een zware review, 14 pagina's. We weten al van deze kaart dat-ie voor gamers niet zo geschikt is, maar meer voor de professionele aplicaties.

Well, the question has been answered. The Permedia3 Create! does not have the stuff to compete with cards like the TNT2 and Voodoo3. At least not in speed...Permedia3 Create! has comparable image quality to the G400, which can make any game look fabulous. Don't expect any games to be played at high resolutions, even though the card does support it. If you are looking for a video card which will let you play games, as well as run proffesional applications, then this may be your top choice. Considering it is a pre-workstation card with a hefty 32MB of on-board RAM, and the 256MB virtual texture engine, then you may want this more than a card sporting the TNT2 or Voodoo3 chip. It doesn't work for the hardcore gamer, but here is a quote from 3Dlabs: "Permedia3 Create! has the power you need to work fast all day and play hard all night." This shows that it is something for the proffesional user that would like to play some games on the side. I have to commend the card on its image quality as you can see the Quake3 Screenshots, but also their drivers and use of OpenGL is fantastic. All in all I was farely dissapointed in the speed the card showed, but like I said, if you are not a hardcore gamer, but also use professional applications, definitly look into this card.

CNET Gamecenter heeft een preview klaar van Unreal Tournament. Dit spel wordt errug heftig...

Graphically, Unreal Tournament is beyond words. The special effects are truly mesmerizing. Weapons have brilliant lighting effects associated with them, and when a bunch of people are in a room firing away, what you see is better than any fireworks display. Epic has also increased the polygon counts for individual players and for Bots. You now can see facial features and expressions. As mentioned before, lighting plays a big part in the game. There are many places where players can hide, and it's handy to have a weapon that brightens up a room to expose them. Other cool effects, such as sparks flying where bullets hit or wicked water effects on certain levels, will make Unreal Tournament one of the best-looking games to be released this year.

The price of all this graphical beauty promises to be a bit steep. According to Epic, the preliminary specs will be a Pentium-200 with MMX and 32MB of RAM--as a minimum. Odds are, though, you'll need to have at least a Pentium II system with a good 3D card to really enjoy the show.

Unreal Tournament should ship sometime this summer. And when it does, it's safe to say that it will shake up the multiplayer gaming landscape.

P-200MMX? Wat een grapjas

Anand heeft de TV Outputs van verschillende kaarten getest. Hij gaat er (zoals altijd) diep op in, dus voor de details moet je echt effe de hele review lezen. Maaruh, het einde zal ik vast verklappen

The Voodoo3's quality was on the disappointing side as well, which was interesting enough considering that the Voodoo3 used the same Brooktree chip that was present on the TNT2 and Savage4 boards AnandTech tried. The quality difference between TNT2 boards was negligible, as all of them used the same chip, however the difference between the Voodoo3 and all other implementations of the BT869 was definitely worth mentioning. For DVD output, the Matrox G400 holds the quality trophy, although the color banding issues AnandTech experienced during the tests was a bit disappointing. If you're going to use your computer as a DVD player for your TV or home theater, keep one thing in mind, although the video may be there, 5.1 Dolby digital is still out of the reach of your computer's MX300 or SBLive! cards. There's just no replacing a true home theater system, although you can come pretty close...

Computer Games Online heeft een hele korte review van de Yamaha YST-M50 Speakers gebakken.

Though the system is rated at a total wattage of 80W, it doesn't sound nearly that powerful. It's definitely not weak by any means, but don't expect the kind of room-filling sound you would get from 80W worth of home stereo equipment. For PC purposes, they definitely get loud enough. Yamaha employs their new exclusive "active servo technology" which is supposed to drastically improve bass performance, but there's really nothing amazing about it. The bass response is good, not stellar, and about what you'd expect from a $130 set of speakers. Mid and high-range tones are also handled well, but again, won't blow you away with amazing clarity. Speakers in this price range should be pretty good, and Yamaha's latest are. Beyond that, there's nothing particularly impressive or special about them. They're a good choice, and won't disappoint, but they're too expensive to be a great value and not quite as good-sounding as some more expensive speaker sets. At least they come in stylish black as well as standard "computer white."

In China zijn ze toch verstandiger dan men dacht:

Intel is facing major problems in selling Pentium III into China, it would appear. Strange but true, although you'd expect the Chinese regime to be keen on control-freakery of all sorts, it

has a major downer on the Personal Serial Number (PSN) built into Pentium III.