Gamewire heeft een review geschreven van de Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla, dat is de quad speaker versie van de Montego II met S/PDIF interface. Hier een stuk over de performance:

There is no doubt that the Vortex 2 based cards are great performers, but as with any company that uses a chipset there are differences and modifications between brands. The Montego 2 did everything it was asked and great. However, I really didn't find a noticeable difference between it and the other ones.

Positional audio was exceptional as we have come to expect with Vortex 2 cards, and a3d 2. MP3's, and waves rarely a difference with even different sound cards. What about MIDI? I had a strong impression that this card was aimed at Music enthusiasts as well as Gamers, but a lot of the instruments sounded very cheap. They were about the quality of an AWE 64. However some of the instruments that are called "Cool", sound much better then any card I have tested. For instance the guitar, bass, and drums were excellent. However classical instruments like the flute or trumpet sounded kind of whiney.

Zo, ze komen tegenwoordig met bosjes tegelijk, de TNT2 reviews. Ik heb er nu 2 beet van de Elsa Erazor III TNT2. Dit stukkie heb ik gepeest uit de review van 3D Rage, de andere review is van Speedy 3D.

The ELSA ERAZOR III is not known for its performance or overclockability, but its plethora of features. Cohereing to NVidia's recommended specifications, the ERAZOR III's clock speed is set to 125Mhz while the memory is set to 150hz. Residing on the board are 4 8MB SDRAM 7ns memory chips. This 7ns RAM will be one of the downfalls of the ERAZOR III and hinder not only its performance, but its ability to be overclocked. Sitting on the TNT2 chip is a heatsink although no fan is attached. However, the heatsink was never abnormally hot, as I was able to touch it for long periods of time without having to remove my fingers.

3D Spotlight heeft een review van Kingpin in elkaar gedraaid. Een spel met ballen:

Kingpin has seven episodes and twenty-four levels of gameplay. You should notice Kingpin isn’t all about action though, there are some role-playing elements that makes it different from the rest of FPS. The role-playing involves finding money to buy supplies at the local pawn-o-matic. These supplies include weapons, health, weapon mods, ammo, and armor. The weapons are (from weakest to strongest) lead pipe, crow bar, pistol, which can be upgraded with mods such as pistol rate of fire, fast reload, silencer, which is very realistic, and magnum, which boosts the power on the gun. The rest are shotgun, tommygun (my favorite), HMG (a powerful semi-automatic rifle), grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and flame-thrower. There are some more mods, but I don't want to spoil all of the excitement.

Other role-playing elements involve the NPCs, which are computer controlled characters you can interact with. Most of these are characters can give you information on how to get further along in the game. In Kingpin, players will be able to hire up to 2 thugs to act as bodyguards. You have three simple commands for your hired goon. These commands are: Follow, which will make him follow you anywhere, you can tell your goon to do his special move, which is his ability (such as lock picking or explosives expert), or you can simply tell him to stay still. Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin, the maker of the QuakeII Eraser Bot, made the artificial intelligence making your competition as life-like as they get. One addition to the brain bashing violence and list of enemies are rats, big rats that bite. I didn't like this addition very much, but I didn't mind blowing them away.

Another thing about Kingpin is that it is realistic. When you are being shot at, your life depletes very quickly. I found myself standing in one spot and shooting with one hundred percent life and when the gunfight was over my life was in single digits. Another great highlight of this game is the blood trails. Do you ever think you wounded a bad guy but not sure where he went? Its simple, just follow the blood trails...

FiringSquad heeft de nieuwe Q3Test gebenchmarked (met deze versie kan wel goed, gelukkig) met de AMD Athlon en Dual Celeron's en Pentium 3's. Tja, en het ziet er naar uit dat zelfs 2 Intel's niet zijn opgewassen tegen het Athlon geweld, in Q3test tenminste.

Check het artikel voor de de vele benchmarks!

Well, simply put, this thing just swept all of the Quake 3 benchmarks, and processor-specific optimizations haven't yet been implemented into the game! The Athlon is one fast mofo, and it looks like Intel's going to have to really push the MHz in their future processors in order to keep up. However, don't forget to consider the price. The Athlon 600MHz is slated to cost $699 when released. AMD is no longer content at grabbing the low-end budget market, and now it looks like they've got the performance premium to command a corresponding price premium. It's possible to build a dual-Celeron 550MHz system for less price than the processor itself! Of course, with the Athlon, you're not just limited to Windows NT/2000 and specific SMP-supported programs (what other games besides Q3A can you think of which take advantage of multiple processors?

FPS3D heeft een review in elkaar gezet van de Abit BP6, het dual Socket 370 wonderplankje vol zaligheid

Anyway, check de review hier!

Abit has always had kickass temperature monitoring systems. From the actual thermistors themselves to the monitoring software, it's always been superb, realtime Windows monitoring, the way it was meant to be. The BP6 follows up on this tradition with seperate temperature monitors for the CPU and case (one isn't needed for the other CPU, as both would operate at the same temperature - as with all SMP rigs they must be at the same speed to work properly). Abit's highly excellent Hardware Doctor monitoring system is one of the best in my eye. Highly configurable and real time, it definitely adds a great deal to the ease of the overclocking experience.

Best wel interessant artikel van Matrox Users, ze zetten de G400 en de G400 MAX tegenover elkaar. Tegen de tijd dat die kaartjes hier normaal zijn te verkijgen, zijn we wel een paar weekjes verder, dus je kan nog beslissen welke smaak je wilt

If you are going to be restricted to no more than 1024x768 then there is not a huge difference between the two G400s at present. The reviewed units here are very late beta hardware which are almost definitely in the final production form and obviously the drivers too are late beta. We may see as drivers develop the gap widen in performance between them at low resolutions. To decide between the G400s you must look at cost, potential performance in your system and if you have a low spec system will you be upgrading in the near future in which case the MAX may prove a better investment due to its scalability. For the mainstream user the G400 will be an excellent buy but for those craving the ultimate speed, feature set, image quality and don't mind the extra cost then it's got to be the MAX.

Comchip heeft het eerste deel van hun "Road to CD burning" artikel gepost. Dit deel gaat over het kiezen van de juiste brander en hoe hem te installeren. Deel 2, over "problems and tips" komt later.

Now why is SCSI better? It is better because the bus gets a lot less interruptions than the IDE. With next to no significant interruptions, it will help your burning experience become a pleasurable one. Basically if the same model has both the IDE and SCSI version, they will be similar in price. The catch here is that you will need another SCSI adapter card to support the SCSI drive, and here is where it will cost more. Adaptec carrys tons of different SCSI cards, and depending on your need, they will have one that's right for you. It is always suggested that if you have more than one SCSI devices, you separate the CDR drive by having it on its own SCSI card. This is certainly not necessary but you can do it if you got the cash

Ik lees op AGN Hardware dat er nieuwe beta drivers zijn voor de TNT en TNT2 kaarten van ASUS, zowel voor Win98 en WinNT.

Win98 version 2.08beta3
WinNT version 2.08beta1

Tweak Utility 2.02
Asus Live 3.4beta1(Capture)

Ik las net bij M.U.R.C. dat je nu ook de Marvel G400 (hun alles in een oplossing voor video editing) kan bestellen in de online shop van Matrox. Verder info erover ontbreekt nog. Verder zijn ze nog steeds bezig met het optimaliseren van hun OpenGL ICD (en dat mag ook wel):

One online store at least is a little optimistic about the release of the Marvel G400 and is offering the following:

AGP MATROX G400 MARVEL 32MB $349.99

Don't go pre-ordering a Marvel G400 just yet as you may be in for quite a long wait. Thanks to Charles Johnston for that one.

G400 ICD Performance

Those of you that have been loitering around the forums may have noticed talk of the upcoming 5.2x PowerDesk series and how they are to see substantial improvements in speed to the G400 OpenGL ICD. Voodooextreme have come up with the first snippet of figures for these soon to be released drivers.

The guys at MaximumPC fired off an email to let us know that they have put some information/benchmarks on a new OpenGL ICD for the Matrox G400 MAX. Dig it:

Matrox just released a new OpenGL ICD for the G400 that speeds things up a bit--the Quake II timedemo (at 1024x768) shot up from 61.9fps to 70.7fps. Unfortunately Half-Life performance didn't get as much as a boost. The G400 just doesn't do Half-Life very well mainly because the game uses so many textures.

I am, however, very encouraged by the progress Matrox has made in the past month in optimizing their OpenGL ICD. I think they've learned from the whole G200 debacle and have a highly capable team in place that will continually improve OpenGL performance

Jason van AnandTech heeft ff snel een paar SMP benchmarks gedraaid met de nieuwe Quake3 Test v1.06. Het testsysteem bestaat uit een dual PIII-450 met Viper V770 op 170/190Mhz:

Q3TESTDEMO1

Frames/s	Resolution	SMP
49.3	640X480	OFF
62.7	640X480	ON
48.3	800X600	OFF
57.7	800X600	ON
40.4	1024X768	OFF
41.3	1024X768	ON
30.2	1152X864	OFF
32.1	1152X864	ON
26.1	1280X1024	OFF
26.2	1280X1024	ON
17.3	1600X1280	OFF
17.3	1600X1280	ON

Q3TESTDEMO2

Frames /s	Resolution	SMP
55.0	640X480	OFF
68.0	640X480	ON
54.6	800X600	OFF
66.4	800X600	ON
52.4	1024X768	OFF
60.1	1024X768	ON
48.5	1152X864	OFF
52.0	1152X864	ON
43.0	1280X1024	OFF
44.1	1280X1024	ON
29.9	1600X1280	OFF
29.9	1600X1280	ON

Zoals je ziet begint de videokaart op hoge resoluties de limiterende faktor te vormen.

Voodoo Extreme heeft een screenshot gepost van de Unreal Tournament user interface.

Tim Sweeney geeft uitleg:

Shot Description: Ok, here's something different...rather than taking a screenshot of me getting my ass kicked by a bot, here is a shot of the desktop and user interface. Note:

1. Screenshots in the map selection menus.
2. Cool player configuration screen with 3d view of player mesh.
3. HTML "news" window in the server browser, currently filled with a bogus news update...some joker was testing that...dammit Brandon!:-) It's lying. Pay no attention.
4. Console in a window.

Hot Hardware heeft info gepost over nieuwe V3 drivers waarvan 3dfx zegt dat ze de beeldkwaliteit 'dramatisch' verbeteren...

The week of July 19th, 3dfx will be releasing a new set of drivers for the Voodoo3. Besides the usual bug fixes, we have added some user control image quality techniques to the 3dfx Tweak page in Windows properties. The increase in our already industry leading image quality is dramatic. Attached, you will find some screen shots from the new driver using the new Alpha-blending option along with an explanation of how it works. You can also see the new properties page at www.voodooextreme.com.

Meer info en screenshots vind je in het artikel van Hot Hardware.

KAC Hardware heeft een bespreking van een kaart waar we nog weinig reviews van gezien hebben: de Videologic Neon 250. Het ding lijkt na een jaar vertraging dan toch eindelijk gereleased te gaan worden. Uit de Winbench en Quake benchmarks blijkt dat de Neon 250 vooral op lage resoluties beduidend sneller is als de Voodoo3 en TNT2:

As earlier mentioned the special rendering method used by VideoLogic Neon 250 is much more efficient than other chipsets; and this can be seen in all our benchmarks; The Power VR 250 chipset was under all circumstances significant better than both Voodoo3 and TNT2. VideoLogic Neon 250 could very well become a serious threat to 3Dfx and Nvidia.

Riva3D heeft een review van de Diamond HomeFree Phoneline in elkaar gekwakt. De bedoeling van deze kit is dat je er een netwerk mee kunt aanleggen over de bestaande telefoonlijn in huis, dit tegen netwerksnelheden tot 1Mbps:

Overall the windows performance of the homefree network is quite good. I was very pleased to find that file transfers went nearly as quickly as Diamond's promised 1 Mbps transfer rate. I transferred a 32.9 MB (34,557,432 bytes) file from one computer to another in 5 mins and 7 seconds (307 seconds). This works out to 0.9005 Mbps! Not bad for a phoneline based network. On the host computer, the network seems take some time to spawn (up to 30 seconds) when I double click on Network Neighborhood. I have found that the reason for this is because of the second NIC card in my system which is used for my cable modem service. However once the network is "visible" the performance is excellent as I have already mentioned.

Absolute PC heeft een review gepost van de Rio PMP300, de welbekende en veel te dure portable MP3 player van Diamond. Hier een stukje over de geluidskwaliteit van het apparaat:

The sound quality of the RIO was not surprising as I am accustomed to the great quality of MP3’s on the computer, however the bundled ear phones do no justice and were the first thing I changed as soon as I got the RIO. I was not impressed with the 64Kbps quality and would never listen to music if given a choice at less then 128Kbps which limits the RIO’s storage capacity to about 7-10 songs or 30 minutes of music. Other than those complaints with the unit itself, I was thoroughly amazed by the RIO and had quite a bit of fun with it! Sound Quality is not quite up to par with a CD however it is not noticeable except with the most detailed music.