3D Spotlight heeft een review gepost van het ACT Labs Force RS force-feedback stuurwiel. 3DS beoordeelt 'm met een 9,7/10:

Other than those games I tried Speed Busters and Monaco Grand Prix RS 2, both games support Force Feedback effects, again it felt too nice. In general terms, in most of the games I had to tweak settings to get a perfect experience, also it took me a while to get used to it, but after all it was totally worth it.

Just in case I went back to my old good Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad but after the Force RS, I felt playing racing games without it was unacceptable.

The Force RS is an excellent product, maybe the best wheel out there for its comfort and upgradability and its one of the cheapest ones, if you have got the $139 you have to pay for it, go and buy it, you won’t be sorry.

En de doos is ook mooi :

MSNBC heeft een artikeltje over Microsoft Reader, een proggie waarmee Bill de leesbaarheid van computer schermen hoopt te verbeteren:

THE COMPANY SAID a new program called Microsoft Reader makes digital text appear almost as clear as words printed on paper. The software’s benefits are most significant on the liquid-crystal displays used on portable computers, making them more suitable for reading book-length documents, Microsoft said. (Microsoft is a partner in MSNBC.)

A variety of companies are now selling special-purpose devices that store and display books in digital form. But those products, sometimes called e-books, have been slow to take off. Microsoft thinks publishers can find a larger market sooner if the hundreds of millions of conventional portable and desktop computers are adapted for reading books.

[...] Microsoft Reader is based on a technology called ClearType that Chairman Bill Gates first showed off in November at the Comdex trade show. The technology is designed to compensate for the fact that the dots, or pixels, used to display text on computer screens are much larger than those generated by printers, making computer text appear jagged or fuzzy by comparison. Microsoft researchers found a way to increase resolution by dividing each computer pixel into three elements, made up of the red, green and blue light used to form colors on computer screens.

Volgens mij doen ze hier een poging om de basisprincipes van Anti-Aliasing uit te leggen . Windoos doet al in zeker mate aan AA, alleen niet bij kleine fonts (wat dan waarschijnlijk gaat veranderen met Reader). Beta versies zullen voor het eerst in de herfst verschijnen, de final staat gepland voor het eerste kwartaal van 2000. Meer info vind je hier.

Alex van Kaam heeft de final versie van Motherboard Monitor 4.10 gereleased. Hier heb je de complele lijst met fixes en nieuwe features:

Added: Support for the THMC10
Added: Support for the Winbond W83627HF, the new Super I/O chip of winbond wich has hardware monitoring inside
Added: Support for the Asus AS99127F on the Asus P3B-f boards
Added: Support for the Asus AS99127F on the Asus MEW i810 boards
Added: Support for the Sis5595 (very untested this is)
Added: Support for the ABit BE6
Added: Support for the ABit BP6 (select Abit BP6 in voltage setup section)
Added: Support for the Intel i810 chipset
Added: Support for the Soyo 7IZB+ (select Soyo 7IZB+ in the voltage setup section)
Added: Don Hass (an MBM user) provided some code to reduce the MBM memory usage from 3-4mb to 700k
Added: Support for Win2000 Hibernation (mbm will close before hibernation and start once hibernation is over)
Added: AutoDetect of all sensor chips, user can turn this off on the general tab (in case it don't work :-P )
Added: Multiple e-mail address in the Send To:, please use a ; example: mail1@email.com;mail2@email.com
Added: Option to include Up/Down log in a warning E-mail
Added: Date & Time will be added to E-mail subject
Added: Compatibility with SoftFSB, both can now run at the same time without messing each other up (so far )
Added: Option to set the max number of entries that there should be in an Interval Log. Once this max number has been reached the oldest entry will be deleted. If you are still using a interval log file created in a build before 4.10 then please delete it on the interval log tab so that a new file (in a new format) can be created.
Added: Option to set the max number of entries that there should be in an Up/Down Log. Once this max number has been reached the oldest entry will be deleted.
Added: You can now set a Core Voltage for each Core port, since Dual CPU boards become more populiair and overclocking them can be done via the SoftMenu many users have diffrent core voltages per CPU. On the Voltage > Setup tab you can set the Voltage per Core. Please note that because of this, your original core voltage setup is gone, so as soon as you start 4.10 please go to the Voltage Tab > Setup and setup the Core Voltages to your personal needs
Added: Japaneese language support
Added: Registry section on the general tab, here you can find the Clear Registry button and the new "Save Registry Settings to file" button which will do just that
Added: Compatibility support for Soft FSB
Added: Small refresh button in the CPU Mhz display, will allow you to update the CPU Mhz (like the popup menu option)
Added: Icons for the popup menu entries
Changed: Francaise and Espanol language files have been renamed without the ç and ä in the file name, this caused install errors on the Korian version of windows
Changed: Moved all extra langues into a sub folder
Changed: User can select in the installshield project if he or she want to install the extra languages and/or help file
Changed: Lots of internal changes in the mbm.dll for future compatibility with CPUIdle and to make it easier to add chips
Changed: VU Style meter will now allow values below 0c (32f)
Changed: SMBus code, changed a few more things in this code to make it work a little bit better
Fixed: Up/Down tab/log error when reaching values below 0c (32f) temperatures
Fixed: CPU speed code, Win 9x users will still be using the code from version 4.09 (the fast code) while NT users will use the code from 4.08 (the slower code), this should give NT users the correct CPU speed

Check de MBM homepage voor de download locaties.

The Register meldt dat er een massief beveiligingsgat in de Hotmail servers zit:

A catastrophic breach in Hotmail security means that anyone who has one of the freebie mail accounts can have his or her emails read by others.

At the same time, the breach means that once people have logged into the system, they can send, receive and delete emails using that account to their heart's content.

The breach, just tested by The Register using one of our own writer's Hotmail accounts, and found to work, uses a Web address in which you type a hotmail handle. You then have full access to that Hotmail account, with all rights.

For obvious reasons, we are not publishing the Web page address here.

Ik lees bij Planet Multimedia dat KPN pas vanaf midden volgend jaar met de invoering van ADSL zal beginnen. Amsterdam, Utrecht en Rotterdam zullen als eerste aan beurt komen:

De capaciteit op het grote lijnen net is ook de hinderpaal bij de introductie van Snelnet breedband toegang voor abonnees. Eerst zijn de aansluitingen in Amsterdam, Rotterdam en Utrecht aan de beurt in een 'pre-commercial' fase van introductie. 'Midden 2000' volgt de rest van Nederland in een volledige commerciele introductie. Tot die tijd heeft de tv-kabel buiten de grote steden nog een monopolie op de breedband markt.

Tevens heeft de Opta bepaald dat KPN moet wachten met het aanbieden van gratis internet totdat het voldoende capaciteit heeft voor andere aanbieders van telefonie en internet. Meer daarover lees je bij Planet Multimedia.

HardOCP heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid waarin ze uitleggen hoe je die irritante airflow-blokkerende flatcables rond krijgt:

Let’s take a 40 conductor IDE cable for example. Count five of the little “humps” and place your thumbnail between conductors 5 and 6. Place your other thumbnail in the corresponding groove underneath the ribbon and using opposing pressure, “shear” the fifth and sixth conductors from each other. After you get a good tear going it is easy to separate the conductors all the way from connector to connector. Repeat this every five conductors until you have eight five conductor ribbons. Now carefully twist and stack the mini-ribbons on top of each other until you have a square bundle and using premium electrical tape (SlipKnot Grey if you can find it,) wrap the bundle equi-distant from each connector. Wrap every two inches until the spread of conductors at the connectors make it impossible to continue. You will notice that the bundle wants to “lump” up because the middle ribbons are not being turned and twisted as much as the outside ones, a “racetrack” effect if you will.

Het komt er dus basicly op neer dat je de kabels in reepjes snijdt en die vervolgens samenplakt. Meer daarover lees je hier.

Thresh en zijn vriendjes zijn er weer snel bij met een preview van de Savage2000, die eerder vandaag door S3 werd aangekondigd. Hier heb je een stukje over S3TL, de onboard geometry engine van de Savage2000:

We're most interested in the 2 multi-textured pixels per clock, the onboard T&L, and the DVD options. Current 3D accelerators such as the Voodoo 3 and TNT2 only do a single multi-textured pixel per clock. The Savage2000's 2 multi-textured pixels per clock virtually doubles the performance of the Voodoo 3 and TNT2, the Savage2000 can also do single-pass quad texturing for a single pixel.

S3 states that their transform & lighting engine S3TL "Enables Next-Generation Content with 4-10X Polygon & Lighting Complexity," with up to "8 dynamic hardware lights with 3X performance of today's CPUs." S3TL also features real time load balancing between hardware T&L and the CPU. The video card will be able to pump out far more polygons onto the screen, and we'll see even more realistic 3D games as programmers take advantage of the technology.

Current games don't even need the 3 million sustained triangles per second current 3D accelerators can push out. Fill rate is still the main bottleneck and will continue to be the bottleneck until games start using more polygons.

Nu S3 eidelijk weer een high-end accelerator in huis lijkt te hebben vraagt Firinsquad zich wel af of het wel zo verstandig van S3 is geweest om de naam 'Savage' te handhaven. Kan ik me wel wat bij voorstellen, want eerdere Savage kaarten hebben (in het high-end game segment) duidelijk gefaald.

Hehe, kwam een leuk nieuwsbericht tegen bij The Register: een stel landgenoten van het CWI (Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica) in A'dam hebben een 512-bits code gekraakt. Aanvankelijk werd gedacht dat hiervoor 50 miljard jaar CPU tijd nodig zou zijn, maar Herman te Riele en zijn kameraden klaarden de klus in 35 CPU jaren:

The security system used in Internet transactions has been cracked as a result of an international effort at the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, CWI) in Amsterdam. The project was co-ordinated by Herman te Riele.

The RSA-155 code (so-called because the 512-bit numbers in the code have about 155 decimals) was originally developed at MIT. What the research team has accomplished is to find the prime factors of a 512-bit number. The factored key is a model of the public key, which is used in the SSL protocol. This means that 512-bit keys are no longer safe against what the team modestly calls a "moderately powerful attacker". The consequence is that malevolent persons with access to something like a 2 Gigabyte Cray C916, plus 300 SGI and Sun workstations plus a few Pentium PCs (and a high-powered group of researchers) can now breach commercial banking, stock exchange and ecommerce transactions.

It was thought that it would take 50 billion years of CPU time to crack such codes, but in the event the computing time used was about 35 years. By running in parallel, but working mostly just nights and weekends, the job took just seven months. This could apparently be reduced to a week if the project were distributed though the Internet. Mafia.net is probably already on the job, but to save them time and for the benefit of hacker Register readers, here's the answer: RSA-155 =

Misschien kunnen ze ook ff helpen met onze Nederlandse Power Cows?

MySQL, de super snelle maar enigzins beperkte database server van het zweedse TcX, is gereleased onder de open source GPL license. Hier heb je de info van The Register:

MySQL, a multiuser, multithreaded SQL database server developed to handle very large databases an order of magnitude faster than major vendor products, is being released under a GPL.

The SQL in this case is the real structured query language, and should not be confused with a Microsoft product that usurps the SQL name. A 1970s IBM research project resulted in Structured English Query Language - SEQUEL - which was subsequently abbreviated to SQL, and is now the standard for database query language. The current GPL version of MySQL, released a few days ago, is 3.20.32a, and it is planned that older releases of MySQL will be offered with a GPL, and called GNU MySQL MySQL had been previously available free for internal use, but there was a fee if it was included in a product or service; if a charge was made for installation and maintenance; or it was included in a distribution.

Tweakers.net is dus ook powered by MySQL .

Micron heeft aangekondigd dat het de eerste samples van z'n 128 en 144Mbit Rambus RIMMs in de bakkerij heeft liggen. Levering van deze 0,18micron RIMMs zou in de herfst moeten beginnen:

But in a company statement, Micron stressed that it will also support competing products including PC-133 parts, to its customers.

The company said that it has started samplying 356MHz and 400MHz chips at 128Mbit and 144Mbit capacities with data rates of 712MHz and 800MHz respectively. Micron said that its RIMMs (Rambus inline memory modules) use a proprietary fine pitch ball grid array packaging technology.

Intel is an investor in both Micron and Rambus.

Check The Register voor meer info.

Ik lees bij The Register dat AMD nu ook een 500MHz variant de deur uit heeft van de K6-2 processor. Altijd goed voor een budget upgrade. Hier is de soep:

Chip manufacturer AMD confirmed it has introduced a 500MHz version of its K6-2 processor, with OEM prices at $167/1000.

That positions the processor against the Intel Celeron chip family in terms of pricing.

At the same time, AMD said IBM will use the part in some members of its consumer Aptiva range.

While AMD ramps volumes of its Athlon K7 throughout the rest of this year, it will use the K6-2 to attack the Celeron in its own patch. Although the K6-2 family has been successful in the marketplace, AMD is vulnerable with its K6-III family of processors, which have not sold as well as it hoped, according to distributors close to the company's plans.

According to Robert Stead, European marketing director of AMD, the K6-2 is likely to exist until the middle of next year. Meanwhile, as reported here earlier, AMD will roll out K6-IIIs using copper technology and eventually move the Athlon K7 into the volume value part of the market. ®

3D Wars heeft een review gepost van de snelste 3dfx kaart momenteel op de markt, de Voodoo3 3500. Naast de snelheid heeft deze kaart ook allemaal leuke TV tuning en video editing features aan boord:

The TV Tuner on the Voodoo3 3500 TV is made by Phillips. This is the same TV tuner that you will find on the STB Desktop TV. This TV tuner includes a RF coaxial cable input and the same for the FM input. Every TV in the US uses coaxial cables to input and output TV signals to and from the cable box. Yet, many of us(including myself) have not used a coaxial cable or RF connector for an FM signal. Fear not, since this problem can very easily be solved by picking up an adapter piece at radio shack or other local electronics store. As far as quality is concerned, the TV tuner allows you to watch and capture images up to 640 x 480. However, when capturing video streams in either MPEG 2 or AVI format, you are limited to 320 x 240. You can either use PAL or NTSC for the TV signal.The software that allows you to do all of this is included on the installation CD. Visual Reality is the software that allows you to watch TV, capture images, freeze frames and do much more. 3dfx has dedicated a website to the operations of the software. They teach you how to make your own 'skins' and more. The FM tuner software is an extension of Visual Reality as well. For video editing, 3dfx has included a copy of Unlead's Video Studio. This software is not very powerful as far as video editing is concerned, but is ideal for home or personal use.

The software package with the Voodoo3 3500 TV is a very nice one. It includes the full version of Unreal(a bit old though), and upgrade to Unreal Tournament(makes up for it), Visual Reality, Video Studio and WinDVD. Along with great drivers on the installation CD, this software package is very nicely laid out. 3dfx has gone to certain lengths to accommodate everyone, rather than just the gamer(which they do a great job of for the gamer).

Storage Review heeft een review gepost van de nieuwe Western Digital Enterprise WDE18310 SCSI schijf. Net zoals de Quantum Atlas 10K - de huidige SCSI kampioen - loopt deze broeder op 10.000rpm:

In the end, the Atlas 10k's formidable performance is too much for the Enterprise to beat. Under Windows NT, it comes darn close though, for all intents and purposes delivering equivalent (read: blazingly fast) performance. The Atlas 10k, however, remains a better-balanced drive by also delivering unmatched performance in Windows 9x. What shouldn't get lost in the shuffle, however, is that the Enterprise does place a strong second to the Atlas 10k. The drive consistently outperforms veteran products such as the latest Cheetah and Ultrastar, at times by significant margins. The SCSI drive world is being turned on its head, with newcomer's in the 10k market outperforming established players. These are interesting times .

Koen van Hardwareinfo.nl heeft een review gepost van de Terratec Xlerate Pro, een Aureal Vortex II soundcard met 4 speaker support en digital S/PDIF interface. De XLerate Pro ziet er exact hetzelfde uit als de Xitel Storm Platinum die ik hier heb liggen, beide kaarten zijn dan ook gebaseerd op het Aureal SuperQuad reference design:

a deze test zijn er een aantal gebruikersprofielen die we de XLerate PRO van harte kunnen aanraden: ten eerste personen die veel 3D spellen spelen. Door het A3D systeem wordt het spelen van deze spellen nog een stuk realistischer dan te voren. Ten tweede de bezitters van een Minidisc op DAT recorder, aangezien de optische digitale output voor een perfecte verbinding tussen PC en Audio-recorder zorgt. Ten derde personen die veel digitale opnames met de computer verrichten en de beste digitale kwaliteit willen rond de Fl. 200,--. Personen die zelf muziek creëren zijn echter wellicht beter af met een Sound Blaster Live!, omdat in zulke gevallen de environmental effecten erg bruikbaar zijn. Ook personen met een langzamere CPU kunnen wellicht beter een Live! aanschaffen, aangezien het A3D systeem zeer veel CPU-performance vraagt.

Verder heeft Koen ook een uitgebreid artikel over Positionele 3D Audio gepost, zou ik ook absoluut lezen!

BXBoards heeft een interview gepost met David Cook van Metabyte. In het interview wordt wat heen en weer gebabbeld over de Voodoo2 en Voodoo3 drivers van Metabyte:

Q: Considering the fact that your company (Metabyte) no longer sells Voodoo2 cards, and hasn't ever sold a Voodoo3 card, (for obvious reasons) why did you take the time to develop this new Mini-GL driver?

A: This driver was designed primarily to support Quake3 in our eyeSCREAM stereo vision products. Simply put with our own miniGL it was much easier to add stereo support to Q3 than it is with 3dfx's drivers. The second reason is to support Q3 for the users of our Wicked3D boards who want to use our feature rich drivers rather than 3dfx's reference drivers. A modified version of this driver is also a significant part of our PGC technology. And another modification of this miniGL is used in our stereo vision cave technology.

Verder vind je er ook een overzicht met Quake3 benchmarks, waaruit blijkt dat de Metabyte drivers duidelijk sneller zijn dan de 3dfx reference drivers.

Betanews weet ons te verblijden met het bericht dat Mirabilis een nieuwe versie van ICQ heeft gereleased. ICQ 99B v3.18 Build 2568 kun je hier naar beneden laden.

Review Zone heeft een 15 pagina tellende Athlon vs PIII comparison online gezet. Hier heb je een hap uit de conclusie:

Now for the recommendations. Clearly enough, the Athlon is the winner here, and we strongly recommend the Athlon 600MHz and the Athlon 550MHz when considering their price and their performance. The 650MHz version is the most expensive out of the lot, because it’s the fastest processor available. Naturally, if $950 isn’t a big deal for you, the Athlon 650 is the best choice for you. However, if you currently own a BX motherboard and are looking at the cheapest upgrade without having to spend more money on motherboards, you can either opt for a 500MHz Pentium III since it’s now $270 or a Celeron 500. You may as well go over the 500MHz mark if you haven't already, rack up some horsepower for postmillenial demands on computing power.

Thanks to the EV6 bus, the future of Athlons on multiprocessing systems looks very promising as well. Once the 100MHz system memory bottleneck is lifted, the Athlon system will offer support for PC-133 SDRAM or faster. At the moment, Athlon boards offer Ultra ATA-66 support and AGP 2x, while AGP 4x support will take a bit longer to arrive on the scene. More interestingly, not only has the Athlon has been designed in a way to scale the processor all the way up to 1GHz but what’s more, the current 0.25µ core seem to even scale up to 700MHz+, so it won’t be a surprise if AMD comes up with a quick 700MHz Athlon based on this core.

3DHardware.net heeft een review van de Kaser Corporation YO!MP3 portable MP3 player gepost. De Jomp (hmm, kazig naampje... ) heeft 32Mb geheugen en is met 99 dollar erg redelijk geprijst:

Shockproof and memory size in all honour, but what good is a funky portable audio system without good performance? Nothing. Well, luckily enough the YO!MP3 is really good in that area. As I described in the intro, and you?ve surely experienced yourself, the MP3 audio format delivers really good sound quality at 128kbps (standard bit rate). As the sound quality at this bit rate was close to perfect (from what I could hear using my favourite Sony MDR-V200 headphones), I don?t recommend using higher bit rates (which I did, without any relevant change in sound quality), because this would only be a waste of valuable memory.

Ik las bij AnandTech dat er bij EBay nu ook al gehandeld wordt in RC5 blokjes. Voor een oogst van 100.000 balen wordt op dit moment 26 dollar geboden. Zelf een bod uitbrengen kan hier:

100,000 RC5-64 blocks and adding more while the auction runs that could bring your team at distributed.net a giant leap forward in the statistics or make you the leading contributor of your team. Check out the current number of blocks you'll get at this URL!

David van Tweak3D heeft een review van de Creative Labs CD-RW Blaster 6424 op z'n site geparkeerd. Deze 230 dollar kostende CD brander fikt op zesvoudige snelheid en herschrijft op 4-speed:

To conclude, the Creative CD-ReWriteable 6424 drive is a best buy on any occasion. Most other CD-RW's at the same price range between 2X-2X-24X and 4X-2X-24X. Logically, this drives price/performance ratio is top-notch. Other obvious benefits include the ability to not only write, but also re-write, which most do not take into consideration when buying such a drive. Seek time, and buffer size are also on par with other competitors. In fact, the only fault I could find is in Read time. As mentioned earlier- this, however, can easily be overlooked considering most will still use their CD-RW and CD-Rom in conjunction.

Hot Hardware heeft een review gepost van de Western Digital Expert WD-AC418000, een 7200rpm ATA/66 schijf met een capaciteit van 18Gig:

From the Winbench99 Suite we took the Business and High End Disk WinMark99 numbers only. What you are looking at here again are some of the fastest numbers ever put forth from a drive in our labs. The only area, where the drive was not the absolute fastest, was the Front Page 98 High End Benchmark. Regardless, the high spindle speed combined with the hot new ATA66 interface have earned this drive a ?keeper? position in the Hot Hardware Flagship Machine! Sorry IBM, you have been replaced... :-)

Ik kan me niet voorstellen dat er uberhaupt nog iemand serieus geïnteresseerd is in deze kaart. Maareuh, PowerVR Generations weet te vertellen dat de Videologic Neon 250 morgen dan toch eindelijk gereleased zal worden:

Neon 250 will officially ship on 31st August.

S3 heeft z'n next generation GX4 chipset officieel aangekondigd! De naam is trouwens verandert naar Savage2000. Hier heb je een kort overzicht van de specs:

- 128-bit memory support (up to 200MHz)
- Up to 200MHz engine clock
- Up to 64MB of memory - allowing resolutions up to 1600x1200 triple buffered with 32-bit per pixel color depth and a 32-bit Z-buffer, with 32MB left for textures, and also full-scene anti-aliasing higher resolutions
- 350MHz RAMDAC
- DVI-compliant digital flat panel technology
- TV-out support
- AGP 4X technology
- Sustained fill rate of 700+ MegaTexels/second
- QuadTexture engine
- S3TL Transform and lighting engine
- S3TC (of course)
- DTV/DVD Playback
- Dynamic Multi-Tap Scalar ... ?
- Motion Compensation Engine
- Fully Compliant VIP 2.0 Bus
- Priced at $29 (USD) each in quantity of 10,000 units [break] De Savage2000 zal dus, net zoals de nVidia NV10, over een T&L engine beschikken. Verder doet de kaart full scene Anti-Aliasing en is er support voor Environment Mapped Bump-Mapping (EMBM) en (natuurlijk) S3TC. De standaard versie zal op een kloksnelheid van 150/166MHz lopen en duurdere Savage2000+ zal op 200/200MHz worden geklokt. Samen met de QuadTexture rendering engine kom je dan op een theoretische fillrate van 800Mtexels/sec. Klinkt allemaal erg goed, nu is het alleen nog wachten op de aankondiging van de nVidia NV10 (morgen?).

Voor meer info heb je hier de complete press release:[/break] S3’s Announces Savage2000: The Ultimate PC Entertainment and Productivity Graphics Solution

Next-Generation Architecture Combines Proven Image Quality with Lightning Fast 3D Engine

SANTA CLARA, Calif. --- August 30, 1999 -- Rapidly following on the "award-winning" success of the Savage4 accelerator, S3 Incorporated (Nasdaq: SIII) today announced its next-generation graphics platform, the Savage2000 accelerator. Featuring stunning 3D performance for PC gamers, superior digital video playback and TV-out support for home users and high-resolution 2D image quality and digital flat panel support for professional users, Savage2000 combines unmatched functionality and mind-numbing speed to deliver today’s most complete PC graphics solution.

"Savage2000 significantly raises the level of performance that consumers can expect to find from S3 on store shelves by the end of this year," said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Associates (www.JPA.com), the leading market research firm tracking digital media. "Giving S3 a complete top-to-bottom volume product offering, Savage2000 is well positioned to succeed in the high-performance graphics controller market, which our research indicates exceeding 46 million units in 2000."

"Bringing Savage2000 to market is another major milestone for S3," said Ken Potashner, president and CEO of S3 Incorporated. "Combining the Savage2000, mobile Savage and products with our strategic industry partnerships and widespread OEM customer base, S3 is well positioned to determine the course of the PC graphics market over the next few years." First Savage2000 Retail Offering

S3 also announced today that Diamond Multimedia will produce the first Savage2000-based retail add-in card. Scheduled to be available on retail shelves for Christmas, Diamond’s soon to be announced Viper 2 series will deliver a superior sub-$250 solution for end-users seeking stunning 2D, 3D, HDTV and DVD performance.

"With the Viper 2, Diamond is committed to maintaining its leadership role in the retail graphics market," said Scott Vouri, vice president and general manager of Multimedia for Diamond Multimedia. "Working closely with S3, we are building a graphics card that both consumer and professional users will be demanding to play 3D games, watch DVD movies and run a whole host of other next-generation ‘must-have’ applications."

OEM and Retail Add-In Card Solution

Meeting the needs of the retail add-in card market as well as the performance segment of the OEM PC market, Savage2000 is available in two configurations: the Savage2000 and the Savage2000+. With 128-bit memory support (up to 166MHz) and up to a 150MHz engine clock, the Savage 2000 is targeted at high-performance OEM systems, while the Savage2000+ – with 128-bit memory support (up to 200MHz) and up to a 200MHz engine clock – is targeted at potential retail add-in card designs ranging from $169-249. In addition to high-performance cores, both configurations provide up to 64MB of memory, a 350MHz RAMDAC, DVI-compliant digital flat panel technology, advanced TV-out support and complete AGP 4X technology for optimal performance.

For complete information on S3’s Savage2000 accelerator, including white papers, data sheets, product photos, screen shots, etc., please visit the Savage2000 section of S3’s website at http://www.s3.com/savage2000/index.htm

64MB Memory Support

Doubling today’s standard memory configurations, Savage2000 is the PC industry’s first volume 3D accelerator with support for up to 64MB of memory. Greatly increasing the flexibility and performance of its 3D engine, Savage2000’s 64MB memory support allows for the usage of resolutions up to 1600x1200 triple buffered with 32-bit per pixel color depth and a 32-bit Z-buffer, while still maintaining 32MB of memory for textures. Savage2000’s 64MB support also allows for full-scene anti-aliasing at higher resolutions.

Superior 3D Technology

Combining the industry-leading 3D image quality (32-bit rendering, 32-bit Z-buffer and S3TC™) of the Savage4 accelerator with a lightning fast 3D rendering engine, Savage2000 delivers both speed and quality for ultimate gaming performance. Setting the standard for next-generation 3D accelerators, Savage2000 implements several industry-first 3D technologies including:

Dual Pixel/Dual Texture Pipeline – Implementing an innovative single clock, four texel architecture, Savage2000 delivers an unmatched sustained fill rate of 700+ MegaTexels/second. Approximately twice the speed of today’s slower single pixel/dual texture architectures, Savage2000 is the ultimate gaming solution for multi-textured games such as Quake III, Unreal Tournament, Dues Ex, Sanity and Prince of Persia 3D.

"For the next 6 to 9 months, multi-texturing fill rate will remain the key to kick-ass game performance," said John Heap, director of product development for Rage Software PLC., developers of the award-winning Expendable title. "Definitely, this is the feature that a winning 3D accelerator must have!"

Unique QuadTexture Engine – With the ability to composite four textures in a single cycle, Savage2000’s QuadTexture engine enables developers to use complex visual effects, such as shadows, reflections, bump, noisy environment and simulation, for the first time without a loss in performance. Building on S3’s S3TC and high multi-texturing performance, Savage2000’s QuadTexture engine takes 3D gameplay to unparalleled levels of realism and interactivity.

S3TL™ Technology – Off-loading the geometry calculation stage of the 3D pipeline from the CPU, S3’s first-generation transform and lighting engine (S3TL) will enable the development of future OpenGL and DirectX 7 games that deliver 4-10X the polygon and lighting complexity of today’s fastest PC applications. Delivering up to 8 dynamic hardware lights at 3X the performance of today’s CPUs, S3TL also enables real-time load balancing between Savage2000 and the host CPU. This frees up valuable processor cycles that developers can use to further enhance other aspects of their applications such as artificial intelligence, audio, collision detection and physics. To push the development of these future games, S3 has an aggressive ISV program underway designed to match S3’s existing texture compression technology (S3TC™) with S3TL for the most realistic game play ever seen on the PC platform.

Best of Class DTV/DVD Playback

Continuing S3’s proven leadership in video quality and performance, Savage2000 is a complete DTV/DVD solution that delivers a level of performance equivalent to stand-alone consumer devices. Highlights of Savage2000’s superior video engine include:

Industry-First Dynamic Multi-Tap Scalar – Dynamically adjustable up to 16 taps, the Savage2000’s high-quality scalar sets a new quality standard for PC video while providing outstanding DTV playback.

Third Generation Motion Compensation Engine – Featuring broad industry support, Savage2000’s motion compensation engine delivers full DVD frame rates, while leaving the system with plenty of CPU bandwidth to run other applications. Fully Compliant VIP 2.0 Bus – With the industry’s first fully compliant VIP 2.0 bus interface, Savage2000 supports multiple DTV configurations with busmastering for low CPU utilization.

For more information on Savage2000’s best of class DTV/DVD playback, please read S3’s video white paper entitled S3’s Savage2000 Accelerator: A New Architecture for Superior PC Video, which can be viewed on S3’s website at http://www.s3.com/savage4/white.htm

Pricing and Availability

Sampling now, Savage2000 will be in mass production in October of this year. End-users should be able to purchase Diamond Multimedia’s Savage2000-based Viper 2 add-in cards during the fourth quarter of this year and Savage2000-based systems in the first quarter of 2000.

Savage2000 is priced at $29 (USD) each in quantity of 10,000 units, while the Savage2000+ is priced at $35 each in quantity of 10,000 units.

About S3 Incorporated

With the world’s largest installed base of graphics and video accelerators, S3 Incorporated has established itself as a market leader in technology excellence, core business strengths, strategic partnerships and worldwide reach. Building on these strengths, S3 is committed to delivering targeted products for the Personal Computer, Computing Integration and Consumer Appliance Markets.

Voor de gene die nog steeds niet weten dat je Tiberian Sun op een hogere resolutie kan draaien dan 800x600, is dit een truck om tot 1600x1200 je robots orders te kunnen geven.
Edit de sun.ini file en voeg dit erbij:

[Video]
ScreenWidth=1600
ScreenHeight=1200
StretchMovies=no