Bij Ultimate Games is een preview te vinden van Team Fortress 2. Deze game hebben ze namelijk kunnen aanschouwen op de ECTS beurs in Londen, die nu gaande is. Hier heb je vast wat info van deze revolutionaire game:

The animation, stunningly, betrays every little nuance of movement as the players run around the battlefields, guns moving independently of the body directions as players strafe and bullet cartridges popping out across the landscape. In one of the rolling demos, I was shown the spy doing his worst sneaking up behind an enemy trooper and skilfully throttling the life out of him. This, I discovered, was an example of the action everyone else saw (an accurate depiction of a bloke being strangled) differing from the animation shown to the players involved. This, you see, makes the situation all the more realistic.

Always Time For A Tank

There are a number of vehicles in the game, including tanks and landing craft, but these are controlled by the omnipresent commander who sees what goes on from an RTS perspective for which Valve have ensured that everything has been rendered from above and all the roofs are taken off the buildings. The commander’s, er, commands, take priority over everyone else’s voice communications.

Vehicles aren’t too important to the major structure of the game itself, however. The technology is advanced enough, you see, to make the game into a very convincing driving sim if it wanted to be, and this is not the direction that Valve want the game to go in.

Over twenty or so maps, the point is to encourage co-operation between players so that whole new strategic avenues are opened up with each combination of player types. The example of two players manning a machine gun turret to increase its effectiveness is just one crude example of this.

Klinkt goed hè? In de review staan verder ook wat screenshots.

NovaLogic heeft een filmpie online gegooid van Delta Force 2. Hij duurt 1 minuut 22 en is o.a. bij AGN 3D neer te laden. Zie hier wat info:

About the Game: Delta Force 2 will include an all new Commander's Screen, providing you will perfect control of all of your AI teammates. As for glorious graphics, a new level of Voxel Space 3 allows for true long-range engagements. 32 bit software support, new weapons, equipment and story based missions provide a new level of true power.

Show Description: This 1 minute 22 second video goes through different areas of the world of Delta Force 2, giving you an idea of what to expect. Cool music in the background and tons of people getting shot, make you wonder if this is legal? The shooting shots include everything from close by, to long distance using the scope. As for the quality of the video, it is only an 180x120 video feed, so plan on zooming it a little larger.

Je kan kiezen tussen een 15Meg AVI of twee kleinere RealVideo versie van rond de 1MB. Downloaden kan hier.

Onze Russische vrienden van iXBT-Labs hebben er een review bij, ditmaal van de Voodoo3 3500TV. Zoals we van iXBT-Labs gewend zijn is de review super uitgebreid, met erg veel benchmarks en plaatjes. Zeker het lezen waard, hier heb je vast een gedeelte over de performance van de kaart:

Well, what can we say here? 3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV appears falling behind nVidia Riva TNT2 Ultra almost everywhere except Quake2 and Shogo in multitexturing mode. 3dfx mini-driver allows 3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV graphics card to show all its power and coolness in multitexturing in Quake2. The same situation takes place in Shogo. Here we would like to remind you that only 3dfx chipsets can boast "free" multitexturing, which actually means that if enabled it greatly increases the performance. Just compare it to the chipsets with double pipeline rendering, when the enabling of multitexturing allows processing only one pixel per time step instead of two though the textures are superposed somewhat faster.

Unfortunately, although ICD OpenGL driver written especially for Quake3 became a bit faster with a new version, it is still not optimized enough to make 3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV card show all its hidden power in Quake3 as well.

Eergisteren is de demo van Driver gereleased, dus vond CTNews het nodig om er een kleine review van te posten. Dit is eigenlijk het enige interessante:

Everyone has been raving about it's PSX counterpart, but I haven't played it yet. Before reviewing the final product I promise I will play the PSX version that has got rave reviews to do a comparison of the two. Even before starting this game I thought of games such as GTA which I loved. As far as the PC demo I tested, I only found one game mode, where you try to outrun a squad car. When I started the game I remembered a couple of Fox specials, World's Worst Police Chases 2, Worlds Worst Car Crashes 5, etc. It's exactly like that, you are alone car, trying desperately to outrun a police cruiser, not to mention avoid traffic, buildings, etc. You have two meters, one displaying the amount of damage to your car, and another displaying the level of felony you are at (heheh). The graphics are decent, the controls are arcade like (I personally like that...) It's like Need For Speed meets Destruction Derby. Cool. I will be eagerly waiting the final product.

Check de review voor wat sceenshots.

Voodoo Extreme weet te melden dat Asus nieuwe (beta) drivers voor de V3800 kaarten op haar FTP heeft gegooid, zowel voor Win9x als NT. Dit is de soep:

1. Based on NVIDIA's display driver v2.25
2. Dual-view support, but the TV-out of dual view mode for 3D game is still under development.
3. Improve captured video quality for high-speed moving objects.
4. Fix capture driver bug under Adobe Premiere when the capture is completed.

Downloaden kan hier.

Vandaag heeft Blizzard dan toch officieel Warcraft III aangekondigd. Check hier de press release. Voor meer info zou ik even naar GameCenter fietsen, sinds zij er al meteen een preview van hebben... Blizzard heeft overigens ook al meteen een officiële Warcraft III page online gemikt, die staat hier. Anyway, hier heb je wat info afkomstig uit de press release:

During a press conference today at the European Computer Trade Show, Blizzard Entertainment® announced what promises to be its most highly anticipated title ever. Departing from the current generation of real-time strategy games, Blizzard is developing Warcraft® III as a 3D RPS, or Role-Playing Strategy game.

By introducing role-playing elements to the Warcraft universe, Blizzard intends to elevate strategy games to a new level of interactivity. Instead of focusing on resource gathering and accumulating massive numbers of expendable units, Warcraft III will immerse players in a dynamic world, making the game environment much more compelling. Players will control smaller, more powerful forces as they adventure, complete quests and interact with non-player characters, while simultaneously devising strategies to succeed in the overarching mission of defeating opponents. Key features in the game include:

- Six different races to command including Orcs, Humans and Demons, each possessing unique units, magical abilities and weapons of war.

- Legendary heroes lead powerful forces while completing quests, gaining experience and acquiring special items.

- Fully interactive world that incorporates non-player characters; wandering monsters; neutral towns, strongholds and temples; and environmental effects.

- Skeletal and skinning animation process allows infinite frames of animation resulting in true fluid movement of 3D models.

- Advanced world design tools allow players to customize every aspect of the game including tile sets; character art; quests; mission objectives; and unit types, AI, attributes, special abilities and spells.

- Expanded multiplayer options over Battle.net™ including a larger number of players per game and multiple game types including team play and questing.

En hier vast wat shots:

Ook bij Sharky Extreme, een review van een doe-het-zelf overclock pakketje, bestaande uit een Celeron 366, een Supercool 4500 fan / heatsink en een MSI Slotket adapter. Alles wordt in de fabriek getest door Net-N-Dude waardoor ze garanderen dat je je Celeron 366 op 550MHz kan laten draaien. Gek genoeg werkt het ook echt, Sharky kreeg hem zelfs stabiel op 578Mhz! Klik hier voor de review.

We were immediately impressed with the Supercool combo's ability to dissipate heat, its fan and heatsink have obviously been tested at length to provide superior results versus other options.

In fact, we compared the Supercool 4500's temperature reduction capability versus Intel's retail OEM PPGA fan/heatsink and found that the Net-N-Dude cooler lowered the CPU's temperature by up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit versus the Intel model. Not bad.

The Celeron CPU itself was clearly a strong one. Net-N-Dude does indeed pre-screen them for speed based on this particular model. None of our other standby Celeron 366 CPUs could achieve even close to 550MHz even when using the Supercool 4500 cooler.

Using the wide variety of FSB settings on the MSI MS-6163Pro mainboard, we even managed to stabilize the Net-N-Dude CPU at 578MHz (5.5 105MHz). It pounded through three hours of Prime95's CPU torture test in this configuration, along with some looping Quake2 Crusher demos as well.

Sharky heeft een review online gezet van de Vortex2 soundcard van Videologic Systems. De kaart is volledig volgens Aureal's reference design gebouwd, met 4 speaker support en een digitale S/PDIF uitgang. Hier heb je wat over zijn features, de rest vind je hier.

Perhaps the most important feature of the SonicVortex2 is that it is powered by the Aureal Vortex2 chipset. With a CD packed full of demos to show off all of the great features of the Vortex2, it won't be long until you are a believer. From reflections to occlusions, the Vortex2 chipset will make any card a winner, and the SonicVortex2 will certainly stake a claim in the sound card market.

While supporting 76 DirectSound streams in hardware, the Vortex2 chipset can allow simultaneous playback of sound from separate sources. This means having Windows sounds occur while playing games or listening to CDs - certainly something we had all lived without in the early days of Windows.

The only real difference between the SonicVortex2 and any of its competitors is its S/P-DIF optical sound output line. While this may not seem like a big deal now, it will certainly make minidisc recording a snap. The soundcard can even be hooked up to a home stereo system, making for some exceptionally clear sound. While most of its competitors will have you buy pricey add-on cards for digital outputs, VideoLogic has taken a step we'd like to see more OEM's take. While they could have made a more complex daughtercard with more outputs and inputs, they opted for a solution that, while costing nothing extra to the consumer, delivers probably the most important interconnect that a daughtercard would have.

360 Degrees heeft een review van de Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 op hun site geparkeerd. Deze Ultra TNT2 kaart is waarschijnlijk nu de snelste in zijn soort, sinds Hercules geen TNT2's meer bouwt. Anyway, de review vind je hier.

I don’t know why you want to overclock this card anymore than it already is. For the sake of argument, the card comes shipped faster than 90% of the Ultra TNT2s. So, that makes this card a good overclocker in my opinion. It ran as stable as the V3800 in all test when it was clocked at its default 175 MHz core. Actually, the card runs better at its default 175 MHz than at 150 MHz. I experience slow boots at 150 MHz. I have not pushed the card further because I am not yet insane.

Wazige Japanse site is terug met een aantal plaatjes van de Athlon 650 en K6-2 500. Veel beters hebben we niet te doen met dit trage nieuws op zondag...

Volgens Ace's Hardware (die de info uit een onleesbaar artikel van Digitimes Taiwan heeft) zal VIA in de tweede helft van 2000 een Athlon server chipset releasen. Tot de features behoren support voor Double Data Rate SDRAM, AGP4x en ATA/100:

According to this Digitimes Taiwan report, VIA's server chipset solution will debut in Q2 2000. The Northbridge of the chipset, VT8653, will feature FSB133, DDR-266 and AGP4X among other things. The accompanying Southbridge, VT8233, will support AC-97, 4 USB ports, 1/10/100 MB network transfer rate and UDMA-100, The chipset will be sampling as early as Q2 and motherboards using the chipset are expected to come out in Q3 2000. An integrated version, VT8607, with GX4 graphics adapter integrated will follow in Q3. VIA has not decided if this chipset will be used for Slot-1 or Socket-370 platform yet. As for the K7 platform, VIA will roll out VT8373 with PC133 and DDR support by Q3 2000, and the integrated version, VT8357 with GX4 graphics, by Q4 2000.

Sun doet er alles aan om de 64-bits Merced versie van Solaris klaar te krijgen voor de release van Win64, om zodoende een belangrijke voorsprong ten opzichte van Microsoft te verkrijgen. Hier heb je de info van The Register:

Sun will turn up the heat on Microsoft this autumn by shipping key developers an early access release of Solaris for Intel's IA-64 simulator. Although Intel has now demonstrated Merced silicon in action, for the near future much software development will still be carried out on the simulator.

Sun is demonstrating 64-bit Intel Solaris at this week's Intel Developer Forum, and the company has already made it clear that it intends to use 64-bitness as a stick to beat Microsoft. The latter's Win64 for Merced was demonstrated earlier this week, but the company isn't planning a first beta until the first half of next year, giving rivals from Sun, SCO and the Linux developers a chance to run with the 64-bit ball earlier.

And in light the recent confusion involving Compaq and NT for Alpha, it looks far more likely that Win64 will suffer the traditional Microsoft slippage rather than hitting the schedule. Tellingly, Microsoft is planning a hybrid 32/64-bit version of Windows 2000 to deal with early 64-bit platforms, plus a mechanism to allow Win2k to address more memory. If Microsoft was absolutely convinced it could ship Win64 for Merced's release, then these wouldn't be necessary, right? [break] Over dat laatste (32/64-bit switching) plaatst Ace's Hardware een opmerking: [/break] Microsoft is planning first a hybrid 32/64-bit version of Windows 2000 for the Merced and it siblings. I don't have to tell you that this will severely hurt the performance of the Merced. It means that IA-64 processors will have to jump back and forth between IA-32 and IA-64 mode and that the Merced will have to use its IA-32 to IA64 decoders quite offen.

Intel gaat de prijzen van de mobile Celerons en PIII's omlaag gooien. Tevens zal er een nieuwe mobile Celeron op 433MHz geïntroduceerd worden. Hier heb je de details, uit een nieuwsbericht van News.com:

The discounts on Intel's notebook chips will be relatively steep. The 400-MHz Celeron processor, for instance, will drop approximately 43 percent, from $187 to $106 in volume, while the 400-MHz Pentium II will drop 32 percent, from $530 to $316 in volume quantities.

The first Pentium III notebook chips, which will run at 500 MHz, are expected in late October or early November, the company has said. When Pentium III notebooks begin to come out, Intel will begin to phase out the Pentium II line rapidly.

Most of the major PC makers, including IBM and Compaq Computer, are expected to release 433-MHz Celeron notebooks in the coming weeks. Although Celeron is often associated with consumer notebooks, sources indicated that the chip is making deeper inroads as a notebook business chip. Some of the 433-MHz Celeron system, for instance, are expected to cost around $2,000 and to be aimed at business users.

3D Rage heeft een review van de Avus QX-TFT-02 flat panel speakers online gezet. De geluidskwaliteit van de super platte satellites blijkt erg goed te zijn, maar de subwoofer faalt:

The good news is that the satellites provide pretty good sound. They seem to be accurate in representing the correct frequencies and unlike the Benwin BW2000 flat panel speakers, they do not have distortion when turned up past the halfway mark, which is a big plus. But, like the BW2000's the bass is severely lacking. It's basically the overall sound quality of the bass that is lacking, other than the fact that it's weak. When turned up all the way it's probably as powerful as my Labtec $39 speakers when turned to the 1/2 mark, even though the subwoofers are the same size. The volume can be turned up slightly louder than the BW2000's but not much louder. Overall, I'd say the sound quality of the QX-TFT-02 flat panel speakers is mediocre, for tradtional speakers and pretty good for flat panel speakers

ATi heeft nieuwe drivers voor de Rage128 gereleased. Betanews heeft de info:

ATi has posted some new Special Purpose drivers for their Rage128 based graphics cards. These are for those using a K6/K7 3DNow!, Pentium III SSE, or for those wanting to run Quake3 Test. They are version 6.20CDH29 for Winddows 9x and NT4.

Windows 9x versie kan hier naar beneden gehaald worden, de Windows NT4 versie kun je hier downloaden.

Ik kwam bij AMD Zone deze erg handige post tegen die duidelijkheid geeft over de huidige situatie met de Athlon moederborden (MSI screw-up enzo). Check it:

Went down to *** to see what the availability situation is. They have one Athlon there in the store (550 MHz) and he said that he could get all the CPU's he wanted but wasn't going to bother until he had some motherboards to pair with them. His son now works at AMD and his job involves certifying motherboards. He said that MSI had submitted a motherboard to AMD for certification and then, after they had got certified, they went back and fiddled with the design and then manufactured some 11,000 substandard boards and shipped them out. They were sent to Japan, the U.K., and the U.S., including Austin. They had removed a transistor, reduced the size of many of the capacitors, and redone some of the PCB etching. Right now, AMD itself is manually reworking most of those MSI boards just to get them out on the street. He also said that IBM had pushed back the start of its' Athlon sales two weeks while they dealt with some motherboard problems of their own. Lastly, ASUS had developed a board but the design did not allow CPU speeds over 700 MHz.

MacOS Rumors heeft een aantal specs van de nieuwe iMac (C2, of hoe zij dat ding ook noemen...):

- Although no exact date is known, we have been told not to expect major news at Apple Expo France (previously considered a possible unveiling event for C2) on the 15th. At present, our best estimate of the C2 release date is some time in mid November.

- The processor will reportedly be a 400MHz G3 with 512k backside cache, 64MB of SDRAM standard, and include an 8GB UltraDMA/66 hard disk. The Unified Architecture motherboard will offer generally the same features as the existing iMac, but with the important addition of 400Mbps Firewire. According to sources, there will be two Firewire ports, each supporting a full 400Mbps.

- 100baseT Ethernet performance should improve significant over previous iMacs, and should rival that of the PowerMac G4 (Sawtooth).

- Although still not confirmed, several sources are aware of efforts at Apple to switch the iMac from expensive SDRAM SO-DIMMs (used in the iBook and Powerbook for size considerations) to full-size DIMMs. For some time it was thought that Apple would introduce this change with C2 -- however, recent opportunities to look at prototypes have clouded this issue significantly. A clearer picture of this aspect should be available soon.

Intergraph heeft bekend gemaakt dat het stopt met z'n PC en server produkten, een stap die naar eigen zeggen het direkte gevolg is van het gebrek aan medewerking van Intel. EBN Online heeft het nieuws:

In addition to discontinuing its PC and server lines, Intergraph is seeking third-party investments in both its ViZual Computing graphics workstation business and Intense3D add-on card operation, and hinted that an outright sale of the groups may be in the offing. Under its new plan, the company will focus exclusively on software and services.

As he has in the past, Intergraph chief executive James Meadlock blamed Intel for his company's troubles, and said today's decision capped a lengthy legal dispute underway in an Alabama federal court. As late as last week, Intergraph filed a motion claiming Intel is ignoring a preliminary ruling compelling it to provide chip samples and documentation to the OEM.

"Intel would rather have us not succeed," Meadlock said.

[...] The company claims that its Intense3D chip occupies 40% of the high end graphics accelerator market and 24% of the mid-range market. Still, Meadlock said Intel's reluctance to supply information was to blame for its inability to compete effectively in its markets. Intergraph lost $20.9 million last year, on revenue of $286.7 million.

FullOn3D heeft een korte review van de Rally Championship 2000 Demo gepost. Ik vond de demo zelf errug kewl, hoewel er nog een paar kleine probleempjes zijn (zwaartekracht te laag, Schotse co-driver nauwelijks verstaanbaar etc.). De graphics schoppen kont, vooral die van de wagen zelf:

The real beauty of Rally Championship 2000 so far is the amount of detail and realism given to the car itself, the SEAT Ibiza Evo2. I cannot even begin to cover them all. Here is a list of things that totally impressed me.

- The car gets dirtier as the race goes on.
- You can see the brakes and suspension through the slots on the wheels. And no, it isn't just part of the wheel texture.
- The wheels spin independantly. The only time you see this is externally viewing the car when it accelerates from a stop.
- The front wheels spin like mad while the rear ones start spinning slowly.
- With an interior view, you see the hand come off the steering wheel to shift. That is just too cool.
- The Model itself kicks all possible ass. You can see the entire interior from outside of the car including the rollcage and the spare tire.
- Oh, the paint jobs rocks too.

Hier een paar screenshots uit de demo:

Armin van FullOn3D heeft een artikel gepost waarin hij kijkt naar de effectiviteit van Celeron multiprocessing onder Linux. Als moederbord werd uiteraard de BP6 gebruikt. Hier heb je een stukje uit de conclusie:

We see that the benefits of SMP vary strongly based upon the applications run. Multithreaded applications are the best but a rare find still - but only if you're singletasking.

Under multitasking conditions the operating system is well capable of acceptable load-balanced scheduling. In this scenario it is of more importance to accomplish a good mix of memory-heavy and memory-light applications to make optimal use of the addtional CPU power.

From our scores we can say that an SMP machine can make a good rendering machine for i.e. POVRay and even scientific heavyweights like FFT and cryptoanalysis can show a good gain.

De benchmarks die gebruikt werden zijn o.a. RC5, SETI@Home, PovRay en een Linux kernel compilatie. Check FullOn3D voor de info.