Hè hè, eindelijk staat ie dan online, de 3dfx demo van Unreal Tournament! Check 3dfx Gamers voor de download locaties. Nu maar hopen dat de OpenGL / Direct3D versie snel volgt...

Fullway heeft een add-on voor de (oude) PSX aangekondig, waarmee het mogelijk wordt om MP3'tjes op het ding af te draaien:

Nestled alongside the SDMI-compliant digital music players this Christmas may be a nifty little toy that the recording industry would classify as more naughty than nice.

Taiwanese company Fullway's PSXAMP/MP3 Card for PS, which has already been released in Europe and Japan and could hit U.S. shores in the next few months, is a simple $80 unit that lets Sony PlayStation owners jam MP3 CDs on their game consoles. PlayStation and other game console units already play regular audio CDs. Meanwhile, reseller MP3Enhancer.com is taking pre-orders for the unit.

With PlayStations retailing for $99, that means consumers can get an MP3 home stereo that--oh, yeah--just happens to play Tombraider, for somewhere under $200. That's less than the cost of most portable MP3 players.

Meer info lees je in deze nieuwsposting van MP3.com.

Brandon Reinhart (aka Greenmarine) heeft een .plan update gepost met spul over de Unreal Tournament demo:

Sorry the demo wasn't out yesterday. 3dfx worked all night on getting their infrastructure ready to handle the demand. They are targeting demo release for Friday morning.

While they were working that out, Tim and I updated the demo archive. I put the ngStats fix in there so it is not necessary to download it. That's one good thing.

Based on feedback from testers, I've reevaluated my method of calculating ping in UT. After ECTS I decided to convince Tim we should subtract frametime from the ping calculation. This would result in the ping being a direct reflection of network performance (or close enough).

In retrospect this was a flawed decision for various reasons. I have changed the ping calculation to better reflect gameplay. This means that you might see a ping higher than you would expect when you join a server. I feel that this is better than seeing a lower ping than you would expect. I would rather you say "I'm getting a good game here, although my ping seems high" than "If my ping is this low, I should be getting better gameplay."

Big thanks go to Evil Avatar. I sent him various test DLLs with changes in the way I calculated ping. He then ran the game and played for a while. When he exited he told me the ping that my changes reflected and whether or not the gameplay felt to be at that level. We tested three or four variations and ultimately settled on the one I felt was the best in theory and turned out to be the best in practice.

You would be surprised how much ping can affect ones perception of a match even if the actual conditions behind a match are the same. I feel the current ping report more accurately reflects what people have come to expect from net gameplay. That removes some of the butterflies from my stomach, but I'm still apprehensive. This is the first demo of my first commercial game so I'm pretty nervous!!

Make good use of utbugs@epicgames.com to send us feedback. We'll definately be reading it.

Andreas Stiller heeft een artikeltje op de c't site neergemikt met een vrij diepe vergelijking van de Athlon en PIII architectuur. Hier heb je een stukje over de FPU performance van de Athlon:

The units of Athlon are reserved for floating point and multimedia thus either for FPU, MMX or 3DNow!. AMD especially optimized the FPU. In the K6 the FPU was the weak point still. It did not allow any pipelining meaning: an instruction always had to wait until the previous one was finished. Therefore the floating-point performance was significantly below Pentium II level. With Athlon things are completely different now. The FPU is 'fully pipelined': after one clock it can already start processing the next FPU instruction. With some restriction this is also true for FMUL and FDIV that are still 'not pipelined' in the Pentium III.

On top of that the three units also split the work: one is responsible for regular FPU operations, the second one for multiplication and the third for storing.

AMD also refined the latency times of the FPU - in total the FPU shows up to 50 percent better performance than the one of the Pentium II/III.

BXBoards heeft de specs gepost van de nieuwe Epox EP-BX6 Special Edition, een slot 1 BX plankje met 6 bus mastered PCI slots. De overklokker kan zijn creativiteit botvieren op de voltage tweaking en busspeed features:

EPoX New M/B "EP-BX6(Special Edition)"

- 440BX
- Slot 1
- Debug Card Onbord
- PCIx6(All master)
- Supports CPU Front Side Bus(FSB)Setting by 1Mhz Increments
- (PCI CLOCK 66 to 88/2 88to 124/3 124 to 155/4)
- Supports CPU Vcore & VIO Settibg by BIOS
- (Vcore 2.0/2.05/2.1/2.2/2.3/2.4/2.5)
- (VIO 3.4/3.45/3.5/3.55/3.6/3.65/3.7/3.75)

VST Technologies heeft een verse kudde FireWire harddrives en zip drives aankondigd. Voorlopig zullen die dingen vooral leuk zijn voor met FireWire gezegende Mac gebruikers:

VST Technologies, Inc. announced the shipment of the full-height, high-performance FireWire® Hard Drives and a 250MB full-height FireWire Zip Drive that are both FireWire cable bus powered(requiring no external power supply). Along with these FireWire shipments comes a $100 price reduction on the 14 and 22 Gigabytes (GB) Hard Drives.

Taking advantages of high speed performance of Firewire in FireWire-equipped computer, the affordable full-height Hard Drives are designed for high-end video editing, audio and multi-media applications. These drives are now available in 14 and 22 GB capacities and feature hot plug/unplug at blazing transfer speeds up to 15 MB/sec. With USB, users can simply cable the drive and the computer together and the volume mounts automatically, making the unit ready for high-speed file transfers.

The 250MB FireWire Zip Drive offers Apple Power Macintosh® G3 and G4 users hot-plug/unplug capability in high performance removable-media storage technology regardless of platform. As with the Hard Drives, the volume mounts automatically, ready for high-speed file transfers. In January, Apple began shipping FireWire (IEEE 1394) as a key built-in feature to every Power Macintosh G3 series professional desktop computer. VST's new FireWire Zip Drives are the industry's first 1394 compliant removable media drive to take full advantage of Apples new FireWire capable CPU's.

250MB FireWire Zip Drive is priced at $349.95 MSRP, 14GB FireWire Hard Drives at $599.95 MSRP and 22GB FireWire Hard Drives at $699.95 MSRP. They are all available now at stores. VST's products can also be viewed and purchased through their web site at www.vsttech.com and from major distributors worldwide, domestic resellers and catalog mail houses.

The High-Performance PC Guide heeft een review gebakken van de Gigabyte GA-6BXDU, da's dus een dual processor slot 1 moederplank met on-board Ultra-2 SCSI. Check de review hier.

The GA-6BXDU motherboard is a very impressive piece of equipment in as much as in terms of dimensions, as it is in terms of performance and functionality. One gets a sense from it of assurance and stability from the first instant of use. Everything seems to have been considered in a polished design that rises above the vulgar uses of a game platform... On the other hand, it's unfortunate that the Dual BIOS system developed by Gigabyte was not integrated into this board. That said, it is always possible that Gigabyte will release a revised version of the 6BXDU that includes this feature. It may not be indispensable, but it does provide a certain amount of added confidence in a motherboard's security and reliability. In summation, the GA-6BXDU seems to me to be a solid base for designing a server destined to support a range of processor intensive applications.

Overclockers' Workbench heeft Release Candidate 4 van DirectX 7 online gezet. Deze schijnt al volledig stabiel te zijn:

This version is suitable for all languages, according to sources. I installed in onto my Windows 98 and it's running fine. I have split the files into 7 files of 1.4mb and you may download them one by one. I use the program called splitter to split it. You can recombine them later without using any special utility.

Het is blijkbaar een groot succes want op dit moment (17:28) kan ik de site niet eens meer bereiken. Wil je ook een poging doen, volg dan deze link.

Bij Thresh's FiringSquad is een review geplaatst van de Swiftech MC1000 peltier cooler. Lees het hier.

We were only able to test Celeron PPGA processors with our evaluation unit, and we have no complaints about the Swiftech's performance with the celery. We can't recommend the MC1000 for Pentium II and Pentium III CPUs until we actually test the cooler with those processors. We're not sure how the MC1000 cools the cache on the P2 and P3 processors. The Swiftech offers a "P3 Milled" MC2000 cooler where the "cold plate is milled down, to raise the L2 area, and provide maximum cooling to the cache." The MC1000 doesn't have a "milled" version. The external cache on the P2 and P3 processors often determines the overclockability of a processor, and we can't recommend the MC1000 for P2 and P3 CPUs until we test it ourselves.

We don't have any cache cooling questions about the Slot-1 and PPGA Celerons. The on-die cache gets cooled with the rest of the core on the Celeron processors. The P3 Coppermine processors will have 256k on-die cache, and we have no doubt the MC1000 will perform well with the next generation P3 processors.

Frankly, we would use this cooler in our own Celeron systems. The installation and setup might bother some dainty people, but we have no problem with it.

Bij Tom's Hardware Guide hebben ze een aantal BX moederplanken getest. Het zijn de Abit BX6, Asus P3B-F, Biostar M6TBA, de Gigabyte BX2000 en de Microstar MS-6163. Winnaar uit test: de Asus P3-F. Lees de review hier.

Each of these manufacturers was able to create a functionally stable and well performing motherboard within the Intel specification, but only a few were able to push the limits of our finicky overclocked Pentium II CPU. Unfortunately, the purchase decision cannot be made on performance alone, given the small differences we see in the performance testing. The most important decision on any product is to make sure the product meets your functionality and feature requirements. Therefore, each of the features must be taken into consideration. If a user doesn't plan on doing any overclocking, any of these motherboards could fit the bill. Given my preferences, I like the ASUS P3B-F. I believe it provides the best all around flexibility giving the option of a JumperFree BIOS configuration for advanced users. It also provides the system integrator the ability to disable this feature prohibiting an un-experienced user the potential to misconfigure the CPU settings, possibly destroying the system. I am also fond of the frequency granularity provided by the P3B-F. Having this allows the overclocker to step up their frequency gradually until they reach a stable setting. Also, the ASUS P3B-F has a slight edge in the gaming benchmarks, which scores another point with me.

3D SoundSurge heeft een review gepost van de nieuwe Aureal Vortex SQ2500, een verbeterde versie van de Vortex 2. Hier heb je wat over de wavetracing feature:

Now we get to the real optimizations…wavetracing! Wavetracing is what the Vortex 2 and Aureal is all about (aside form excellent 3d audio). While I suspect that most of you are well aware of wavetracing I will offer the following brief overview.

Wavetracing is based on room geometry and the Aureal A3D 2.0 wavetracing engine will render the reflections of each sound source depending on how close to a wall or object the listener is and the sound sources are, and the materials and shape of the room where the listener and sound sources are will also affect the sound (i.e. a gun shot in a "bright" room like a tiled bathroom bounces off the tiles, around the corner, into the "soft" wood and carpeted room that the listener is in, rendering correct reflections, acoustic materials and occlusion on the fly as appropriate.) Not only does it render each source (and all the geometry and materials that come between it and the listener) but it also will take into account dynamic objects like opening doors, elevators, moving geometry (i.e. a listener or sound source inside a car), etc.

Its this process that takes up 60 of the Vortex 2’s available 76 3d steams in A3D 2.0 titles. Much of the work in terms of geometry processing has been done on the host CPU where as the Vortex 2 processor does the job of rendering the sound. Now I really don’t know what Aureal has done on the revised Vortex 2 silicon but as I noted above, what ever it is causes them to handle reflections differently. Once we had worked through some driver issues I got to some pretty startling results.

Nu de nieuwe Coppermine processors om de hoek staan zal de Slot 1 nu toch echt gaan verdwijnen, aldus dit bericht van The Register. De nieuwe lijn van Pentium 3's gaat de FC-PGA370 gebruiken, een "Flip Chip" Socket 370.

Sources close to Intel's plans have revealed that when it introduces Coppermine technology next month, the chips will use a different naming convention as well as extra silicon bells and whistles.

Documents seen by The Register show that Intel plans to release a whole rash of .18 micron processors, not only at higher clock speeds, but also with 256K of on die, full speed level two cache.

The processors will have the naming conventions E, B, and EB, to distinguish them from current Pentium III Slot 1 processors. However, it will be some time before Slot 1 parts disappear entirely, and Intel will run the two lines in tandem, cutting prices as it ramps up its production.

The "E" designation represents the Coppermine family, while the "designation" refers to parts supporting the 133MHz FSB (front side bus). Intel will produce 550E and 500E MHz parts which only support a 100MHz FSB. It will reserve the EB designation, that is Coppermine supporting the 133MHz FSB, for its higher priced parts.

Intel is positioning such chips as an upgrade opportunity for its dealers, in other words, allowing them to make more money.

The Socket 370 used in the new Pentium III families is called the FC-PGA370. The FC stands for "flip chip", a packaging method which Intel has talked about before but which is by no means new. IBM Microelectronics has used the technique in the past. It allows for better contact with motherboards.

This implies, however, that Intel's 810e chipset is likely to be released concurrently with these new parts. ®

Bij SystemLogic hebben ze een interview gepost met Intel. Hier heb je vast twee vragen:

SL: Tom (Tom's Hardware) recently showed that RDRAM performs slower and is costlier to implement than PC133, why is Intel so much against PC133?

Intel: Intel announced at the Intel Developer Forum on Sept. 1 that it will support PC133 SDRAM with a chipset in the first half of 2000. Intel is supporting SDRAM due to customer requests and DRAM vendors' ability to easily upgrade their PC100 die to PC133. However, RDRAM remains Intel's long-term memory goal, and Intel is on schedule to enable RDRAM via the Intel 820 chipset in September. We believe RDRAM performance advantages will become increasingly obvious as microprocessor frequencies continue to climb. RDRAM performance will scale with those frequency increases.

SL: Camino is for a 133 MHz motherboard, why increase to 133 FSB, and not 200 like AMD's Athlon? Since 400 MHz RDRAM (PC800) needs a memory bandwidth of a 200 MHz FSB, why would somebody buy this over PC600 (133 MHz bandwidth)?

Intel: We don't believe AMD's 200 MHz FSB is necessarily the best way to improve overall system performance. Intel has worked with the industry to design a balanced platform in the 820 chipset. Bottlenecks have been improved in all areas of the system. A faster FSB is of no use if memory bottlenecks still exist elsewhere in the system. Intel's studies have shown increasing sustained memory bandwidth going from PC600 to PC800 RDRAM within a 820 based platform.

Unreal Universe heeft de 3dfx demo van Unreal Tournament al te pakken gekregen en hebben er een kleine review van geplaatst. Hier heb je een gedeelte, en 3 van de 12 sreenies:

The 3dfx Unreal Tournament demo comes in at slighty over 50 megs, and unzips to almost 100 megs. Besides deathmatch, the Unreal Tournament demo sports both capture the flag and domination! You can learn more about the various modes of play on our Unreal Tournament Game Types page.

The demo has five playable levels, with a number of powerful weapons and even some mods. One such mod, is the insta-gib mutator. Which turns the game into an orgy of blood and death! Other mods include low gravity, where you can literally fly around with the slick air control. Add rocket launcher arena, where all the weapons of the map are rockets, and shock rifle area- that features all shock rifles and you have a virtual ballet of battle! You can combine mods, like the insta-gib with low gravity, or rocket launcher arena, but not shock rifle and rocket arena at the same time.

Brutal Realistic Bots, have also made their way into the demo, you can include them in your online battles, or play offline in single player practice mode. Words, however cannot do this game justice. Here's some screenshots, feast your eyes!

Tweak3D heeft een review van de 32Meg vanilla G400 neer gemikt. Over dit kaartje hebben we inmiddels wel zo ongeveer alles gehoord, dus laat ik maar meteen verder skippen richting de conclusie:

After looking into all the wonderful features, and comparing this board to its competitors... It

becomes clear that this is the #1 choice of 3D accelerators out today. It is the most well balanced of

all opposition in terms of speed, quality, and features. Although out-performed from a frames per

second standpoint, anyone willing to give up realistic visual quality for an extra 10-15fps should go

with a TNT2 or Voodoo3. However, to be as straight forward as possible, with the recent official

announcement of nVidia's GeForce 256 and S3's Savage 2000, it may become questionable whether

to buy this product now. If you are willing to wait 1-2 months with your current graphics accelerator,

then I would make the effort. Then again, if having the best in 1-2 months is not your concern, and

you are anxious to get the best now- then the G400 or G400 Max is your #1 bet. Being a person that

has the luxury of choice between many different top-notch graphics accelerators, I picked the G400

to keep in my system, and it will stay there for quite some time. To all of you limited to one choice,

might as well make it your best. And how else than with a Matrox Millennium G400?

Sysop Solutions heeft een review van de Vantec P3-D5030 gepost. Hier een stukje over de performance van deze Pentium III cooler:

We know from previous tests, just how the stock Intel heat sink performs (or how well it under-performs). We decided to strap one of our nifty thermal probes as close to the CPU slug as possible and see just how much cooler our processor would run once the P3-D5030 was working for us.

Once everything was in place we fired up 3D Mark 99 and ran it for approximately one hour. We also powered on our air conditioning unit and kept our room temperature at a very stable 23 C for the duration of the tests. The Vantec cooler managed to keep the CPU temperature, under load to 44 C. very impressive if compared to the stock Intel sink which barely held at 51 C after one hour of 3D Mark 99.

We also decided to see just how fast we could run our 450 PIII before things got too hot to handle. Cruising along at 558MHz, we ran QuakeII for a further hour and still everything remained stable. FYI, we were not even able to run our PIII at 558MHz with the Intel heat sink. This can only mean one thing, not only is the P3-D5030 a great cooling solution, it is good enough that it allows you to moderately overclock your CPU, and I am sure that will leave you with a smile on your face (and a few extra bucks in your pocket book).

Jaja, dat is volgens Ken Kutaragi (hoog ventje @ Sony) de ware reden achter de gedelayde release van Playstation 2 in Japan (introductie zoals bekend verschoven naar maart 2000):

According to a report in today's Times, Sony executive Ken Kutaragi told the press at the PlayStation 2's launch that since Japanese schoolkids have to face a stack of exams in January and February, the company would hate to duff up their results by getting them playing games instead of revising.

As a parent of two, a straight-faced Kutaragi said he "would hate to tempt millions of children to neglect their revision".

And he's dead serious of course. Just think, after all those swotty sproggs bring home top-notch grades, proud parents will be able to immediately rush out and spend their yen on brand new PlayStation 2 prizes...

GA-Source heeft een preview van het Guillemot Ferrari Force Feedback stuurwiel, dat dankzij een exclusieve deal met Maranello deze naam mag dragen. Het stuurtje ziet er behoorlijk cool uit en als we GA-Source mogen geloven dan stuurt-ie ook nog eens erg lekker:

Equipped with 4-levers, the Ferrari FFB Racing Wheel offers gamers a full range of driving possibilities. From a progressive acceleration and braking levers under the steering wheel which offers an alternative to full hand-control driving to a gearshift lever that is ideal for use with Indy or Formula 1 races. Finally, it comes equipped with a 4-in-1 buttons that was created in order to reduce the number of buttons on the front face of the wheel while giving access to 20 programmable functions (including the foot pedals).

The design of the Ferrari FFB Racing Wheel can be used in 2 different positions according to the driver's preference. First as a laptop steering wheel with a clamp design to fit onto the user's lap or as a desktop wheel with a long central clamp that secures onto a surface and ensures great stability. Furthermore, the Ferrari Racing Wheel is also equipped with spring-reinforced, sturdy, double-axis pedals, developed to withstand strong acceleration and emergency braking. This double-axis pressure system produces maximum effects with minimum effort.

C&C: Renegade is officieel aangekondigd door Westwood Studios. Hier heb je een hap uit de press release:

Renegade puts you on the C&C battlefield as the Commando, the one man army made famous in the original Command & Conquer strategy game. Instead of commanding troops from afar, you'll be on the battlefield, in the middle of the war.

As the Global Defense Initiative's last, best hope for victory, you'll wage war against the diabolical Brotherhood of Nod using not only a vast array of weapons but more than a dozen vehicles from the Command & Conquer universe. You'll be able to zip around on a rocket bike, fry enemies with a flame tank or throw down death from above in an Orca Fighter.

Renegade promises an intense multiplayer experience with a variety of team play options as well as deathmatch variations. Multiplay will be supported through Westwood Online, an online gaming service with more than a million members.

Check Firingsquad voor de hi-res (1280x1024px) screenshots.

3D Spotlight heeft een review gepost van de 3DfxCool Alpha 7HO, die samen met de GlobalWin FDP32 toch wel als koelste socket370 cooler beschouwd worden. 3D Spotlight behaalde dan ook redelijke resultaten met de Alpha heatsink:

When it comes to overclocking, a lot of people uses the Alpha and for good reasons too. My results were impressive to me. The place where I ordered my guaranteed overclocked Celeron 366 CPU to 550MHz recommended 2.2 volts for stable operation at the 550MHz overclocked speed.

The place obviously didn’t do any “burning in” of the CPU, because after 6 hours of looping unreal I was able to run the CPU 100% stable at 2.1 volts. This was with the smaller generic cooler that was supplied with the CPU. After putting the Alpha on this very same CPU, I was able to enable turbo mode (103MHz FSB) to run the CPU at 567MHz and I lowered the voltage to the default 2.0 volts. I then ran the Unreal flyby loop at this speed for 8 hours straight without one single lockup. I was impressed to say the least. I then tried for 616MHz.

While the CPU was unstable, I was able to boot into Windows 98 at 2.3 volts. The previous cooler would stop at the splash screen. I’m not one to keep trying for these super high overclocking speeds, so I am comfortable with running the CPU at 567. Besides, why worry about if the CPU is going to lock up and if you can get the highest number of frags in Quake 2 when you can just be worrying the later?

Ars Technica heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid waarin ze uitleggen hoe je de koeling van je BX chipset kunt verbeteren. Dit schijnt vooral nuttig te kunnen zijn in SMP configuraties op hoge busspeeds:

I can happily say this particular system has been considerably more stable since I slapped some custom cooling on the BX chipset. In the 7 days since I performed this procedure, I have been able to run this machine at 550MHz (5.5 x 100) with no problems except for one day that I left the air conditioner off and it was over 80°F in my computer room. Even then it ran at 522MHz without any problems at all, even while playing Q3A extensively. Of all of the BP6 machines in the Ars Labs, this one was the most finicky, but now it was on par with the others, as far as I was concerned.

GA-Source bericht dat opperhoofd Bill weer eens wat geld weg gaat geven:

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will announce plans today to donate at least $1 billion to fund full college scholarships for minority students, by far his biggest charitable contribution to date.

The Gates Millennium Scholarships will cover room, board and tuition for at least 1,000 high school students a year over the next 20 years in the fields of education, math, engineering and science, according to a source close to the $17-billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Students covered by the scholarships will be fully funded for their entire college education including any graduate work, according to the source, who asked not to be identified.

[...] Gates has indicated he wants to use his wealth to improve education and health, particularly in the developing world.

Prior to the scholarship program, Gates' biggest single contribution was $200 million to libraries in the United States and Canada, largely to bring Internet access to poor communities.

He also has donated $100 million toward bringing vaccines to children in developing countries, $50 million to develop a vaccine for malaria and $50 million to help reduce maternal deaths in developing countries.

Gates has been criticized for not giving more of his wealth away sooner, although he has said he ultimately plans to give away most of his fortune, leaving a relatively small portion for his two young children.

Ondanks deze enorme gulheid hoeven we niet bang te zijn dat Bill uit armoede een bijstandspappa zal worden: de $100 miljard die hij de mensheid in de afgelopen twee decennia heeft afgetroggeld moet voldoende zijn om Bill en zijn familie de komende drie millenia van een redelijk dik belegde boterham te voorzien...

WickedPC heeft een review van de 3dfx V3-3500TV op het net gezet. Hier heb je een hap uit de review, over de Video-in/out en FM features van de kaart:

We found the radio a bit boring to listen to and CD Audio to be more fun, however watching cable TV on the PC, or even outputting a movie to the television can all be done with the 3500TV. It looks better, cleaner, crisper, and is obviously much faster than the ATI All-In-Wonder Pro 128.

This brings us to the first misconception among gamers. We all want the best hardware available at any given time for our PC. Especially when gaming. The problem is, the 3500TV is faster than the 3000 by about 5-10% for frame rate. The other problem, is that the 3500TV is more expensive by about $75. The result? Angry gamers that complain about price. Ignore angry gamers, since they don't understand what the 3500TV should be used for. The 3500TV is obviously more expensive due to its extended line of multimedia, tv, and fm capabilities. The fact that it's a bit faster for gaming shouldn't matter to those who do purchase the 3500TV, since gaming is not what you should buy the 3500TV for. If you're a gamer that digs multimedia capabilities then the 3500TV is the best video card you'll find for your money, hands down. If you're just a gamer, don't buy the 3500TV - you're paying for a lot of features you won't even use.

Michael van ...euh...AnandTech heeft een interview afgenomen met een of andere hoge harrie bij 3dfx. Deze meneer weet ons zelfs te vertellen waarom FXT1 beter is dan S3TC...

What makes 3dfx's FXT1 better than S3TC/DXTC?

There are numerous ways FXT1 is superior to S3TC. From a technology perspective, FXT1 utilizes four separate compression algorithms that result in substantially better overall image quality than S3TC. Also, S3TC does not support a 4 bpt compression format for 32-bit textures which use the Alpha channel for translucency, a capability supported in the FXT1 compression format. From a development perspective, S3TC is not an Open Source technology and is thus restricted by S3 licensing terms and conditions, thereby limiting its use as a cross-platform compression standard. With a cross platform texture compression technology like FXT1, a develop can use the same high quality artwork and high resolution textures for direct X with other platforms like Mac and Line Linux the texture compression technology transfers, too.

Geld ja, het draait allemaal om geld . GA-Source geeft ons het antwoord:

Hey Mark, why is the first demo of Unreal Tournament going to be on an API as ancient/unsupported as Glide-only?

Glide is probably the LEAST ancient of the major APIs. OpenGL has been around a lot longer. I think Direct3D has been around longer than Glide but only recently (with DirectX6) became a really good API to work with. DirectX7 looks extremely promising (see Tim Sweeney's discussion about DirectX7 at unreal.epicgames.com).

BUT, to answer your question, the reason why the UT demo is being released first (by at least 3 days) on Glide is because several months ago GT and 3DFX signed a very lucrative bundling deal to include Unreal Tournament with some versions of their Voodoo3 card. So 3DFX earned the right to have a little bit of publicity for the demo release. 3 or 4 days (it might be a little longer thanks to Hurricane Floyd!) isn't a big wait for a free downloadable demo, is it?

Mark Rein,
Epic Games Inc.

Riva3D heeft een review gepost van de Guillemot Maxi Gamer Gougar, een op de Riva TNT2 Model 64 gebaseerd videokaartje. In de review vind je een paar handige Quake2 en Q3Test benchmarks die duidelijk laten zien wat de gevolgen van de gecastreerde 64-bit geheugen bus zijn:

In Quake 3, the monster of system testers, the Cougar manages to turn in some very playable rates for such a low-cost card. On Celeron based systems, you can expect at least 40 frames per second in 640x480 @ 16 bit color. But take in mind, all tests in this review are done with straight out of the box settings. No tweaks, no tricks, which means that you can tweak this baby up to get much higher numbers if you care to do so. The Quake 3 16 bit scores are done with a custom setting which uses the High Quality default settings, with the bit depth changed to 16 bits. This means that using the Fastest setting in Quake 3 will get you even better frame rates. Running a quick test using the Fastest settings at 640x480 yielded 77.4 fps!

Oftewel een prima kaartje om te gamen op 800x600 of lager. Check Riva3D voor de review.

Beyond3D heeft een interview gepost met Nick Caddick van S3, waarin uiteraard gesproken werd over over de Savage2000. Hier heb je alvast een vraag:

Q: But now S3 has made the announcement of the Savage2000 and 2000+.....Is S3 going for new markets?

A: Hmmm, the specs of the Savage2000 are really something eh? Well we still want to sell a good price/performance product. But we are aiming at the high-end market too this time. This while keeping the focus on a $200 price tag.