Tech Arena heeft een interview met Steve Mosher van Creative Labs op het net gegooid. In het interview wordt gesproken over Creative's GeForce 256 kaartje (de Annihilator, koele naam ):

Tech Arena : Why is TL Acceleration more prominent in nVidia’s technology advantage over a super high fillrate?

Steve : It’s not. I like to think of the GeForce256 as two chips. First it has a 4 pipe rendering system. That’s twice the pixel processor power of the Ultra. What does that mean to end-users? It means if your playing “yesterday's games", then you will see a large increase (under NDA) in the performance of those games. So the Annihilator is a great legacy accelerator. It accelerates your legacy games. In addition it has 2 geometry pipes that will accelerate games shipping today, and games shipping tomorrow. The developer reaction to adding support for T&L has been great. I've even heard of some very clever guys doing T&L patches to some legacy games. (Ed Note : Hmmmm… *grin*)

The reason for adding T&L is obvious: you have to lead or follow. We led with a 12MB game card when everybody said no games need 12MB. We led with a 32MB and 32bit rendering, when the followers said games are 16 bit and don’t need lots of texture space. And I think the people who bought that technology were glad when developers started pumping out more graphically demanding games. The same holds true with T&L. Its about creating a platform that developers find compelling. It’s not about accelerating the old games better, its about doing that PLUS giving a end user a lot a head room for games that require higher poly counts.

Michael van AnandTech heeft een behoorlijk dik artikel over de nieuwe Matrox TurboGL OpenGL driver op het net geschopt. In goede AnandTech traditie heeft-ie een flink heuvel benchmarks gedraaid, waarbij de performance van de TurboGL driver met een PIII-450 en PIII-600 onder Expendable (D3D) en Quake3 werd gest. Hier heb je z'n conclusie wat betreft de Q3 framerate toename:

It is clear from the data above that Matrox has been hard at work on the TurboGL. Performance is significantly higher across the board. At 640x480, performance is up over 50%. We always knew the G400 had plenty of raw power, which allowed it to be pretty fast at high resolutions, but a poor ICD held it back at lower resolutions where fill rate is not limiting. The full power of the G400 is finally unleashed with the TurboGL.

The 5.13 drivers are the original drivers that came with the card upon its release to the public. The 5.25 beta ICD is the latest ICD available from Matrox's site at the time of this writing.. It is interesting to note that by optimizing the full ICD, Matrox has only been able to gain about 10% at low resolution and even less at high resolution. The TurboGL, which is optimized specifically for games, gives a huge performance increase.

Interessante info voor (wannabe) G400 bezitters. Check 't hier.

Cyrix lijkt na de overname door VIA weer tot leven te komen. The Register weet te vertellen dat we nog dit jaar een op de Cayenne core gebaseerde socket370 chip kunnen verwachten, met kloksnelheden van minimaal 500MHz:

Via is putting the Cyrix roadmap back on track with the launch of a 500MHz-plus Socket 370-compliant chip, codenamed Joshua, this year. Cyrix had this and other chips on the stocks, but had to all intents and purposes suspended operations pending its acquisition by Via.

Joshua is based on the Cayenne core, and is a modification of Cyrix's MII with 3Dnow! instructions added. It has 64k of primary cache and 256k secondary cache.

Via has been running a roadshow demonstrating a Joshua implementation running at 350MHz, but says that production silicon will operate at speeds in excess of 500MHz. Even so, the company will probably have to work hard to carve a slice of the low cost market for itself - the very fact that NatSemi sold Cyrix to Via indicates that this is a trickier patch than Cyrix, Centaur and Rise anticipated.

And Via also has a few other items from the Cyrix roadmap in the locker. Earlier this year it was aiming to ship Mojave, with the Jalapeno core, at 600MHz plus in summer of next year - this obviously now seems some revision.

Transmeta, dat super geheimzinnige bedrijf waar onder andere onze vriend Linus werkzaam is, zal op de komende Comdex in november misschien een tipje van de sluier oplichten. Yahoo! News heeft nieuws:

Silicon-valley's most secretive start-up, Transmeta, may shed light on its business at the Comdex trade fair in Las Vegas in November, one of its most famous employees, Linus Torvalds, said Thursday.

Torvalds, the developer of the Linux operating system, has shot to fame this year as his system has been endorsed by a number of top computer industry companies and emerged as a serious rival to Microsoft.

Torvalds and other people known to be involved with Transmeta, including Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen and Chief Executive David Ditzel, have been careful not to reveal what the company is up to.

``I think I can now tell you when I will be able to tell you,'' Linus said on the sidelines of a seminar.

``The company has considered saying something at Comdex, or at least saying when we will announce something.''

The combination of money from Microsoft's co-founder and know-how from Torvalds, who still controls the core of the Linux system, the secrecy and the Linux hype this year has nurtured the ground for speculation. Most commonly, the company is believed to work on either a revolutionary high-speed computer chip or on software improving the way chips work, or both.

Ook The Register heeft een artikeltje over deze kwestie.

Sony heeft een nieuwe digitale Walkman aangekondigd. Het apparaatje heeft de naam 'Memory Stick Walkman' meegekregen en ondersteund Sony's eigen MagicGate copy protection technologie:

The Walkman will use MagicGate and Sony's Memory Stick flash memory cards to secure and store music, and will support its ATRAC3 compression technology, a newer version of Sony's MiniDisc format.

Music in MP3 or CD audio can be stored on a hard disk using the OMG application which encrypts the data. Content can then be transferred to the Memory Stick via the USB port.

A spokeswoman for Sony said the system will enable users to convert content in the MP3 format -- the de facto audio standard on the Net -- to its proprietary ATRAC3 compression technology. She declined to give details about possible content partners adopting the technology.

Missing from the Sony announcement was support for competing audio formats such as Liquid Audio and Microsoft's Windows Media Audio, which Sony's music division had previously endorsed.

Meer info over deze Memory Stok vind je bij Wired News.

Salon heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedraaid waarin ze de performance van kabelmodems vergelijken met DSL, dat in de VS inmiddels redelijk ingeburgerd is. Hier zal het met onze *kuch* vrienden van *braak* KPN wel weer een eeuwigheid gaan duren voordat we daadwerkelijk gebruik kunnen maken van ADSL. Maar goed, de schrijver blijkt na ervaring met zowel kabel als DSL modems de voorkeur te geven aan kabel, dus de uitverkoren personen die nu al over een kabelmodem kunnen beschikken hoeven zich nergens druk om te maken (tenzij je bij een ramp provider zoals Kaazéma ofzo zit ):

The argument that cable modem connections are inferior to DSL connections because the bandwidth on a cable link is "shared" is disingenuous as best. The entire Internet is based upon shared bandwidth. The bandwidth on an individual subscriber's DSL connection may not be shared; the DSL connection ultimately terminates at an Internet router, at which point the multiple streams are merged together into one or more shared upstream connections. Likewise, cross-country Internet links are shared between thousands of ISPs and millions of users. Even DSL circuits can be shared: Bell Atlantic's DSL deployment shares a single pair of copper wires that both voice and data can use simultaneously.

The issue isn't whether or not a link is shared. The issue is whether or not there is enough bandwidth on the shared link to satisfy all of the users at a particular time.

In bandwidth, cable is king: With the exception of fiber optics, there is no faster way to send a data stream from one location to another. In my tests, I've seen instantaneous speeds of 7 megabits per second over my cable modem -- that's the underlying speed of the data channel between my house and the next router on the network. Of course, I don't actually see 7 mbps in my daily use. When I transfer more than a few packets of data, the cable modem is programmed to slow down the rate of transfer to roughly 600 kbps. This prevents me from taking more than my fair share of the available bandwidth.

HardOCP heeft twee wazige shots van een Coppermine in boswachters kleedij online gegooid:

KBench brengt (naar mijn weten) als eerste benchmarks van een GeForce 256 kaart naar buiten. De resultaten zijn zijn voorspelbaar: de GeForce 256 is vanwege z'n hogere fillrate vooral sneller op hoge resoluties:

Dit is dan ook meteen de benchmark die het meest positief uit pakt voor de GeForce. Andere benchmarks (Winbench99, 3DMark99, Quake2, Kingpin en Expendable) zijn minder (om niet te zeggen tegenvallend). Vooral 32-bit performance is nauwelijks beter dan de TNT2. Lijkt erop dat de memory interface van de GeForce een grote beperking vormt.

Ik kwam bij Ace's Hardware een posting tegen met inside info over de ware reden achter het besluit van Gateway om geen systemen met AMD processors meer te leveren:

". . . .There was only one reason that Gateway was shipping AMD product and that was to some insecurity at Intel. It worked but was very painful.

It was a horrible experience from a manufacturing standpoint. The qualification process was twice as long as a comparable Intel product and the quality of the processors coming in was very poor. The motherboards still had jumpers and the known problems list at product release was around 70 items long although not all were critical. That's huge. Thermal problems prevented production startup and cost Gateway nearly 200 million in lost revenue. The order backlog grew to 60k units and GW was unable to ship for 5 weeks. Roughly 50% of the first orders were cancelled prior to shipment.

This hit GW very hard in the spring and caused them to yank the AMD configs back from sales and then re-introduce very late in the product cycle. . ."

Oftewel: K6-x systemen zijn brak. Met de Athlon verdient AMD een tweede kans? (hmm, Gateway komt zichzelf wel tegen wanneer de Athlon op 1GHz loopt en de PIII op 800 ).

Ik kwam via AMD Zone bij dit interessant artikel van Microprocessor Report. Nu VIA na de overname van Cyrix en WinChip ook zelf CPU's maakt wordt het een concurrent van AMD in het low-end segment. De schrijver van het artikel speculeert dat VIA als gevolg hiervan mogelijk gaat stoppen met het bakken van Athlon chipsets:

In the low end of the market, Intel has effectively used Celeron price cuts as a club to beat its competitors senseless. I believe the only way for a competitor to survive in this segment is to match both Celeron's clock speed and its socket with a lower-cost product. Matching the socket is necessary, because there isn't enough profit in this segment to support a non-Intel infrastructure. Competitors must have a lower manufacturing cost to generate profits from their lower prices and lower volumes.

If Via produces a 0.18-micron Socket 370 version of WinChip 4, it could follow this path to success. Centaur's compact core will cost less to build than Celeron. With a Socket 370 interface, Via can ride Intel's coattails into standard PC motherboards.

As Via pursues this strategy, its enemy is not just Intel but AMD. That vendor's K6 parts are a big seller in the Celeron space, and AMD plans to push its new Athlon processor into the low end next year. Although Via has been working on a Slot A chip set for Athlon, I doubt that chip set will see the light of day, given the company's new strategy. Why build chip sets that support only your enemy? With Via and Intel controlling more than 90% of the chip-set market, that leaves only a few also-rans (and AMD itself) likely to support Slot A.

eMachines heeft het design van z'n eOne PC verandert nadat Steve en zijn vriendjes pissig werden over plagiaat van de iMac vormgeving. The Register brengt de soep:

Japanese PC vendor Sotec said yesterday that it will continue to offer eMachines' eOne consumer-oriented computer -- but from next month the machine it offers will be a remodelled version that looks rather less like Apple's iMac than the current one does.

The company's announcement, made by director of planning Masayasu Ozeki, is a tacit admission of the validity of Apple's claim that the eOne's designers ripped off the look and feel of the iMac -- a claim that's the subject of a writ against Sotec.

Indeed, the move came a day after the Tokyo District Court imposed a preliminary ban on sales of the eOne in Japan while it considers the merits of Apple's case.

Scott Miller van 3DRealms heeft op het 3D Realms plakbord van het Developer's Forum een posting geprikt over de status van Duke Nukem Forever:

could you give a short rundown of the current status of the game?

Progress is being made! the game, the engine, the modifications you guys have made, the art, the content (offensive or otherwise ), the story

Really, I can't say too much about the game, but I will say that PC Gamer, after months of kind but insistent asking, finally talked us into giving them a few details about the game and exclusive screen shoots for the Nov. or Dec. issue. You'll see Duke on the cover of that issue.

i am sure that everyone here will want to get a developer's eye view of this widely anticipated game, and with some of the current advances in network play (q3test and UTdemo), we are all wondering how this might affect you all...

DNF will have all the network functionality of UT. But remember DNF will be a game with a great story throughout the game, while UT (awesome game, btw) and QA3 are not story-driven games with a true beginning and ending.

Scott Miller

Hopelijk is die PC Gamer hier in Nederland ook verkrijgbaar (wij hebben toch de UK versie?).

Voodoo Extreme heeft een extra reaktie toegevoegd aan hun Fillrate vs T&L artikel. Deze postings is afkomstig van Jack Mathews, ex-3dfx (dat maakt het interessant) en nu werkend voor Ritual:

The question is very subjective, and I'm afraid I'll have to answer both and, well, neither. That's very vague, let me explain. For the "both" argument, it depends on what you really care about. If you care about looking a pretty as you can, you'll want the AA, which requires very high fill rate to maintain. If you want Quake 3 to run very, very quickly you'll want a T&L card. That's basically it. Now, as for neither, if these cards are going to be even close to as expensive as I hear, they will not have a mainstream market penetration. As such, very few games will not be written with these cards in mind in the very near future. Everyone needs to remember to support Voodoo2 and even TNT1.

You can have games that scale their performance up to these levels, but I think you'll find with the grand majority of games that the developers simply won't have time to put in extra goodies for certain cards barring money from the hardware company, very very high market penetration, or extra time. In the mean time, the long term will start to happen where T&L cards start to concentrate more on fill rate because the fill rate guys are starting to concentrate on T&L. And developers will have a fairly common set of hardware to write for again. This probably won't be for a year though.

So to answer your question, in the next two months, the people with money to burn will pick one or the other depending on their style of play, but neither will really be more or less important. In the long run, the two (fill rate vs. T&L) will likely converge anyway just as a result of competition. Which would I prefer to have as a developer right now to work with? T&L of course

Tim Sweeney heeft weer een update gepost op de Unreal Tech page. De Unreal Tournament Direct3D/OpenGL demo bevindt zich op dit moment in terminaal test stadium. Wie had gehoopt op een snelle release lijkt bedrogen uit te komen, want het lijkt erop dat we nog enkele dagen moeten wachten :

Microsoft has released DirectX7. You can read about it and download it from Microsoft's DirectX Page and download it on their Download Page.

Now that DirectX7 is available, we're doing final testing and tweaking on the upcoming Unreal Tournament demo with Direct3D and OpenGL support, coming in the next few days.

One thing we've found on DirectX7 is that NVidia TNT2 performance is not fill-rate limited until you get to very high resolutions. During testing, performance at 640x480 seemed a bit slow, but as we increased the resolution, the frame rate was hardly impacted at all. So 1024x768 seems to yield the best overall experience on this card.

I've enabled support for 32-bit color textures under Direct3D, which significantly improve the graphical quality, with a 10-15% frame rate impact.

The Direct3D code now uses vertex buffers, which speeds up mesh and text drawing a bit.

What about OpenGL?

We're still maintaining OpenGL sypport, though it's not as much of a priority at the moment because texture management performance in GL on Windows is significantly behind Direct3D. It's still useful in NT4 and Linux of course. I've been advocating a GL extension which would enable the fine-grained control over texture management that has led to such an improvement in Unreal performance under Direct3D.

Speedy 3D verrijkt het net met een review van de Terratec XLerate Pro. Yup, alwéér een Aureal Vortex II / A3D2.0 kaartje...

The sound quality in the two A3D 2.0 games that I tested was simply excellent to say the least. Half-life, which in my opinion is one of the BEST games to show off A3D 2.0, had superior sound via A3D 2.0. The new reflections engine is simply awe inspiring. Sounds coming from behind a wall around the corner, really sound like they are coming from behind the wall around the corner. This is something that the Sound Blaster Live! has trouble doing, even with version 2.0. Positional audio has also improved from A3D version 1.0. With four speakers... or even 2 speakers, sounds coming from behind, in-front, or beside you sound real, almost too real. Drakan is a perfect example of this.

Graig van Sharky Extreme heeft z'n Weekly CPU Prices column geupdate met info over de release van de Athlon-700 en de introductie van Intel's PIII Coppermine processor:

The already confusing CPU picture will get muddier over the next six weeks as AMD's Athlon 700MHz CPU debuts on October 4th, while Intel is preparing a literal onslaught of new chips based around their Coppermine architecture.

The push begins in earnest next week when the Katmai based .25 micron Pentium III CPUs that are designed to run using the new 133MHz front side bus speed of the i820 core logic chipset arrive and go on sale with i820 mainboards. Offered in two versions, the P3-533B and the P3-600B, the two new CPUs are already being offered for sale from select vendors a week early.

After September ends it's all Coppermine for Intel, with a launch of at least five new CPUs occurring by the last week of October.

Het artikeltje gaat verder met info over de benaming van de nieuwe PIII processors (PIII E en PIII EB). Check 't hier.

3D Accelerated Gaming maakt ons blij met een review van de superkoele 3DfxCool Alpha koeler:

So, how does it perform? Well, it took my Celeron 433 (previously running at 488) to about 84 degress (F). It allowed me to even take the 433 up to 541mHZ, running at 84-87 degress (F, 84 degress when browsing or idling, 87 when gaming). With that kind of cooling, you can really press the envelope. I imagine that if you kept your case open, that would even come down some. This is a great fan. There's no getting around that. Then why aren't all fans built like this?

Well, the price is the largest obstacle. While this unit is excellent, it'll cost you $50. Kindof steep, but all in all I definitely think it's worth it.

Overclockin.com heeft een behoorlijk heftige heatsink roundup gepost waarin 9 PIII en socket7/370 koelblokjes op de testbank worden gepijnigd. Algemeen winnaar van de comparison is de welbekende Alpha P125:

The Alpha P125S heatsink (available from 3DfxCool for $50) is one of those things that just amazes you the first time you take a look at it. It is, in a word, huge!! The Alpha P125S kit (yes, you will have to assemble it, but you can do it. Very straightforward.) comes with the heatsink itself, a cover that is used to direct the airflow, two fans rated at 27.2 CFM each, various screws, spacers, a backplate, and a tube of thermal grease. I'm not going to cover the assembly process here (I will be doing a much more detailed review of this heatsink with full instructions for assembling the heatsink and results from testing some other Slot1 processors and with the fans blowing onto the heatsink and pulling air off of the heatsink) but it was fairly easy. It took me around 15 minutes to put the heatsink assembly together and install it on a processor and that includes time to take photos of each step of the process.

This heatsink has a huge amount of surface area. The very thin and tall fins used on the heatsink combined with the massive airflow really allow this heatsink to keep the processor cool. If you get one of these heatsinks, definitely make sure you have plenty of room. You will need it.

Meer nieuws vanuit het Taiwaneese Computerfront:

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. September 22, 1999-We at ABIT Computer Corporation would like to offer our condolences and express our sadness at the devastation that was brought upon Taiwan after Tuesday's at 1:47 a.m. earthquake. We would also like to take this opportunity to reassure our customers all over the world that ABIT did not sustain any damage to our headquarters in Xi Zhi nor our factory in Tao Yuan. There will be some delays in shipments from the island as there has been a severe power shortage island wide. Currently Tai Power is having to ration power giving local residential areas first priority, leaving our factory and headquarters presently without electricity. We should be up and running again within 1 to 2 days. Additionally there will be the Moon Festival holiday this Friday as well as another national holiday on the following Tuesday, creating a period of reduced activity for ABIT until next week. We want to assure our customers and personnel worldwide that normal production and operations will be resumed by next week. ABIT is deeply saddened by the tragedy that has befallen the victims of the quake and would like to again express our best wishes and condolences for those affected. We would also like to thank our friends and customers around the world for their support and want all of our associates to know that we will be trying to do our best to keep up our production, service and support.

Ook de sites van Asus en Chaintech zijn weer online, maar er wordt niet gerept over de rampspoed die het land getroffen heeft.

Omdat het land nog enige zware naschokken te verduren heeft gehad, en nieuwe niet uitgesloten zijn kunnen de problemen voor het transport en de productie (vanwege de stroom voorzieningen die puur op het humanitaire vlak gericht zijn) nog wel even blijven bestaan. Laten we echter ook de slachtoffers onder de bevolking niet vergeten. Zij verdienen ook onze aandacht en steun.

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van de Videologic (of Imaginator, zoals het tegenwoordig schijnt te heten) Neon 250 op het gekwakt. Eindelijk hebben we nu ook een direkte benchmark vergelijking met de TNT2, en de Neon 250 blijkt het (dankzij tile-based rendering) met z'n 125Mpix/sec fillrate absoluut niet slecht te doen:

Moving on to the 3D benchmarks, the Neon 250 actually seems to hold its own quite well with the Xentor TNT2. The Quake 3 Test 1.08 results show the Neon 250 is easily competitive not just with the Xentor TNT2, but also the Voodoo3 3500 and TNT2 Ultra as well. I suspect that a lot of work went into making their mini-GL work as well as possible with Q3Test and the results speak for themselves. The only issue with the Neon 250's Q3Test performance was when testing with the High Quality setting. Here, the Xentor almost doubled the Neon 250's score, and it's interesting that there was absolutely no difference between the Neon 250 Q3Test HQ scores on the PII-300 and PIII-450.

Verder in het artikel ook overklok info. Fiets richting Sharky Extreme voor het volledige artikel...

Ik kwam bij Unreal Universe een korte posting tegen over de Unreal Tournament performance van DirextX 7. Tim Sweeney geeft antwoord:

"DirectX 7.0 gives 'Unreal Tournament' a significant performance boost," said Tim Sweeney, "Unreal engine programmer for Epic Games. We're very happy with the ongoing API improvements Microsoft has made with the Direct3D API."

De release van de D3D/OpenGL demo wordt vandaag verwacht.

Red Hat heeft de financiële resultaten van het tweede fiscale kwartaal van dit jaar bekend gemaakt. De omzet ging met 95% omhoog, desondanks boekte men een verlies van 3,1 miljoen dollar. Hier wat spul uit de press release:

Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq: RHAT - news), a leading provider and developer of open source software, services and information, today reported that its revenues totaled $4.4 million in its second fiscal quarter, which ended on August 31, 1999. This is a 95% increase over revenues of $2.3 million for the same period a year earlier.

The Company had a net loss of $3.1 million, or $0.09 per share, in the second quarter of fiscal year 2000, compared with net income of $0.1 million, or $0.01 per share, in the second quarter of fiscal 1999. Had the Company's initial public offering been completed at June 1, 1999, the Company's weighted average common shares outstanding for the three months ended August 31, 1999 would have been 67,835,538, which would have resulted in a net loss per common share of $0.05 for such period.

3dfx gamers (promo sitetje van 3dfx) heeft een interview met Mark Rein op de site geparkeerd. Hier een vraagje over hoe geweldig Mark 3dfx vindt:

Tell us about your relationship w/3dfx?

We've been working with 3dfx and their hardware products since the original Voodoo Graphics card first came out. It's been a great relationship because we know our games will run great on 3dfx cards right out of the box. We consider the bundling deal for Voodoo3 between GT and 3dfx to be an immense coup both for us and the Voodoo3 3000 & 3500 customers who get UT, when it ships .

Part of the reason for the exclusive 3dfx-only demo (ahead of the version for other cards) is 3dfx's desire is to reward the loyal Voodoo users, especially the Voodoo3 users anxious to get their copies of UT, with an early look at the game. We're 100% behind that decision because Voodoo users have always supported us and 3dfx has sold a LOT of Voodoo3 cards. For a long time Voodoo cards (like the original Voodoo graphics and VoodooII) have been add-in cards designed strictly for brute-force, high-end gaming. So 3dfx has developed a following of loyal, power-hungry users - the kind who want to extract the very best possible playing experience out of games like Unreal. So if you're making high-end games that can benefit from high-end hardware, 3dfx is a brand that you want to associate yourself with. Every time they bring out a new video card they take the crown as the resolution and speed king and we have no reason to doubt their ability to continue on in that fashion.

Een tweede nVidia interview komt van C|Net's Gamecenter.com. Ditmaal is David Kirk, chief chientist bij nVidia, de ondervraagde. Zoals wel vaker bij Gamecenter gaan de hardware artikelen niet erg diep, onderstaande vraag is echter wel redelijk interessant:

GC: The core clock speed on the GeForce has been reported to be 120 MHz. That's lower than the core clock speed on the TNT2. Isn't it strange to have a next-generation chip running slower than its predecessor?

DK: First, we're not yet reporting the clock speed. Second, we're a chip vendor, not a board vendor; we have little control over what speed our customers decide to ship the product. We have a specification, but if they provide better cooling or better quality power, they can choose to improve on that specification. We really don't know at what clock speed people will ship.

If you look at the history of what we've been doing with our products, when we introduce a major new architecture with major new features, frequently we increase performance and rendering quality by doing more operations, not by doing them at a higher clock rate. So, for instance, the Riva TNT, when it came out, wasn't at a higher clock rate than the Riva 128 or 128ZX, but it did a lot more. Then the TNT2 pushed the clock rate up. What you're seeing now is that even at a lower clock rate, the GeForce will be able perform a lot better than a TNT2.

I would predict that maybe there might be a GeForce II, or something like that at some point. It's been pretty predictable over the last two-and-a-half years that we produce a new product every six months, so you can expect to see some interesting new products about six months from now.

Riva 3D heeft een interview gepost met Chris Donahue, die de developer relations van nVidia verzorgt. Uiteraard in dit interview weer wat gebabbel over de GeForce 256:

RIVA3D: Can you give us an example of before and after polygon rates ( i.e., a 3D object in a game before being tweaked for GeForce vs that same 3D model after tweaking)?

Chris: Sure - In Shadowman the main characters (Shadowman, Mike Leroi and Nettie) have gone from about 750 polys to over 2000 polys. The larger creatures in Experience went from about 300 polys to over 4000 polys - it makes a HUGE difference. Some of the creatures in Evolva are upwards of 6500 polys and they look incredible.