April 24 - 30, 1999
Archive

If you've read Planet Hardware's Voodoo3 2000 review, you'd know that the Voodoo3 has fantastic image quality, and it only gets better with the 3000 model. Well, the only difference between the 2K and 3K models in the 2D aspect is that the 3000 has a 350 MHz RAMDAC, compared to the 2000's 300 MHz. For most users, this will make no difference at all, since most users aren't running 1600x1200+ resolutions in 32-bit color at 90+ Hz refresh rates. But just like the 2K, the 2D image with Voodoo3 is rock solid and crystal clear, 3dfx has come a long way since the Voodoo Rush.

Drivers that came out of the box.
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Voodoo3(tm) Driver kit: 1.00.00
Voodoo3 DirectX(r) Driver Version: 2.18
Voodoo3 Win9x 2D/3D Display Drivers: 4.11.01.0441-1.00
Voodoo3 Glide(tm) 2.X Driver: 2.60.00.0412
Voodoo3 Glide 3.X Driver: 3.10.00.0406
Voodoo3 3dfx Tools: 1.2.0.16

New download of drivers released 4/29/99
-------------------------------
Voodoo3(tm) Driver kit: 1.00.00
Voodoo3 DirectX(r) Driver Version: 2.18
Voodoo3 Win9x 2D/3D Display Drivers: 4.11.01.0441-1.00
Voodoo3 Glide(tm) 2.X Driver: 2.60.00.0415
Voodoo3 Glide 3.X Driver: 3.10.00.0414

You can grab the drivers from the sidebar on the right.

• Yamaha XG Driver (Win9X - version 1031 - 4.23 MB)
  
  

As value is kind of a relative issue, it’s always hard to put a grade on this. The BA635’s aren’t the solution that brings you the most for your Benjamin, that’s for sure. But if what you’re looking for is a compact, and I mean something that you can squeeze in anywhere, speaker solution with great quality and clear, enjoyable sound, these might just be the ones for you.

 

• Fireball CR ATA-66 Disable Utility
• Fireball Plus KA ATA-66 Disable Utility
  
  

Picture a new cooling solution for your PC that has no drawbacks or flaws, and one that just exhausts all the air it possibly can at incredible rates at a pretty decent price. This cooling solution would blow air out of your PC rather than add more to it, and it would sit in any expansion slot where the majority of your heat is created. It would then take this heat and pump it directly out the back of your case, and into the open where your computer will never know the heat was there. Picture that, and you have 3DCOOL.COM's Super Slot Fan.

• Voodoo3 Retail Drivers - AGP/PCI (Win9X - version 1.0 - 1.3 MB)
• Voodoo3 Retail Drivers - AGP/PCI (WinNT - version 1.0 - 1.1 MB)
  
  

• Aureal Vortex2 Driver w/Wavetable (Win9X - version 4.06. 2030 - 8 MB)
• Aureal Vortex2 Driver without Wavetable (Win9X - version 4.06.2030 - 3.5 MB)
• Aureal A3D 1.0/2.0 Driver (Win9X - version 2.08 - 300 KB)
  
  

• Canopus Pure3D driver (Win9X - version 2.01.10 - 2.07 MB)
  
  

As you can tell, the performance of the Winfast 3D S320 II is great, but not quite as good as what you can get with the TNT2 Ultra card. On the other hand the price for the TNT2 Ultra is going to be about $50 more, so your saving cash may be worth it.

NEW YORK, April 29 /PRNewswire/ -- At the AMD 1999 annual shareholders' meeting here today, KryoTech and AMD (NYSE: AMD - news) demonstrated the KryoTech Super-G(TM) computer running at 1 GHz (1,000 MHz or one billion cycles per second). The Super-G is based on a thermally-accelerated AMD-K7(TM) processor and KryoTech's newest cooling system. KryoTech expects to deliver the Super-G to customers at speeds up to and including 1 GHz.

``The Super-G is derived from two years of technical cooperation between KryoTech and AMD,'' said Al Quick, Chairman and CEO of KryoTech. ``Working together, we have produced the Super-G, a true next-generation computer system. With performance measured in gigahertz instead of megahertz, and state-of-the-art cooling integrated as a feature rather than an afterthought, the Super-G establishes a new standard for the rest of the industry to follow.''

The D-Link DSH-5 looks like most any hub, with 5 ports plus an uplink port. Each of the 5 ports supports 10 or 100 Mbit speeds automatically, depending on what is plugged into it. An internal switch provides the ability to communicate between the two speed segments. This is very useful if, for example, your two PCs have Fast Ethernet (100Base-TX) connections and a friend comes over with a computer with only an Ethernet (10Base-T) card. He/she simply plugs into a spare port on your hub and you can all communicate with each other. The DSH-5 also has LEDs to indicate network status such as data transmissions and collisions. Unlike most hubs however, the ports are on the back of the hub, while the LEDs are on the front of the hub, allowing for more of a clean installation where the network cables can be moved out of sight.

The range of Bus speeds supported by the MS-6163 is incredible, they are 66, 75, 83, 100, 103, 112, 117, 124, 129, 133, 138, 143, 148, and an incredible 153MHz. The multiplier is adjustable up to 8x. Due to a combination of Intel's multiplier locking and my personal lack of a vapor-phase refrigeration CPU cooler (I'll just hop down to the local computer store and grab one), the higher bus speeds are unattainable for me. The only thing I regret is the absence of two bus speeds that I would have liked to see: 105MHz, and 110MHz. I have a SL2WY PII-333MHz processor, Which so far has maxed out at 515MHz. It refuses so far to do 560MHz, so I was hoping to have a shot at 525MHz using a 105MHz bus speed. I hope that MSI includes these bus speeds in its future performance flagships.  

Summing up we would like to say that Diamond Stealth III S540 graphics card performed beautifully and is comparable to all the new graphics cards. 3D quality is perfect. And as for a comparatively low speed in 2D, it is more than compensated by the purely gaming aims of this product together with its relatively low price, which makes it available for most 3D admirers.

• Powerstrip (Win9X - version 2.41.09 Beta - 654 KB)
  
  

Reliable sources said yesterday that a future Intel IA-64 chip called Northwood would hit 3000MHz at its release.

At the same time, it emerged that McKinley is likely to launch using P858 aluminum technology.

The main reason why the 20 year old x86 architecture is still competitive with the younger RISC CPUs is the fact that modern x86 CPUs use an advanced RISC Core, register renaming, and out of order execution to make sure that the x86 limits are breached.

We think Leadtek did a great job in putting it's first TNT2 powered video card together. It's packed with plenty of features and sports excellent image quality, doing this at a competitive price that most will find affordable. We found the software bundle to be unique and the drivers stable and full of options. If you are in the market to pick up a TNT2 powered card we think you should check out Leadtek. They also have a S320 II packing with either 16 or 32MB of SGRAM. The Digital LCD connector is optional, but everything else is included. We give Leadtek's S320 II 16MB AGP card a 94% and seal of a great buy. If you want the comfort in knowing you will have a feature set that is used down the road, this is the card for you.

• AX6B PLUS
• AX6BC
• AX6B
• MX6E PLUS
• AX3L
• MX3L
• AX59 Pro
  
  

As usual, I will be betting on the horse that no one likes (hey I win some, I lose some :) In saying so, I would like to formally say that the G400 will be my favorite card of the year. Yes that's a mouthful (especially coming from me) and you can expect me to eat my hat if I'm wrong. Although I'm sure the G400 will do much better than its crippled sibling, it is all riding on whether it will be able to pull through in frame rates and have a quality OpenGL ICD ready when it is released. Which brings us to our last topic, release time. As of now, times are a bit sketchy, but we can expect a summer release. So if your like me, you can setup camp near Matrox's offices (which are god knows where) and stake it out until we get one.

• APK 3dfx Tuning Engine (Win9X/NT - version 2000+ SR-5 - 2.1 MB)
  
  

-- Breakthrough Visual Quality advances the state-of-the-art 2-D, 3-D and video performance. The Pixel Precise Engine extends Intel's hyperpipelined architecture with new features, such as a 16 tap anisotropic filter, emboss bump mapping, texture compression and texture compositing.

-- Intel® Upgradeable AGP is an industry first, providing a simple and cost-effective migration path from AGP2X to AGP4X. This technology enables a Intel 752 graphics accelerator down on the motherboard with an AGP4X slot for future upgrades to the platform.

Is the TNT2 the choice for you?  If you happen to have a slower CPU, anything slower than a Pentium II 350 or a Celeron 366, the Voodoo3 will probably offer you greater performance for a similar price.  However, a couple months down the road when you want to play a game of Quake 3, don't complain about the quality of the textures.  The Voodoo3 and TNT2 both perform at a level where there is not a huge difference of performance between the two, although in some cases it is definitely noticeable.  The best overall solution out of the two seems to be the TNT2, whose combination of superior image quality and above average performance do make it a powerful successor to the original TNT.  Owners of first generation Pentium II's (233/266) will probably want to stick to 3dfx in this case, as the Voodoo3 is a much better choice for slower CPUs, in spite of the difference in image quality.

AnandTech took a look at Intel's only BX based motherboard a while back, the SE440BX, however in a world dominated by overclocking, the motherboard did not emerge with a favorable review. The only strength of the SE440BX seemed to be its design and construction, which lead it to be one of the most reliable motherboards AnandTech has ever tortured in the labs. How many gamers do you think bought the SE440BX for their systems? Most likely very few. Last year was the year of the overclocked Celeron, and the only motherboard available that provides absolutely no potential for overclocking happened to be the SE440BX.

Overall, though low-level benchmarks hint that the drive may push performance into new frontiers, the Quantum Fireball Plus KA turns out to be merely a adept performer that matches its competitors in many areas. Of particular note is the Windows NT performance: when it comes down to it, the Fireball matches the latest Maxtor drive number for number. A formidable feat indeed, something that until now had never been done. In the Win95 arena, though, the drive falls a bit short of the Deskstar/Expert. Noise is also something potential purchasers should consider: it's the loudest ATA drive out there. Even so, the drive delivers excellent performance and is yet another indication that we're entering a "golden age" of sorts where one can't go wrong with the purchase of almost any current ATA drive.

Seriously, it looks like NVidia delivered a solid piece of evolution with the TNT-2 and ELSA wrapped it into a tasty morsel with the Erazor III. Your mileage will vary specifically with the CPU you run, this baby was made to take a serious beating with triangles and I doubt that it will begin to sweat below 600 MHz.

We could again see it at CeBIT as well as WinHec, there's a massive amount of commotion going on about upcoming 3D chips and cards. Lots of different chips and boards were shown or at least announced, of course months before the actual shipping date. The times in the 3D-chip arena are getting tougher, 1998 was far from enjoyable for most of the 3D-chip makers and many card makers got even into real trouble. Canopus and Miro left the 3D-card scene completely, 3Dfx swallowed STB and Diamond produced heavy losses, barely covered by the success of RIO. If you compare the 3D-chip with the CPU market, you can see that the competition as well as the ability to make money is a whole lot harder in the 3D arena than in the CPU section. Intel is still taking huge amounts of money for the majority of its CPUs, whilst even the suppliers of the fastest 3D chips are selling their 3D accelerators at less than a tenth of the price of a microprocessor with comparable complexity and die-size. This is indeed surprising if we consider that the mainstream 3D-card market is only a mere 3 years old.

The very first time I tried the headphones out, I was playing Half-Life and I wanted to see how the headphone sound compared to the Midiland 4100's. After trying them out for a while, I was amazed at how well A3D 2.0 translates to a good set of headphones. I've always thought that the original A3D API sounded best on headphones, and A3D 2.0 is even more impressive. The effects using this method rivaled my dual-speaker set configuration for both sound depth and acoustics.

For today we're looking at the Intel 810, which according to Intel has been designed to specifically "compliment the Celeron processor". What this means is basically a host of changes to the older 440EX and 440ZX chipsets, including support for the upcoming 100MHz FSB Celerons (beginning with the 500MHz variant of the series in late summer 99) and complete compatibility for the new UltraDMA/66 IDE storage peripheral communication format.

• SoftFSB v1.6-B5

• WCPUID v2.4d

• WCPUL2 v1.6

• WCPUCLK v1.3

• WPCREDIT v1.2

• WCPRSET v1.2

What they do:
SoftFSB: Overclocks your front side bus speed on-the-fly from Windows.
WCPUID: Tells you all types of info about your CPU and other hardware.
WCPUL2: Adjusts the L2 cache latency to assist in overclocking efforts.
CPUCLK: Checks clock speeds in real time.
WPCREDIT: Edits PCI configuration register.
WPCRSET: Changes the PCI configuration register.

Only use this programs if you know what you're doing! I take no responsibility if something goes wrong.

As far as CD writing goes, I tested the drive with Adaptec's Easy CD Creator and Direct CD and was very impressed with the capabilities of this drive.  Not only did I not have a single error, but I found burn time to be exactly what they should be for a CD-R drive with the same stats.  On average it took under 17 minutes to burn 74 minutes of audio.  CD-RW performance was about the same, if you factor out the time to format the CD.  All in all, I was very impressed with the writing portion of the drives capabilities.

The SonicVortex 2 is a decent card with some great features.  It has a good bundle for the musician, while leaving the game demos out.  It add an optical S/PDIF connector for digital recordings but falls short on it's multi-speaker support.  There are now several Aureal Vortex 2 based sound solutions, which makes it a bit harder to pick one from the bunch.  I would have to conclude that the VideoLogic SonicVortex 2 sits at about the middle of the spectrum in terms of price, bundle, and features.  As far as performance goes, it's about par for the course for Vortex 2 based cards.

With this card in, I was able to play Unreal at 1024x768 without feeling like I was under a strobe light. That to me just about says it all. As the other TNT/2 entries start to come to the market from the other manufacturers (Creative, Diamond, Hercules and Leadtek), comparisons will be coming. I would tend to think that there will not be a whole lot of price dropping on any of the 3rd generation cards over the summer, so being an "early adopter" may not be a bad thing this time around. A $30 difference is probably worth having a premium 3D card a few months earlier.

The 810 rather mysteriously supports both 66MHz and 100MHz front side bus speeds – Celeron isn’t due to move on up to 100MHz FSB until early 2000 and there’s still a 100MHz/66MHz FSB Celeron due out later in the year.

Intel has denied that the 810 will be able to support Pentium II processors so it’s not easy to see exactly why 100MHz is on offer right now, unless there’s a Socket 370 Coppermine waiting in the wings (something Intel’s Paul Otellini has denied).

Yes, you aren't seeing things again, that IS 1600X1200 Quake2 at 41+ FPS! This is the best score I have ever seen at that resolution! The 3Fingers Crusher Demo still puts the smack down on the V3 but these numbers aren't to shabby either! The 3DMark numbers speak for themselves!