August 15 - 21, 1998
Archive

In a move which will send shock waves through the industry, Compaq said yesterday that it prefers the 64-bit Alpha processor to Merced as it offers better performance and is 50 per cent cheaper.

Richard George, who runs the Alpha business in the UK, said: "The Alpha chip is better than the Merced chip. It has more applications than the IA64."

George revealed that when Compaq releases the 600MHz EV6 later this year, it will have FX32 embedded into its kernel. Microsoft will access this 32-bit backward compatibility when it releases NT 5.0, he claimed.

But in sum, the Terminator 2x/i is a good low-priced solution. Yes I could say that. But if you have the money to spend, then make sure you steer clear. There's so much more in the way of performance and features offered elsewhere in the market. But what you do get for such a cheap price is a fairly low end but nevertheless capable 2D/3D solution that allows newcomers to at least dabble with the 3D gaming scene. Just don't expect high frame rates but what you can expect is excellent visual clarity in 3D- perhaps even better than the mighty Voodoo2. The only real thing going for it is its price of $99. Then again you could go even cheaper and down to rock bottom prices and avoid this card altogether if you tried out one for the alternative Taiwanese Intel740 boards.

"Some of the initial designs from other companies for Voodoo2 boards had problems with overheating and failing after long use," explained Vincenzo Coccoli, Chairman and CEO of California Graphics. "We have worked closely with 3Dfx and are the first to have the new second generation design (Rev 03), which has been tested and approved by 3Dfx, and does not suffer from these problems. In addition, our tests show that our 3D Wizardä design has faster memory access giving a performance improvement or around 10%."

Overview
 
As you can see here, the Velocity 4400 performs admirably under most conditions. With THESE drivers, the speed is more/less equivalent to a Voodoo2. The fill rate on this card is unbelievable. In Final Reality, it just totally blows away all other cards I have seen. It's almost 3x greater than the Voodoo2 and the RIVA 128 ZX. It's understandable since this is necessary for good framerates in high resolutions. If you look at the GLQuake numbers, the 4400 maintains a 40+ fps at 1024x768 in 16bit color. At 1280x1024, it borders the 30fps mark. With time as the drivers mature, I believe we'll see 30fps+ performance at that resolution. 32bit color on GLQuake isn't very good (almost unbearable). I couldn't see any major differences in color or picture fidelity. I did include it here for curiosity's sake. As you can see, it exhibits a 30fps drop from 16bit color in 640x480. As resolution increases, it drops 20fps and 10fps at 640x480 to 800x600 and 800x600 to 1024x768 respectively. The bigass timedemo numbers were consistent. They showed more conservative framerates in lower resolutions. As the resolution increased to 1600x1200, it settled closer to the other timedemos, demo1 and demo2.
 
Installation for this card was somewhat difficult. Contrary to what I was instructed to use, I found out that setting the AGP Aperture should not exceed total system ram available, 64mb in my case. The drivers themselves were troublesome at times. I experienced lockups, crashing in Final Reality in demo mode, mouse-on-screen-while-in-d3d mode, and graphics corruption in Win98 and in MSIE 4.01. I also had trouble changing graphics modes and going into STB Tweak. They would freeze occasionally. This will all undoubtably be fixed when the drivers go "Gold" which should be soon. I also look forward to testing the TV-Out function. On an interesting note, I'm curious as to why STB created their own tweak program. Daniel Di Bacco from NVIDIA assured me awhile back that he would be producing a NV4Tweak program much like his NV3Tweak program for the RIVA 128/zx. Maybe STB is in a rush to beat its competitors and NV4Tweak isn't available yet? Or possibly NV4Tweak doesn't meet STB's needs. Who knows.

Conclusions:

The rendering quality of the TNT is beautiful, no matter whether it is in 16 bit or 32 bit color. I was unable to see a difference in visual quality in GLQuake when using 32bpp mode. Forsaken's colors did seem more vibrant with 32 bit color enabled. As always, visual quality comes at a penalty in performance. The TNT has enough power to spare to run at high framerates at most common resolutions even when using 32 bit color. A 20-30% performance hit is, IMO, very acceptible for the luxury of 32 bit color. My guess is that on most applications, there will be very little if any difference in visual quality between the TNT's 32 and 16 bit modes. For those occasions that require 32 bit accuracy, the TNT should be powerful enough to drive those applications.

Actual game performance for Voodoo Banshee is 78 percent higher on Turok and 32 percent higher on Incoming than the levels reported by Mercury Research. Similarly, Voodoo2 results were at least 25 percent greater on both games. These results put game performance for both Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo2 ahead of S3's Savage3D.

3Dfx Results (fps with v-synch off		Mercury Research Results (fps with v-synch on)
	INCOMING	TUROK	INCOMING	TUROK
Voodoo2 SLI	77	122	not tested	not tested
Voodoo2	75	80	60	60
Voodoo Banshee	78	100	58.9	56.16

Many have been wondering what kind of performance they can expect on a lower end machine using the TNT. Well, how about some numbers on a lowly K5-166, which would be roughly equal to (or even slightly slower) than a P133. Surprisingly, the TNT did an otay job, which means you can expect VERY playable results with a K6 or Pentium MMX. Here's the results on both Quake II and Forsaken:

Quake II
640x480	15.7
800x600	15.7
Forsaken
640x480	37.29
800x600	31.83

As you can see, those numbers are pretty good for such a lowly processor, and considering that the drivers aren't even final yet, those numbers will definitely improve. And of course, the TNT looks just as fantastic on a K5 as it does on a P2.

Intel Mendocino(Celeron w/ 128KB L2 on die) is faster than Klamath in 3D Accelerated games such as Forsaken, Turok, Incoming, etc,. and It is not working with a most intel 440BX M/B.

3DWinBench98 Results
   CPU                Mendocino < Klamath   5-10%
   FPU                Mendocino > Klamath   2-4%
   Graphic WinMark    Mendocino < Klamath     3-5%

3DWinBench98 Results
   3DWinMark          Mendocino < Klamath   5-10%

3DGames
   Quake II             Mendocino < Klamath     5%
   Direct3D Games     Mendocino > Klamath     5-10%

Tested with E4 CoolView128 AGP (Riva128, Driver V2.0 B1.5)
            Mendocino, Klamath 333MHz
            64MB SEC PC100
            Sambo Detroit 440BX Mainboard(AMI Bios)
  
P/S.
Award bios can't detect the cpu type and down after post
(Abit, Asus, Aopen, MSI, Altos, FreeTech, EPoX)
   I think, it is problem of AWARD BIOS Core Routine.
Phoenix bios detect as Pentium Pro. And L2 is disabled or not detect the correct speed
(tested w/ Micronix 440LX, 440BX and Some OEM Board)

Ami Bios is not boot up with some m/b such as Tyan 440BX ..
But Some board is working correctly such as Trigem Detroit (made in Korea, www.msd.co.kr)

• Diamond Monster Sound MX200
• Guillemot Maxi Sound Game Theater 64
• Orchid NuSound 3D
• Turtle Beach Montego A3DXtream

Reminiscent of no other Super7 AT motherboard, the Tyan Trinity 100AT features a 4/4/1 expansion slot configuration (PCI/ISA/AGP) which is obviously geared towards the user who considers expandability as a primary factor in a motherboard's design.  The three 168-pin DIMM slots are placed flush against the two 72-pin SIMM slots in the lower right hand corner of the Baby AT Form Factor PCB.  In spite of the number of memory slots, the 1MB of L2 cache, the positioning of the Socket-7 IC and the inclusion of both AT & ATX Power Supply Connectors, the Trinity 100AT allows for the installation of 3 full length PCI cards, meaning a Dual Voodoo2 SLI setup is possible on this motherboard.  A great rarity among AT Super7 solutions. 

Rambus is a very hot topic. Intel has been promoting Rambus as the new memory standard since late 1996. Now, eighteen months later a few DRAM manufacturers have prototype silicon in hand. Because it uses a completely new interface, Rambus requires a whole new generation of chip sets. Intel’s Rambus platform is targeted for mid 1999 using the Katmai processor. Because of the risks associated with Rambus, we also expect that Intel will offer a Katmai platform using a BX-like chip set supporting SDRAM at the same time.

Isn’t Rambus going to be really fast?

Remember, there are two kinds of fast – low latency and high bandwidth. Rambus offers extremely high bandwidth, but has slower latency than even standard SDRAM. Its slower latency will compromise CPU performance, but its higher bandwidth exceeds the ability of the CPU to use. This does not translate to "fast".

The Pentium II Overdrive (333mhz) runs for $600 and provides performance 1 icomp 2.0 point faster than the Pentium II/350. In order to put an Overdrive processor onto a Pentium II motherboard (to take advantage of SDRAM, Ultra DMA, and AGP) a $40 riser card is necessary. This brings the total cost of a PII/333 Xeon system to $640 + the rest of the system. The Pentium II/350 processor, on the other hand, provides equal or even better performance (in most desktop applications), costs a mere $370.  

There is no doubt about it, for the plain Desktop system, the "333mhz Xeon" is no solution. 

What about Overclocking? 

If you believe that your 333mhz Xeon will run at 375 or 416 you are most likely mistaken. The high speed cache inside this overdrive chip is very sensitive to speed increase (chances are that the reason the overdrive is limited to 333mhz is because higher speed cache is too costly to manufacter. The Pentium II/350, on the other hand, can be easily overclocked to around 400+ mhz. What ever way you look at it, the Pentium II Overdrive is not a solution for a desktop system. As a matter of fact, it is cheaper to upgrade to a Pentium II motherboard and a PII/350 than to upgrade a Pentium Pro 200 system with the overdrive chip.