December 1 - 5, 1998
Archive

Oh my! Does it get any better than this? Running Half-Life in A3D2.0 vs. A3D1.x (emulated on a Maestro-2E card) was like night and day. Sounds were much more defined and clearer. You could move your finger as to where the guys were. The reflections on the materials were outstanding, and the occlusions were very well defined. I loaded up Heretic II, which uses A3D1.x and it sounded wonderful too. The position was well defined and sounded great. I really applaud Aureal on A3D2.0... great stuff. While playing Half-Life and other games, I used 4 speakers also. Again, great stuff! I'm not a big fan of 4 speakers (at this point) because of the wire problem and room space. But I did set up the 4 speakers for a while and was amazed with the sound.

 

Intel's Celeron 300A is their most overclockable chip yet, it runs great at 450MHz!   We will assemble, overclock, and test your upgrade at 450MHz, and it will be certified by KickAss Gear to run at that speed.  This is what you get!

• Boxed Intel Celeron A 300 with heat sink, fan and 3 year warranty from KickAss Gear
• Abit BH6 BX chipset 100MHz jumperless motherboard
• 64MB 8ns PC-100 SDRAM DIMM
• Assembled, overclocked to 450MHz, and tweaked for stability
• 20 day money back guarantee with no restocking fee.

You must own an ATX case to accomodate the motherboard. If your old case is an AT-style, include the Antec Steel Mid Tower for only $100.00.

• Click here to go to their ordering page

 

KryoTech has let me know that their long-awaited refrigerated super cooled machines (I stress long-awaited, mine's been on order for over 5 months) running the K6-2 will finally ship next week. The Cool K6-2 500 is running a 400 MHz K6-2 chip, overclocked and supercooled to 500 MHz. The whole shabang comes with the processor, case, and motherboard. If it ships on time (it's been delayed a few times, hopefully it won't happen again), you should see a review on Planet Hardware soon after.

 

When we last reviewed DVD-ROM upgrade kits, owning one garnered you a place among the early-adopter elite. These days, most desktop and notebook manufacturers offer DVD as an option, and many even include the drive in their standard home/enthusiast configurations. DVD drives are still something of an extra--on the order of a built-in Zip or CD-RW drive. However, DVD's ability to hold up to 17GB of data on a CD-sized platter; display full-motion, full-screen movies; and read CD-ROM discs means there's little doubt that DVD-ROM will one day replace CD-ROM as the standard for PCs.

 

Music was great with the speakers, especially with the CMSS music mode. But music is not the reason you would invest in these speakers, you would invest for the Digital AC-3 and Pro Logic support! The experience with watching Godzilla with the Desktop Theater in AC-3 mode literally blew me off my chair. The sound steering is simply amazing, making sure that each speaker has what it is supposed to be playing coming out of it. In a restaurant two different sets of people were talking from the separate rear speakers, while the onscreen people were talking out of the front. This truly created the immersive audio experience that DVD video promises. Running down the street, Godzilla was being attacked by helicopters and more, all placed perfectly on the proper side of my head. If you have not had a chance to experience this yet, the only way to describe it is a movie theater without all the talking people.

 

PowerStrip 2.3 has been released, and adds a color temperature control for desktop publishers, bolstered NT DPMS support, and refresh rates up to 200Hz for the Permedia2 under NT. 16bpp TNT color calibration is now supported under NT as well as Windows 9x, and there is a new switch that adjusts the DAC gamma ramp to match chromaticity information obtained directly from the monitor. Much has been done in this release to try to ensure that custom gamma ramps "stick" when switching from the desktop to OpenGL and Direct3D. For OpenGL and the desktop, assign your custom color schemes to PowerStrip hotkeys - the layout of the controls in different dialog boxes may be lame, but the two features together give you real power and flexibility. For Direct3D games where hotkeys are unavailable, always run the desktop at a different resolution than the game, and use the hotkeys to switch color schemes before and after game play.

• PowerStrip (Win9X/NT4 - version 2.30 - 779 KB)

• Creative Labs 3D Blaster Voodoo2 Driver (Win9X - RC - 3.3 MB)

 

We hinted at the 6ABX2V's performance earlier in this review, and the news is good. Even though all 440BX based mainboards tend to group together in terms of overall performance, the Lucky Star 6ABX2V posted numbers that are near the best we've seen. We can't repeat enough that from best to worst, the 440BX boards tend to only be separated by 3% or so, but every bit of speed helps, and we feel we need to report it to those that live and die in the world of "tenths of a second".

 

In short, that's what MMX and KNI are -- additional instructions Intel added to the x86 instruction set that give the Pentium with MMX, Pentium II, and soon the Katmai Pentium IIs the ability to handle data with SIMD techniques. The MMX instructions do SIMD work on integers, numbers like -40, 0, 1, 469, or 32,766. The KNI instructions add SIMD capability for floating point numbers, which are numbers like -40.2337, 1.4355, or 877,343,226.012. Using MMX or KNI, a single instruction can operate on 2 or 4 streams of numbers at the same time. Instead of our code sample above requiring 529,200 instructions per second, it needs only 264,600 because the same instruction handles both the left and right channels. Instead of the video example needing 70,778,880 instructions per second, it needs only 23,592,960, because red, green, and blue channels are handled by the same instruction.

Ok, now we have all seen games that supposedly sport support for a 24/32 bit color scheme (although there are very few games that do, currently), but very, very rarely do they actually look any different on a 3Dfx card with it's 16 bit support than a card that supports 24 or 32 bits color rendering (unless you have a side by side screen shot comparison, but when playing the game, the difference isn't usually isn't noticeable).  Will we actually see a difference on say a TNT w/ its support for 32 bits vs. a V2/V3 w/ its 16 bit support, in Quake III Arena?

Hook's response: Basically, whether you can see the difference between 8bpc (24/32-bit) vs. 16bpp rendering depends on a lot of factors, including the hardware, rendering architecture, and the source art.  Games that have 16-bit source art or that don't stress multipass rendering won't look tangibly different between 16 and 32-bit; however, when you have 32-bit source art and/or lots of rendering passes, the difference can become quite obvious.

The difference between a V2 and a TNT is startling with Q3 Arena, especially with the skies that are rendered using four passes.

 

"Canopus has been working closely with 3Dfx to get these drivers finished but for the last two months we have been waiting for 3Dfx to add extensions to the OEM DLL specific to the Pure3D II to properly support Glide 3. Believe me if we could, we could have done it ourselves. The fact is we are now more dependent on 3Dfx for Glide 3.0 than we would like to be and until they can get the changes done we will not release the drivers. We are well aware of our customers unhappiness and we would like to have these drivers done as much as you want them in your computers. Once we receive what's needed it will only be a matter of days before they are released to the public. We expect 3Dfx to deliver some new drivers in the next few day's. If that happens we could have a new release with Glide 3 support early next week. As far DirectX 6 support goes that will not be included with this driver update. 3Dfx is still working on those drivers and no final release has been made yet. Soon after 3Dfx releases their Gold Master DirectX 6 drivers ours will follow."

 

Before speaking about performance, look at other features - take Re2Flex. There is no other Banshee board that offers you to customize your resolutions and refresh rate to settings you never would have dreamed of. For a review which may attract more folks than our long-time readers, this has to be said again: You're not bound to standard resolutions and refresh rates. Pick your fav rez, pick your fav refresh (adjustable in 1 Hz steps) and there you go. Those stopping by here often may say that Metabyte just announced at our webboard (see our Dec. 2 news) that they will make the drivers available separately. Fine for everyone with a different Banshee, but for everyone looking for a new board it would be unlogical to get the drivers from Metabyte and a new board from someone else. I just reprint below the ranges table from Metabyte's own Vengeance page (Jenifer, will ya ever forgive me!):

 

• Creative Labs Graphics Blaster TNT (WinNT4 - 500 KB)

 

We mentioned at the beginning of this review some instances of the bad luck and poor decisions that plagued Hercules for much of this year. With the release of the Dynamite TNT, Hercules has awoken from their long slumber and are beginning to traverse the path back to the pinnacle of excellence they once held.

The Dynamite TNT deserves to be considered right along with the big boys of video acceleration, and we highly recommend its purchase to anyone seeking fast and stable gaming speed.

 

The Western Digital Ultra DMA 8.4GB drive suits a particular purpose.  It is big, cheap, and relatively fast.  No, it's not going to run circles around SCSI drives, and there are even other IDE drives that have faster spindle speeds and lower seek times, but you will pay almost twice as much for such a product.  The Western Digital drive did exactly what I needed it to do: sit there and hold my games while not making me miserable with slow load times and transfer rates.  It installed like a charm and has been running beautifully every since.  The load times for my games may be just a little bit slower than the SCSI drive it replaced, but I now have an additional 4 GB of storage...which means my older games can hang around a bit longer as I get new ones installed.

 

For $99, the MX300 is a compelling PCI sound card. Although CPU use is a little higher than I'd like, it's still much more efficient than Vortex 1 boards, and it's possible that the final driver releases will realize some increased efficiency. For that small hit, you get support for A3D 2.0 and DirectSound 3D in hardware. Diamond promises better hardware support for EAX in future drivers, but EAX 2.0 is an unknown quantity. MIDI sounds are quite good, and you can always add a daughtercard if you like. The MX300 has just been added to my buy list.

 

• STB Velocity 128 Driver (Win9X - version 1.82 - 1.9 MB)
• STB Velocity 128 Driver (WinNT4 - version 1222 - 800 KB)

 

Despite the hype, a digital camera is not necessarily the best way to get high-quality color images into your computer, and typing isn't the only way to get information into your system. Often, the cheapest, most versatile device for getting pictures, line art, and text onto your desktop--whether you're creating a family album, documenting completed projects, or simply cataloging information--is a color flatbed scanner. And because quality is improving as prices drop (the scanners in this review range from $99 to $299) there has never been a better time to buy.

 

At a price tag of $99, the card is still a good buy for those looking for a low-cost solution to enabling TV support on your computer. A few nagging features set this product back a few steps, but it does a more than adequate job. Multimedia capturing is easy, picture quality is good, and no problems surfaced after long hours of usage. On the downside, the virtual remote gets in the way and a few features are not implemented as well as they should. STB will be releasing the card with a FM tuner soon so you might want to look into that one.

 

There are a couple of really handy features of this board that aren't often talked about.  If you happen to select a setting in the BIOS that won't allow the machine to boot, you can hold Insert to boot with the default BIOS values.  This is really nice if you happen to enable Speed Error Hold in the CPU Soft Menu.  If, when you are overclocking, you select a value your system can't handle, it will freeze the system and not allow a bootup.  The only way to get back to the BIOS is by holding Insert on bootup.

 

Diamond’s Rio is a portable player capable of playing the above mentioned MP3 files. Clocking in at the $199 price range, it is a little bit on the expensive side. Considering portable CD players Made their debut with a over $300 price and a very large size, $199 is not much to pay for digital music that fits in the palm of your hand. Not only is the Rio small, it also weighs less then the McDonalds cheese burger that I had for lunch. This will be a definite plus in the Rio’s favor when your are listening to it jogging down the street trying to work off that burger. The actual weight of the Rio is only 2.4 ounces, and the dimensions are only 3 ½" by 2 ½" and just a bit over half an inch thick! This makes for a device that will look right at home in the shirt pocket of James Bond

 

The Video Blaster WebCam II is a decent video product at a very affordable price.  The image and video quality are certainly not the best on the market, but there are far worse solutions that cost even more money.  Another added bonus when buying a Creative product is their superb support and warrantee, which will keep you happy with your product for as long as you have it.  The camera comes as part of complete kit that includes everything you need for video conferencing on the net as well as just making videos and taking pictures of the things you like.

 

Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, December 2, 1998. Coinciding with the newest Intel^® socket architecture and the relevant 440BX chipset which supports it, ABIT^® announced their newest 440BX based motherboard using the Socket 370 architecture with Soft Menu II™ and five PCI slots, the BM6. ABIT's BM6 is the newest Intel^® 440BX based mainboard with Socket 370 which was designed for the new socket based Celeron® CPUs.

ABIT's new BM6 has One AGP, Five PCI and Two ISA slots to handle all of your expansion needs. The ABIT^® BM6 comes with all of the latest advancements and trends in the motherboard industry, including but not limited to; all the specifications for, AGP for improved 3D graphics performance at a lower cost, APM/ACPI power management, Ultra DMA 33 support, Infrared peripheral support, USB, PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, CPU auto-detect, AWARD write protect anti-virus, and Wake On LAN, the BM6 also supports Wake on Keyboard and Wake on mouse.

 

• 3DFX Voodoo Banshee AGP (Win95 - version 1.01.03)
• 3DFX Voodoo Banshee AGP (Win98 - version 1.01.03)
• 3DFX Voodoo Banshee AGP (WinNT4 - version 1.01.03)
• 3DFX Voodoo Banshee PCI (Win9X - version 1.01.03)

In case you didn't get it before, here is the latest miniGL for OpenGL games like Quake II/Sin/Half-Life that works with all 3DFX chips:

• 3DFX miniGL (Win9X - version 1.46 - 210 KB)

eyeSCREAM finally offers a stereoscopic solution that works. All of the features of eyeSCREAM work in unison on any 12MB Voodoo2 card to provide the highest resolution, most ergonomically pleasing 3D stereoscopic gameplay available today. With its lightweight, wireless design, the eyeSCREAM eyewear provides for an extremely comfortable stereoscopic gaming experience.

In keeping with the Wicked3D? Board Company's mission to deliver a truly immersive gaming experience, eyeSCREAM comes complete with Metabyte’s exclusive driver technology. Metabyte's unique software enables stereo viewing at the driver-level rather than the API-level. This means that current popular games will run in stereo mode without custom modification. Additionally, Metabyte's proprietary technology allows games to run in custom high-resolution modes which greatly enhance the quality of the stereo viewing experience. Now, users can run their favorite games at resolutions never before supported--1024 x 672 using one Voodoo2? board and 1024 x 1024 using two (in SLI-mode)--even in normal (non-stereo) mode

 

• Unreal -- several visual artifacts are corrected, including a "rainbow" effect on some textures. There are still someTexture downloading performance issues that we are working on, but this is a significant improvement.
• Descent3 demo -- texture problems are corrected.
• Rogue Squadron from LucasArts -- W-buffering problems are corrected.
• 3D Studio MAX 2.5 -- fixes possible freeze of desktop, better wireframe drawing, fixes miscellanious crashes when selecting objects
• Multigen Creator 2.2 -- textured object performance dramitically faster
• Caligari TrueSpace 4.0 -- occasional crashes fixed
• Solidoworks 98 -- fixes some rendering anomolies

• nVidia Riva TNT AGP Reference Driver (Win9X - version 0.48 - 902 KB)
• nVidia Riva TNT PCI Reference Driver (Win9X - version 0.48 - 892 KB)
• nVidia Riva TNT AGP/PCI Reference Driver (WinNT4 - version 0.48 - 508 KB)

• Diamond Monster 3D II Driver (Win9X - version 2.05 - 2.16 MB)

 

The Soyo SY-6BA is one of the better i440BX boards out there. It has a very complete feature set and only minor quirks once the proper bios flashes are performed. Overall, the only real problems with this board have been bios related all along. The question is, will there be more problems that creep up in the future? It seems like the answer to that question is no, so the Soyo SY-6BA would therefore be an excellent purchase.

Very VERY impressive! HalfLife is actually playable in 1280x960 with this card. It beat the Creative Labs card in EVERY benchmark we threw at it. Even though it could not keep up with the Voodoo2 in lower resolutions, games were still very playable, and with better image quality than the Voodoo2. Honestly, in regards to image quality, it's not noticeable until you stop and look closely at the image. Personally, I would prefer higher fps over image quality (ask any racing sim gamer, they'll tell you the same). But being able to play HalfLife (and I really mean playable, not slow motion crap) in 1280x960 for a card of this price just cannot be beat!

One of the biggest complaints that people had about CD-R disk was that once you had written to a disk, you could not erase the information. The newer CD-RW drives also support rewritable CD media, these CD-RW drives procure a premium and can only write to a disk in 2X CD-ROM speed (300k sec). With the Panasonic DVD-RAM you can write and erase a disk over 1000 times, all at a perky 1.38MB sec. The Panasonic drive also includes a 2MB buffer to keep write problems to a minimum. Unlike with CD-R technology, DVD-RAM employs packet writing, which is not susceptible to the disk destroying buffer under-runs that were so common with CD-R drives. With a DVD-RAM drive if it has a problem copying a file it will try again. About the only thing that can stop the drive from working right is my wife’s reset switch happy finger. (She gets personal pleasure out of turning off my computer on a regular basis. As a tip to the guys out there, get a dog.)