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Saturday - May 8th
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Matrox Millennium G400 Preview 4:18
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Here's something new, a Matrox
G400 preview from I have no idea, but it has some 3DMark 99 benchmarks and a
picture of the board. They compare it to the Voodoo3 3000 and the TNT2 and
it seems to hold quite well against them. I just wonder how these guys got
a hold of the G400, Matrox rarely give stuff out for reviews.
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More Wicked3D PGC Details 4:10
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Gamespot has posted some information
about what's happening with Wicked3D's (Metabyte) PGC technology. Check
it out:
In a nutshell, Metabyte's PGC involves combining two video cards
simultaneously to boost PC game performance in a manner similar to 3dfx's
Voodoo2 Scan Line Interleave. As detailed in a GameSpot News interview earlier
this week, Alienware will implement the PGC technology using two 3dfx PCI
Voodoo3 2000 boards, and it will be made available for purchase sometime in
mid-June.
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ATi RAGE PRO Beta Drivers 10:16
AM EST - Email Us |
|
ATi has released new beta
drivers for the RAGE PRO chipset. Grab them below:
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The Future of 3D graphics 8:53
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Loyd Case from GameSpot has
posted a nice article about the future of 3D graphics. He talks a about what you
might be seeing in hardware and on your computer screens in the next year or
two. You can check it out here
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Friday - May 7th
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Leadtek S320 II TNT2 Reviews 8:40
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Here a couple more Leadtek Winfast S320 II
TNT2 Review for you to salivate on (or help you decide if you want one or
not). Check them out below:
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Hercules TNT2 @ 180/220MHz! 8:26
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Fastgraphics has gotten hold of a
TNT2 card from Hercules that is running at
180/220 core/memory clock speed. That is pretty amazing stuff, the final
boards probably won't be running that high because of poor yields, but maybe
there is something special about the Herc boards that allow it to run a bit
higher than most other TNT2's? Head over to fastgraphics
to see the news and benchmarks.
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Actima 44X CD-ROM Review 7:41
PM EST - Email Us |
|
AGNHardware has done a review
of Actima's 44X CD-ROM drive. It seems like a pretty fast drive, check
out this bit:
As the numbers clearly show, the Actima drive really screams. The
read speeds are better than the 40x SCSI drive I am so fond of, and the random
access time is nice and low. There were a few areas where the benefits
of SCSI really seemed to pay off: Full access time and CPU utilization.
While the Actima gave fair numbers for the CD-ROM tests, CPU utilization was
much lower on the SCSI CD-ROM.
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HPros BayCooler II Review 7:05
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Here's another cooling device review for all you overclocker's and cooling buffs
out there. This review
is of InClose' BayCooler II hard drive cooling kit and believe me, its one good
hard drive cooling kit. Check out the review here.
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AMD K6-III vs. Intel Pentium III 10:32
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Hardware Upgrade has decided to put these
two CPU's through their paces and see what they can do in a head-to-head
comparison. After all the testing they did of these expensive chips, it
looks like they threw them both away in favor of the great value of the Celeron,
check it out:
This analysis shows that the CPU
representing the best compromise between performance and price is Intel
Celeron: this processor has, at the same clock frequency, similar performance
as Pentium III with applications which don’t use SSE instructions. K6-III is
a big step forward in comparison to K6-II: the integration of 256 Kbytes of L2
cache working at the clock frequency allowed to obtain a big gain in
performance both with Business applications and High-End software even if the
performance of floating point unit (the same as in K6-II) is lower than that
of Intel CPUs.
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Powerstrip 2.41.12 Beta 10:23
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Entech has released a new version of
the PowerStrip. Here is the info and a link to download:
The latest PowerStrip 2.41.12 build here adds
the TNT2, Vanta and Savage4 to the list of new chips supported and validated,
which also includes the Voodoo3 and Rage128. All of these chips ship with a
decent set of user controls - some of these borrowed, right down to the icons,
straight from the PowerStrip. Still, none of them provide anything like the
PowerStrip's in-game gamma controls or include much in the way of NT support,
and if you happen to be a graphics professional or work seriously in OpenGL,
NT is where you live. Note that only the current beta supports these chips;
earlier PowerStrip releases may detect, but do not properly support any of
these chips.
- Powerstrip
(Win9X/NT - version 2.41.12 beta - 652 KB)
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ELSA Erazor III TNT2 Preview 10:04
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Thresh's Firing Squad has posted their preview
of ELSA's Erazor III TNT2 card. This thing is pretty huge, they go
through every little feature of the TNT2 card. I guess that's a good
though, for people who are just getting into the game. Anyway, check out this
bit:
The Elsa Erazor III looks to be a very strong contender, based on the TNT2
chipset. The main differentiator that I see between the TNT2 chipset and the
Voodoo3 family is although the Voodoo3s are very fast, as we have come to
expect from 3Dfx, they are a good chipset for current technology. The
problem is, newer games are coming out which have a whole slew of new features
that the Voodoo3 line is not going to support. The 256x256 limit on textures,
lack of AGP texturing, lack of AGP support, and lack of 32-bit rendering are
just four of the shortcomings, and those alone leave a bad taste in my mouth
for the Voodoo3 line. Of course, the Erazor III, based on reference specs, has
support for the mentioned features.
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iXBT's Monthly Hardware Overview 9:41
AM EST - Email Us |
|
iXBT Hardware has posted this
month's Hardware New Overview and boy is it ever long. If you had a
hard time keeping up with all the news for the past month, this is a great way
to run it by you again and understand everything that happened. Here is
the intro:
The bird's-eye view of this month turns out pretty interesting. The
majority of most remarkable events can hardly be referred to one single field.
Of course, when Cyrix reduces its prices or when Western Digital announces a
new harddisk model everything is clear. But when for instance, it comes to
ATI's sudden desire to find its way into integrated chipsets manufacturing?
Where should it be related to? Initially, all the information dealing with
chipsets used to be referred to mainboards section. But on the other hand, S3
or ATI and … the mainboards! Isn't it nonsense? Nevertheless, the slogan of
this month is more than evident if you remember the top event - the launching
of i810 chipset with the integrated graphics core i752, which follows in the
footsteps of MVP4, SiS 520 and SiS 630. So, the slogan sounds as global
integration.
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Thursday - May 6th
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Tweak3D Interview w/ AMD 6:50
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Tweak3D has posted their interview
with Drew Prairie from AMD about the upcoming K7 CPU. Here is an
interesting bit about bus/memory speeds:
Tweak3D:The K7's chipset
has the unique ability to "down-clock" the memory bus down to 100
MHz so that users can use PC100 RAM. Will the motherboard support faster RAM
and how? At release, will there be any bus speed RAM (200 MHz) available for
high-end systems? If not, will it support the 133 MHz RAM that is being
produced for the 440JX chipset?
Drew: I don't know if
"down-clocking" is the right word, either technically or
descriptively. The 200 MHz system bus for the K7 is the speed at which the
system logic and the processor communicate. All other system buses,
memory/AGP/etc, are not tied directly to this 200MHz operating speed. The net
result is that the CPU/system logic bus can operate at 200MHz and the memory
bus can operate at 66/100/133/etc. MHz without any problems --- alleviating
any bottleneck between the chipset and CPU that may be in place today. Another
cool thing about the EV6 bus architecture is that in MP configurations, the
CPUs have point-to-point connections with the chipset and do not have to share
bandwidth. Support for additional types of memory is tied to chipset support.
We have not disclosed any info on our initial chipset and neither ALi or Via
have given any details on the chipsets they have in development. That said, if
we want to continue offering a competitive platform versus the other CPU guys,
there are a number of technologies we need to make sure the K7 platform
supports. Faster memory technologies are definitely on that list....
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3dfx Voodoo3 3000 Review 4:22
PM EST - Email Us |
|
3DGaming has done a review
of 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 card (166MHz & TV-Out). Here is what they
thought:
Over all I feel the Voodoo 3 has not been given the respect it deserves.
Many other sites have over shadowed the board with the TNT2, which I also feel
is a great board. What it comes down to is the Voodoo 3 is a board offering
excellent 2D, outstanding 3D performance and the best 16 bit rendering you
will find. The numbers I got from this review have been some of the highest I
have seen. Some even not broken by a TNT2 running at 150 MHz. Voodoo 3 is a
contender, and I feel it will be for awhile.
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TNT/TNT2 1.73 Reference Drivers! 4:10
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Remember those drivers I mentioned yesterday? The ones that the boys over
at FullOn3D got from NVIDIA
which showed speed increases in both the TNT and TNT2, well D128.com
has gotten hold of them. Grab them below and have fun:
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Midiland S2 4100 Speaker Review 4:10
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Are you looking for an awesome set of speakers to compliment your SB Live! or
MX300?? Well check out the Stratics
Network review of Midiland's S2 4100 3-piece speaker set. This is one
hell of a good sound system, but are you willing to pay $400 USD for a set of
speakers? Check out this bit from the review:
The Midilands excel in so many areas that we cannot just say it is
excellent, or "awesome, but rather that it kicks some serious, bad
attitude butt. Having said that, however, I feel it only fair to point out
that the Midiland's sit on the expensive side of the fence, and that there are
other speakers out there that also perform excellently for a lower price. For
those who are wondering if the Midiland's are worth the price tag, the answer
is a resounding yes. For those who are wondering if the Midiland's are their
only choice for excellent sound. The answer is... both yes and no.
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Promise Fast Trak RAID Review 9:00
AM EST - Email Us |
|
AGNHardware
has done a review
of Promise Technology's Fast Trak IDE RAID controller card. This card
allows you to use RAID features on IDE drives, something that was unheard of
before. Check out this bit:
For a somewhat more appreciable measurement, I shaved 7 seconds on my
bootup, a whopping 11 seconds on loading SIN, and just over 4 seconds on
loading Word. For me, this was a significant and noticeable improvement.
Looking at the Business Marks for the IBM 14GXP (2920 marks) and Segate
Medalist Pro (2930 marks), both of which are 7200rpm drives, we can see the
Array still measures up favorably. Please feel free to check out Jeremy
Allford’s review of the IBM 14GXP here at AGN for more of the Data on
these drives and a great review of the 14GXP.
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|
TNT2 1.73 Driver Benchmarks 9:00
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Fullon3D has gotten the chance to test
NVIDIA's 1.73 reference drivers for the TNT and TNT2. They put them to the
test on an Elsa Erazor III (TNT2) and a Leadtek S320 (TNT). Most of the
scores are much higher with these drivers, can't wait to get them. Check
out the benchmarks here.
|
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ATi Rage Fury Review 8:47
AM EST - Email Us |
|
CGO has done a review
of ATI's Rage Fury Card which is based on ATi's Rage 128 chip. They
think its a pretty good card, but arrived way too late on the market, check out
this bit:
It wasn't supposed to happen this way. ATI was going to bring a product to
market that wouldn't just be an economical solution for OEM customers, it
would be a true gaming powerhouse. It would have all the features everyone
wants, twice the memory of competing products, and it would be affordable.
Most importantly, it would be as fast or faster than anything else on the
market. That was late last year, when previews of the ATI Rage Fury praised
it's beefy 32MB memory limit and stellar 3D performance in 32bit color modes.
At that time, the card was going to ship in a few weeks' time. Weeks turned
into months, and the Rage Fury shipped far later than anticipated.
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Wednesday - May 5th
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Abit BX6 R2.0 Mobo Review 5:45
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Vince over at Extreme Hardware has done a
review
of Abit's BX6 Revision 2.0 motherboard. This board combines the best
of the BH6 and the BX6 to provide one hell of a good motherboard with excellent
overclocking capabilities. Check out this tidbit:
The Winbench scores were very impressive, but
even more impressive was the Abit BX6 2.0's real world performance. In Win 95
business apps, the BX6 2.0 seemed to handle multi-tasking a bit better than
the BH6, although games were comparable on either system. Overclocked
performance was also top notch and if you're going to try some Celeron action,
I highly recommend the BX6 2.0.
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Gigabyte BX2000 Mobo Review
5:42
PM EST - Email Us |
|
iXBT Hardware has done a review
of Gigabyte's BX2000 Slot-1 motherboard which is based on Intel's BX chipset
(what gave it away? the name?). This motherboard might be useful for
mission critical workstations (or cities which have lots of blackouts), because
it has dual bios chips in case something goes wrong when you flash the bios.
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ASUS P2-99 Mobo Review
5:31
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Dan's Data has done a review
of ASUS' P2-99 Slot-1 motherboard which is based on Intel's ZX
chipset. I don't see why anyone would want one of these when there are BX
boards ten times better out there at just a few bucks more, but anyway check it
out if you're interested.
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Wicked3D Leaving Hardware Arena
5:26
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Wicked3D has decided that it wants to go
back to what it does best, and that is provide excellent software (drivers) to
hardware manufacturers. They have developed the PGC and excellent
eyeSCREAM drivers which definitely set them apart from the crowd and now will
help hardware manufacturers implement these technologies instead of doing it
themselves. Check out this bit from the press
release:
FREMONT, Calif., May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Wicked3D(TM), a division of
Metabyte, Inc., announced a change in company direction to shift its focus
back to its core competency in software development. The Wicked3D hardware
product lines will be discontinued but support for current Wicked3D customers
will continue.
``Wicked3D has created a very successful hardware business that resulted in
tremendous exposure and brand building,'' says Steve Gleitsmann, former
Director of Worldwide Sales and newly appointed General Manager of Wicked3D.
``With our recent developments in graphics technology we have the potential to
become a significant force in the industry in a very short period of time.
Having said that, we feel that it would be much more beneficial for the
industry and for us if we concentrate on doing what we do best -- and that is
to develop software technology and allow others to bring it to market. It
basically came down to a decision about whether we wanted to develop
technology exclusively for our own products or concentrate efforts on
providing technology on a more global basis. With eighty percent of your staff
being highly skilled and innovative software engineers, the decision was
clear.''
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|
ATi Rage Fury 128 Review
9:00
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Ars Technica has done a review
of ATi's Rage Fury Retail card which has 32MB of RAM. This card sports
excellent 32-bit rendering at great frame rates, and has the best DVD support
out of any existing card. However, here is what they suggest:
As for the current crop of cards, however, I
have difficulty recommending the Fury given the brand new arrivals from 3dfx
and NVIDIA, especially the latter. While one could make the argument
that the ATI card is superior to the Voodoo3 in at least feature set and
possibly image quality, by all accounts the TNT2 should equal or surpass the
ATI on all fronts. Unless the TNT2 is a huge disappointment, I'd hold
out before plunking down the cash on the Fury.
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3dfx Voodoo3 3000 Review
8:48
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Gamepost has done a review
of 3dfx's Voodoo3 3000 card (166MHz w/TV-Out). They gave it a score of
95% which I think is accurate for the performance, but not accurate for its
features. Anyway, we just received our Voodoo3 3000 so if you haven't seen
enough of them already, ours will be coming soon.
|
Tuesday - May 4th
|
Diamond Stealth III S540 Review
11:12
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Anand Tech has done a review
of Diamond's Stealth III S540 card which is based on S3's Savage4 PRO
chip. Here is a bit from the review:
The Savage4 Pro runs at
a core clock speed of 125MHz, and because of the relatively cool operating
temperature at 125MHz, Diamond saved a buck or two by refraining from
outfitting the card with anything other than a simple passive heatsink. The
heatsink is too small to attach an older 486 fan to, however if you can find
another way of attaching a fan to the heatsink then you may be able to
overclock the core of the Savage4 Pro a little higher than with just the
heatsink alone. In AnandTech's tests, the Savage4 core was able to go up to
143MHz without a problem, with 150MHz being a little unstable, and anything
above 150MHz behaving quite erratic. The S540 followed the general trend of
Savage4 boards that have graced the AnandTech testing labs, as the card
eagerly went up to 143MHz core (already at 143MHz memory clock) without a
single problem, and without having to add any additional cooling.
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|
Trident Blade 3D Review
11:05
PM EST - Email Us |
|
WickedPC has done a review
of Trident's Blade 3D card. This is Trident's attempt to enter the 3D
market, and as people expected, its pretty much garbage. The unfortunate thing
is that many people will probably see this card in their systems, as many
manufacturers like to use Trident cards because they are so cheap.
|
|
Voodoo3 1.48 MiniGL Driver
11:02
PM EST - Email Us |
|
3dfx has released a new miniGL driver for the
Voodoo3. This driver has support for the Pentium III as well as 3DNow!,
grab it below:
|
|
MSI 6163 Mobo Review
12:14
PM EST - Email Us |
|
The Tech Zone has done a review
of Microstar's MSI 6163 Slot1 motherboard. This board is as good an
overclocker as the BH6 and BX6 R2, maybe even better! Check out this
tidbit:
Some of you might be wondering why I tested
this board with a PII-350 since it's not considered a great CPU for
overclocking because of it's low 3.5X lock. However, with the MS-6163, I
was able to overclock the PII-350 to 480Mhz using the 138Mhz bus! And it was
rock stable! I think I could have gone higher but my Ram didn't feel up to it.
By using the MS-6163, I was able to turn what is considered to be a poor
overclocking CPU into a great overclocking CPU.
|
|
Is AMD Ready For Server Market?
9:40
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Johan over at Ace's
Hardware has written a very interesting article
regarding this very topic. Sure, we all know the K7 is one hell of a
design and should knock the socks off Intel, but is AMD ready to dive into the
multiprocessor/server market when they have absolutely no experience?
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|
Not Hardware, But Damn Good
9:17
AM EST - Email Us |
|
This may not be hardware related stuff, but these are such good
programs that they deserve to be posted on a Hardware Site! Mirabilis
has released a new version of ICQ 99a and Nullsoft
has released a new version of Winamp which has a brand new MP3 decoder. Grab
these awesome utilities below:
- ICQ
99a (Win9X/NT - version 2.20 build 1800 - 4 MB)
- Winamp
(Win9X/NT - version 2.20 - 608 KB)
|
Monday - May 3rd
|
Intel Celeron 466MHz PPGA Review
3:18
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Thresh's Firing Squad
has done a review
of Intel's Socket 370 Celeron 466MHz. This will probably be the last 66MHz
Celeron CPU before they start rolling out the 100MHz FSB versions. They
were able to get 7.0x75MHz with this CPU but nothing higher, check it out:
As ever, overclocking with the Abit board was a streamlined
process. The multiplier is locked at 7.0, which only gave us room to play with
the bus speed setting. Taking it a little higher than the its default 66 MHz,
we first tried 75Mhz, which resulted at 525 MHz. The Celeron booted up fine,
POSTed, went through its paces, and Windows loaded up. This was at the default
voltage of 2.0V, so we were rather pleased, hoping that there would be a
margin for more speed. We ran a few benchmarks at 525 MHz just to see if it
would crash easily, but after several hours, everything seemed solid.
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|
ixMICRO ixTV Tuner Card Review
3:09
PM EST - Email Us |
|
System Logic has done a review
of ixMICRO's ixTV Tuner card for the PC. This thing is feature packed,
check it out:
This is a very neat feature, and one of the main reasons I
wanted to test out a newer tv-tuner with this feature. It allows
you to get on-line newspapers, magazines, computer games, software updates,
music, entertainment and at speeds 6 times 56k modems without using any phone
line. This service is free with the WaveTop software that you find bundled
with this TV Card. This is done by the use if VBI data broadcasting. You may
be unfamiliar with this as I was before I received the ixTV. VBI data
broadcasting is a proven, high speed, data transmission medium, which
transmits data to your computer using a standard television signal. By
installing the ixTV card in your computer, you can take advantage of this easy
and efficient method of receiving information - automatically, and best of
all, without tying up your phone line.
|
|
Xitel Storm Platinum Review
3:05
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Gamewire has done a review
of Xitel's Storm Platinum audio card which is based on Aureal's Vortex2
chip. This card is right up there with Diamond's MX300 and even comes with force
feedback headphones! So check out this review if you're looking for a top
notch sound card.
|
|
Anand's Leadtek S320 II Review
10:07
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Anand Tech has done a review
of Leadtek's Winfast S320 II TNT2 16MB Pro model which has digital LCD flat
panel support. Here is what he thought about this card:
By now, the TNT2's
performance is known across the world and the decision can be made as to
whether or not the TNT2 is the right choice for you. If it is, and
you happen to have around $130 burning a hole in your pocket, the Leadtek
Winfast 3D S320 II is a perfectly fine choice for a TNT2 card. I can
tell you now that the S320 II won't be the absolute best TNT2 card to grace
the market, however it won't be the worst, and it's definitely not going to be
something you regret for the rest of your life (unless, of course, you wanted
a Voodoo3 or a Savage4 instead). The S320 II, like most BX
motherboards, offers you everything most other upcoming TNT2 cards will, with
one value added feature, it's available today.
|
|
Diamond Stealth III S540 Also Shipping
9:14
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Diamond Multimedia has
also announced that their Stealth III S540 card which is based on S3's Savage4
chip, is also shipping and should be in stores this week. Check out this
tidbit from the press
release:
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 1999-- Diamond
Multimedia Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: DIMD
- news), a leader in PC
multimedia and Internet connectivity, today announced the imminent shipment of
the company's newest addition to the Stealth graphics accelerator product
line--the Stealth III S540. Based on S3's Savage4 processor, Diamond's new
Stealth III S540 features 32MB of on-board memory, Intel-validated AGP 4x
support, S3 texture compression (S3TC) and hardware-accelerated digital video
playback. These advanced features coupled with a low, retail price point
enable mainstream PC users and gamers to enjoy impressively sharper images and
realistic textures while working and playing on their PC.
|
|
Diamond Viper V770 Is Shipping
9:04
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Diamond Multimedia has
announced that its Viper V770 should be in stores this week! and the Ultra
version should hit stores later this month. Check out this bit from the press
release, regarding clock speeds:
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- May 3, 1999-- Diamond
Multimedia Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: DIMD
- news), a leader in PC
multimedia and Internet connectivity, today announced the availability of the
company's much-anticipated, high-performance Viper V770 graphics accelerators.
Featuring the latest advancements in 3D graphics technology, Diamond's new
Viper V770 series comes powered with NVIDIA(TM) Corporation's (Nasdaq: NVDA
- news) award-winning RIVA
TNT2(TM) graphics engines to deliver optimal visual quality and increased
speed for today's hottest 3D gaming and business applications. Diamond
Multimedia's new Viper V770 is shipping to worldwide retailers, OEMs and
systems integrators this week at a U.S. estimated retail price (ERP) of
$199.95. The Viper V770 Ultra graphics accelerator, based on the RIVA TNT2
Ultra chip, is scheduled to ship later this month at a U.S. ERP of $249.95.
...
The Viper V770 graphics accelerator will ship with default
speeds of 125MHz engine clock speed and 150MHz memory clock speed. The Viper
V770 Ultra graphics accelerator will ship with default speeds of 150MHz engine
clock speed and 183MHz memory clock speed and with the company's InControl
Tools 99 3D Turbo Gauge feature, gives the user the option to overclock the
engine and memory clock speeds, based on their individual system configuration
-- up to 175/200MHz. The Viper V770 Ultra ships with an active cooling fan for
added stability at higher clock speeds.
|
Sunday - May 2nd
|
ATi Xpert 128 Review
6:35
PM EST - Email Us |
|
WickedPC has done a review
of ATi's Xpert 128 video card which is based on ATi's Rage 128 2D/3D
chip. If you're looking for decent 2D/3D and awesome DVD playback, then
this is the card to get, check out this bit:
The most valuable feature in my eyes of this video card is
its DVD hardware support. ATI truly does have great DVD hardware playback, and
it shows. Until processors are fast enough, you'll always notice occasional
flukes while watching a movie, which can be distracting, but not really too
big of an issue. This is based upon our standard test system of a Pentium
III/500MHz. My biggest continuing complaint with all ATI Rage 128 based video
cards is that you have to mail in this stupid card to get the DVD software,
and pay $10 for the shipping/handling/cd fees. This should come with the video
card instead of a paper mail-in coupon. 3dfx does the same thing with the
Voodoo3, and it's silly. Just give us the software we paid for when we bought
the card!
|
| Articles Over @ Overclockers.com
5:53
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Joe over at Overclockers.com
has let me know that they've posted a couple new articles to satisfy your hunger
for knowledge, check them out below:
|
|
AMD K7 vs. Intel's Pentium III
10:24
AM EST - Email Us |
|
The Register
has gotten hold of some very juicy benchmarks of a K7
600MHz and a Pentium III 600MHz (Coppermine). Don't take these
scores to be too accurate of the final products, since both are not due
out for quite a long time, but they are interesting none the less. Check
them out:
WinBench99 Version 1.1 (5 times measure) CPUMark99
(CPU Integer Performance does not include MMX register)
- K7@600MHz 68.4 Mark
- Pentium III@600MHz 70.1 Mark
FPUWinMark (CPU Floating Point Performance does not include
MMX,SSE,3DNow!,FSTORE Extension register)
- K7@600MHz 2,819 Mark
- Pentium III@600MHz 3,104 Mark
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FIC VA-503+ Mobo Review
10:17
AM EST - Email Us |
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SysOpt.com
has done a review of
FIC's VA-503+ Super 7 motherboard which is based on the VIA Apollo
MVP3 chipset. Here is what they thought of the board:
It's nice that FIC thought to add the
>100 MHz bus speeds, but that isn't enough to make a good board.
Certainly, the board is a solid, very stable board once it's
running, but getting it configured can be a headache. For $70,
it isn't a bad deal, but for the price, there are better, easier to
configure boards. I dare say that running a K6-2 300 at 333
isn't worth it if you have to spend several days doing everything
possible to get the system up and running.
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3D Chip Feature Comparison Chart
10:06
AM EST - Email Us |
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3DHardware
has posted a small
chart which outlines the features which the next generation of
video cards will have and won't have. Pretty good for a
side-by-side comparison.
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Diamond Viper V770 Review
10:04
AM EST - Email Us |
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IXBT
Hardware has done a review
of Diamond's Viper V770 TNT2 card. I wonder how they
actually got one these, Diamond never likes to give samples out.
Anyway, this card looks mighty good with high frequency SGRAM, so the
guys over at IXBT decided to see how much it overclocks and what
performance gains can be had.
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Anand's Savage4 Review
9:52
AM EST - Email Us |
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Anand
Tech has done a review
of S3's Savage 4 chip. We heard a lot of this chip a while back
and how it would be the first card out with AGP 4X support, but it
seemed to die off pretty quickly, where the heck is this thing
and how does it perform? Well here is what Anand thought:
For those of
you expecting the Savage4 to come through as being the world's
fastest 2D/3D accelerator, you're out of luck. However, the Savage4
does have its strengths as discussed above. The Savage4's ability to
render at 32-bit color depths with a very small loss in performance
will make the Savage4 a strong performer in Quake 3 Arena which is
supposed to truly illustrate a difference between 16-bit and 32-bit
rendering. If it does in fact illustrate such a difference, Savage4
owners will be pleased to know that the drop in performance they'll
experience for the added image quality is next to nothing compared
to the TNT2 and other competing solutions capable of 32-bit
rendering.
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Saturday - May 1st
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AOpen Announced TNT2 Card
3:48
PM EST - Email Us |
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AOpen
has announced that they are going to be producing a TNT2 card called
the PA3010. Check out this bit from the press
release:
The AOpen PA3010 TNT2 card has built in utilities to let power
users adjust the TNT2 chip clock frequency and memory clock
frequency. This is a great feature for power users who want to drive
the best performance out of its card when playing games. If the game
does not work to higher frequency, simply power on the system again.
It will go back to the default chip clock and memory clock.
While focusing on high performing segment, we also want the
PA3010 to run very reliably. That is why AOpen implemented an active
fan attached to the TNT2 chipset which cools down the TNT2 chipset
temperature from 55 degree C with a heatsink to 32 degree C. “Both
reliability and compatibility will be improved under a lower
temperature environment” said
Spencer Kuo, director of R&D department, AOpen Multimedia
Business Division.
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Build Your Own PC
3:46
PM EST - Email Us |
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Gamecenter
Hardware has posted an article
which explains how to build your own PC. I know it can be
intimidating, even scary doing it for the first time. But
believe me, its a lot easier than it looks, especially in this day and
age where everything is plug n play. In the old days, we used to
have to play with gazillions of jumpers and hope everything worked
properly.
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AMD K7 Preview
3:45
PM EST - Email Us |
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Gurutech
has posted their preview
of AMD's much hyped K7 processor. This processor is due in
June and should deput in speeds anywhere from 500-600MHz. AMD's
is betting their future on this chip as its supposed to be the first
one to surpass any offering from Intel.
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Tom's Guide to Intel's 810 Chipset
3:38
PM EST - Email Us |
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Tom
Pabst and Brent Kerby from Tom's
Hardware Guide have posted a huge article
on Intel's new 810 (Whitney) chipset. There is some pretty
good technical information about the features of this new integrated
chipset. Check out the intro:
Intel flexes their muscles and shows their
technological dominance in the low-cost chipset arena. Up to date
there have been a several attempts to design a fully integrated
chipset. Unfortunately, this type of integration in the past went
hand-in-hand with lack-luster 3D performance. Most of the integrated
chipset solutions shipping now provide acceptable performance for
productivity software (e.g. word-processing, home finance, and
Internet browsing). But when the user would slap their favorite 3D
game title in to the CDROM drive instead of entering a cartoon like
3D world with full motion video it was more like a watching a
slide-show. The reason for horrible 3D performance was due to the
video implementation in the chipset. Most of these integrated
chipset solutions use UMA (Unified Memory Architecture) where the
integrated video allocates the required frame buffer from the system
memory. By sharing the system memory the integrated video is limited
to slow 66MHz-memory access. This slow memory access along with
rudimentary 3D features integrated into most of these chipsets
equated to HORRIBLE 3D gaming. Finally, Intel has provided the 810
Chipset solution to meet the low price demands of consumers without
completely ignoring the performance requirements of 3D gaming.
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Act Labs GS Gun System Info
10:41
AM EST - Email Us |
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Act
Labs has officially announced their GS Gun system for the PC and
boy does it look cool, here is a picture and a bit from the press
release:
Richmond, BC. April 30, 1999 - ACT
LABS, developers of cutting-edge gaming peripherals, have announced
the ACT LABS GS Gun System TM, the first product that will utilize
their patent pending PC gun technology. The recently announced
technology offers extreme accuracy in a variety of resolutions
(including all 3D modes) at a comfortable range of up to 6 feet. The
ACT LABS GS Gun System TM will be showcased at the upcoming E3 trade
show as one of ACT LABS premier new products for 1999.
The ACT LABS GS Gun System TM is a complete system that has been
designed to offer both single and two-player use. Following the high
design standard set by their previous products, the system consists of
2 light guns that are stored in an attractive holster-style base unit.
The base has a metallic finish and rubber form fitting pockets to keep
the guns upright in storage. The gun design also features a metallic
finish and rubber compound handle.
The third important component of the ACT LABS GS Gun System TM is a
handheld controller that can be used in conjunction with one of the
guns. This device has it's own storage location at the rear of the
base unit. You can "hot-swap" the guns at any time to allow
for the use of the included handheld controller. The handheld
controller also has a "mouse-emulation" feature that gives
it additional functionality.
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Voodoo3 vs. TNT2 Comparison
10:34
AM EST - Email Us |
|
The
Review Zone has posted a huge comparison
between 3dfx's Voodoo3 2000 & 3000 and a couple of TNT2 boards
from Leadtek and Guillemot, check out this bit:
Considering the mid-range
competition, the Voodoo3 3000 offers extremely good 16-bit
performance, overclockability and a good game bundle for the price.
The Winfast S320 II is cheaper and delivers better all-round
performance, though not up to par in terms of overclockability or
software bundles. Keep mind, however, that this is neither the only
nor the best TNT2 card due out- and we’re not talking about the
impending Ultra TNT2 boards either. There will be quite a few more
TNT2 boards, with 32MB of SDRAM or SGRAM rather than 16MB, and with
different features, coming out from several high-profile OEMs in the
near future. The Winfast S320 II was just the first to hit the
streets.
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Leadtek Winfast S320 II Review's
10:31
AM EST - Email Us |
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Here
are a couple Leadtek Winfast S320
II TNT2 reviews for you to feast your eyes on, we should be getting
one soon too, so expect to see a review from us:
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