November 1 - 8, 1998
Archive

In Quake II, which is very bandwidth-sensitive, both the 5600 and the Apollo Pro chipset are clearly slower than the 440BX, which shows a little bandwidth lack of the newcomers. With Incoming the difference is not that big. The Winstone runs do not differ that much, since large parts of the program's code is written to optimally take advantage of the fast L2 cache. The Highend Winstone requires a lot of CPU power and makes the differences clear again.

 

• VoodooDoctor (Win9X - version 1.0.2 - 96 KB)
• DirectControl (Win9X - version 2.0.6b - 110 KB)
• Matrox Overclock (Win9X - version 2.0.6 - 165 KB)

 

We tested the MX300's EAX ability using Creative Labs' special Sound Blaster Live EAX version of Unreal. What we were astonished to find was an identical reproduction of the EAX environmental 3D audio with the MX300 versus the aforementioned SB Live. We had a few staffers really listen in while a player went through the various levels of the game, and there wasn't a single instance where the MX300 didn't faithfully reproduce the same perfect audio positioning that the SB Live did. Even the "waterfall test" you've been reading about online was reproduced accurately.

The CardexPert GX3 is one fine card with TV/Out. The S3 name is commonly associated with the commonly laughed at ViRGE chipset. But with the Savage3D, S3 has finally redeemed itself. It's one heck of a fast chip with a damn low price. TV/Out adds even more value to the card, if S3/Cardex could fix their buggy TV/Out drivers.

 

Our Editors' Choice for professional systems is the Gateway G6-450 ($2,632 direct). It has everything you want: a fast 450-MHz Pentium II CPU, a top 2-D and 3-D graphics card, the STB Velocity card with the nVidia RIVA TNT chip set and 16MB of SDRAM, a 9.6GB IBM hard disk, a 56-Kbps modem, and a 19-inch monitor. With the G6-450, you also get a second-generation DVD drive with good playback quality, Boston Acoustics speakers with a subwoofer, and a rewritable-CD drive. All of these components add up to top performance. The unit's case is easy to service and has room for upgrades; you also get your choice of software, including Microsoft Office 97 Small Business Edition. Gateway offers a complete Web site full of information, round-the-clock technical support, and a three-year parts-and-labor warranty, plus one year of on-site support. Gateway earned a mix of above-average and average scores on our latest Service and Reliability Survey.

 

AGP110_NTSC.EXE 11-04-98 AGP NTSC BIOS version 1.1 improves the performance of the memory on the V4400. Place a blank formatted floppy diskette in the A: drive. Execute
AGP110_NTSC.EXE A:
and it will write an image to the floppy. Then boot to the Floppy disk. FOR AGP CARDS ONLY!

PCI110_NTSC.EXE 11-04-98 PCI NTSC BIOS version 1.1 improves the performance of the memory on the V4400. Fixes Award motherboard BIOS issues. Place a blank formatted floppy diskette in the A: drive. Execute
PCI110_NTSC.EXE A:
and it will write an image to the floppy. Then boot to the Floppy disk. FOR PCI CARDS ONLY!

AGP110_PAL.EXE 11-04-98 AGP PAL BIOS version 1.1 improves the performance of the memory on the V4400. Place a blank formatted floppy diskette in the A: drive. Execute
AGP110_PAL.EXE A:
and it will write an image to the floppy. Then boot to the Floppy disk. FOR AGP CARDS ONLY!

PCI110_PAL.EXE 11-04-98 PCI PAL BIOS version 1.1 improves the performance of the memory on the V4400. Place a blank formatted floppy diskette in the A: drive. Execute
PCI110_PAL.EXE A:
and it will write an image to the floppy. Then boot to the Floppy disk. FOR PCI CARDS ONLY!

 

If you're not interested in overclocking, and if you're just looking for a motherboard that'll cover your basic needs then the Diamond C400 is a very well rounded solution.  However if you're the type of user that likes to squeeze every ounce of performance out of their system, then you may want to look towards the ABIT BH6 or another motherboard of that class.  Diamond did a fair job with the C400, they just need a little more experience in the motherboard department before they can release a truly competitive product to please a greater percentage of the hardcore tweakers. 

The WHQL Certified 1.42 driver for the Velocity 4400 increases performance in a number of industry standard benchmark applications. Release 1.42 also improves performance with ALI-V chipsets on Socket 7 motherboards and improves video playback of DVD and AVI files. Use with BIOS version 1.1 ONLY

• STB Velocity 4400 Driver (Win9X - version 1.42 - 1.2 MB)
• STB VISION 3.0 Utilities (Win9X - version 3.01 - 3.4 MB)

 

The 3D part of the Savage 3D was from the beginning anticipated to be magnificent. The 32 bit pipeline, and the special feature for better 16 bit gaming promised great visuals. Then adding a vast feature support and a hasty rendering pipeline, this chip was expected to be superb.
I must say my expectations were fulfilled. The chip offers wonderful, stable (keeping a good performance all the way through the resolution range) performance and great graphics. In the beginning I had some problems with image quality, something that disappeared with new drivers and a bit of tweaking. Something I didn't get the chance to feel was the power of texture compression. This feature, allowing an immense 200 Mb. of textures on screen with only 8 Mb of on-board memory, although being supported by DirectX 6 (actually being designed for it) didn't work, despite countless attempts. From what I've seen on in S3 demo's this is a feature to add some weight to the Savage 3D when properly implemented though. It also, theoretically, supports the future AGP 4X (or AGP Pro), through the ability to process textures so fast.

 

By the time you read this, Banshee and TNT boards should be on store shelves. From what we've seen so far, both chipsets are going to be fantastic additions to an already crowded field. We tend to be partial to the Banshee, thanks to its pocket-battleship performance on a budget. In a package that 3Dfx expects will street near $120, Banshee is a way for computer makers to cash in on the Voodoo franchise without unduly boosting the price of their PCs. But TNT boards like STB's 4400 will be going out the door $50 to $75 less than a Voodoo II, making it a good value, too. PC Games will run full reviews as soon as we get retail versions of these products.

 

Guillemot announces today the new price of the Maxi Gamer 3D2 (12MB). For only $99.99 (after a $30 mail-in rebate) end users can now obtain the Maxi Gamer 3D2 based on the 3Dfx Interactive Voodoo2 chipset - a fast 3D accelerator which allows for arcade-quality 3D graphics at speeds exceeding 100 frames per second. This in effect allows the user to obtain 2 Maxi Gamer 3D2's (12MB) in SLI mode for only $199.99 (after two $30 mail-in rebates).

 

1. Hardware acceleration support - from the existing 8 to 32 DirectSound 3D Streams.
2. Live!Surround - allows you to connect your Sound Blaster Live!/Live! Value to your existing surround receivers and speakers.
3. Individual effect auditioning (eg. reverbs, echos etc) - while adjusting Environmental Audio settings.

• Sound Blaster Live! Driver (WinNT4 - Revision 2 - 2.1 MB)

• Aureal Vortex Driver (WinNT4 - version 1.16.13 - 5.06 MB)

While software renderers today cannot compete with hardware rendering (with the exception of the Unreal software renderer) Future software renderers may be extremely powerful, especially if KNI optimized ones. KNI will allow software engines to make use of both SIMD with floating point numbers AND SIMD with integers (MMX) AT THE SAME TIME WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT SWITCHING BETWEEN MMX AND NON-MMX mode. Software engines optimized with Katmai have the potential of running up to 2x as fast as previous versions, or more! As long as Intel (and competitors) can keep up the development pace, software rendering will not die out anytime soon. In the near future we should expect to see games which run at resolutions of 800x600 @ 16 or 32bit color, with colored lighting, filtering, possibly MIP Mapping, and more at over 30 frames per second.

 

• New Release of Win9X drivers (v1.05)
• GlideSwitcher utility
• Latest BIOS flash program (v1.01.1)

• CL Graphics Blaster Banshee Driver (Win9X - 2.04 MB)

 

• 3D Blaster PCI Driver (Win9X - Revision 6 - 206 KB)

 

Digital TV broadcasts consist of digital signals, created by broadcasters and then distributed via terrestrial over-the-air broadcast, cable, satellite and even land-based transmission technology. The signals are then MPEG decoded and displayed on, for example, a digital TV set.

As with DVD, where PC-based DVD ROMs provide a great high volume complement to DVD consoles, DTV can be enabled through the PC, an implementation expected to quickly become one of many places where consumers will enjoy the benefits of digital television. (A February, 1998 estimate from industry analyst Mercury Research indicated DVD ROMs would prove to outship dedicated DVD consoles by a factor of 10 by the end of the year.)

With a PC enabled with a graphics accelerator that can handle the HD0 DTV format MPEG decoding, and a low cost DTV receiver card, DTV viewing on the PC becomes an affordable option. A graphics add-in card and receiver board, with an approximate combined cost of well under $500, can provide the highest quality DTV viewing at a fraction of the several thousand dollars it costs for the new high definition digital TV sets and DTV tuner/decoder boxes.

If a graphics accelerator board or set top device that features ATI's RAGE 128 chip and ATI's RAGE Theater( video encode/decode (video in and video out) chip is used, DTV can be viewed on conventional TV sets, including large screen or wide screen TVs. This provides an opportunity to preserve the investment in those giant screen TVs.

 

Computer Heaven has posted a review of the Midiland S2/4030 Speaker set.  These are the less expensive cousins of the 4100's.   Check out this bit:

These small speakers pack some of the best audio I've seen in a long time from speakers under $200. The S2/MidiLand 4030's are small, but as I mentioned before earlier, size means nothing. I threw in a few CD's and started listening, and my first reaction was "Wow, they really rock!". They pack a true punch, when I was doing some "loud tests" (putting them at max volume with everything at max volume, now this is obviously odd, considering you would never listen to them at such volumes on a computer, but I did it just to check out how they handled some volume) they didn't even flinch, and pumped out the music without blowing any drivers or damaging the speakers, and everything worked well afterwards and during the test (as a word of caution, I suggest you do not to try this at home, simply because the volume at which the speakers were at, in a small room could easily damage your ears, if not damage the speakers also).

 

MURC has done a review of Matrox's wonder card, the Marvel G200.  This card has it all, kind of like the ATI All-in-Wonder Pro, except this card actually has kick as 2D speed and quality as well as very decent 3D speed the G200 is famous for.

AGN3D has done a review of Guillemot Phoenix (Banshee) card.  Here is a bit from it:

The Phoenix is a really good card, and it's coming to you from a company that seems to care more about what gamers want than pure profits.  It has a good bundle and a great price.  If your looking for Banshee performance and the cheapest way to get Glide support, this is the card for you.

 

How come my 3D Sound doesn't work?

One main complaint with 3D sound is the quality of the rear sound with two speaker output. This is in part due to the problem of each ear hearing both speakers instead of only one as with headphone output. Crosstalk cancellation technology helps to curb this problem but isn't 100% effective. So often 3D sound is lost in the rear. Which caused some discomfort over the news groups as some were upset that their 3D sound didn't work perfectly, claiming false advertising

 

Well, over the weekend I picked up a copy of Trespasser, and if you've read any of the online reviews you'll probably be able to guess at what I saw when I ran it on my personal system which is now a P2-450 clocked at 504 with a pair of Diamond Monster 3D-2's (12MB).   The game was still quite choppy at some areas, and the visual quality wasn't all that great...especially whenever I fired a gun, the explosion out of the barrel was quite horrendous.  Just for the hell of it I decided to switch to my Matrox Marvel G200 for the rendering device in Trespasser, and, well...I was shocked when the G200 seemed to perform just as well as my SLI setup.    Keep in mind that Trespasser is a Direct3D game and was intended for operation with DirectX 6.0 installed.  With the success of the G200 on my personal system (although there were quite a few texture problems I could obviously pick out with the G200, probably a driver issue) I decided to setup a quick test system with the unofficial Direct3D king, the nVidia Riva TNT, running on a slower Pentium II 400 compared to my 504.  The results?  Since I don't have any way of reporting a frame rate for Trespasser yet (I'm going to see if I can talk to a few of my programming friends to develop a little layer between DX6 and Trespasser for benchmarking), I can only report what I saw...which was a clearly sharper, more vibrant, and noticeably faster frame rate on the slower TNT system in comparison to my "supposedly" faster SLI setup.   We've all been talking about how AGP will eventually become a useful tool in the future with games, and judging by my experience with Trespasser, the AGP2X recommendation on the box shouldn't be taken lightly

 

Here is a article out of computer gaming world.

3Dfx's Next Part:

Although 3Dfx's isn't talking about it much yet, not wanting to cloud its fourth quarter sales outlook, we've heard a few tidbits about its next generation chip set, called Rampage. This 2D/3D AGP chip, whose exact ETA isn't known, will be 3Dfx's only chip.    That's right, kids new 3D-Only 3Dfx boards will be a thing of the past when rampage arrives, sometime next year.  This makes a pretty serious departure from 3Dfx;s traditional approach, which consisted almost of exclusively of 3D-only boards, which have proven very successful for the company.  But in announcing their third quarter results to their stock holders, 3Dfx unfortunately posted a net loss, although its settlement of the Sega lawsuit did offset the losses somewhat.  The fourth quarter is looking brighter for the company, with the arrival of Voodoo Banshee boards from Diamond and Guillemont International, as well as the traditional heavy holiday buying season.

Rampage represents 3Dfx's realization that the 3D-only board market is a niche marker relative to the much larger 2D/3D graphic market, and it's there that the company will focus its efforts with Rampage,  No performance specifications are available as of yet, but given that the current Voodoo 2/Banshee architecture isn't especially AGP Friendly, 3Dfx may be looking to create an architecture that will take better advantage of age.

 

• COMDEX TEASER
• GAMES GAMES GAMES
• Q3D RAVEN REVIEW
• MORE BANSHEE NEWS
• V2 PRICING
• CARMA2 DEMO REVIEW
• COLIN McRAE REVIEW
• ...and the usual stuff you want to know...

The STB Velocity 4400 has surpassed the Creative TNT as the TNT card of choice. With faster performance, TV-out, and a low price, the STB Velocity 4400 might very well be the best TNT to date. While the Creative TNT is a generic reference TNT, STB went the extra mile to add the tv-out and driver tweaks to squeeze out those few extra fps. If you're looking for a TNT, pay up that extra $10 or so and go for the Velocity instead of the Creative.

 

The subwoofer uses patented wOOx technology from Philips in order to deliver bass that rattles the windows and not the subwoofer. The subwoofer has very crisp bass that did not distort at even the highest volume levels. The wOOx based subwoofer uses a 5.25" active woofer and a 6" passive radiator to deliver that pounding bass response. The subwoofer works by using the active woofer to modulate the air mass inside the case of the subwoofer. The passive radiator sits next to the active woofer and simulates the motion of the air mass that is generated by the active woofer. The end result is a smaller subwoofer with a lot of power. This subwoofer was one of the loudest PC subwoofers that I have heard, with the exception of the Midiland S2/4100 speakers. On top of the wOOx technology, the subwoofer also includes Dynamic bass boost, to provide the highest bass level at the lower volume settings.