October 1 - 9, 1998
Archive

• CL 3D Blaster Voodoo2 RC Driver (Win9X - RC 3)

 

• 3DFX Banshee OpenGL Miniport Driver (Win9X/NT4 - 500 KB)

 

As you can tell I have really taken a liking to the Raven, or at least to the software bundle that comes with it. So it is going to be really hard for me to offer an impartial conclusion to this review. What I can offer is advice on whether or not the Raven, or even a Banshee is the right card for you. Even with the low price of $119 after rebate the Raven is not the cheapest Banshee card on the market. Creative has a card that is $20 less, but does not include the killer bundle. If you want a Banshee and are not worried about the bundle I would recommend the Creative. If you do not have a Voodoo 2, I would recommend that you either get the Banshee simply for the Glide support that it offers. Now if you are a power game how already has a Voodoo2, and you need a good 2D and are not worried about the bundle, I would say pick up a TNT. The TNT is a better performer, but it is really CPU dependant and does not support Glide.

 

The K7 will initially come out on the widely used 0.25-micron manufacturing process and be made with aluminum wires, according to AMD CEO Jerry Sanders. Later, however, the chip will be moved to the more advanced 0.18-micron process and be constructed of copper.

By 2000, it will run at 1000 MHz, the company has said.

 

As it stands the Phoenix is the Banshee board to beat. The only other board I see matching or surpassing its outstanding value is Quantum3D's Raven.

• Winamp (Win9X/NT4 - version 2.03- 500 KB)

 

• Sound Blaster Live! Driver for Cyrix CPU's (Win9X - 483 KB)

Direct 3D Forsaken numbers are the best to come from this setup and visual quality is tops. OpenGL visual quality was very impressive from this small wonder of a board but performance needs to be improved substantially..at least another 10 fps to be a player with the TNT and V2. With all the recent 3D shooters using the Unreal or Q2 engines, this is one area that can't be overlooked or ignored at this time. It's less than the TNT or Voodoo2 boards and at $109.00 this is a very cost effective upgrade.

The TNT is a real good chip. It's not only fast as hell (especially in high resolutions) but has also a superb image quality. With  Riva128 Nvidia released a good Direct3D chip. Now, the TNT beats everything. It still has some problems with OpenGL, but that's gonna change with the release of better drivers. Nivida made just one big mistake: They were talking about the TNT beating a Voodoo2 SLI. As we proofed in our test, the TNT reaches just the level of a single Voodoo2. Still, the TNT has some great advantages compared with a Voodoo2: First, it's not even half as expensive, it displays resolutions higher than 1024x768, and the image quality beats everything. Now, we can just hope that, in the future, programmers don't just think of GLIDE, but include Direct3D or OpenGl support in their games. As we see at the example of Unreal, GLIDE is an API of the first choice. But with games, such as Quake 3: Arena or Messiah the porgrammers promise better TNT support.

 

• Marvel G200-TV (16MB)
• AOpen Navigator PA70D Savage 3D (8MB)
• Metabyte Vengence Banshee (16MB)

 

• AGN3D's Hardware Show (6PM EST Time - Real Video)

 

For its price, I believe this board is way overpriced - even with the amount of cool features you get. If you look at competing boards by Creative and Maxi Gamer, they may not offer ReFlex Technology or H3D support, but they do offer substantially lower prices (as low as $89 after rebates), pack-in games, and better RAM (SGRAM to be exact). Tack on the facts that the Vengeance's the drivers still need work, you're only getting SDRAM, and no pack-in game, and you've got yourself one overpriced Banshee. $40 more and you can get yourself an asskicking TNT board for crying out loud! This is just too expensive for anyone's taste.

 

Foster will be a 32-bit design, very similar to a chip design dubbed Willamette. Foster will be intended for high-end PC servers and Willamette targeted at desktops, Pollack said.

Foster chips could hit speeds of 1000 MHz or higher when they come out late in the year 2000 or early 2001. "This is our target," Pollack said. Currently, the fastest megahertz rating on Intel chips is 450 MHz.

• Entech's PCIList (Win9X - 117 KB)

 

Windows NT 4.0 driver for the Matrox Mystique, Mystique 220, Mystique G200, Millennium, Millennium II AGP, Millennium G200, Millennium G200 SD, MGA-G200 SD, with Microsoft WHQL certification. This is an international release.

• Matrox Unified Driver (WinNT4 - version 3.63 - 1.56 MB)

 

I enjoyed playing Half-Life Day One on TNT at 1152x864 and I’m playing Quake 2 online at this resolution on TNT every day for two weeks now. Shogo is looking great too on TNT, and it also runs fine and smooth at 1152x864. I wonder what should make me spend a whole lot more money on two Voodoo2 cards, which cannot supply the high screen resolution and which take a lot of space in my system as well as producing a lot of heat. There’s certainly still quite a lot of justification for Voodoo2, but if you are wondering which 2D/3D combo to buy …. go for TNT and see if you feel like adding two Voodoo2 cards later on. I doubt that you will …

 

WingMan(R) Interceptor uses proprietary NET-2 magnetic encoding technology to provide smooth motion and extreme precision for flight simulators and games, without the skipping that can occur in potentiometer encoding-based joysticks. A single centering spring provides smooth, precise control whenever the joystick is moved. This design eliminates the ``jumping'' often experienced with multi-spring sticks.

 

It's all about the power. Over the past couple of years 3Dfx has reigned as supreme leader of the 3D graphic industry with its powerful 3D Voodoo graphic chipset. The world was amazed at the graphic quality that the 3Dfx Voodoo chipset brought to home computing. No more blocky pixels and stale colors. Voodoo brought games to life, with its vivid colors and blazing fast performance. The people had been crying for something new, something grand. So stepped in 3Dfx, who set the precedent for all things to come.

 

Overall, this system is an excellent sounding and could be a worthwhile investment.  Do yourself a favor and explore your options with speakers; most systems are relatively cheap and the benefit you could derive is enormous--your ears will thank you for it.  Altec Lansing also manufactures other, cheaper systems that sound as good or even better than this, so it may be worth your while to give them a look. However, this is the only set of speakers that I know of that take advantage of USB, and the USB support is very well executed.

 

As a role model for all future Banshee based video cards Guillemot did an excellent job of putting the chipset to good use, you'll find no useless features, filler software titles, or pointless driver utilities with the Maxi Gamer Phoenix.  You'll get exactly what you pay for with this card, the $89.99 final price (after a $20 manufacturer's mail in rebate) buys you what will come to be considered the average for a 2D/3D accelerator combo, with at least one title that'll keep you drooling for a while.

Overall, a strong recommendation for average 2D/3D performance goes out to Guillemot for their Banshee based product, while the card isn't for high end users, it still packs the explosive punch necessary to take down the 3D performance barrier without any TNT.

3DSS: Skip, I am still trying to wrap my head around what wavetracing can do. For example, if I am in a room, lets say the center of the room and fire a blank, will it sound different than if I fired that same blank facing into the corner of a room?

Skip: Wavetracing will correctly render each reflection of each sound source depending on how close to a wall or object the listener is and the sound sources are, what the material and shape each room the listener and sound sources are (i.e. a gun shot in a "bright" room like a tiled bathroom bounces off the tiles, around the corner, into the "soft" wood and carpeted room that the listener is in, rendering correct reflections, acoustic materials and occlusion on the fly as appropriate.) Not only does it render each source (and all the geometry and materials that come between it and the listener) but it also will take into account dynamic objects like opening doors, elevators, moving geometry (i.e. a listener or sound source inside a car), etc.

 

All in all, the Banshee is a great performer.  It does not perform as well as the RIVA TNT, but then again, neither does a Voodoo 2.  You do get Glide support, which is a huge bonus.  The downside may be that some games will need to be patched to recognize the Vengeance (or any other Banshee) as a glide device.  The performance was great across the board.  Slightly less speed than a Voodoo 2 in Glide and OpenGL games and slightly more in games using Direct 3D.  The visual quality (not quantity) is such that most games on the Vengeance were indistinguishable from my Voodoo 2.  My wife and friends certainly could not tell the difference, and I had a very hard time doing so myself.

 

Zen Research has developed an excellent product, and puts an end to all the guess-work required with "- MAX" rated drives, wondering what your speed will be on the inner tracks. You get 40X all the time with the Kenwood 40X "TrueX" CD-ROM Drive. I'm very happy with the drive, and recommend it to anyone who wants to see some real speed from their CD-ROM drives! Also, I can't give too many details, but my contact at Zen Research also told me they have a DVD drive they're working on which is capable of transferring files faster than a Cheetah 9LP hard drive -- The fastest Ultra2 SCSI hard drive available! That mean's we'll be seeing transfer rates in excess of 20mbps!

 

The P817 XtremeMonitor features 360MHz video input bandwidth and horizontal scan range of 30 to 137kHz to produce high resolutions of 2,048 x 1,536 at 85Hz refresh rate and 1,920 x 1,440 at 90Hz refresh. To ensure sharp images and vivid colors at such high resolutions, the XtremeMonitor offers a super fine 0.26mm dot pitch (0.22mm horizontal) and Invar shadow mask technology. The anti-glare ARAG(R) screen treatment uses a multilayer process to refract unwanted light while maintaining superb image quality.

 

Download the Windows* 95 INF Update Utility

Updates Windows 95 for compatibility with the following Intel chipsets:

• Intel® 440GX AGPset
• Intel® 440BX AGPset
• Intel® 440EX AGPset
• Intel® 440LX AGPset
• Intel® 430TX PCIset

Download the Windows* 98 INF Update Utility

Updates Windows 98 for compatibility with the following Intel chipset:

• 440GX AGPset

 

• Matrox G200 Driver (Win9X - version 4.26 Beta2 - 1.61 MB)

 

The chip, and the workstations based around it, are designed to challenge the performance of Unix workstations, said Anand Chandrasekher, general manager of Intel's workstation division.

Creative Labs announced today that it has significantly lowered the price of its 12MB Voodoo2 cards to $149.99, after a $50 mail-in rebate. The 8MB version will be $79.99 after a $30 mail-in rebate. Both versions will still include their software bundles.

 

• PowerStrip (Win9X/NT4 - version 2.28.5 - 737 KB)

• Creative Labs 3D Blaster Voodoo2 Driver (Win 9X - RC 2)

 

Anyway, I hope this clears up the confusion between Auto TC and S3TC. To summarize, when used on older games that were never designed for this feature, S3 Texture Compression results in a loss in image quality and hard drive space, and a very small performance gain. When effectively used in new games and levels, S3TC displays all of its expected benefits with no consequences.

 

• STB Velocity 4400 Driver (Win9X - Beta 1.37 - 1.5 MB)

 

• Guillemot Phoenix Driver RC2 (Win9X - 2.79 MB)

 

The Viper V550 is a great TNT card, with a few driver issues to be worked out. Both the 2D and 3D performance is strong, but the TV-Out leaves a lot to be desired. If you are the type of person who likes to stick with a particular brand and you want a Diamond card, the Viper V550 will not let you down. It delivers a great gaming experience for an acceptable price. A quick search of pricewatch found the card for only $162, not bad considering the Vooodoo 2 started out at twice that price. If you want the card for its TV-Out feature, I would advise you to hold off and see how the TV-Out drivers progress.

 

I was very pleased to hear that the sound quality of the ADA305 well exceeded my $30 generic Subwoofer speaker system. The regular stereo sound was excellent; however, you haven't heard anything until you put this system into Dolby Pro-logic mode. Playing Unreal with this speaker system is the ultimate in audio-visual experience, the best music, the best visuals, and one of the best reasonably priced speaker systems to go along with it. I also love listening to music in surround sound (Dolby Pro-logic) mode, even though the vocals are usually overshadowed by the music... All in all, if you are looking for high quality "True Digital Audio", as Altec Lansing calls it, don't pass the ADA-305 up. Also, if you think that $30 generic subwoofer system is going to give you the same sound as the ADA-305, you are in for a disappointing surprise.

 

For most users, the Apollo Pro is nothing more than the BX chipset with a different logo on it, however for the gamer, or the user that simply hates to mess with AGP GART Drivers (you'll have to use them with the Apollo Pro to get the most out of the chipset from a performance perspective) it is better to wait until you can either afford to purchase newer RAM for use with the BX chipset or until VIA fixes the performance issues with their chipset, the latter which should require nothing more than a bit of driver tweaking.  It looks like Intel will hang on to the throne for a little while longer in the chipset industry, a good sign for the boys inside as they've taken a hard hit in the microprocessor market since last year.

 

I know that the 3Dfx cards can only support 256 x 256 textures, so video is usually downsized to this for the card to display.   My question is this, can you split up the image and have it displayed over two textures, or maybe even 4, so that you can have a better resolution image displayed?   For example, if the original video image was 640 x 480, could you divide it into 4 textures of 160 x 120.  Does this require too much from the card, or is there some other limitation to this approach?

GrandMaster B responds

Of course that would work, but you're then in a position of decoding several times more data, downloading several times more textures, and rendering several times more pixels.  This is a big issue that cannot be lightly dismissed.

So the choice of 256x256 is arbitrary in that it is the highest value you can use reasonably on a 3Dfx, and it's "good enough" for most video.  I'm sure next generation games will up that to 512x512 or something similar, falling back to tiling on 3Dfx and other architectures with 256x256 texture size limitations.

The Marvel G200-TV is an amazing professional level card with professional software included with it. The 8MB version retails for $299.99 and the 16MB (board reviewed) retails at $369.99. This is a lot of money, but if you are planning to buy a TV Tuner separate or if you would like to do spectacular home videos than I would have to recommend this card. You can pick up some additional information from the Matrox home page

 

Benchmarks.  Everyone loves them.  They are the hard, numerical data that separates the weak ass from the kick ass.  Gamers love to know just how pimped out their rig is.  Speed nuts love the challenge of tweaking variables to squeeze out those extra frames.  Benchmarking plays a huge part in the video card industry, and especially so in 3D.  The challenge to chip designers now is to create the fastest polygon pusher there is.  The following is an overview of 3D benchmarking and what to keep in mind.

If you don't need to have the incredible overclocking capabilities of the ABIT BH6, and want to try something new, a little different, and definitely more cost effective than most Pentium II motherboards, the Apollo Pro based P2-112A from Epox will make an outstanding foundation for virtually any system.  The cost to manufacture the VIA Apollo Pro chipset and the option of re-using older DIMMs on the P2-112A make this board much more cost effective than one could've ever imagined a Pentium II board could possibly be, especially if you navigate down the road of the Celeron or Celeron A.  Just make sure you don't rely too heavily on 3D application performance, as the AGP performance on the Apollo Pro chipset isn't up to par with that of the Intel 440BX chipset...curious as to why?  Take a look at the AnandTech Motherboard Reviews Index for a special comparison between the 440BX and the Apollo Pro in the very near future...

 

• Turtle Beach Montego A3D Driver (Win9X - 7.1 MB)

 

Computers containing Intel processors accounted for 54.3 percent of retail sales in August, according to Matt Sargent, computing analyst with Computer Intelligence. This is a drastic drop from the same month a year ago when Intel-based PCs accounted for 84.3 percent of retail sales.

 

• PowerStrip (Win9x/NT - Version  2.28 - 734 KB)

• Matrox G200 Driver (Win9X - version 4.26 Beta 2 - 1.61 MB)

 

• Sound Blaster PCI 64 Driver (Win9X - Revision 1 - 800 KB)

 

What do we feel about the Millennium G200? Well, it's a good board, as fast or even faster than the Mystique G200. The things is, these two boards are targetted differently, Mystique G200 is targetted for the home user or gamer. Whilst the Millennium G200, with it's 250MHz RAMDAC and SGRAM is more targetted for professional use like CAD, which is reflected by it's bundle. One good thing is that the Millennium G200 will be available later in a PCI version. This is something that many Pentium users have been waiting for, to be able to use a G200 on a non-AGP capable system. We'll have a review on that later on. So, which card should you go for then? Since the performance differences between the two aren't really high, it's largely about what you'll use it for. If you are a gamer, then I'd suggest the Mystique G200 not only because of the TV-Out, but also for the good game bundle, with the Millennium G200, you get no games whatsoever. If you need high refresh rates in high resolutions then the Millennium G200 is to prefer. Still, if you really need those extra 2 FPS that the Millennium G200 might give you in some games and you don't have any use of the TV-Out, then why not go for a Millennium G200.

 

>Subject: Texture on Banshee
>
>Does Banshee limitation on texture size (no larger than 256 X256) is really big >problem or will become big problem in the future ?
>Arif Octovian

Banshee does have the same maximum texture size of 256x256 textures as other Voodoo technologies.  This hasn't been a problem in the past as most game developers target this resolution or have learned to tile them together (like on cockpits or title screens.)  It's very easy to work with.   However, some developers have requested higher size support for '99 and beyond games and we look to accommodate them in that timeframe.

Brian P. Bruning
3Dfx Interactive Developer Relations Manager

 

In sum, the TNT appears potentially to be a good general purpose OpenGL graphics card but with the current NT driver it may have problems with some specific technical apps. Its polygon rate is about the same as the Permedia2 but its fill speed and visual quality are better.

The Permedia2 offers the most solid/robust OpenGL implementation with the better polygon rate. Its main limitation are its z-buffer and lack of truecolor at 1280x1024 resolution.

 

• Windows NT Service Pack 4 RC1

 

• Rendition v2x00 OpenGL ICD w/3DNow!

 

For our money, Best Data’s ArcadeFXII is the clear winner. In a flood of me-too Voodoo IIs, the ArcadeFXII’s low, low price can’t be beat. Even if you have a P200 or K6, Best Data is making it hard for you not to trade up your accelerator. Likewise, if 1024-by-768 resolutions and consistently high frame-rates across resolutions are important to you, then the ArcadeFXII is even more attractive when you consider the costs of buying two Voodoo II accelerators.

• Velocity 4400 AGP Review
• Velocity 4400 PCI Review

 

The MX300 is promising a new era of 3D audio. However, empty promises are becoming almost commonplace in the computer industry (I won't mention Nvidia), but Diamond has a proven track record of bringing excellent products to the consumer, so look for the MX300 to be the trend setter for the next generation. The newest Monster Sound is going for the exceptionally cheap price of $99.00, which, when you look at the tech sheet, makes it an unbelievable value.

 

We're pleased to announce the availability of a new driver package for users of the 3D Blaster Voodoo2 (all models) under Windows 95 and Windows 98. This package includes: The latest 3Dfx reference drivers (the same ones described later on this page) An integrated installation program Control panel enhancements, including an overclocking slider and improved ergonomics

• Creative Labs 3D Blaster Voodoo2 Win9X Driver

 

• Sound Blaster PCI128 (Win9X - version 1204 - 762 KB)
• Sound Blaster 16/32/AWE32/AWE64 (Win9X - Revision 15 - 958 KB)

 

Supposedly it has many bug fixes for games (including Final Fantasy VII), fixes for socket 7 boards, optimised for the Unreral Direct3D patch and brings the speed back up to 4.11 levels

• Matrox G200 Beta Driver (Win9X - version 4.26 - 1.6 MB)

 

MILPITAS, Calif., Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Maxtor(R) Corp. (Nasdaq: MXTR - news) today announced the DiamondMax(TM) 4320 series of hard disk drives, the latest addition to the award-winning DiamondMax family. The DiamondMax 4320 offers capacities up to 17.2 GB, UltraDMA compatibility and an average seek time of 9.0 ms.

 

With the AX6BC, AOpen decided to fix some of the short comings in the AX6B. They moved the ATX power connector to a better position, they added a PCI slot and only sacrificed one DIMM and one ISA slot in terms of functionality. Unfortunately, they made a mess of the AGP Turbo jumper, which will cause lots of problems. The movement of the floppy connector behind the Slot 1 connector was not particularly wise either. Don't get me wrong, this is still an excellent board and for some people will be better than the AX6B. However, AOpen had the chance to take a near perfect board and make it perfect and did not take advantage. As such, I'd say they are overall equal. Pick the AX6BC if you want 5 PCI slots. Pick the AX6B if you use a 66MHz CPU, want to overclock to 100MHz bus, and do not want to insulate B21.

 

• Matrox Overclock (Win9X - version 2.0.0 - 169 KB)