October 10 - 16, 1998
Archive

• Wicked Vengeance Driver (Win9X - version 1.30 - 4.8 MB)
• Quantum3D Raven Driver (Win95 - version 1.1)
• Quantum3D Raven Driver (Win98 - version 1.1)

 

• ADI Microscan 6P
• Hitachi SuperScan Elite 751
• ViewSonic PS-790
• Optiquest V95
• Sony GDM-400PS

 

• 19Kb Stream (RealAudio)
• 19Kb Stream (RealVideo)
• 19Kb Download
• 85Kb Download

• 3Dfx Banshee RC2 Drivers (Win95)
• 3Dfx Banshee RC2 Drivers (Win98)

 

RICHARD BELGARD, a microprocessor-patent expert in Saratoga, Calif., says that Intel’s new chip, code-named Merced, might infringe on a patent owned by graphics chip maker S3 Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif., which bought the patent and nearly four dozen others last year for an estimated $10 million from a defunct company called Exponential Technology Inc.
       S3 and Intel are locked in intense licensing negotiations over the patent, say people familiar with the matter. If Intel indeed infringes on the patent, S3 could represent an obstacle to Intel’s plans for deploying its new computer architecture, which represents a multibillion-dollar investment by Intel and its partner Hewlett-Packard Co. Many of the world’s computer and software makers have said they will launch products based on Merced.

Without a doubt the 3Dfx Banshee is a 2D/3D chip to be reckoned with and made me forget all about the Rush fiasco. The Phoenix Banshee gives you the power of a Voodoo2 at an incredibly low price point. Including Half-Life: Day One in the game bundle was a great move and with 16 MB of memory, you'll be set for the next wave of 3D games to hit the market. This is not one of those cheap cards that are obsolete the minute you buy them. While the Phoenix is certainly an impressive 2D/3D card, the performance hit in multi-texture games and the 16-bit color limit are also potential issues that you should weigh. Even with those aspects in mind, I can't help but think 3Dfx and Guillemot have really got a winner here, and I think it's high time that more gamers experience exactly what has made the 3Dfx name so special.

 

Gamers Depot is always excited to see products come to market that will completely knock us off our seats. The Creative Labs SB LIVE! is just that kind of product. If you are asking what kind of difference this will make in your games, let's just say that the Live! will do for your audio what a Voodoo2 SLI does for your graphics. No true gamer should be caught without one of these!

 

I have to congratulate AMD for a battle plan that’s laid out well. I am honestly impressed and I am not impressed easily, as you know. Intel will have to come up with some real hard work this time. I believe that only a fully new designed CPU will have a good chance against K7, so that they will need to get Willamette done a lot earlier than planned.

Both the Maxi Gamer Phoenix PCI and AGP 16MB are retailing for $89.99 (after $20 mail-in rebate). Order can be placed by calling toll free 1-877-484-5536 or directly at Fry's Electronic Stores, Best Buy, Micro Center, Aventure Electronic and Business Depot.

The Maxi Gamer Phoenix comes bundled with the Half Life Day One version, a special edition of Tonic Trouble and the playable demo versions of Star Wars - Shadows of the Empire, Incoming, Hexen II, Redline Racer, S.C.A.R.S., Sub Culture and Star Wars - Jedi Knights. In addition, the Maxi Gamer Phoenix is completely compatible with the more than 250 games currently developed to take advantage of Voodoo2 and Voodoo Graphics chipsets. Optimized for all major development environments and for the Pentium II architecture, the Maxi Gamer Phoenix fully protects the user's investment

 

The excellent quality of the P6Pro and the great new features of the VIA Apollo Pro chipset make this board a great choice for performance-minded upgraders and provides lots of flexibility for overclockers. While I encountered some minor issues while installing the board, it eventually worked without a hitch and provided some exciting tweaking possibilities. The one feature I missed on the overclocking front is voltage tweaking. While all Tekram mainboards come with a well-tuned switching voltage regulator, I would still like to see the option of manual voltage tweaking. Again, if you plan on getting this board I advise you have Windows 98 installed. I recommend the Tekram P6Pro-A5 to anyone who wants interesting features like the 95MHz bus speed or the asynchronus RAM option, especially if you want to use your old SDRAM.

 

• Support special DDC routines with all G200 BIOSes
• CRTC protection is set and Vertical Interrupts are disabled for all VESA modes with G200 AGP & PCI
• Support for for EDID structure revision 2.0 (256 bytes EDID) for all G200 BIOSes
• Support for VBE/DDC 2.0  for all G200 BIOSes
• Fixes a DDC problem when entering Windows, now interrupts are disabled during DDC with G100 PCI, and all G200 BIOSes. This addresses the issue where a DDC monitor would be detected as an unknown monitor.
• New NTSC parameters for G200 TVO AGP BIOS.
• Progbios now supports the G200 PCI
• PCISPY now supports the G200 PCI
• TSRVESA.  First release, adds VESA support for Flat Panel in DOS.
• VBESETUP checks for Flat Panel and will not load if it is detected.
• MGAMON checks for the Flat Panel and will exit if it is detectetd.

• Matrox Unified BIOS (version 3.44 - 700 KB)

 

Since I started reviewing Voodoo2 cards, I've not seen one that I wouldn't be ready to install in my personal gaming machine. Some offer low price, others a great warranty from a well-known company, and still others attempt to market specialized features to the discriminating buyer. The miro HISCORE 2 3D is just such a card. With 12 MB of 100 MHz Silicon Magic ram, TV-out and one of the most amazing driver features sets on the market, the HISCORE 2 3D has been designed for the high-end market. Many have called the original HISCORE 3D "the European Pure 3D", and we can extend that sort of description to their Voodoo2 as well.

 

Metabyte has announced some price cuts to their line of video accelerators, check it out:

Wicked3D Vengeance - $149
Wicked3D Vengeance plus one H3D System - $249
One W3D Voodoo2 board - $149
Two W3D Voodoo2 boards (SLI) - $298
One H3D Eyewear System - $129
One W3D Voodoo2 board and one H3D System - $249
Two W3D Voodoo2 boards and one H3D System - $398

 

Riva3D has done a review of the Canopus Spectra 2500 (Rivat TNT).   It's not too shabby actually, there are a lot of pictures of the control panel interfaces and a few benchmarks.  Check it out.

After testing 12 different controllers on 11 different games, we unanimously settled on the Gravis Xterminator gamepad as our overall and sports (non-racing) champion, and InterAct's UltraRacer PC as our racing controller champion.

 

• S3 Savage3D DirectX6 Reference Driver (Win9X - Version  6.11.01 - 782 KB)

Well you've seen the figures and they probably speak louder than any words I can use here. Put simply the Direct3d performance rocks even with early drivers and the card is also doing a sterling job accelerating OpenGL for all your Quake2'ers. It remains to be seen how well the TNT and its nearest competitor, the Voodoo2, perform when true DirectX6 games appear which take advantage of their twin texture mapping ability. But on current Direct3d applications TNT is King of the Hill for the moment, and if Microsoft have their way, perhaps Direct3d scores are the ones that you should look hardest at.

 

• AMD Quake II 3.19 3DNow! Update

 

If you are looking for a good Quake card with an affordable price-tag, the G460 is defenitely for you. With good 2d performance and solid 3d performance at 640x480, this card hits the mark for it's target audience. While it won't outperform a Banshee or Savage in a million years, that's not the point. Our hardware review system is currently under review, but I'd say this puppy gets an 8/10 overall, based on it's price/perfomance ratio.

 

Following McKinley will be Madison, based on 0.13-micron technology. Both Merced and McKinley are based on 0.18-micron technology. Intel then plans to release the Deerfield processor, which will target the volume workstation and server market.

 

With three general execution units and three address calculation units, Meyer described the K7 as "a wider superscalar machine than the Pentium II."

On the floating-point side, particularly for X87 code, the difference between the K7 and the Pentium II "is even more apparent," he said. The K7 has two double-precision X87 data paths, which are fully pipelined, compared with one for the Pentium II which, Meyer said, is not fully pipelined for double precision. "If you want to do an X87 instruction on the Pentium II, in one sense you cycle the instruction through the pipe twice. So in some ways for double precision X87, the K7 has four times the peak execution rate."

Because the 3DNow multimedia instructions are single instruction multiple data (SIMD), in every register there are two single precision numbers, and two pipelines can operate on that data. "So, essentially, the K7 provides twice the performance [available on the Pentium II] for X87 code," Meyer said.

 

For its part, ATI's designers tried to reuse as many blocks as possible in their fourth-generation accelerator, the Rage 128. The chip relies on the Katmai New Instructions of the Pentium II or the 3Dnow instructions of the AMD K-6 2 to handle geometry transform and lighting work, according to Bob Feldstein, director of engineering for ATI Research Inc. (Marlborough, Mass.).

Rage-128 is aimed at the PC mainstream, where ATI is now the dominant supplier since unseating S3 Corp. The 8-million transistor design will sell for about $35 and offer performance of about 100 million multi-textured pixels/second. On the CDRS benchmark used for OpenGL applications, the chip rates about 60, as compared to the high-end Gamma 3 workstation cards, which nab a score of about 1,300.

 

Reinstall Windows 98 and an hour later I’m back up and running. But wait what’s this?!! I was getting random crashes in any and all programs. My once stable system was now turning on me (one of the sure signs of the apocalypse :). Anyway after reading a few newsgroup posts I took note that the 24bit color depth was a bit unstable so I jump down to 16bit color. Also utterly horrible was this vertical jitteriness at 1280 x 1024 @ 75hz, the jitteriness goes away at 60hz but it gives me (and just about everyone else) a headache (Note: 1280 x 1024 @ 75hz worked on my Velocity 128 perfectly, it may just be a bad board as no one else has posted with this experience. I’ll post an update when I return this card for another Fusion).

 

Is this the much sought after Voodoo2 killer? From what I've seen it doesn't look like it. The Voodoo2 still has several advantages, the main one being glide support, which many games use exclusively. However the TNT is the best 2D/3D graphics adapter on the market. Which one is the best for you depends on a variety of things. The TNT certainly provides better image quality, but it doesn't provide the glide support. If you're going for the ultimate performance plateau you could consider Voodoo2 SLI, which can be had for as low as $230 (yes, $230 for 12 meg reference design SLI). With Voodoo2 prices as low as $99 for an 8 meg board, it's a tough choice, but since frame rate isn't really a factor, the TNT is most likely a better choice, since it provides better image quality. 

I would recommend waiting until the Savage3D based boards and drivers (not just the PA70 reviewed) mature before considering this board as a high performance board. If you want a fast board for around $100, there really isn't another option...

 

• Creative Labs 3D Blaster Banshee OpenGL Driver (WinNT4 - 1.1 MB)

 

• Support for ALI and VIA chipsets
• Correct some fonts corruption in VGA.
• Correct a cursor problem when opening a windowed DOS box in Windows.
• Added a Test to distinguish between an 8 Mb and a 16 Mb memory device.
• Added Support for modes : 
  1600x1200x256   2Mb 
  1600x1200x64k   4Mb 
  1600x1200x32k   4Mb

• Matrox Unified BIOS (version 3.43 - 601 KB)

 

• Real3D Starfigther AGP w/TV Out (Win9X - version 0303 - 1.3 MB)
• Real3D Starfighter AGP w/o TV Out (Win9X - version 0303 - 1.2 MB)

 

The part will be called the M II+, Slater said, and will ship in the spring of 1999, using the Super 7 bus.

Cyrix said it also plans to add a graphics core to the M II+, producing an integrated processor-graphics chip more powerful than its similar MediaGX chip Cyrix is now shipping. But that chip, which Cyrix has code-named Cayenne, has been delayed, Slater said. Originally planned for release near the end of 1998, the Cayenne product will now ship in April 1999, he said.

 

• Matrox Mystique G200 Review
• Canopus Spectra 2500 Review

 

• K7 Technology Presentation (Powerpoint - 2 MB)

Jalapeno includes an 11-stage deep-pipeline, a completely new floating point unit, a 3D graphics engine and numerous memory enhancements, all of which combine to deliver outstanding improvements in overall system performance.

The design philosophy behind Jalapeno reflects National Semiconductor's corporate vision -- to make low-cost, high-performance Windows®-compatible computing power available for mainstream business users and consumers. This latest core technology will be the soul of the M3, Cyrix's next generation processor, expected to debut in the fourth quarter of 1999 in the 600 - 800MHz speed range.

"We designed Jalapeno to deliver the highest performance engine for the mainstream PC market," said Stan Swearingen, vice president of marketing for Cyrix. "We found that the most significant bottlenecks in system performance result from memory latency. Since our goal was to optimize overall system performance, we focused our attention on minimizing memory latency and maximizing bandwidth by implementing an innovative on-chip caching scheme and memory controller. The high level of integration minimizes die size, which means we can manufacture at low cost and provide the best value in a high-performance processor."

 

The STB Velocity 4400 is a stunning piece of hardware. The 2D performance is top notch and the 3D performance leaves little to be desired. If you're putting together a brand new computer, we'd wholeheartedly recommend this card. If, however, you already have a nice 2D card and are only in the market for 3D, it might make sense to pick up a Voodoo2 instead. With the recent price drops, the two cards are about the same price and the Voodoo has glide support. You can always get a TNT later. In fact, the best thing to do is to have both. Either way, the Velocity 4400 will do amazing things for your video game addiction.

 

As you'll be able to see in the table of results, the Glint GMX based cards which feature the Glint Gamma processor are the fastest OpenGL cards for professional use, but though they don't get over 26 fps in Quake II... The Diamond Viper V550 which performs far less in professional applications shows a whopping 69 fps in that same game.. How can that be explained?

Well 3D games cards are optimized for full screen, small polygon count, textured scenes (as is typical with games), while professional cards are optimized for rendering in (small) windows using very high complexity scenes. Professional cards ooze with polygon crunching power, but they simply lack fill-rate to get high fps's in full-screen games.

 

The Microsoft(R) Windows(R) compatible AMD-K7 processor with 3DNow!(tm) technology offers seventh-generation design features that distinguish it from previous generations of PC processors. These innovations include a nine-issue superscalar microarchitecture optimized for high clock frequency, a superscalar pipelined floating point unit, 128KB of on-chip level one (L1) cache, a programmable high-performance backside L2 cache interface, and a 200 MHz Alpha EV6-compatible system bus interface with support for scalable multiprocessing.

The AMD-K7 processor is expected to be available in the first half of 1999 and is planned to operate at clock frequencies faster than 500 MHz, based on AMD's 0.25-micron process technology. The AMD-K7 processor will leverage existing physical and mechanical PC infrastructure.

 

Rise Technology Company today unveiled at Microprocessor Forum the mP6(tm) family of microprocessors, the industry's first microprocessor designed from the ground up to meet the needs of the Basic PC market.

Rise Technology demonstrated a number of Windows-based multimedia applications running on the mP6 microprocessor. Through its innovative design, the mP6 microprocessor is able to provide superior multimedia capabilities that were previously only available in expensive high-end performance PCs. In addition, the microprocessor's low power consumption makes it ideal for portable applications as well as Basic PC desktop systems.

Today's Basic PC products typically feature adequate performance on business applications, but force consumers to live with substantial tradeoffs such as inferior 3D graphics and poor soft DVD quality. In fact, this limits the functionality of home PCs in precisely the areas where Basic PC purchasers are most interested in using a computer -- interactive education, entertainment, digital imaging, and other consumer-oriented applications. Rise Technology specifically designed the mP6 microprocessor to fit these needs.

 

Today 3Dfx released their long awaited "DX6 optimized" drivers for the Voodoo2 chipset. Incorporating the Voodoo2's multi-texturing ability into DX6 wasn't easy, but 3Dfx's software engineers have pulled it off.

That's the good news.

Here's the bad news:

Unless you've got a game that's specifically written to take advantage of DX6's mutlitexturing ability *cough* NONE *cough*, you won't see any form of performance increase between these new drivers, and the ones Voodoo2 owners have been using for months.

For Pentium II owners, regardless of clock speed, if you don't mind using two cards to handle your video tasks, the 3Dfx Voodoo2 still seems to be the best solution from an overall performance standpoint.   Unfortunately, this doesn't carry on into the value standpoint as you are throwing much money away when you choose to go with a Voodoo2 due to its 3D-only nature.

If money is a definite factor, as it is for many of us, the 3Dfx Banshee is the best overall graphics accelerator for the money.    While the best overall graphics accelerator regardless of price may be the nVidia Riva TNT, for the money, it seems as if nothing can beat 3Dfx's Banshee.  The only chipset out of the roundup which was never intended to dethrone a previous champ, the Banshee proved to be an excellent performer on all platforms, offering support for Glide based games in addition to Direct3D and OpenGL titles as well as the backing from the largest company of its kind, 3Dfx.

 

The Mystique is a good all-around 2D/3D accelerator, but compared to such great game accelerators as the 2D/3D RIVA TNT and 3D-only Voodoo 2, it comes up short. Current games run relatively well, but we worry about it being able to keep up with titles coming out at the end of this year and into 1999.

 

• Voodoo2 Software Kit v3.01 (RC1) and Control Panel - AGN3D
• Voodoo2 Software Kit v3.01 (RC1) and Control Panel - Blue's News
• Voodoo2 Software Kit v3.01 (RC1) - 3DFiles
• Voodoo2 Control Panel - 3DFiles

 

• Voodoo2 Software Kit (Win9X - version 3.01 - 2.5 MB)
• Voodoo2 Control Panel (Allows for vsync to be disabled - 380 KB)

 

Now that a wide variety of next-generation multi-function video cards are on the market, we thought it was time to round up the best ones and do an in-depth comparison between them. We looked at performance mainly, but we also evaluated the different bundles, drivers, and the degree of each card's "intangibles" to find which card would most please the highly critical buying audience. Entries included cards based on the Voodoo2, Banshee, TNT, G200, and Savage3D chipsets.

The emphasis for the rankings were based from the gamer's perspective, as the majority of SharkyExtreme readers are dying to know which card will allow them to best experience the joy of upcoming games like Half-Life, SiN, Heavy Gear 2, and Tomb Raider 3.

 

AMD officials plan to offer a more comprehensive overview of their next-generation K7 processor at the Microprocessor Forum, which opens in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday.

The upcoming chip, due out in mid-1999, is expected to surpass the performance of Intel's Pentium II line in all areas.

On Tuesday, Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) is expected to announce further details of its Katmai processor at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif. Not to be outdone, rival AMD (NYSE:AMD) will show off its latest 3-D enhanced processor, codenamed "Sharptooth," and reveal details of its next-generation K7 processor.

 

3Dfx Interactive(R) Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX) today announced new high-performance DirectX(R) drivers for Voodoo2(TM) that shatter all previous 3D graphics performance records, scoring 665 on the GameGauge metric when running in SLI configuration. The new drivers, combined with the unique 3Dfx SLI configuration of Voodoo2, offer 40 percent faster performance than the closest competitive product and are specifically optimized for the multi-texturing capabilities and other new features of DirectX 6. The performance improvements offer up to a 50 percent performance increase for multi-texturing Direct3D(TM) games over the previous drivers.

Additionally, customers will see a dramatic reduction in board pricing as a result of significant drops in memory component costs over the last six months. The Voodoo2 SLI configuration is expected to sell for less than $300 (U.S.), while an 8MB, single-board Voodoo2 is expected to sell for less than $100 (U.S.). These new prices will be a key element of 3Dfx's latest marketing campaign known as the "Power of 2," which debuts today. As part of the promotion, Guillemot will offer a pair of 12 MB Voodoo2 cards for a special "Power of 2" pricing of $229 (U.S.).

Voodoo2 SLI Tops Performance Records Voodoo2 SLI has set new game performance records in several categories, delivering the highest-ever 3D scores on GameGauge and on various time-demo benchmarks of multi-textured game tests. In tests supervised by Jon Peddie & Associates, the Voodoo2 SLI configuration scored 665 on the GameGauge metric.

The new drivers offer increased performance and added functionality for all Voodoo2 solutions. Most notably, these enhancements include:

• Fully optimized DX6 driver implementation with support for full speed, single-cycle, single-pass multi-texturing and new flexible vertex formats.
• D3D performance optimizations offer increased performance of up to 50 percent, particularly when using the Voodoo2 SLI configuration.
• AMD(TM) K6-2(R) 3DNow!(TM) support has been incorporated for enhanced performance of up to 60 percent on optimized games running on AMD machines equipped with the K6-2 processor over games and drivers that have not been previously optimized.
• H3D(TM) Stereo glasses support is incorporated into the drivers, which give add-in board makers the ability to deliver stereo-ready capabilities.

 

When it comes to building a better gaming rig, there is one critical component that no one can live with out.  No matter what you do to make your rig scream: 3D boards, 2D boards, memory, CPUs, hard drives, etc...you still have to be able to display the image somewhere.  That's right, I'm talking about Monitors.  Often times, the monitor is the least discussed component on our systems.  How could this be seeing that the Monitor is the window to our computing worlds?

 

• Powerstrip (Win9X/NT4 - version 2.29.2 - 738 KB)

 

Demo1.dm2, Demo2.dm2, Crusher.dm2, Massive1.dm2, Unreal timedemo, Forsaken Nuke.dem, Forsaken Biodome.dem, Mon2.dm2, etc. What is the difference between all of these benchmarks? What limitations do these benchmarks expose? Why are Crusher results always lower than demo1.dm2? How come Mon2.dm2 runs faster than a Voodoo2 on just about any AGP board? All of these questions will be answered, in detail with this article.

 

All in all, there are several speaker sets reviewed that are worth your time to look at, and maybe even to buy. While MidiLand's S2/4100's will give you the overall best quality, the pricetag will turn many people away. Same principal applies to the Logitech SoundMan Extreme's and Labtec 2612's, which are lower in price, but also suffer from quality drops. All in all, the Microsoft Digital Sound System 80 is my choice for the best speaker set in this comparison. It's sleek look, great features, true USB audio, and really good software make it the speaker choice to get. Even though it has a relatively high $259 price tag, once these hit the market, they are sure to be a hit.

 

Many companies are planning to make a lot of money off of the consumers with their "great products". Since we all know that we are going to buy more and more products, I will have to explain the future products and the "Good and Bad"... Which products should you avoid and which ones should you spend all your moola on. This includes processors, video boards, sound boards, etc

 

Yes many reviews have already shared with us the intricacies of the V2 chip.  Voodoo2 is very capable of bringing us killer graphics, speed, and the whole bit but whats it gonna hurt if I give you my scoop on it?   Many of you know AOpen was the culprit behind the whopping 16MB Voodoo2 and just so you know, I was told it wasn't cancelled...yet.  They do have one pre-production 16MB card in the testing labs but there has been too many problems with it, so production is out of the question (for the time being).  Of course most of us already know that the extra 4MB/texelFX chip isn't going to affect how we play since most games don't need the extra memory.  Anywho, lets get on with the review.

 

PowerStrip 2.29 has been released, with a handful of minor improvements and fix-ups, a broader monitor database, and hardware LUTDAC support for older cards with a TVP3026 (Permedia, Millenium, etc.) to allow color calibration under NT. (Banshee users with Voodoo cards may prefer to download the current beta instead, since it also includes a simple method for switching between Banshee and Voodoo Glide support - but be sure to read the release notes for instructions, and in the event of a problem simply re-install the drivers.)

• PowerStrip (Win9X/NT4 - version 2.29 - 738 KB)

 

As usual, performance comes with price. The Glacier 4500C will cost you a hefty $35 USD, but the money is well worth it. Overall, I believe that the Glacier 4500C is an excellent, and by far the best Celeron cooler available today, and is a must for every overclocker.

 

• CL GlideSwitcher RC (Win9X - RC)