October 24 - 31, 1998
Archive

The sounds of people screaming and writhing in pain were particularly disconcerting, there's no scarier feeling than hearing someone being killed slowly and then homing in on their position by sound alone. My girlfriend even refused to play the EAX version of Unreal after just five minutes at the helm, stating that it was "too real" and was "freaking her out". (She says that about the Mossad's striking resemblance to actor Tom Cruise as well….)

Most force feedback controllers on the market today use a gear system to provide the effects. Logitech scrapped that idea for one that makes much more sense. Steel cables provide the effects in the Wingman Force, allowing for much less wear and tear on the internal mechanisms. Imagine plastic gears gnashing against each other to provide the effects in other controllers. Now picture steel cables on pulleys moving back and forth. It just makes sense. Add to that Logitech's track record in creating durable equipment, and you can imagine how solid this unit is.

 

Anand Tech has done a review of Iwill's revised Super 7 Motherboard, the XA100Plus.  This board should be ready to handle AMD's K6-2 400Mhz and 450Mhz when they come out, check out this bit:

The board features clock multipliers from 2.5x up to 5.5x, theoretically providing support for the upcoming K6-2 450 and above processors.  On the PCB, like its predecessor, the XA100Plus allows for FSB selection via a single jumper as mentioned above for the now common 66, 75, 83, and 100MHz FSB settings.  The core voltage manipulation on the revised XA100Plus has changed greatly since the time of the first XA100, instead of offering a limited number of choices, the board allows for selection of CPU core voltages from 2.0v to 3.5v in 0.1v steppings for the most precise overclocking and system tweaking.  From within the Award BIOS Setup, you can enable/disable options such as the increasingly popular keyboard power-on as well as enable custom configurable FSB settings, such as the 110, 115, 120, and 125MHz settings described above in the mainboard specifications.

Here is another Microsoft Digital Sound System 80 review from 3DFiles.   Seems like everyone wants to get their hands on these things to test that new USB digital audio capability without a sound card.

Software rendering has improved to tremendously in the past few years. Six or so years ago, the first true polygon based engine games were released. These games ran in 320x200x256 color graphic mode, used linear texture mapping, and ran horribly slow on computers at the time. Now games like Unreal have software rendering engines capable of filtering, 32bit color, transparencies, translucencies, smoke, colored lighting, and more. The latest software renderers (Unreal) are so powerful that they actually outperform some of the earlier hardware accelerators, not to mention produce more eye pleasing output as well.

The major increase in performance and visual appearance of software renderers is largely due to the increase in processor speed, and the development of multimedia instructions, such as MMX. The latest floating point SIMD instructions (3DNow from AMD, and soon KNI from Intel) will even further increase the speed of software renderers by freeing up more processor cycles for rendering and by providing very fast services, such as square roots and floating point divisions.

 

• Guillemot Phoenix Driver AGP and PCI (Win9X - version RC4 - 2.9 MB)

 

Well, what sets this pad apart from any other? Microsoft has incorporated a motion sensing technology in this gamepad. Turning on the sensor with a push of the button (a light on top of the Freestyle turns green when this is on, red if off), you can tilt the joystick instead of pushing on the directional pad to provide movement. No directional button presses are necessary anymore. In a sense, the gamepad is now acting in an analog type mode. This is helpful in driving or flying games where you don’t want to turn too much or too little. The farther you tilt the gamepad, the more you turn. If you were using the directional pad, any presses would essentially be on or off, no incremental turning would be possible. Also, no lag was evident when using the gamepad and reaction time was instantaneous when tilting the gamepad. With that in mind, the gamepad offers a more accurate and precise control in the motion-sensing function than the directional pad function. And this feature takes no thinking or time to get used to. Since most of us naturally move our body and arms when playing games with gamepads, the natural tendencies are translated to the game via the Freestyle with little or no effort on your part. It’s the ultimate in intuitive interfacing.

• Hercules Terminator Beast Driver (Win9X - version 0.94 - 2.0 MB)
  

The 3Dnow! unit is about 2-2.5 times faster than the pipelined FPU. When a FPU-intensive game or application is well optimized for 3Dnow! you can expect that the K6-2 will outperform a equivalent PII by about 10-30%, but most games are not enough optimized for 3Dnow! to show its potential. Should K6-2 owners be dissapointed in 3Dnow!?

3Dnow! is at least 2x more powerfull than the a well designed pipelined FPU, but you will need a lot more polygons to really feel that. 3Dnow! is ahead of its time. And yes, games of today still require a lot from the x87-FPU. In that case, overall FP-performance of the K6-2 lowered by the non-pipelined FPU. The K6-3 does not have a pipelined FPU, but the 3Dnow! performance will be higher and a tweaked FPU will help as well. AMD needs time to develop a really powerful pipelined FPU and a product to last until it's done.

No, K6-2 owners should not be dissapointed, a K6-2 is inexpensive, it performs in most 3D-games almost as good or as good as the PII and the Celeron A, and it has very sturdy integer performance (a bit better than the PII). Will there be games where the K6-2 outperforms an equivalent PII? Well, it’s not out of the question. Remember the Directx 6.0- Winbench 3D benchmarks? A K6-2 333 was as fast as a PII-400. Well, Directx got finally the attention of game developers. Version 6.0 is finally a well-rounded API with acceptable performance. If some games make full use of the Directx 6.0 API, a K6-2 may actually outperform the PII by signifigantly larger margins. By then, KNI will be here

 

• Sound Blaster Live! Driver (Win9X - Revision 2 - 2.4 MB)

 

Ultimately, the Banshee based Raven is an excellent performer, at an excellent price. What price? That would be retailing for $150, oh but wait! There is a $30 rebate in the box! So that comes to…(give me a moment)…$120! I’m sure some of you are thinking "waitta minute, I know of Banshee cards that are under $90!". However, the bundle is worth around $120 itself, so hey, if that bundle really tickles your fancy, then think of it as buying 3 games and getting a free Banshee! But in all seriousness, that bundle has to have something that you’d like, so it’s still a great value for a great card. This is definitely a gamer’s card. Not as much for the hardcore gamer, but for the casual gamer, this is a really outstanding choice. I don’t know why more PC OEMs haven’t picked this thing up.

 

• DirectControl (Win9X - version 2.0.6a - 113 KB)
• Matrox Overclock (Win9X - version 2.0.4a - 166 KB)

 

• Diamond Viper V550 Driver (WinNT4)

• Ensoniq AudioPCI Driver (Win9X - 491 KB)

 

• miroHISCORE˛ 3D/HISCORE 3D Driver (Win9X - version 2.11 - 3.2 MB)

 

One final interesting feature the K7 will have is a 72 bit data bus, where information transmitted over the bus is encoded using error-correcting codes. This means that data being transmitted to and from the K7 will be much more stable and error free than it would otherwise be on other processors. This should be a great boon to overclockers out there, as the K7 will probably gain quite a bit of extra stability under harsh conditions that other CPUs wouldn't naturally have. Since AMD has always been much more overclocker-friendly than Intel has a history of being, this should be wonderful news to those who enjoy pushing their hardware to the extreme.

• Crative Labs SoundBlaster Live!
• Turtle Beach Montego A3DXtreme
• VideoLogic Sonic Strom Pro
• Yamaha 192XG
• TeraTec Xlerate PCI
• SIIG SoundWave 128

 

ASUSTeK will provide VGA cards powered by the 3Dfx Banshee chip. There will be two different configurations, one with 8MB SGRAM and the other with 16MB. The performance will be 10% higher than others with SDRAM on board.

The 8MB model, AGP-V3200/8MB will ship in early November. Whereas the 16MB model, AGP-V3200/16MB will be shipped out late November.

 

In particular, the Katmai architecture should allow for greater realism in 3D software applications, where developers will be able to smooth the surfaces of objects and include more objects in a given scene. Katmai's improved floating-point performance should also allow designers to include more complex light sources, and to render shadows and reflections that shift in real time.

Real3D's Starfighter AGP at the core is a average performer, what really will attract people is the price.  I looked on Pricewatch and saw the full retail box for around $60.  Considering this is the price for some games out there, its a great deal for the thrifty gamer out there.  But what about the hardcore gamers?  Well the performance is decent if you only want to play in 640x480 but it drops steadilly after that.  When the newest games come out that pushing the envolpe of graphics technology, the Starfighter will not have the speed to catch up.

 

The ACS45.1 speaker system is an upgrade to the popular, award-winning ACS45 PowerCube(TM) and features a larger, wood cabinet. This addition enables the listener to experience a fuller range of audio with a deeper, richer bass. The ACS45.1 is a new and improved version of its predecessor, the category leading ACS45 PowerCube(TM). The new system includes two 6 watt satellites as well as a larger, 20 watt, wood subwoofer which delivers more enhanced low frequency audio playback. This provides the consumer with a richer, fuller multimedia experience while still maintaining a small footprint at the same price of the ACS45. The new wood subwoofer also provides vastly improved bass effects to audio playback.

 

Overall, this drive will run with the best of them, featuring fast access times and some amazing throughput scores. With all of the IDE CD-ROM drives out there, this one takes the cake as the fastest and most innovative CD-ROM drive on the market. If you are still a die-hard SCSI fan, then just hold out, since a SCSI version is promised before the holidays; but for those of you who cannot afford the added expense of a SCSI card, this is a solid performing unit. Zen Research seems to be a company to keep your eye on in the future. This kind of innovation is what keeps this industry forever changing, and forever growing.

 

• Canopus Spectra 2500 Driver (Win9X - version 1.10.04 - 5.09 MB)
• Canopus Spectra 2500 Driver (WinNT4 - version 1.10.03 - 3.53 MB)

Of course, Matrox isn't the first company to think of an all-in-one card, but all of the competitors have had serious problems that crippled them in more than one area. For example, ATi's "All-In-Wonder Rage Pro Super-duper Turbo", despite the addition of multiple "extra-fast" adjectives to the name, was simply a dog in 3D, and pretty mediocre in 2D. And everybody knew it.

So what if their video and TV capabilities were the best in the world? Nobody cares, since Windows and Quake are more important. Right?

Matrox has done it right. Take their award-winning G200, with its best-of-class 2D and very respectable (and very usable) 3D, and plug in their award-winning Rainbow Runner TV. What a winner!

 

• Diamond Viper V550 Driver (Win9X - version 4.10.01.0239 - 3.24 MB)

 

• 3DMark 99 (Win9X/NT4 - 15.4 MB)

 

• This product includes a display driver and the Matrox PowerDesk for Windows 95/98 for the G200 only (including G200 PCI).  Includes DirectX6 and Flat Panel support and optimizations for Unreal and Final Reality.

• Matrox G200 Driver (Win9X - version 4.26 Beta - 1.7 MB)

 

Silicon Magic today introduced the SM84L512K32 high-speed synchronous graphics DRAM.

This product is organized in a 256K-word by 32-bit by 2-bank configuration, making it ideal for 3D graphics and games applications as well as high-speed communications applications. With clock frequencies initially up to 167 MHz coupled with ``CAS Latency 2'' performance of 143 MHz and single cycle block write, the SM84L512K32 extends Silicon Magic's leadership in high-speed specialty memory chips. The company also plans to have a 200 MHz memory chip by year end.

``Demand for high-speed SGRAM continues to rise because of the bandwidth hungry requirements of graphics intensive 3D applications,'' stated Rick Horiuchi, Silicon Magic's Senior Manager of Memory Marketing. ``By working closely with the leading high-end desktop graphics chip makers, we've learned a lot about the requirements for advanced memories for these demanding applications over the past four years. Our expert memory designers have the flexibility to take advantage of the best world-class wafer fabs to bring our customers the highest performance memories possible.''

The SM84L512K32 is ideal for high-speed 3D graphics applications because it conforms to JEDEC specifications and supports all major graphics controllers' functional requirements. Each chip provides bandwidth ranging from 572 MB/sec at 143 MHz to 667 MB/sec at 167 MHz. Command and data are synchronized to the rising edge of the system clock to enable precise control and predictability. A programmable mode register enables the device to be customized for maximum system performance with burst type, burst length and CAS latency. The 8-column block write and write-per-bit modes can also enhance overall system performance

 

I suppose that the Desktop Theater 5.1 delivers what it promises: an affordable, easy-to-set-up decoder/speaker system for the PC. But don’t expect top-of-the-line sound reproduction system, that even dogs can hear.

If they market themselves right (with better packaging and manuals, and give us longer cables dammit!), they could probably sell truck-loads of these to newbies just entering the consumer DVD (or even DIVX *ptui*) market. Unlike LDs, the market penetration of DVDs has been quite rapid, offering a relatively inexpensive medium for excellent video and sound reproduction. However, most home users lack a decent home-theatre setup, which is what the Desktop Theater 5.1 delivers. And they will be wowed!

 

With the addition of the fan, and the high-spec SGRAM, Diamond has done something that each of does in the privacy of our own bedrooms (and is illegal in 22 states still)....they simply "overclocked" the Fusion.

See, most Banshee cards clock in at a paltry 100MHz core speed and a 110MHz memory bus speed. A couple models available boost those numbers to a 110MHz core speed and a 115MHz memory bus speed. Diamond has surpassed all of those figures for the Fusion, and when our PowerStrip diagnostic program spit out the numbers, open comments of disbelief were heard from the staff:

115MHz core speed, 125MHz memory bus speed.

 

• Voodoo2 NT4 Driver (WinNT4 - version 2.0)

 

• Enable / Disable Anisotropic Filtering
• Added the following options for Powerdesk support:

  BitPackFont, Circles, CursorShapeSync, Ellipses, FastBlit, FontCaching, Force DDC, HiColorMode, PaletteWriteSync, Rectangles, Device Bitmap Caching, Filtering when Scaling, MMX and Polygon Acceleration

• Matrox Overclock (Win9x - version 2.0.4 - 166 KB)

• New Nitrane 1.24
• Better sound quality
• Better corrupt MP3 handling
• New experimental "Aural Stimulation" mode -- Winamp Prefs->I/O->Nitrane Config->General. Try it!
• Added .ZIP skins support -- drop a .zip skinsfile into your Skins directory (usually C:\Program Files\Winamp\Skins) instead of unzipping into a folder.
• New Winamp Installer and Uninstaller
• Bugfixes aplenty.

• Winamp (Win9X/NT4 - version 2.04 - 509 KB)

 

The most hyped feature of this set is "true USB audio", meaning pure digital audio running through your USB port. With the DSS80 set (or any other true USB speaker set) and Windows 98's sound card emulation, your system will bypass your sound card and send the audio straight through your USB port and straight to the speakers. What this means is you can have crisp digital audio, without a sound card in your system, a pretty new concept that many people might not understand. Basically, the sound card is in the speakers. In this particular set, the DSP (Digital Signal Processor) is on the top of the subwoofer. Be warned though, not all CD-roms can handle digital audio extraction (playing music CD's with no sound card), you might want to check and make sure with your CD-rom drive manufacturer if your's supports this feature or not. If it doesn't, than you have to have a sound card in your system to play music CD's.

 

Users running their 300MHz Celeron processors at 450MHz will be the first to tell you that we've definitely come a long way from the days when a 386 running at 25MHz could win the front cover of a computing magazine.  At the same time, we're reaching the limits of what a well manufactured processor and a $30 heatsink/fan can offer us.   With the first barrier keeping us from overclocking the current generation of processors beyond the limits we've already pushed them to obviously being heat, the question has been posed time and time again, and now we'll take the first steps towards a simple answer...get ready to beat the heat as AnandTech takes a look at alternative cooling methods at their best.

 

• Blackmagic3D Review by Tweak3D
• Blackmagic3D Review by WarZone

 

Due to cost considerations, all but the very high-end (and very expensive) computers have utilized DRAM for main memory. Originally, these were asynchronous, single-bank designs because the processors were relatively slow. Most recently, synchronous interfaces have been produced with many advanced features. Though these high-performance DRAMs have been available for only a few years, it is apparent that they will soon be replaced by at least one of the protocol-based designs, such as SyncLink or the DRDRAM design from Rambus, Inc. and Intel.

 

As the tests show, the PentiumII has the slight edge. This is probably due to the larger L2 cache. Quake2 benchmarks were only about 1 fps apart at the most, while Unreal score for both were within 1 fps of each other. Gamers will not see that difference at all. Norton's Benchmark was a bit surprising. Though the cache of the Celeron is running at full clock speed, the 128K doesn't seem to be enough. Both are great choices, but you'll probably have better luck locating a Celeron 300A. Performance is very close, but the PentiumII seems to be more stable. Neither CPU was absolutely stable at 504MHz. High heat output is suspected of causing the errors. The heat problem was most pronounced in the Celeron 300A. This is probably due to the integrated cache. Both the heat of the CPU and cache are combined in the Celeron, whereas the PentiumII separates the CPU from the cache on the module. The Celeron 300A was about $85 cheaper. When you compare either to the output of a PentiumII 450, it's a bargain to get either the Deschutes PentiumII 300 or the Celeron 300A.

 

• Quantum3D Raven Driver (Win95 - version 1.2)
• Quantum3D Raven Driver (Win98 - version 1.2)

 

• Fixes black screen problem when exiting certain D3D games (Rainbow 6, in particular)
• Fixes SLI V-Synch disable issue
• Adds SLI Monitor detection switch
• Fixes issues when Wicked3D is used with the Vengeace
• Other bug fixes

• Wicked3D Driver (Win9X - version 2.8 - 3.6 MB)