September 5 - 11, 1998
Archive

Desktop:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0907/11eintel.html

Mobile:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0907/11emob.html

 

As you have read in this article, Canopus has come up with a definite winner. This bad boy includes the latest utilities and great documentation. Including a heatsink/fan, TV-Out and sound input is a great feature, considering that most people want these new features and it all comes with the board. The list price for the board is $199.99 and most likely a street price about $179.99, but don't hold me to that figure. It is a bit pricey but you are getting superb 3D performance and very good 2D with many normally add-on features included.

 

• STB Velocity 4400 Driver (Win9X - version 1.31 - 1.46MB)

While the performance of the card isn't exactly double that of a regular Voodoo2 card, you can definitely run games at higher resolutions with superior performance. With the X-24, you can run most 3D accelerated games at 1024x768 resolution with little speed hit over running them at 640x480 on a standard Voodoo2. While there's arguably little benefit from playing 3D shooters like Quake II and Unreal at the higher resolutions, running a flight simulator such as beta versions of Combat Flight Simulator and F-16 Aggressor at the higher resolutions allows greater clarity of the cockpit gauges and better visual fidelity of distant objects.

 

So what's my final conclusion? While the RivaTNT cards available are not quite what Nvidia promised us back in March, they still are relatively powerful performers, and users shouldn't be disappointed in their abilities. While I wouldn't recommend dumping a Voodoo 2 to buy a RivaTNT, if you're buying a new system the RivaTNT definitely deserves a serious look. As it stands right now, the RivaTNT is definitely the current king of the ring for 2D/3D combo cards when it comes to Direct3D performance. Nothing else in the Fall '98 lineup really seems to comes close.

 

• i740 Driver (Win 9X - version 2.6 - 1.9 MB)

• Updater (Win9X - version 1160 - 2.1 MB)
• Full Install (Win9X - version 1160 - 6.6 MB)

As far as Pure 3D power goes, the RAGE FURY looks to be able to hang with the big contenders.  The list of 3D features is quite impressive coming from a company known for their business graphics accelerators.  Expect to see a full Triangle setup engine, trilinear and bilinear filtering, edge and line anti-alaising, alpha blending, and bump mapping just to name a few of the RAGE FURY's features.  And with Full OpenGL support through an ICD and Direct X 6.0 support, ATI promised 60+ FPS performance  at 32bit color on the most competitive of games.

 

Here is a very good comparison of the Voodoo2 and the TNT from Riva3D.  Here is what I think sums up the comparison:

"So, where does all this leave us? Basically, it gives us the opportunity to see that whether you choose a V2 or a TNT, you've made a good choice."

Be sure to check out the whole thing, it has image comparisons too.

Fundamentally, supersampling (as the name suggests) involves sampling the original image at a higher resolution than is intended for the final image. The high resolution image is then filtered and downsampled to the lower resolution. Filtering the image before downsampling is what helps to remove the aliasing. Two commonly used filters for this process are the bilinear filter and the bicubic filter - both of these filters are available in Adobe Photoshop.

With supersampling you can render at any resolution, and downsample to any resolution. As the ratio between the high resolution and the low resolution increases, the quality of the rendering goes up.

 

With a new low price of $59, I highly recommend this sound card to anyone looking to purchase a 3D sound card with hassle-free installation and superb 3D sound. Most of you don't want to pay extra for any bundles, and this makes it the cheapest A3D sound card with BOTH a speaker output and headphone output, and better-than-average sound clarity.

So far, my impressions of Xitel are extremely positive. Their extra touches in their products and their knowledge of the gaming market make them similar to companies like Canopus. The Storm VX is also currently the bundled sound card in Alienware's mid and high-range PC gaming systems. Not bad at all!

 

Compaq, Hewlett-Packard Company and IBM today announce a joint development initiative to deliver significant improvements in the PCI bus technology standard. These improvements will give customers an unmatched level of performance for their current industry standard I/O systems, especially for high-end business critical applications.

This new technology, PCI-X, is an extension to the existing PCI bus, runs at speeds up to 133 MHz and provides the critical I/O bandwidth needed for industry standard servers running enterprise applications such as Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Ultra3 SCSI and Cluster Interconnects. PCI-X will provide customers with much needed PCI bandwidth and with investment protection because it offers backward compatibility with existing systems. PCI-X-based products will be available in enterprise-class products the second half of 1999.

 

Over 100 games on the WickedVision certified list
R2Flex with resolution override on all D3D games now!
- Almost all of the issues with D3D games are gone.
- run games in 640x480 & override to 1024x1024: the text looks great
Can run a Wicked3D board with any other brand board in SLI mode!
- If you already have 1 Voodoo2 board, buy a Wicked and get all the benefits of Wicked and run in SLI to boot.
Laser sight on any Glide game (QuakeGL games included)
- Performance for Quake 2 much faster on Glide.
Lots of bug fixing from the beta release drivers!
Improved CFG files for most Glide games!
- fixes problems and enhances the depth perception in many games.

X-Ray vision on Quake 2!
Here is a hidden trick to play with till the new drivers come out.
Using regedit (if you have to ask, don't try this at home) Enter
the key "XRayVision" as a DWORD (of value 16 or so) in the
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Metabyte\Opengl] section.
Using the Wicked3D Opengl wrapper run Quake2. You should see all of the
bad guys and secrets visibly right thru the walls.

 

"I have put together a killer Allgames Hardware Show for everyone this week! The show starts off with a review of the Matrox Marvel G200 All-in-one video card. The Marvel G200 is currently the only nextgen card that includes video-in, TV-Tuner and more! After the Marvel Review I kick the information highway in the butt with a review of Diamond's Supra Sonic II ISA Modem, or make that modems! The Supra Sonic II includes 2 modems on one card, allowing for up to 112kps download speeds! I actually had a lot of luck with this card and was pulling down a hefty 101kps at all times. If you do not thing that is enough material for you, I kick the bass with a set of Midiland S2 4100 speakers! These multimedia speakers pack 100 watts of power for the most realistic multimedia computer experience you can have. Just listen as the cops have to come to the door and make me turn the sound down.

You can catch the show live tonight at 6pm EST here (If it is before 6pm EST, this link will play last weeks show. You can also join us in chat and discuss the products that I am talking about on the show here."

 

The two-handed design takes a bit of getting used to. No diddling room here. In fact, the motion-sensing gizmos came straight out of car airbag technology (see, not everything comes from the space program) so strap in and fly! Just keep in mind that casual gestures can send you racing into the next bonus round or slamming into a wall. The motion input disable button comes in handy for those must scratch moments or for games that really don't adapt well to 'Tilt'. Those of you familiar with Microsoft's SideWinder pad's will recognize the distinctive look that has also been given to the Tilt. Well it's not the same but it's close. You'll need bigger hands but the rest of it is the same, the Dpad and the fire buttons. But it does have a throttle wheel, which seems like a logical addition. (NOTE: Hey Microsoft guys, how about some kind of centering mark so we don't have to neutral blind???)

 

The Pemedia 3 will also offer hardware texture management support called Virtual Texturing, a capability that automatically manages optimal placement of textures in system and local graphics memory. The PERMEDIA 3 architecture incorporates a demand-page texture sub-system that causes a dedicated DMA unit to download 256x256 pages of textures to local memory when they are first accessed. This will allow software developers to straightforwardly load all textures into system memory, while the hardware autonomously maintains an optimal working set of texture pages cached in available local graphics memory for maximum performance. Virtual Texturing will allow execution of textures from system memory in PCI, as well as AGP systems, provides optimized use of backplane bandwidth and avoids local texture memory fragmentation through virtual to physical texture address mapping.

So basically what do we know... Two versions of PVRSG will be ready for independent testing in November... if no unexpected problems pop up. One will be a low-cost, budget solution targeted at Computer OEMs and people who want to upgrade to good 3D for a low price. The other version will be a mid-range solution that has all the extra features that you need to be very competitive with everything that is on the market by then. PVRSG graphical feature set is very good and competitive with everything that has been announced. So no need to worry about lacking blending modes or other stuff because everything is supported. PVRSG framerate will be very competitive because of the huge advantages of deferred rendering ( not doing useless work ) , Videologic knows the competition and is very confident that PVRSG will be very a very competitive product. Frame rate numbers will show people what deferred rendering can do. The fact than hundreds of developers are developing for Dreamcast should also bring advantages, expect the PowerVR-brand to be widely known and respected. All development for Dreamcast is done on PCs with PVRSG boards this means that the developers will know PVRSG for PC and they will carry the special features used in their Dreamcast version over to the PC market. This time there will be more support for special effect volumes... several developers have already said that they are amazed by them and that they didn't know that PowerVR could do this until now. VideoLogic and NEC are working very hard to make sure that all important 3D engines, present and future, run fine on PVRSG and by not making any claims before they have facts they will build up quite a bit of trust.

Montreal, Canada — Matrox Graphics Inc. announced today that the Matrox Millennium G200 (8MB and 16MB), Matrox Millennium G200 SD (8MB and 16MB) and Matrox MGA-G100 (4MB) graphics accelerators from Matrox’s MGA-G200 and MGA-G100 Series of graphics accelerators are standard in select models of the Deskpro EP Series and are available as an option in the Deskpro EN Series. The MGA-G200 Series incorporates the first AGP 2X graphics chip on the market that blends superior performance in every application area without compromise, creating the best all around graphics and multimedia accelerators available. The MGA-G100 Series is engineered as a low cost, high performance AGP solution to satisfy demanding business users.

 

Although a Pentium II 300 may seem like more power than is necessary for a laptop user, high-powered applications like Outlook and Office, as well as the increasingly popular Windows NT Workstation, are creating a need.

Compaq is one of the first vendors to come out with a 300-MHz Pentium II laptop and DVD-ROM drive. The Presario 1810 comes with the new chip and DVD drive, plus 64 megabytes of memory, a 6.4-gigabyte hard drive, and a modem. The retail price is $3,599.

 

What is a bored LucasArts gamer to do while waiting for the new batch of games? Why not fork out thousands of dollars to upgrade your dying machine to a sleek new powerhouse? Don't got thousands of dollars? We're here to help! This guide will help you in your decision on how to spend your gaming dollars wisely. Or, if you think it's time to give up and buy a whole new machine, we'll tell you how much buying a killer, and an almost killer machine will cost you. So read on, and enjoy!

 

PALO ALTO--IBM will unveil today the world's smallest and lightest disk drive--a potential boon to the digital camera market and other consumer electronics devices with increasing demands for data storage.

Weighing less than an AA battery, the drive could be used in car-navigation systems to store maps, to pack addresses, schedules, and phone numbers in handheld computers, and could pose a threat to the most popular type of data storage now used in digital cameras, called flash memory.

 

In the first half of 1999, Intel will ship 300-MHz and 333-MHz Celerons that use a 390-pin chip form, called plastic pin grid array (PPGA). That form will make the chip about the same size as the Pentium Pro chip, but it will have a different pin configuration, according to Carl Larson, marketing manager in Intel's microprocessor group.

The pin-based form factor is cheaper than the slot-based design Celerons use now. The transition should take a few years, Intel said, so as not to inconvenience PC makers.

 

The only reason to go for the TNT instead of a Voodoo2 on a lower spec machine would be for the higher resolutions or better image quality. But playing Quake2 at 1600x1200 might look nice but at 10.1 fps on a K6-2 300Mhz it just doesn't shake a leg. The fact that the TNT does have the ability to render at 32-bit is of course nice but in practice the scores tend to be low. Incoming was still pretty playable though at 32-bit. But with parallel performance, the Voodoo Banshee makes more sense on the mid and lower end PC's of this world. And don't forget that you also get to play Glide based games with a Voodoo Banshee, which isn't an option with an Nvidia TNT. Why pay $50 more for a TNT, with roughly the same 2D and 3D performance (a lot of the time the performance is lower)? Beats me…

 

• 18k Stream
• Download (2.4MB - Playing time 17 minutes 58 seconds)

ECTS Convention, London UK, September 8, 1998 – 3Dfx Interactive© Inc. (NASDAQ: TDFX) and AMD today announced they will join efforts in optimizing 3Dfx's Voodoo2™ and Voodoo BansheeÔ drivers for the AMD-K6®-2 with 3DNow!™ technology. Driver optimization efforts are currently underway for complete support of the Voodoo2 and Voodoo Banshee accelerator cards. This includes driver support for all three standard application program interfaces: 3Dfx's Glide, Microsoft's Direct3D and Silicon Graphics' OpenGL. "We've taken full advantage of the 3DNow! technology in the AMD K6-2 processor with our optimized drivers and we expect to see performance gains of up to 30 percent with the most popular games," said Michael Howse, vice president of corporate marketing for 3Dfx Interactive. "These performance optimizations give mainstream home PC users an awesome gaming experience for an incredible value."

 

OK to solve the Velocity 4400 problems with BX6/EG BIOS combo and with the BH6 do this:

Set AGP Aperture size to 256 megs

Disable VGA palette snoop

Disable Video BIOS Shadowing/ Caching

 

ATI Technologies Inc. today announced that the RAGE(TM) PRO TURBO graphics accelerator chip has been selected by leading computer manufacturers Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, NEC and Packard Bell to provide the accelerated graphics port (AGP) graphics and multimedia acceleration for new PC systems using the just introduced 450MHz Pentium II and 300MHz and 333MHz Celeron processors.

 

Looking at Voodoo II VS Voodoo Banshee, there are some interesting remarks. First of all, Banshee outperforms Voodoo II in games that don't use both of Voodoo II's rendering engines. On top of that, a typical Banshee board will be cheaper than a single Voodoo II board. On the other hand, games that DO use both texture processors such as GLQuake (II) and a lot of upcoming DirectX 6 games will perform quite a bit better on Voodoo II. Also, a Voodoo II SLI configuration will always outperform a Banshee card, and for all it matters any other 3D card as well.... So the decision might be tough if you're on a budged... But for those who aren't: SLI will give you the best performance money can buy, and it will probably stay like that for another while. When you decide to go for Voodoo II there are a few things to keep in mind: First of all, the performance differences are very small, but still I advise you to get a card that uses 100 MHz, 25 ns EDO memory for framebuffer. Slower memory infects performance quite a bit. The things that differ most are the prices and the bundles. It's up to you if you prefere a big game bundle or a cheaper card. Anyway, you can't really go wrong with any of the Voodoo II's that I tested.

 

With the exception of the Obsidian2 S-12 AGP, all tested cards are PCI cards, and most come with 12MB of total on-board memory (4MB of frame-buffer memory and 8MB of texture memory). The exceptions were the 8MB Maxi Gamer 3D2 and the 24MB Obsidian2 X-24. Not surprisingly, the 12MB PCI cards all posted similar performance test results. In fact, we think any of the cards is a solid choice for upgrading your PC's 3-D gaming capabilities. When we factored in pricing, bundled software, and the quality of each card's driver control panel, however, we found the Canopus Pure3D II LX and the Diamond Monster 3D II the best cards overall.

 

The benchmarks clearly show that at 120mhz, the Savage3D is THE card to have. It easily beats the G200 scores, and edges the Voodoo2 by as much as 20%. The only place the Voodoo2 won was in Quake2 on the Demo2.dm2 level in 800x600, but the Savage3D showed it's superiority on the Massive1 map at every resolution, and even at 100mhz was faster than the Voodoo2. For the most part, even at 100mhz this card is a clear rival for the Voodoo2, but at 120mhz, the Voodoo2 is blown out of the water, and the G200 is just left by the wayside.

I was very amazed to see how fast Intel unveiled a new Celeron chip after the "old" Celeron proved to be a cripple. And (I remember someone mentioned it already) isn't it an amazingly fast development of a new chip (about 3 month) from design to production and even to delivery?

My guess is, Intel had this chip already in it's desks. I go even further and I state: "The Mendocino is the original PII design". Why? Well, 3 month is even fast from production to delivery. Not to mention the development.

One and a half years ago Intel had to hurry to throw a new chip on the market. AMD announced the production of 0.25 um K6 with 266MHz and more. And at this time (and the first time ever) the fastest CPU available was NOT an Intel CPU (K6-233). And AMD's K6 design was superior. So the not only had to increase the MHz but also the design of the PMMX to stay competitive.

But at this time Intel's 0.25 um process wasn't ready to production. And the 0.35 um process was far to big to include a on-chip cache. So they decided to make a smaller step and to produce a 0.35 um chip with off-die cache in seperate chips. At this time the didn't knew that AMD would have lots of trouble with their 0.25 um process.

But now, Intel's 0.25 process is nearly perfect. It is that perfect, that they now have to lock their chips because 95-99% (estimated) are 450MHz chips. And now they can throw in the original planned design with on-chip cache. The production costs of a Mendocino are (if at all) around 5-10% more than an "old" Celeron (estimated). And much less than a PII.

 

In fact, you don't even need some hacked glide2x.dll to get this to run, you can get Voodoo SLI to work with different board brands AND different ram configurations, if both boards are running the latest 3dfx Voodoo2 reference drivers (available from 3dfx's page). It will detect both boards as "Voodoo2 3D Accelerators", detect SLI in the Voodoo2 panel in your display controls, and allow you to play games up to 1024x768 - As of right now, I have two different Voodoo2 boards, a 12 MB board, along with an 8 MB board as the secondary, and SLI works perfectly, I'm running Q2 in 1024 at around 60-70 FPS.

 

If you are still in the market for a Voodoo2 card, Metabyte's Wicked 3D is a good candidate with its unique features. This Wicked3D review is from Voodoonation. Here is the part which tells about the unique features of this card:

The other difference with the other 3Dfx Voodoo2 boards is the Re2Flex. I know it sounds like the name of an android from Star Wars...Re2Flex is amazing. It let you customize your refresh rates and resolutions of your Wicked3D board. This fact is really cool by itself but listen to this. Re2Flex enables you to choose between more resolution options than any other Voodoo2 based card. A single board(!!!) is capable of resolutions up to 1024x672 with Z-Buffer, and when you have two boards in SLI configuration you can run as high at 1024x1024!  Re2Flex also allows selection of any refresh rate in 1Hz increments up to a max. of 160Hz! This lets you take full advantage of all the bandwidth available in your display monitor. If you wish to try those resolutions, do not forget to adjust your gamma settings since the picture tends to become a little darker.

I guess you are beginning to understand why this card stands out form the crowd but there is more. The WickedVision feature is an interesting feature in the Wicked 3D drivers.   It adds support for LCD shutter glasses to produce 3D stereovision at the API level. Click here for a list of games that are currently supported with WickedVision. Unfortunately I was not able to test the card paired with H3D glasses.

 

I noticed over at AGN3D, that Kurt has put up a 6 page review of the S3 Savage3D.  Here is his experience with the board:

After 2-3 months of theorizing about the Savage3D, it finally arrived in the form of a reference board. Lacking a digital camera, I'll just describe it briefly: Imagine a board like the one shown below but without heatsink or fan. Furthermore, the chip is much smaller than the one depicted below. And its running comfortably at 115 MHz, thanks to the 0.25 micron manufacturing process I guess. The Powerstrip utility from Entech fully supports the Savage3D chipset. Upping the clock to 120 MHz seems to have no adverse effect. However, all benchmarks are performed at 115 MHz. Due to time constraints, I've opted not to touch on Quake 2 benchmarks for the moment.

 

The difference between these two cards in normal use is negligible. 3D performance is the same at all tested resolutions, and the G200 is not fast enough to handle 3D applications at a reasonable frame rate above 1024x768. The 16MB versions were not tested at this time due to the unavailability of the 8MB upgrade module. Whether or not there is a difference with the increased memory is unknown.

    At resolutions over 1280x1024 there is going to be a minimal difference in 2D performance due to the faster RAMDAC of the Millennium G200 over the SD version. The limitations of the slower RAMDAC becomes apparent only when working with Monitors over 19" at high refresh rates.

    So what does this all mean? Well, it means that if you feel like spending the extra money on the SGRAM version, go right ahead. Will you be getting more performance out of it? It depends on the resolutions that you work with. If you are consistently using resolutions at 1600x1280 or above, it pays to have the faster RAMDAC. If you are below that resolution, then there will be no difference whatsoever.

 

• SLI Driver (153kb)

 

It's had the gestation time of an elephant, but VideoLogic's
second-generation PowerVR for the PC will be here before Christmas - just.

The good news is - it's twins. Well, almost. Hot on the heals of the first
3D accelerator chip will be a low-cost version with the same 2D and 3D
performance and support for flat-panel displays, but no TV out.
Both versions should yield boards from VideoLogic and its OEMs in December.
The first boards are likely to have a street price of around $100
(approximately £60), and the low-cost chip will be priced some 20 percent
lower. Whether the board vendors pass that all on to gamers is another matter.

 

I noticed over at voodoo eXtreme, a new 3D benchmark program called FogCity GL. Here is the info on it and a couple of  links to download it:

- demo
- fully configurable
- 3 benchmarks
- fully use of the OpenGL lighting pipeline (geometry processors are welcome :-)
- dynamic fog simulation
- configurable resolutions
- compare your results against PC's and small and really big SGI's
- 26 channel music from MAVERICK
- using MIDAS Digital Audio System (Copyright 1996,1997 Housemarque Inc.)

FogCity GL V1.0 (2.4 MB)
FogCity GL V1.0 (2.4 MB) (from voodoo eXtreme)

Tested with:
Win95/NT
RIVA 128 OpenGL
Permidia 2 OpenGL
Rendition V2200 GL
Voodoo 1/2:
    3dfxGL 2.1(No FOG)
    Voodoo Mesa

This program requires a full OpenGL driver. It will detect software emulation and will print a warning message.

 

I think this is the highest count of reviews on the same board within the same week that I've ever seen.  Canopus must have sent this board out to everyone, I wonder why we didn't get one.  Anyway, here is the Spectra 2500 review from Anand Tech.

BGR software has released new versions of its utilities.  Go to our utilities page to get Tweak-It 3.0.3 Final and Matrox Overlock 1.0.9.

I am getting nauseous over the word spectra :)  Ok, so maybe I was wrong when I said more than two opinions are good.  Here is a bit from this Canopus Spectra 2500 Review done by Avault:

The reverse pass-thru mentioned earlier is definitely worth a mention. If you have a 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics or Voodoo² board and want to use it with the SPECTRA 2500 (for GLIDE games for example, since only 3Dfx hardware will run Glide), you use the reverse pass-thru instead of the normal pass-thru cable. The reverse pass-thru cable takes the output from the 3Dfx add-on card and pipes it back into the SPECTRA 2500. By doing so, non-3Dfx output is not affected by the pass-thru cable (i.e. degradation) and the 3Dfx output can be output to a TV, via the SPECTRA 2500's video outputs. This technology works well; 3Dfx games look just as sharp (maybe even a little sharper) and normal desktop usage is not affected.

 

Click Here for the streaming version

Click Here to download (2.70 MB)

Blizzard Entertainment displayed a whole new side of Diablo II at ECTS. The as-yet unseen Act II was on display, along with two new character classes, a new environment, and, the biggest surprise of all, 3Dfx support.

The latter is probably the biggest new feature of Diablo II. According to Bill Roper, Blizzard's director of third-party development, the decision to add 3Dfx support was a creative one: "We wanted to see how we could use the features of 3D acceleration in a 2D engine." The addition of 3D support adds some subtle touches to the game. In addition to an improved frame rate, the ability to smoothly zoom in and out, and environmental effects such as fog and translucent water, Blizzard is using the coloured lighting capabilities of the 3Dfx chipset to good effect such as in fire spells that cast an orange glow on dungeon walls, ice spells that light darkened hallways with an ominous blue shade, and day and night that are defined by slight orange and blue glows shading the ground. A 3Dfx-compatible card will not be required to run the game.

 

Without a doubt, the Canopus SPECTRA 2500 is a gamer's best friend. The saying, "If you can't beat them, join them" comes to mind with the SPECTRA 2500. With all the flames going on about the TNT vs. the Voodoo2, the SPECTRA 2500 gives us the best of both worlds. And, with "Witchdoctor" technology, you can have your RGB and TV out too.

 

The proposed bus, called PCIX, is reportedly twice as fast as the current interface, which runs at 66 MHz. PCI is the bus that devices such as disk controllers and network cards use to communicate with memory, the CPU, and other devices.

On the 3D side of things, the Permedia 3 can chalk up to 250 Million dual-textured texels per second and 125 million pixels per second in raw fill rate (compared to the 3DFX Voodoo2’s 90 Mpixels/s). It will be able to do single-pass bump mapping with surface texture, ie, it can render a bump map AND apply a separate surface texture in a single pass. Texture’s will be tri-linear filtered in a single pass and the Permedia 3 will do full-screen anti-aliasing to get rid of your jaggies. Combined with anisotropic filtering (to kill isotropic over-filtering effects) and non-linear Z-buffering for accurate depth calculations, we're expecting some QUALITY 3D to come out of this baby. All this in glorious 32-bit color!

 

In closing, the Spectra 2500 is the most well-rounded high-performance video card on the market, bar none. Cyrellis highly recommends it to anyone desiring great features, great speed, and great quality.

 

-METABYTE'S BANSHEE
-EB'S BANSHEE DEAL
-NEW DIAMOND DRIVER INFO
-GLIDE INFO
-RED BARON 3D
-URBAN ASSAULT REVIEW