NEWSPAGE DEUTSCH RIVASTATION - There´s something FISHY when you can read this!

12.01 - Voodoo 4/5 doch erst in April?

Thresh´s Firingsquad hat einen Bericht von der MacWorld 2000 Messe, in dem über den Entwicklungsstand des Voodoo4/5 basis-chips VSA-100 berichtet wird. Demnach gibt es bisher nur Prototyp Chips, was bedeuten würde das die Karten im Handel erst anfang April verfügbar seien. Auch scheint noch unklar zu sein welche Kartenversionen zu Anfang verfügbar sein werden.

That's what we were wondering once we learned that cards based on the VSA-100 chip weren't on display at MacWorld. We learned that 3dfx has just taped out first silicon on the chips, they haven't received any samples yet. Keep in mind this is for the PC unit, not the Mac product which is even further behind. We pressed the issue a bit further and learned that 3dfx still feels they can have cards based on the VSA-100 processor available in retail channels by April for the PC, but exactly which Voodoo lines that will be is still unknown.

This is very disappointing news indeed. If you recall the introduction of the Voodoo3, limited samples were available just in time for Comdex, and Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 cards were selling at retail in early April.

If early VSA-100 samples are good and 3dfx can ramp up production quickly enough, they just might make their release date. If not however, and the product could slip into the second quarter, cutting revenue for the first half of 2000.

As mentioned earlier, since samples of the VSA-100 don't exist yet, 3dfx is still unsure which products will be available at launch. It's possible that all cards in the Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 line will launch simultaneously but it's also possible that 3dfx may delay the launch of certain models like the more expensive Voodoo5 6000. Nothing has been determined yet. Over the next four weeks, 3dfx should have a clearer picture of the status of the VSA-100 cards, but until then it's anyone's guess.

Den kompletten Bericht gibt es hier.

11.01 - Misc Reviews

Mouse Pad Wars - 3D Wars
Schneider MPMan F20 - PCMag
Ten Maxx Detonator Kühler - The Techzone
Ricoh RW7060A CDR - Gamewire
ASUS P3C-E - Riva 3D

11.01 - Erazor X² Test

Von TweakPC kommt die News das sie die ELSA Erazor X² getestet haben. Erazor X² Test.

11.01 - Video RAM chache guide

Adrian Wong schickt eine Mail das er sein neues Video Cache RAM guide online hat:

I have just posted the new Speed Demonz Guide on Video RAM Caching! Here are some interesting details about this guide :-

- Over 20 tests were conducted using 7 different benchmarks! - The whole article weighs in at 13 pages with a total of 57 comparison charts! - Total size of article = 610KB

Check out a clip from the guide :-

"Also, remember that the needless traffic through the AGP (or PCI) bus will reduce the bandwidth for texture transfers, etc... The traffic runs both ways since for the L2 cache to store the data from the video RAM, it needs to be sent in through the AGP bus; and when that memory region is read, the data is sent back though the AGP bus to the graphics chip. Because the AGP bus is pipelined and is mainly used for texture reads from the system RAM to the video RAM, the data reads from the A0000h-AFFFFh region of the video RAM to the L2 cache will cause the flushing of the pipeline since the transfer is in the opposing direction and such data cannot be transferred via the SBA port."

Adrian's Rojak Pot

11.01 - 3dfx Interview

Extreme Hardware hat Interview mit 3dfx´s Peter Wicher gemacht:

Extreme Hardware: The various Voodoo4/5 cards specs look great, but could you state the full performance specifications and 3D features for a single VSA-100 chip?

Peter Wicher: Sure. VSA-100 is a major step beyond the Voodoo3. It renders two pixels per clock with a single texture per pixel or one pixel per clock with two textures per pixel. At the minimum 166MHz this provides 333Mpixels per second or twice the fill rate of Voodoo3. We improved the raster efficiency by about 20%, we increased the texture cache size, we added new texture combines and alpha blends, and we added guardband clipping, with a –4k, 4k range, which significantly offloads the CPU from doing 2D clip operations to speed up applications.

We focused on image quality more than anything else: 32-bit ARGB rendering, 24-bit depth buffer, 8-bit stencil buffer, 32-bit textures, 2Kx2K texture size, up to 64MB of frame buffer, 4X AGP, and both FXT1 and DXTC texture compression, and new alpha blends (Alpha subtract, src*src, dst*dst) are the key features. It’s important to note that our texture cache can store textures in compressed format thereby greatly increasing the effective cache size, increasing performance. As far as full-scene AA goes, a single VSA-100 is able to create two jittered sub-samples per pixel. We don’t think that’s enough to do high-quality full-scene AA or digital cinematic effects therefore those features are only being enabled when two or four VSA-100’s are linked together in SLI.

09.01 - Neue Linux Treiber

NVIDIA hat neue Linux Treiber released. Neu ist ein XServer und GLX pair für XFree 3.3.5 und GeForce: NVIDIA Treiberseite.

09.01 - Reviews

ATi Rage Fury Maxx - Anandtech
ELSA ErazorX - 3DColony
Hercules 3D Prophet - Firingsquad

09.01 - NVIDIA´s Audio Pläne

Es mehren sich die Gerüchte das NVIDIA auch im Audiobereich einsteigen möchte. Ob dies einzelne Audio-Chips oder integrierte Grafik/Audio Lösungen betrifft ist aber nicht bekannt. Auf Techweb gibt es einen Artikel dazu:

By designing audio products, the company can continue expanding beyond the PC and follow a path it struck through a recent development deal with workstation maker Silicon Graphics. Executives this week said they plan to bring an audio core to market late this year or early in 2001, but have not yet committed to either a discrete audio chip or an integrated graphics/audio IC

09.01 - ELSA Gloria II Review

GamePC hat die ELSA Gloria II mit NVIDIA Quadro und 64MB Speicher getestet. Der Quadro ist für High-End applications unter Windows NT gedacht. Er besitzt eine veränderte Cache-Strucktur und kann auch Anti-Aliased Lines unter OpenGL darstellen.

At first glance, we thought we were looking at the wrong card. The GLoria II is astonishingly small for a 64MB video card, usually 64MB+ professional video cards take up full length slots and barely fit in most cases. This card, with twice the RAM as a normal GeForce, is quite a bit smaller than any we've tested. Elsa's custom card design, combined with large 8MB memory chips (most video cards have 2 or 4 MB chips) allow for this card to be nice and small, while staying just as powerful. The heatsink/fan combination is a little larger than your standard video card cooling set, seems the higher clock speed calls for a slightly larger heatsink than GeForce cards.

Das Review ist hier zu finden.

08.01 - AGP Sideband

Im Web ist zu lesen das man mit dem Registry Schlüssel [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\System] - "DISABLEAGPSIDEBAND"=dword:00000000 das AGP Sidebanding bei GeForce Karten aktiviren kann.

Allerdings zeigen Entech´s AGP List noch andere Programme danach aktiviertes Sidebanding an. Ein Test mit 3D ExerciZer zeigte auch keinerlei Performance Verbesserungen. Ein anderer Punkt ist das Sidebanding mit v3.xx Treibern auf TNT und TNT2 Karten auch ohne diesen Schlüssel funktioniert.

Der Eintrag scheint also nutzlos zu sein (Quaak)

08.01 - Neues Forum Online!!

Das neue Forum ist Online - d.H. wirklich neu ist es nicht, sondern es ist ein Update von DCForum99 zu DCForum2000. Neu hinzugekommen sind neben vielen neuen Smilies, Thread Hit Counter und einem Vote System (Man kann Noten von 1 bis 10(beste) für ein Thema vergeben) auch viele neue Admin Funktionen (Ich als Admin kann z.B. IP Adressen überprüfen!).

Neu ist auch eine E-Mail funktion die die Mail-Adresse von registrierten Usern versteckt. Mails verschicken können aber nur registrierte User. Die Menüs und Hilfe-Texte sind nun allerdings in Englisch (Das war nötig da es für lokale Versionen keine Updates gab!)! Verschieden Grafiken werde ich evtl. noch in dem alten Forum-look anpassen. Leider hat sich da die Strucktur etwas verändert, so das ich sie nicht 1:1 übernehmen konnte.

Wer die alte Version kannte wird sich aber direkt zurecht finden - enjoy :)

07.01 - Forum Upgrade

Ich werde heute Nacht das Diskussionboard von DCForum99 auf die neuste Version DCForum2000 upgraden. Dafür wird das Forum von 23:59 - 27sec bis 06:07-34sec (oder wenn es vollbracht ist) nicht erreichbar sein.

07.01 - Neuer Voodoo3 Overclocker

Oh, 3dfx news.... Es gibt eine neue Version des V3 Tweak Utils Voodoo3 Overclocker. Zu bekommen ist das Programm hier.

07.01 - Quake3 tuning guide

nV News hat ein update in ihrem Quake3 Tuning-Guide gemacht. Darin gibt es detailierte Benchmarks mit der Creative Annihilator und Annihilator Pro: Quake 3 Tuning Guide

07.01 - ELSA 3D Revelator Reviews

FullOn3D hat ein Review der ELSA Revelator gemacht:

While there are alot of ways to spend 60 or so odd bucks on computer related items, few, if any of them, will have the instantaneous affect, of making virtually all of your games worthy of a second look. The first time that face sucker in Half Life takes a leap atcha, and you fall out of your chair, you'll understand what I'm talkin' about.

Der Test ist hier zu finden.

Einen weiteren Revelator Test gibt es bei Rush3D:

From the games & programs that I tried; I had amazing results with Midtown Madness, Episode 1 Racer, 3D mark 2000, Final Reality and Homeworld. Unreal Tournament and other 3D action shooters looked OK. Freespace just didn't look right. I found that in racing games, the games become easier to play because of the depth perception of roads . 3D stereo will add a kick to your 3D action shooters but it will also make them harder to play. The reason for this is that when you add depth perception to a 3D game, another element is introduced: Focusing. Just like real life, focusing on a object in front of you (such as a gun's cursor) means a lost of focus of further objects (such as the enemy), and a focus on the enemy will mean a lost of focus of the gun cursor. A lost of focus will result in a "double vision" which is not a good thing when it comes to aiming. That's why is easier to shoot a real gun with only one eye open, since closing one eye will get rid of the focus-loss double-vision effect. The bottom line is that in almost every game will look better with the 3D Revelator.

Dieser Test liegt hier.

07.01 - Viper II zu gewinnen

Good old Ingo schickt die News das Computer-Nachrichten eine Diamond Viper II verlost. Dafür müsst ihr angaben über euren Rechner machen.

06.01 - Scientific Code - Performance Vergleich

CPU Review hat die Performance von 'Scientific Code' auf Athlon, P2, P3, Celeron und SGI getestet. Hier das Ergebniss:

AMD is faster than Piii (about 1.3x) even considering the extra MHz it is still faster.
Dual Piii is nearly 1.8x faster than single therefore Linux SMP works Piii's do perform significantly better than Pii's
Older SGI O200's are actually quite good considering they are 2.5yrs old.

Der komplette Artikel ist hier zu finden.

06.01 - NVIDIA v3.68 Treiber

nV News berichtet über inoffizielle v3.68 NVIDIA Referenztreiber. Zu bekommen sind diese hier.

06.01 - Tim Sweney Interview

Voodooextreme hat ein Interview mit Epic´s Tim Sweeney (Unreal, Unreal Tournament) gemacht in dem auf die Problematik mit Grafikkarten, deren Support und Features eingegangen wird:

VE: Out of all the upcoming and released 3D cards, which in your mind seems to be the most promising? Why do you think that? Which 3D chip maker do you see becoming the industry's leader in the future? Which upcoming or released 3D card will perform the best in your engine?

TS: NVidia has already taken the lead, and has the combination of technical talent and management strength that they are capable of sustaining their lead for the next several years of 3D hardware advances. That's assuming they don't get complacent and start taking it easy after the NV20 ships! :)

3dfx has some outstanding technical talent, Gary Tarolli and crew, but I question whether the company as a whole will be able to execute to the extent necessary to dominate the OEM market, a revenue stream which will be essential to fund next-generation hardware development. "When it's done" works ok for game developers, but it's a dangerous strategy for developing hardware in the presence of agile competitors.

I see the 3D hardware market as supporting two thriving mainstream companies, a high end player: probable
NVidia, but I wouldn't count 3dfx out of the race; and one low-end, high-volume leader, currently ATI, with strong future competition coming from Intel and S3.

For our next engine, there will be a major emphasis on Hardware T&L, hardware per-pixel lighting, and procedural vertex shading -- basically, the key advancements of DirectX8 and DirectX9. We're going to be totally focused on standard 3D API's, Direct3D and OpenGL, so the 3D card makers who work closest with Microsoft are going to be supported the best. Now that consumer 3D hardware has surpassed what high-end SGI machines were once capable of, there's no longer a clear roadmap for future features, so the future is being plotted out by Microsoft, key game developers, and key hardware makers, with Microsoft's DirectX team being the de facto rallying point.

Das komplette Interview gibt es hier.

04.01 - Quake3 Demoloop

Ich habe ein Quake3 Loop-Demo (endloses Timedemo) gemacht mit dem man sein System dauerstressen kann, z.B. um zu sehen ob die übertaktete CPU/Grafikkarte auf Dauer mitspielt. Erklärung im Readme.txt. Download: Quake3 Demo Loop

04.01 - Forum

Es geht wieder um die Diskussion das Forum Protected zu machen, also eine Anmeldung zur Pflicht zu machen. Grund dafür sind User die dauernd den Namen wechseln oder anonym andere "flamen", also beledigen etc. Während ersteres dafür sorgen würde das man die Leute besser kennenlernt dient letzteres vor allem einem besseren Klima. Bei der Registrierung wird automatisch ein Passwort vergeben das per E-Mail zugesandt wird. Wer nicht registriert ist kann die Beiträge nur lesen, aber keine neuen Beiträge posten. Nun geht es darum ob das Forum offen bleiben soll wie bisher oder ob eine Login-Pflicht her soll.

Wer etwas dazu sagen möchte kann dies im Forum in dem Thread "Passwort-Pflicht?" unter "...meiner Meinung nach" tun.

04.01 - Creative Unified

Creative hat eine neue Version des GLide Emulators Unified released. Dieser unterstützt nun auch die GeForce Karte Anihilator. Probleme beim Download mit Eingabe der Seriennummer (auf der Karte zu finden, nicht auf der Box) sind inzwischen behoben. Download: Unified

04.01 - Athlon/GeForce und AGP 2X

Auf Aceshardware gibt es eine News zu Athlon und AGP2x:

Use powerstrip, create a shortcut on your desktop and change the target in the properties to: C:\WINDOWS\PSTRIP.EXE /AGP:2X

And his method works! I verified with PCI list and I definitly saw AGP 2x enabled. Here are the benchmarks to show you the small but existing difference between AGP 1x and AGP 2x: (benchmark system: Athlon 700, Erazor X² (Geforce DDR at 120/300), Gigabyte GA7-IX, Windows 98 SE)

Benchmark	AGP 1x	AGP 2x	Boost
Quake 3 High Quality	82.4	84.1	2%
Quake 3 High Quality at 1024x768	56.9	58.8	3.4%
3D Mark 99 Max (1024x768x32)	6545	6659	1.7%
Expendable 1024x768x32	79.8	80.1	0.3%

It seems like DirectX games don't care about AGP 2x or 1x, but you can notice a small boost in OpenGL Games. Of course the higher resolution the more important AGP 2x gets as more data is moved from the main memory to the videocard.

ThanX to Aceshardware!

04.01 - Beam Screensaver

Von der Bravo Interactive Group gibt es eine neue Version des OpenGL Screensavers Beam:

The screensaver features deep-space action taking place in an asteroid field surrounded by beautiful nebulas and living stars where small but powerful and dangerous ships fight for their lives. To give the battle some emotion and diversity camera view spins from one ship to another in numerous ways creating very eye-catching scene.

Download: Beam Screensaver (2,4MB)

04.01 - Neue VIA Treiber

VIA hat neue Treiber für die Chipsätze VT82C586B und VT82C596 released:

the 4-in-1 Driver v. 4.18a
AGP Driver 3.59
USB Filter Driver