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The NVidia Pages of 3D-Gaming report about new RIVA 128 referencedrivers v3.12a that can be found on Microsofts WHQL pages. There is a Win95 version (Download) and NT4.0 version (Download).
This is no offical release! So use them on your own risk! Mybe itīs better you wait until the offical release is finished. Besides of the announced new TNT drivers there shall be new and faster RIVA 128/ZX reference driver

"We got a number of things coming down the pipes here at NVIDIA. The next 3 months are going to be incredible here....Im not sure if you know, but we will be releasing a new rev of drivers in the next week. The coolest thing about these are that not only will they enhance your DX6 features in both the TNT and TNT 2. In other words, these drivers are forward and backward compatible (past and future products). These things are going to rock.

TNT 2 will be announced in the next couple of months. We also have that here in house and the visual qualtiy along with the performance is incredible."

Note: There are some rumors that there are TNT Boards that are equiped with a faster TNT(-1) chip running at 120MHz. These are not confirmed yet! It seems that these chips are first TNT-2 prototypes that are used only for internal test for card developers.

"In Europe 3Dfx is currently negotiating with Elsa and Guillemot. STB did not use to have a strong name in Europe, so that 3Dfx needs other strong OEMs in this area of the world. The future plan of 3Dfx however is to build up a strong brand name recognition for ‘3Dfx graphics cards’ in Europe soon too, which could be a problem negotiating with the two above mentioned OEMs"

You can find the full report here.

On February 1, 1999, we will do some major changes to the internet services of the ELSA Support.

*** KnowledgeBase ***
A new knowledge base, based on a database software with a WWW interface, will give you quick and direct access to support information. For example you will be able to choose your product from a list and have a look at all available FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions).
A powerful full text search interface will allow to search for keywords or any desired phrase.
The ability to choose from several possibilities to search for information will give you the chance to search the way that suits you best and use all available information conveniently and independently.
Regular updates of the database with new support information based on all incoming questions guarantees an up-to-date information pool.

*** Inquiry forms ***
New inquiry forms that can be filled in directly on our web pages provide a new level of convenience. With a mouse click you can access the latest available drivers, software and FAQs for your product. A number of input fields for technical details will garuantee that all required information is sent to the support team. These are the best conditions for quick and direct answers to your questions without complicated checkbacks.

*** More efficiency - More availability - Better support ***
These new tools are a great step forward for our online support services: Frequently asked questions are answered directly from our knowlegde base, all other questions willbe answered by our support team.
Since we would like to establish the new services uncompro-misingly und with all our efforts, we decided to close the  newsgroups at the same time. An optimal organization requires a concentration on the most efficient tools. Of course we will answer all questions posted before the switch in the same way as we did before.
We would like to say thank you to all readers and posters who assisted the ELSA support and all users of our products with their helpful contributions!

As of February 1, please use our new support services.

Descent3 Demo - Outrage Entertainment updated his Descent3 Demo with a 1MB sized patch to version 1.1. A list of changes can be found here.. Download at 3Dfiles: Descent3 Demo Update

"Thank you for taking the time to check directly with Creative Labs. In the past, we've made reference to our development of an optimized miniGL driver for the 3D Blaster Banshee and 3D Blaster Voodoo2. We've learned quite a bit about optimizing for game performance in the development of that driver, and there's the possibility that in the future we can transplant that technology to other platforms, like the RIVA TNT. However, we have not formally announced any plans to do so at this time."

Viper3D made a second part of its comparsion of Diamond Viper V550 drivers. This time with more benchmarks beside of 3DMARK99:

Which Driver Should You Use?

Quite simply, whichever works best for you. As far as bugs go, the only noticeable flaw I found during testing was that the WHQL (0252) drivers incorrectly displayed blood splatters and explosions in Half-Life D3D. Note that when running with the OpenGL driver, all seemed normal. Out of the currently available drivers, the NVIDIA reference .0048 drivers are the most recent release, and therefore should offer the most bug fixes and best compatability. The WHQL drivers *seem* to offer the best overall performance, but may contain bugs that the Reference .0048 drivers don't. In fact, given the delays in acquiring WHQL status, the .0252 drivers may actually be older than some of the other Diamond drivers tested.

You can find the whole article here: Viper V550 Driver Testing - Part 2

New TNT reference drivers in sight. NVIDIA will release a new diver next time that will bring a major performance increase. It is expected to get an increase of partly 20 to 25% in Direct 3D. 3DMARK99 climbs from ca. 2100 to 2480 (Drivers preversion 1006)

Aceīs Hardware released a second article about installation of Videocards and troubleshoting. In addition thereīs a full Win98 installation-guide: Video Card Troubleshooting Part 2: Solve Your Troubles Once and For All!

Thereīs new info about the upcoming Unreal patch v2.21 (Not the inoffical v2.21 patch postet two days ago....new stuff!) in the  EpicMegaboard:

Specifically, 221 will contain a completely new OpenGL driver. Unreal owners with Riva TNT cards or other cards with a good OpenGL driver will find the game to completely kick ass now. Configuration under OpenGL is as easy as changing one line in the .ini (no more driver registry hacks) and running the game. Tim has tested the OpenGL driver under TNT and a few other cards...I don't have a complete list of what cards have been tested, but Isure Tim will post one to the Tech Page (unreal.epicgames.com) when he's finished. The new OpenGL driver will allow for fast hardware acceleration in a window, so UnrealED will be able to use OpenGL now

Source: RIVAZONE

Diamond released new Windows NT4 drivers for the Viper V550. Info aboout changes in the new drivers v0203 can be found here. Download: Diamond Viper V550 drivers

EPIC informed me that the patch Iīve posted earlier that day is not the announced patch that will bring more visiual enhancement for TNT cardīs but an 'old' not released patch!
The new enhancements will be possible due an special OpenGl driver! - Nevertheless: I like these screenshots ;-)

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Pfuscherīs Techware hat ein Review von 7 TNT Karten gemacht. Dabei kamen die Diamond Viper V550, ELSA Erazor II, Hercules Dynamite TNT, STB Velocity 4400, Creative Labs Graphics Blaster TNT, Canopus Spectra 2500 und Leadtek Winfast S320 zum Einsatz.

Adrian Wong made an interview with Ashley Saldanha of EnTech Taiwan, the developer of Powestrip and other tools. One point in that interview are the fast memory timings for TNT.
In addition Adrian reports of a new feature in the latest Beta Version of Powerstrip that enables you to set custom memory timings for you card:

You can reach that menu after a double-click on the tachometer (at memory settings) in the overclock menu. But you can only try to find the best settings for the Memory chips on your board.
During installation of this version from Adrians page AVP gave me a Virus Warning, so be carefull!!

Hercules driver version 4.10.01.0048
Diamond driver version 4.10.01.0220
Diamond driver version 4.10.01.0239
Diamond driver version 4.10.01.0245
WHQL driver version 4.10.01.0252
NVIDIA reference driver version 4.10.01.0048

The results of the Hercules and nVidia reference drivers make no surprises but the reults of the Diamond drivers are amazing. They are 300-500 points faster in 3DMARK99 !!! So the Diamond drivers play in another league here. The question is: Are these drivers simply 'optimized' for 3DMARK99 or can you also find that increase in D3D games??
Would be sad if we loose 3DMARK as a secure benchmark. Unfortunately Viper3D did not run comparsion runs with other D3D games.

I didīnt find that point in any PCI soundcard test in magacines. This should be included in future! The best 3D accelerator is useless if the CPU charge- caused by the soundcard ist too high.....but Iīm wondering a bit, you could read in these magacines that PCI soundcards are no longer a brake-block, in contrast to ISA soundcards...

I had many postings in my discussion board in the last time, so it was time to search for a new clear arranged solution. I found that at DCScripts. Thanks to David from DCScripts for helping me out with installation problems!!!!

The new board is splitted in two areas:
The RIVA Tech Zone and the RIVA Games Zone. The Tech Zone is for installation, benchmarks, hints and so on. The Games Zone for everything about games.

Most of the postings are german, but you can also post in English! We are one world!

If you should still see the old board after clicking in the left menu (I know, discussion is writen with 'c' in english..<g>) you should reload that frame in your browser....or clicking here.

Note: Like the news page, you should reload the pages in the discussionboard some times or set your browser to compare the request with the site thatīs stored in the browsercache. If you do not, the old pages are loaded from the cache!

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