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Tuesday 15.02.2000 |
| 15.02 - AGP article Tom´s Hardware made an article about the features of the AGP-Bus: Already at the first launch of the AGP, specifications allowed two different AGP-speeds, AGP1x and AGP2x. The main differences between AGP and PCI start with the fact that AGP is a 'port', which means it can only host one client and this client ought to be a graphics accelerator. PCI is a bus, and it can serve several different kinds of clients, may it be a graphics accelerator, a network card, a SCSI host adapter or a sound card. All those different clients have to share the PCI-bus and its bandwidth, while AGP offers one direct connection to the chipset and from there to the memory, the CPU or the PCI-bus. (...mehr) 15.02 - GeForce Tweaks RIVA Extreme offers a collection of GeForce Tweaks for download: GeForce Tweaks 15.02 - S3 Tweak Voodooextreme reports that there´s a new version of the Savage-Tweak tool S3 Tweak available. Download: S3 Tweak 1.08b 15.02 - Video 2000 available MadOnion.com´s Video 2000 benchmark is now (since monday <g>) available for download. With this benchmark you can test you system on DVD replay and MPEG encoding. You can download it here. Articles about the bench are available here:
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Monday 14.02.2000 |
| 14.02 - 3dfx Interview FiringSquad made aan interview with mit 3dfx's Director of Product Marketing. They discuss topics like VSA-100, FSAA (full screen anti-aliasing), Bitboys, Playstation2, and others: FiringSquad: How does 3dfx view overclocking? There probably isn't as much danger in retail remarking as we've seen in the CPU industry, but is this a major concern? Will overclocking utilities be included in VSA-100 drivers? Any component that has a clock, can be overclocked. However, with Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 the performance is so superior that there is no need to overclock. We guarantee stability at the shipped clock rate. We do not forsee remarking our chips as a big problem. We know that our end users love to overclock, but there are some WHQL restrictions that come into play that affect what we can put in the box. We have to insure that what we put in the box is guaranteed to always work. I'm not able to tell you what we're going to do with Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 with regard to enabling overclocking but you just might find something different than what we did for Voodoo3 (which was nothing!). You can read the whole stuff here. 14.02 - BeOS 5 with OpenGL The new Version 5 of the Operation System BeOS is coming soon. Reason enough to ask Be about 3D support of the new version. Frank Boosman of Be Incorporated told me the following: Yes, BeOS 5 will support OpenGL. I can't yet tell you how extensive this support will be or which chipsets we'll support... keep watching us for updates as we get closer to release. 14.02 - Webride Mouseman vs. Intellimouse - The Techzone |
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Sunday 13.02.2000 |
| 13.02 - New Creative drivers Creative offers new 3D Blaster TNT2/Annihilator drivers for download that are based on NVIDIA reference drivers v3.68: Creative 3D Blaster v3.68 13.02 - UltraHLE will be back (soon)! The Nintendo N64 emulator UltraHLE which made very big news last year will be back soon with a new Version v1.5.0 erhältlich! This will no more only support GLide. It comes with full OpenGL support. You can allready watch some development screenshots on the website of UltraHLE. The program is not finished yet: OpenGL Developer Screenies 13.02 - Video 2000 article nV News made an article about MadOnion.com´s new benchmark Video 2000: Video2000 is the first benchmarking tool to evaluate cards based on their DVD playback and MPEG2 encoding measured against the total of the system in regards to AGP performance and CPU power. As such, this test will fit at home with power users who weigh greater importance on video cards and CPUs that can crunch digital video, vs the gamer who can use a tool to report on a better system or game tweak job. You can read the article here. |
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Samstag 12.02.2000 |
| 12.02 - AGP Wiz riva.hardware.ru offers the Creative Tool AGP Wiz for download. With this tool you can set the AGP mode (1x/2x/4x) of your NVIDIA graphics card, the sideband and fast writes option. It´s not clear yet if this tool works on all cards or if it´s only for Creative cards. There´s also no proof yet if sidebanding will really work on GeForce cards with this tool or if it´s only thought for TNT/TNT2 cards which run with sideband enabled by default with v3.xx drivers. 12.02 - Video 2000 No, It´s not the old video system Video 2000 but MadOnion.com´s new Video/DVD benchmark Video 2000. This bench allows to test the video performance (Video editing, DVD playback, and MPEG encoding) of your system:
Key Features of Video2000 include: - Task-focused results for areas such as DVD, encoding
& decoding MPEG2, HDTV, Netmeeting and Home Theater
The benchmark will be available on monday: Pressrelease |
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Friday 11.02.2000 |
| 11.02 - Voodoo4/5 News Björn 3D got news about 3dfx´s Voodoo4/5 CeBit presentation. It say´s that 3dfx will show V4 and V5 there: I received a mail from the people who handles
3dfx in Sweden. It appears that 3dfx will have their first showing of the Voodoo4 and
Voodoo5 at this year's CeBit (held in Hannover 24 Feb to 1 March). 11.02 - New SGI Workstation with NVIDIA graphics?!? RIVA 3D heard rumors about a new SGI workstation called "Flash", that´ll use a NVIDIA Quadro for the graphics.... (if the rumor is correct) SGI is getting ready to announce its new LINUX
workstation, code named FLASH, which contains...(drum roll please)...the NVIDIA Quadro as
the graphics processor! 11.02 - 3Dfx and NVIDIA about memory usage Reverent the Pulpit´s asked 3dfx´s Scott Sellers and NVIDIA´s Chris Donahue about what happens if a game uses more memory than the 32MB that can be handled by the Voodoo4/5: [Scott]...but I think also I would call into question the relevence of your example map. For one thing, if you are using so many textures, they clearly do not need to all be 32-bit textures. If this was a real game with real artwork, the large majority of the textures could easily be 16-bit textures with absolutely NO loss in visual quality. Yes, there are some texture maps that would need to be 32-bit (for example, explosions and translucent surfaces such as the sky maps as such...) but by and large any developer that we have talked with will use 16-bit textures for the majority of their artwork. [Chris] Almost all of the developers we talk to have been building games using 32 bit textures since we shipped the TNT in '98. They may have to down sample to fit into older architectures, but the entire industry uses tools that generate the art in 32 bit, seems like less work to use it as is and the benefits are obvious in the higher quality visuals. When the VooDoo 4 and 5 are available I'm sure they will be as enthusiastic about 32 bit color as we have been. [Scott] Of course developers are utilizing 32-bit textures. That is not what I was arguing against. My point is that developers, in many cases, will take a texture which has a substantially lower memory space and bandwidth requirements if the compressed texture looks just as good as the 32-bit texture. Clearly, not all textures fall into this category. However, many do, so why would a developer waste 8 times the texture memory when they don't need to? The answer is they wouldn't, and instead use that extra texture space for storing more textures, increasing the resolution of the texture maps, etc. The whole answers can be found here. No real answers at all... 11.02 - Reviews NVIDIA Quadro 64MB DDR - Reverent the Pulpit´s |
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Thursday 10.02.2000 |
| 10.02 - Windows 2000 v3.76 RIVA 3D got hands on some new NVIDIA Windows 2000 beta drivers version 3.76. Download: NVIDIA W2K v3.76 10.02 - GeForce vs. Viper II Thresh´s FiringSquad made a shootout between the S3/Diamond Viper II and a NVIDIA GeForce card (SDRAM Version). They benched the cards on Q3, Unreal Tournament and NVIDIA´s Treemark: Diamond doesn't want the Viper II to be compared to the GeForce, and we think Diamond's argument is perfectly reasonable. The Viper II isn't in the same market segment as the GeForce. A quick trip to a couple price search engines shows us that the Viper II can be had for $50-$100 less than the average GeForce 256 SDR board. Clearly, it would be unfair for us to compare one card against another that is %35 to %65 more expensive. Then again, if we were to look at the product specifications for both cards we have to ask why shouldn't we compare both cards? They both feature hardware T&L and have similar texel fill rates. If we ignore price, a performance comparison between the GeForce and Viper II must be made because the specifications for both chips are very similar. (...more) |
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Wednessday 09.02.2000 |
| 09.02 - Athlon/GeForce Tool Mark Rouleau hacked a small tool that allows to set AGP 2X mode with GeForce on Athlon systems: Geforce Regedit version 0.7.8 This is my first ever program in Visual Basic that I have writen. It took some help from people like my partner Jason Alday. I hope you find it useful. If you can give me any hints or suggestions You can download the tool here. 09.02 - Benchmarks CTNews 3D made a Benchmark-Link page where you can download the most popular Benchmarks. CT News 3D Benchmarks Page 09.02 - Patent agreement between S3 and NVIDIA Feb. 9, 2000--NVIDIA(TM) Corporation and S3(R) Incorporated today announced that they have agreed to enter into a seven-year mutual broad patent cross-license agreement. As part of this agreement, NVIDIA and S3 have agreed to dismiss their pending patent infringement suits against each other. "With this announcement, we have reached an agreement that is mutually beneficial to both companies," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA Corporation. "Over the years, S3 has developed and acquired a rich portfolio of technologies in graphics, multimedia, microprocessors and system logic. Our license agreements with SGI and S3, combined with NVIDIA's rich technology patent portfolio, gives us a strong technology base on which to build winning products." "Access to intellectual property is rapidly becoming the highest barrier to entry in today's PC graphics market," said Andrew Wolfe, Chief Technology Officer for S3 Incorporated. "Over the past ten years, S3 has built an incredibly strong IP portfolio through internal development, as well as through licensing agreements with Intel, Exponential, Cirrus and now NVIDIA. Based on our IP strength, S3 and NVIDIA rank as possibly the only two companies positioned to win long-term in the PC graphics market." 09.02 - T&L Part 4 Instead of thinking what OCP stands for the guys of HardOCP started another run with GeForce on Test Drive 6. This time with slower CPU´s: Hardware T&L and what it will actually get you TODAY. Does it shine? Has the the "hypometer" been totally blown off the scale by nVidia? Mmm, no, but let's say they have done a good sales job. Hardware T&L does have a very real place in the gaming and hardware world it has just taken some digging to get to it. Now we have been putting our own hype out over this subject and we have done it for a reason, to hopefully raise the awareness of the hardware junkies out there. We could have posted this article first instead of last, but that would have taken all the fun out of it. Besides, all those folks that wrote in and said the Test Drive 6 was NOT the benchmark to show T&L may just eat some of those words. On with the madness, one more time... (...more) |
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Tuesday 08.02.2000 |
| 08.02 - Brian Hook about T&L Brian Hook answered a question about GeForce´s T&L capabilities on Voodooextreme´s "Ask Hook" pages: The GeForce's hardware T&L can only help things as much as the application lets it. While there are a few applications that support hardware T (and sometimes L), such as Quake3, there is still a huge difference between "support" and "optimization for". Quake3 uses the hardware transformation capabilities of OpenGL, however it still performs a huge chunk of work on the part of the CPU such as lighting (both vertex lighting and lightmap modification) and vertex interpolation on the character models. Not to mention that the shader language supports a lot of capabilities that are done strictly in software, e.g. vertex perturbation, environment mapping, texture scale and scroll, etc. This kind of stuff is not magically handled by the GeForce since the GeForce can only accelerate those things that are accessed through a 3D API by the application. In the future we'll see more and more titles that are engineered with hardware T&L in mind. Once these start to hit the market, the difference between T&L and non-T&L support will become much more apparent. More about that here. 08.02 - 3dfx about Support The new 3dfx Voodoo3 drivers received some critics due to some bugs. Avault asked 3Dfx about that:
The whole interview can be read here. - It´s nice how open minded 3dfx cares about these problems. Some others should do it also this way.... 08.02 - GLQuake A new version of GLQuake is available. The new release offers the following changes/improvements: - ARB_multitexture. You can download it here. (ThanX to Voodooextreme) |
Copyright: RIVA Station 1999 - Lars Weinand |
