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

27.03 v5.06 for w2k

Reactor Critical offers inofficial Windows 2000 NVIDIA drivers for download.

27.03 Motion Blur Demo

TCS of GLVelocity made an OpenGL demo that demonstrates the effect of motion blur on every OpenGL capable card:

I have released my new motion blur demo ! If you want to know how your games could look with 3Dfx's next generation card tomorrow, check out my demo today. You can see the motion blur applied on various scenes and objects. The intensity can be adjusted. You can even freeze the scene and take a closer look to the effect. The demo takes a LOT of fillrate and T&L performance since every object is drawn several times. Users of 32 bit cards should set their desktop color depth to 32 bit, cause motion blur produces lots of artifacts in 16 bit mode. 3Dfx users should NOT set their desktop color depth to 32 bit. If you do so, the demo runs in software ! Cause the demo loads RAW models, you could use your own models and see how they would look with motion blur.

You should run the demo in 32Bit colordepth. If you like this kind of effects you should take a look on the Kasparov Demo. (Download from Tranzmit)

26.03 Rally Masters Demo

Digital Illusions offers a demo to the game Rally Masters - The Michelin Race of Champions. As you can read in the name the game plays in the Rally Worldchampionchip. It´s more arcarde racer than a simulation. The demo offers you two tracks to race on and you can get a very good impression of the handling and steering of the cars. The graphics are ok - The car loks very detailed and the tracks do also look very nice. But the terrain and car textures are in a way too low resolution. The look blury and destroy the good impression. This is sub-standard today.



Klicken zum vergrößern

The screenshots were made with a GeForce at 800x600-32 with max. details.

Download (24,5 MB): 3D Files - Fileplanet - Avault

26.03 Inofficial NT 5.06 drivers

Reactor Critical offers inofficial NVIDIA Windows NT drivers in version v5.06. As v5.08 w9x drivers, these drivers support compressed textures in OpenGL and offer a better OpenGL performance.

PikAs sends the hint that you can use this driver in a mix in Windows 2000. You only have to replace the file NVOGLNT.DLL in the System32 directory with the one from this driver. But beware: a driversmix is very critical. You do this on your own risk!

26.03 Neue Savage 4 NT Treiber

S3/Diamond offers new Windows NT drivers for cards with S3 Savage 4 chip. These drivers are version 8.19.05:

Stealth III S540
Stealth III S540 Xtreme
Speedstar A90
Speedstar A200

25.03 Volumetric Rendering

The Register made an article about NVIDIA´s new VTC (Volumetric Texture Compression) Technology and speculates about its targets. So this seems to be the first step for volume based 3d rendering technology. The author gives us a short (and very nuts) idea on how developer can use this technology:

That's fine as it goes, and greater external detail can be added by upping the number of points that define the model. The trouble is, this approach provides no information about the space within the model. Real objects, after all, tend to be solid - current 3D models aren't.

That's why many 3D games developers - most notably iD Software's John Carmack - reckon that the next level of sophistication 3D games can achieve is to work with volumetric rendering. Models are constructed from layers of 2D data, rather like the way a series of 2D brain scans can be stack up to form a 3D model of the organ.

The idea here is that when you frag a guy in Quake IV, blowing him in two, you won't just get a mess of blood, you'll be able to see the dude's internal organs. You can also do clever stuff like removing a character's skin, muscles, organs, right down to the bone, without having to generate a separate 3D model and texture for each view.

Gross, yes, but that's what the kiddies like these days.

gosh... more about that here.

25.03 3D Prophet DDR-DVI Special Edition

As before with the Maxi Gamer Xentor 32, Guillemot builds a special card series for Falcon Northwest. The 3D Prophet DDR-DVI Special Edition GeForce card comes with a clockrate of 150MHz core and 346MHz memoryclock:

Features

In addition to the multitude of features offered by the 3D prophet DDR-DVI, the Falcon SE Prophet DDR will also include:

The fastest 3D chip clock to date - NVIDIA’s GeForce 256™ chipset running at a minimum of 150 MHz core chip speed.
The fastest RAM ever used on a graphics card - 32 MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) video RAM running at a minimum of 346 MHz memory clock.
Advanced cooling - a custom fan on the core chip and individual heatsinks for every memory chip provide the best cooling ever offered on a consumer graphics board.
Smart power management - the cooling fan runs directly off the power supply to allow more processing power for the graphics engine.

More in the official pressrelease.

25.03 Voodoo5 Preview

Gamespot UK made a preview on 3dfx´s new Voodoo 5 5500:

3dfx is expecting to ship VSA-100-equipped Voodoo4 4500s, PCI Voodoo5 5000s, and AGP Voodoo5 5500s in April, and it will start a preorder program in the coming weeks. The Voodoo5 5500 we saw yesterday will retail for US$299. Later this summer, 3dfx will introduce the 128MB Voodoo5 6000 AGP, which will run off of four VSA-100 chips (...more)

More details about the new Voodoos can be read in an interview at SimHQ.

24.03 RIVA Station FTP

EA writes in the Readme of Need for Speed 5 that you should use Detonator 5.08 for GeForce cards (v3.77 do also work).... Inofficial (alpha) drivers!! But where to find them? Ok, I´ve descited to mirror all important NVIDIA w9x and w2k Detonator drivers on the RIVA Station FTP-Server so that everybody can get these drivers without problems. The files are also listed on the driverspage.

24.03 Microsoft licensed NVIDIA´s VTC Technology

NVIDIA announced that Microsoft licensed NVIDIA´s VTC (Volume Texture Compression) technology for DirectX in a pressrelease. This technology will allow the use of these textures in internet applications and games.

SANTA CLARA, CA — March 23, 2000 — In a move that will help bring stunning 3D graphics to internet users, NVIDIA™ Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) and Microsoft® Corp. today announced the adoption of NVIDIA's technology for Volume Texture Compression Format (VTC) for Microsoft DirectX APIs. Today's 3D internet sites are plagued with inadequate image quality due to bandwidth constraints of transmitting high-resolution textures over standard communications systems. Even for high-performance PCs, the limited amount of texture storage forces game developers to use lower-resolution textures, resulting in imagery that lacks detail. Scheduled for release in 2000, NVIDIA's VTC format enables a superior level of image quality that allows web and content developers to produce 3D objects that depict their natural characteristics.

"NVIDIA has clearly demonstrated they are the technology leader for the 3D industry," said Tony Barkans, program manager for DirectDraw at Microsoft. "By incorporating NVIDIA's technology into DirectX applications, developers are empowered with the tools to develop and deploy more complex and visually compelling 3D applications."

Limited texture storage has historically been a problem for game application developers, forcing compromises in image quality and performance. The texture-storage problem is exacerbated by volume textures, which are truly 3D data, unlike traditional 2D textures. Volume textures are so much larger than 2D textures that the texture compression format becomes extremely important. NVIDIA's volume texture compression format organizes 3D volume-texture data to take advantage of the 3D nature of the data, which increases the effective texture bandwidth by an enormous factor. NVIDIA has developed a proprietary method to reorder the 3D data within a volumetric image cube to account for the linear accessing required for the optimal use of the memory system of a typical computer system. (...more)

24.03 Soldier of Fortune Benchmarks

Ravensoft hat eine Reihe von Benchmarks zu dem kommenden Spiel Soldier of Fortune mit einer ganzen Reihe von Grafikkarten gemacht. Als Rechner wurde ein DELL System mit Pentium II 400 benutzt:

1200 frame timedemo in the first part of Sib1 (a highly fogged level to test fillrate). Not many textures used (about 3MT). I tested 6 modes - 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 in 16 bit with 16 bit textures, and the same 3 resolutions with 32 bit rendering and 32 bit textures....GeForces used hardware T&L, S3 cards used S3TC.

Notes on drivers
* Savage 4 : I was surprised by how quick this card was, and so tried a different card to verify the timings. All was the same.
* Savage 2k : The version of GLSetup on the Sof CD did not have these drivers. I used the downloading version of GLSetup to get them.
* Savage 2k and Savage 4 : Both these cards had artefacting that was fixed by enabling gl_clear.
* Matrox G200 : The card seemed to have trouble with dynamic lights, but after leaving the machine for 10 minutes all seemed to be OK. Maybe a heating problem?
* Voodoo3 : I have no idea why 800x600 doesn't work. Its slowness surprised me, and I verified the numbers.
* Riva 128 : This card cannot handle alpha interpolation in hardware. This means that the volumetric fog looks poor.
* Rage Pro : This card cannot handle alpha multipliers on alpha surfaces or fog. This means that some effects look really poor and the models "pop" out of the volumetric fog. The GLSetup drivers for this card do not work.
* Intel 740 : This card comes in two different hardware configurations. The one I have works fine, the other crashes and burns.

Welche gewonnen hat? Das Ergebniss ist hier zu finden.

23.03 NV-15 with 200MHz clock !?

New rumors from The Register. They report that the NVIDIA´s upcoming chip NV15 will come with a clockrate of 180 or 200 MHz. This would allow a fillrate of 1600MPixel/sec - much higher than expected:

As we reported earlier this year, Nvidia's NV15 chip is speeding towards completion. The chip is likely to be called the GeForce 2 and will clock to between 180 and 200 MHz, according to reliable sources. (...more)

23.03 WXP Neue Guillemot w2k Treiber

Voodooextreme shows a comment of Patrick Moynihan (WXP - Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens (DMZG)) where he gives some comments on the question of API and a comment on 3dfx:

As for our choice of API: When this project was started (early 1998) 3D accelerator technology was very much in flux. Many cards didn't yet have good OpenGL drivers, GLide was proprietary and not a good choice for supporting many chipsets, and DirectX 6 had just been released. Most cards at that time had decent Direct3D support, and it just seemed like a good choice at the time.

In retrospect I'm still glad we're using DirectX, because our work with NVIDIA and Microsoft on the latest DX7 technology has put us in an excellent position to support Microsoft's newest toy, the X-Box. I can't say anything official at this time, but chances are good that this engine and our game will end up on the X-Box.

DX7 is indeed required to support hardware T&L. Fortunately DX7 is a LOT nicer than DX6, in fact it is a lot more like OpenGL now.

3DFX has got some serious issues to deal with. They lost a lot of developers due to hanging on to GLide for so long and not supporting those of us using other API's. Now they are trying to woo developers back, but their hardware has lagged behind. They are in a tough position, and I wish them luck -- because competition is GOOD!

23.03 New Guillemot w2k drivers

Guillemot released new Windows 2000 drivers for cards of the Maxi Gamer series:

WINDOWS 2000 DRIVERS - DGP2X-2K-378.EXE
Windows 2000 drivers for the Guillemot Maxi Gamer series. Beta Version 3.78.
Please note that this is a Beta version which supports the APIs D3D and OpenGL.
Limitations:
- No control panel.
- Does not support TV output.

Download

22.03 GeForce 64MB vs. 32MB

Sharkyextreme takes a look on the DELL 64MB DDR GeForce card and compares it to a "normal" 32MB DDR card.

For the past few months, the fastest gaming video card available has been a GeForce 256 with 32MB of DDR SGRAM. By mixing a powerful hardware accelerated transformation and lighting engine with an impressive 480 million pixel/second fill-rate, NVIDIA has shown the world a recipe for success in the 3D gaming accelerator wars. But for some of us, that just isn't enough. Enter Dell Computer Corporation's GeForce 256 sporting 64MB of DDR SGRAM, which is twice that which can be found in any other SDR or DDR GeForce available today. (...more)

The 64MB card is a bit faster at all. But it can only really score in the Quake3 "Worst Case" timedemos.

22.03 VSA-100 Preview

Gamespot UK offers a preview on 3dfx´s new coming card generation. Not much new there:

With all the recent fuss over nVidia's GeForce 256 chipset, it's easy to forget that there are other companies with other products looking to steal a piece of the graphics pie for themselves. But that means overlooking 3dfx, creators of the Voodoo chipset and founding fathers of the 3D accelerator industry. (...more)

22.03 Neue ASUS Treiber

ASUS released new W9x and Windows 2000 drivers for the V3400/3800/6600/6800 cards:

Windows 9x v3.75 Beta5

1. Add a hotkey for switching between VGA and TV.
2. Improve D3D & OpenGL VR functions.

Windows 2000 v3.79 Beta4

Download

21.03 Kyle at 3dfx

Kyle Bennet of HardOCP visited 3dfx and took a look on 3dfx´s upcoming Voodoo 5 5500:

Steve posted a blurb on this Saturday, and I have to totally agree with him, the FSAA IS what it is all cracked up to be. While the FSAA does make Quake 3 look a HELL of a lot better at lower resolutions, you don't / won't really see the benefit due to the game being so fast moving. I mean if you stand around and enjoy the eye candy, then you will love it, but for most fraggers the FSAA will not make a difference here. More frames per second is what we want and hopefully that is what we will get.

We did compare the 3dfx FSAA with the leaked nVidia FSAA on a GeForce and I think the 3dfx stuff looks better. This is NOT a true comparison though seeing how the GeForce does not officially support the feature, but I am sure they will the next time round... (...more)

21.03 ATi Rage6

The Northbridge offers a preview on the new ATi chip Rage6. Here are some first specs:

256 Bit Graphics Core
0,18µ, going to 0,15µ
2 Rendering Pipelines with 3 texture units
200-400MHz core clockrate
200MHz memory clock
Pixel Fillrate: 400-800 Mio Pixel/sec
64 or 128MB DDR RAM running with up to 200MHz
up to 6,4GB/sec memory bus bandwith with 200MHz DDR SGRAM
350-400MHz RAMDAC
AFR Technology Support to run multiple Rage 6 chips at the same time
Full AGP 4x with Fast Frites and Bus Mastering
HW TCL : over 20 Millionen textured Polygons/sec
8 Hardware Light sources
Cube Environment Mapping, Hardware Bump Mapping, Embossing
Support for 3D Textures
DXTC and S3TC Textur compression by Software Single-Pass Multitexturing
Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA)

21.03 NVIDIA Devoloper Support

NVIDIA has set up a page with technical stuff for developers that was shown at GDC:

Presentations:
Per-Pixel Lighting and bump mapping
A Practical Bump-mapping Technique for Today's GPUs
How to Bump Map a Skinned Polygonal Model
Cube Maps - Not just for environment reflections anymore!
Cartoon Rendering
DX7 Vertex Lighting
TexGen and the Texture Matrix
GeForce 256's Register Combiners
Shadows, Transparency, & Fog
Computations for Hardware Lighting & Shading
Shadow Mapping with Today's OpenGL Hardware
An OpenGL Extension Safari
Maximizing OpenGL Performance
NVIDIA Tools & Technical Developer Resources

More about that here.

21.03 Graphics cards reviews:

ASUS V6600 Pure&Deluxe - Arstechnika
Gigabyte GA-GF2560 - IXBT
Guillemot's 3D Prophet SDR - TNFST Network

20.03 NVIDIA Demos

NVIDIA released two new GeForce tech-demos. One demonstrates the use of Dot Bump Mapping on two Q3A models, the other shows what you can do with many light-sources:

Q3A Model Bump Mapping - Bump maps can add a lot to polygonal models. Ths app lets you import Q3A models and apply bump maps to them to see the results on a GeForce 256.

Lights Demo - This 70s flashback shows an undulating mesh lit by up to 300 hardware-calculated lights on a GeForce 256. A simple cloth model is used to animate the mesh, and it is transformed with hardware TnL on appropriate chipsets. It will also run in software on non-TnL hardware.

20.03 Rollcage Stage II Demo

Psynosis released a demo for the Rollcage successor. There´s not much new compared to the original version but it´s still one of the fastest arcarde-racers out there. The demo allows you to drive on two tracks.


click to enlarge

The screenshots were made on a GeForce at 800x600-32 with max. details.

Download: Fileleech

20.03 Pretended NV15 Specs

The chinese hardware site PC-Reporter Online offers a PDF file that pretended shows the specs of the NVIDIA GeForce successor NV15. Here are the features:

1000+ Mtexels Fill Rate
20+ Mtriangles/sec through T&L and setup
5GB+/sec Memory Bandwidth
Maximum 3D/2D resolution of 2048 x 1536 @ 75Hz
Complete DirectX 7, DirectX 6 and DirectX 5 support
NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture T M
Industry¡¯s First fully 1.2 compliant professional OpenGL support for Linux.
Integrated 720p, 1080i HDTV Playback
WHQL-certified Windows 2000, Windows NT4, Windows 3.5, Windows 98 and Windows 95
8 Texels Per Clock with Hypertexel TM
2nd-generation T&L Engines
256-bit graphics architecture
Double Data Rate (DDR) Memory
AGP 4X with Fast Writes
32-bit color
32-bit Z/Stencil
Cube Environment Mapping
DirectX Texture Compression
Order Independent Full Scene Multisample Antialiasing.

There´s absolutely no way to see if this document is real or not (anybody can produce pdf files.....). It seems to be from 1999 so the information can´t be very actual.... (ThanX to AGN3D)