Tuesday 25.04.2000 |
| 25.04 NVIDIA Linux drivers NVIDIA released new Linux XFree 4.0 drivers. 3D acceleration is included: These XFree86 4.0 binary drivers are the result of a collaborative partnership between NVIDIA, SGI and VA Linux. In this initial beta release, they provide optimized hardware acceleration of OpenGL applications via a direct-rendering X Server and support the TNT, TNT2, TNT Ultra, GeForce, and Quadro chipsets. AGP and flat panel displays are also supported. You can download the appropriate Linux driver packages below. By downloading any of these files, you agree to the following license agreement: Download 25.04 GeForce FAQ Update Christopher Hill made an update of his great GeForce FAQ. GeForce256 FAQ 10.7:
Check: Chris' Hill GeForce256 FAQ 10.7 (or newer?) 25.04 ATi RADEON 256 ATi presented the new RADEON 256 yesterday. Here´s the official products text:
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, WINHEC, April 24, 2000 - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) today introduced the most powerful graphics processor ever designed for desktop PCs, the RADEON 256™ at Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WINHEC). The new chip is a quantum step forward in 3D acceleration for both high-end gaming and 3D workstation graphics. RADEON 256 has the world's fastest hardware transformation, clipping and lighting (T&L) geometry engine and will drive the creation of an entirely new generation of 3D applications and content. "Radeon 256 firmly establishes ATI in the high end, cutting-edge performance category of the PC and workstation markets," said KY Ho, chairman and CEO, ATI Technologies Inc. "ATI is committed to making significant, on-going investments to ensure a continuous stream of winning products in this category." The new chip supports the following firsts:
"ATI's latest generation, the RADEON 256, provides the most complete implementation we've seen to date of the DirectX7 Direct3D feature set and provides a good step toward the features of DirectX8," said Chas Boyd, graphics architect, DirectX, Microsoft. "By enabling full performance, hi-resolution gaming in 32-bit color, RADEON 256 finally makes today's 16-bit color games obsolete. At the core of the RADEON 256 GPU is a trio of new technologies unique to ATI: The Charisma Engine for geometry processing, Pixel Tapestry™ for rendering, and Video Immersion™ for digital video.
Charisma Engine: ATI's Geometry Engine Pixel Tapestry: ATI's Rendering Engine
Flexible, High Performance Memory Support RADEON 256 provides industry-leading accelerated support for all major graphics APIs, including DirectX 7 and OpenGL 1.2, as well as all major operating systems including Windows, Linux and MAC. RADEON 256 drivers are optimized for maximum performance with specific microprocessor instruction sets including SSE and Itanium, as well as AMD's 3DNow! To deliver on ATI's strategy of excelling in the high-end market, the company has committed significant resources to research and development of high performance graphics technology. The RADEON 256 is the first of a family of products ATI will introduce for the high performance market and is already in concurrent development of a follow on product that will quadruple the performance of the RADEON 256. RADEON 256 completes ATI's desktop product offering - ATI now has the industry's most comprehensive product line of graphics and multimedia solutions, offering product from the high end, with the RADEON 256, to the low-end, with the integrated North Bridge second graphics chip, S1-370 TL. RADEON 256 signals ATI's advance to the top of the performance segment, with plans to introduce a series of feature-packed, benchmark-leading boards for the OEM desktop and workstation markets and the retail market. ATI will also maintain its traditional strength in the mid-sector market with both the RADEON 256 and RAGE 128 PRO family of chips, as well as its leadership in the mobile market with the Mobility family of notebook components. There is many information about ATi´s new GeForce killer on a special website, including a freaky Flash-Animation: ATi RADEON 256. There are special in-depth introductions to the new chip: There are also some early preview available in the web: Hothardware: FiringSquad: So it seems that ATi did really good work with RADEON. As NVIDIA, ATi sets on high polygon models. By using the name GPU (GPU = Graphics Processing Unit - came from CPU) they show that they confirm the NVIDIA kind of view of what´s important on current 3D accelerators. Now it´s really time for 3dfx to ship their new Voodoo´s. There will be not much room left for 3dfx if NVIDIA and ATi start a price war because of the multiple-chip design. A multiple-chip card which needs twice the amount of RAM and silicon will never be as cheap to produce than a one-chip solution! Another point is that the featurelists of NVIDIA and ATi are much more filled than those of the Voodoos. But at the end only performance is the main factor. Let´s wait and see where the new cards stand. Another interresting point in reviewers sight is image/render quality. That´s the point where 3dfx wants to beat its competitors. ein Wenig Zeit. Eine Herausforderung aus Reviewer Sicht wird der Bereich der Bildqualität sein. Gerade in diesem Bereich will 3dfx alle konkurenten deutlich ausstechen. 25.04 Matrox G450 Matrox announced the G450:
Montreal, Canada, April 25, 2000-Matrox Graphics Inc. today announced the new 0.18-micron Matrox G450 2D, 3D and DVD graphics chip. The Matrox G450 AGP 2X/4X chip leverages a die shrink of the 0.25-micron Matrox G400 chip technology to integrate a digital flat panel transmitter, TV-out encoder, second RAMDAC and 64-bit DDR memory interface. By integrating these components directly on the chip, the company has re-architectured its award-winning Matrox G400 graphics technology into a full-featured accelerator that is set to standardize DualHead Display across more markets than ever before. Matrox's exclusive DualHead Display is a state-of-the-market technology that provides immediate and valuable benefits by allowing users to double their display real estate by pairing two display screens (RGB monitor, flat panel or TV) as many as eight different ways. Display versatility is further enhanced by the Matrox G450's 165 MHz Transmission-Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) transmitter, which outputs to a DVI-based digital flat panel at resolutions as high as 1600 x 1200, in 24-bit color. Business professionals currently using high-resolution analog monitors, as well as users who plan to take advantage of increasingly popular digital flat panels, will benefit from the chip's 256-bit DualBus architecture. This well-balanced architecture powers razor-sharp, crystal-clear 2D graphics, even at taxing resolutions as high as 2048 x 1536 at 85 Hz, in 32-bit color on the primary display screen. And with two RAMDACs built directly into the chip, the Matrox G450 ensures a superior-quality analog output signal-not just to one, but to two displays simultaneously. "The Matrox G450 offers all of the features-2D, DVI and DualHead Display-that make it an ideal solution for the high-end and mainstream corporate markets," said Dan Wood, vice president of technical marketing, Matrox Graphics Inc. "And because it's based on Matrox G400 technology, the Matrox G450 also has the 3D, DVD, EMBM and DualHead gaming features that give this chip such multi-market appeal." As the most highly integrated discreet graphics chip on the market, the Matrox G450 chip builds on the Matrox G400's 3D, DVD and DualHead Display capabilities to continue providing innovative entertainment solutions. The Matrox G450 supports Microsoft DirectX Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping for stunning visual effects in an ever-growing list of more than two dozen popular games. Equipped with a 3D Rendering Array Processor, this chip also powers a range of 3D gaming features, including stencil buffering, trilinear filtering, alpha-blending, anti-aliased vectors, vertex and table fogging, specular highlights, a 32-bit Z-buffer and more. The Matrox G450 complements 3D performance with pristine-quality video and DVD playback on the PC. In addition to offering the same high quality expected from a hardware DVD player, Matrox has leveraged its DualHead Display technology to further enhance DVD playback. In DualHead DVDMax mode, users can output a DVD stream full-screen to TV while maintaining a fully accessible Windows desktop on the primary display monitor-a feature no other graphics vendor offers. Matrox is revolutionizing the mainstream PC by including features like DualHead Display in the Matrox G450 at no extra cost to the end-user. From gamers to people who enjoy browsing the Web, anyone can "see more and do more" with features like DualHead Multi-Display, Zoom, DVDMax, TV-Out and Clone. These modes allow users to get more out of their favorite software applications by extending a window or application across two screens, or displaying multiple windows side-by-side, for example. This includes the ability to play DualHead Display-enabled games like Microsoftâ Baseball 2000 head-to-head on two separate display screens; the ability to display a Web page on the primary display while streaming video from that page full-screen to the TV; and the ability to reference email messages on one screen while designing a personal greeting card on the other. Availability Features: - 0.18 micron, five layer metal process
technology |
Monday 24.04.2000 |
| 24.04 ELSA GLADIAC !?
It seems that the new ELSA GeForce 2 card will have the name GLADIAC. You can find a flash animation at Flashworker.de which seems to be made for the new ELSA card. 24.04 Update at Matrox: The G450 Matrox will announce the G450 tomorrow. This Chip will come before the new G800 chip. Thanks to a 0.18 Micron technology it will reach higher clockrates than the former G400 that was made in 0.25 Micron. Additional features are support for DDR-RAM. It will be accessed through a (only) 64Bit wide databus. More on-Chip features are a second RAMDAC and a TV-Encoder. 24.04 ATi Radeon 256 ATi announces new details on the Rage128 successor. The new chip is called Radeon 256 and like NVIDIA´s GeForce 256 it will support hardware accelerated T&L (Transformation & Lightning) calculations. But the ATi Charisma technology, the chip is based on, offer much more: The clipping calculations (cutting triangles heading across the screen borders) are also done in Hardware by the chip. 3D transformation - speak 3D Morphing between two 3d-model behaviors can also be done on-chip without using the CPU.
Another nice feature is HyperZ. This optimizes the amount of Z-Data for objects without joints. This results in a reduced amount of geometry data. Vertex Skinning is a feature pretty similar to the Vertex Blending technology allready shown with GeForce. This allows a skin-like behavior of 3D models/surfaces. 24.04 The WWW NDA war There are some bad things going on in the web currently. There are a few websites who don´t care about NDA´s (Non Disclosure Agreement) and post articles of the upcoming new 3D cards. Those articles are a violate the NDA´s. The information of the new chips are allready well know but still under NDA. Such a NDA is also made to grant chances to all magacines and websites. So these articles are only made to grap hits and make a lot of money with unfair methods. In my eyes: this has no style! I never ever will support such sites... and for those sites: You suck! 24.04 More Voodoo5 previews New Voodoo5 previews: HotHardware FiringSquad So it seems the strenths of the new Voodoos are in image quality and not render-performance. An DDR GeForce card is often faster. But at all the V5 performs very well against the GeForce - a respectable work done by 3dfx. But the problem here is that the real competitor of the new Voodoos is not the 6 month old GeForce but its successor NV15 alias GeForce 2! The specs are still under NDA but I can tell you ine thing: await more than only performance increase! If you read the specs you can see that the air will be very thin for 3dfx. But specs are no real results - so let´s wait for real benchmark results. |
Sunday 23.04.2000 |
| 23.04 Daikatana Demo Long awaited... or let´s betters say very late: The Demo of Ion Storm´s Daikatana is finaly here. The demo allows you to play three maps in single-player mode and 4 maps in deathmatch. There´s also a coop-mode available. Personally I´m not very impressed by the game but better try it yourself....
The screenshots were made on a GeForce at 800x600-32 with max. details. (you desktop must run at 32Bit to get 32Bit colors in the game) Download (102 MB): Fileplanet - Fileleech 23.04 New GFX Tools Entech made an update on various tools: April updates - 23 April 23.04 ASUS 64MB GeForce Test Anandtech reviewed the ASUS 64MB GeForce DDR: Long is gone the time when ASUS was thought of as a small Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer. Ever since ASUS's entrance into the video card market with the TNT based V3400, the motherboard manufacturer has expanded its market scope by becoming a large video card manufacturer as well. Beginning with this card, ASUS has consistently produced products known for their innovation as well as high quality. Throughout the years ASUS has seen high sales of not only the V3400 but also almost all of the very successful V series in general. (...more) |
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Friday 21.04.2000 |
| 21.04 Voodoo5 vs. GeForce AGN 3D made an update of its Voodoo5 Preview and compared the results with a GeForce DDR Karte. As promised, we slapped a GeForce DDR back into my test system to run some comparison numbers between the GeForce and Voodoo 5. The results don't look so hot for the Voodoo 5, except when you look at the FSAA results. Keeping in mind that this is a hardware solution Vs. a software hack the results are not surprising. FSAA is the one area that the Voodoo 5 is still shining in. The question now is: how long can they hold on to it? No one really knows what the NV15 has in store (and those who do aren't talking until April 25th when the NV15 will be officially announced). This is a really small window of opportunity for 3dfx, here's hoping they make the best of it. Surprising: The V5 can outperforms the GeForce DDR only in Unreal Tournament. In most other results the "old" GeForce is faster without AntiAliasing. That´s a bit surprising because V5 must not compete with the 6month old GeForce but with its successor NV15 and ATi´s upcoming Rage6c! So let´s wait what we´ll see next week. 21.04 ATi Rage6c Preview The russian website iXBT still doesn´t care on NDA´s and offers infos on ATi´s new 3D chip Rage6c. Maybe I should move RS to russia....? ;-) 21.04 Flash Intro @ NVIDIA NVIDIA welcomes visitors oht the website with a new Flash Intro that tells you that there´s something coming at 26.04 - the day when the NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) on the GeForce successor NV15 wil fall. There´ll be a lot news next week:
21.04 EMBM game of the week The Eidos game F1 World Grand Prix is the new Matrox EMBM (Environmental Bump Mapping) game of the week. The game uses EMBM to simulate the bluring of the air behind the cars that´s caused by the hot exhausts of the cars.
We designed our 3D engine as scalable as possible so as to take benefit of the latest G400 technology, while still offering very good playability on older 3d cards like the G200. For an F1 game using directional light (the sun), it was not that easy to take advantage of EMBM. However, we thought that using the distorded rendering for heat haze effect would be a key differentiating factor. And if we have had enough development time, we would have liked to used the DualHead feature (for the multiplayer mode, for instance). Our 3D engine displays a very detailed world running many cars simultaneously (each of them having more than 8000 polygons) and the G400 obtained the best performance overall in its category." More screenshots can be found at the Matrox Website. In addition you can also download a movie that shows the effect in the game in motion:
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Copyright: RIVA Station 1999 - Lars Weinand |
