Michael Tirtasana released version 1.3 of his Tirtanium Benchmarks. Besides of internal changes the new version now offers DOS, Win9x, Win NT and Linux in one file. In addition you now have the option to split polygons to produce more triangles (to stress your card) and a wireframe mode.....btw: take a look at the tower (I´m proud of it <g>): Download Tirtanium v1.3 (Normal Version - 6MB ) - Homepage

image by Reactor Critical

3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 Heat (Cardtest ´99): I got some mails where people stated that the heat preoblems of the V3 3000 aren´t true. So I made some measurements with a stick thermometer (flat on the backside) on the backside of the card behind the chip. The Voodoo3 3000 climbs up to 62,5 Grade Celsius (145,4 Grade F)! For comparsion: an ASUS V3800Ultra Deluxe only gets 41,5 Grade. The area temperature was about 25 Grade Celsius. Ther meassurement was made during the 3DMARK99 MAX demo mode. The meassurement may not be very exact but you can see that the card I used for the review gets damn hot. The card was original packed and came from 3Dfx.

PR: Do games have to be written with T & L in mind to take advantage of the technology?

MH: Every 3D application today has a transformation and lighting engine built in.   It may be a proprietary software engine or one that uses a standard API, such as Direct3D or OpenGL.  In order for games to take advantage of any vendor’s T & L processor, they need to use either Direct3D or OpenGL’s 3D pipeline.  Many games today use proprietary engines because when running on the CPU, are much faster than the standard API’s pipeline.  But with the next generation 3D processors, that will no longer be the case.  In fact, if the game developer chooses to continue to support a proprietary engine, they will not be able to take advantage of the huge gains in geometric complexity and lighting, and their games will not be competitive.

Read the whole stuff here.

This table is not official!! I don´t know yet if all models will be available or only a few of them.

You can see a image of the ASUS VR-100 Shutter glasses above. This kit allows the use of the VR-100G glasses on an ASUS V3400 TNT card.
There is a VESA glasses connector available. This should allow the use of the ELSA 3D Revelator glasses on this card. But I didn´t test that yet.

More ASUS news: There are new drivers available for V3400 und V3800 TNT/TNT2 cards:ASUS v1.91 Beta3

RIVA Station reviewed 8 new 3D cards

• 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000
• ASUS AGP-V3800 TVR - TNT2
• ASUS AGP-V3800 Ultra Deluxe - TNT2 Ultra
• Diamond Stealth S540 III - Savage4 Pro+
• Diamond Viper V770 Ultra - TNT2 Ultra
• ELSA Erazor III Video - TNT2
• ELSA Winner II - Savage4 Pro+
• Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor - TNT2

The review is currently only in German language! I´m working on the translation. But you can allready check out the benchmarks ih you want.

RIVA Station Graphics Cardtest ´99

- Assorted 2D problem fixes
- Fixes the Eudora Pro 4.2 toolbar problem
- Fixes the Expedia Streets 2000 problem
- Increased performance in Kingpin
- Stuttering eliminated/decreased in Q3 test and Unreal
- Quake 2 crashes fixed on ASUS P5A motherboard
- Indy 3D now completes without a crash

FullOn3D compared the drivers with v1.88 and found 10% better performance in 16Bit with K6-III 450.

Sources close to the discussions have confirmed that 3DFx made an offer for S3.

But it was an offer that S3 could and did refuse. Instead, earlier this week, it bound Diamond.

The issue at question for 3DFx is that its next generation chip, Napalm, has some problems with features and functionality, according to the source.
While Nvidia's NV10 chip is exciting, the source said, the only thing that comes close to it is the S3 GX4.
It "has a smaller die size and is the only serious contender on the block". For that reason, 3DFx wanted S3.

Unfortunately, it couldn't have, our source said. S3 turned down 3Dfx's offer

ThanX to Wolfgang!

The first mainboard with this new intel chipset that supports AGp 4x are expected to be released in autumn.

The WAVE Report has learned that Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA personally delivered the message during the Computex that if add in board and motherboard companies carry NVIDIA products they are not to carry products which use other competing 3D chips. Two companies in particular were targeted as to be excluded from the market: S3 and ATI.

We have information on the basic background of NVIDIA's actions from 3 sources, however, the details vary slightly. One source with direct knowledge stated that NVIDIA was specific and direct in its attempt to define conditions of the purchase of NVIDIA products while others stated that NVIDIA was emphatic in its position but not exclusionary.

There´s no official statement from NVIDIA about that yet.

Considering TNT3/NV10 will have geometry acceleration a strong processor, in both its speed (MHz) and its mathematical calculations (Floating-Point Unit), is required to achieve photo-realistic image-quality. According to Nvidia's roadmap TNT3/NV10 will have 15,000,000 transistors on the same chip; the same amount as Intel's planned 800MHz Merced processor. Hence the massive numbers of transistors the micron will surely drop from 0.25 to 0.18 or even 0.15 allowing much higher clock rates.

Read the whole stuff here.

[prev] [next] [random] [list]