I hear fighting words. If you've seen any recent interviews with 3Dfx or nVidia representatives, and you know what I'm talking about. Both companies have powerful new rivaling technologies so different that neither companies' card will be robust enough for both. So do you consider yourself a gamer? If you do, and want to stay that way, you'd better listen up, or you'll just be another frag to whoever else bought the right card. So which brand- 3Dfx or nVidia- should you look into? It's not a simple answer. Let's take a look-see, shall we? (click here for more)

- Anandtech reviewed the Gigabyte GA-662 with TNT2 M64:

A variety of "TNT2" cards are popping up all over the place with prices that seem too good to be true. But before you bite, check what you’re getting. The cards may be touted as a TNT2 or even a TNT2 "value," but many are the TNT2 M64, the card we are taking a look at today. Our goal here is to compare the M64 to the "real" TNT2. (click here for more)

What performance gain will you get with GeForce? Is it really faster than a TNT2 Ultra card?
I took a Guillemot 3D Prophet prototype with 32MB SDRAM and a clockrate of 120/166 to check it out on a PIII 500MHz system. It must compete against a TNT2 Ultra on the same System and an Ultra in an Athlon 600 system. The result is pretty surprising!

Guillemot 3D Prophet GeForce 256 SDRAM vs. TNT2 Ultra

A japanese site posted some information about the Canopus Spectra 7400 using GeForce 256. The card seems to be very innovative. Bad you canīt read anything of it.   :-( (ThanX to Battlax)

Do you have any preliminary benchmarks to offer (the TNT2 on the G4, for example)?

As a matter of fact I do so here we go...

[G4/450 (AGP)]
Q3test 1.08 @ 1024*768 with all graphics options turned on : 36-40fps
Q1 @ 1024*768 : 135 fps

These are the only games I have had a chance to test properly...I have my own test suite, which is used to test OpenGL compatibility, but it may be biased so i won't make further comments on this :)

The whole interview can be found here.

Fastgraphics reviewed a GeForce on a Kroytech Athlon 800 system: Fastgraphics

Stereo3D made very complete review of the ASUS Shutter VR-100 shutter glasses: ASUS VR-100 Review

The possibilities from this are very intersting, for example you could play a DirectX game, through your web browser. You may think that would take a while to download, but the WildTangent web driver compresses everything in optimisation for the internet, this means it would be possible to stream content over the net. You can also have a small 3D model, that you can play with and move around, which has the same file size as an animated gif!

To check out some examples of the WildTangent technology, head over to the website and have a look at the demos, they're pretty impressive.

The whole article can be found here.

At iXBT Hardware you can find a review of the Gigabyte GA-660 with TNT2 Pro: Gigabyte GA-660 Review

• Maximum PC
• Riva Zone
• Aces Hardware
• Firing Squad (Updated)

Obviously, if you’ve already got a TNT2 or Voodoo3 card, there’s no reason to upgrade to a TNT2 Pro unless you just want to burn some cash. For those looking to build a new system and need a video card, the TNT2 Pro is one of the best options available. With the GeForce showing up, the entire TNT2 line will be dropping in price, offering up a very good price/performance balance. Remember: before the GeForce showed up, the TNT2 was, arguably, king of the hill.

Read the full article here.

• Riva 3D
• GA-Source
• Fast Graphics
• 3D GPU
• Shugashack
• Firing Squad
• CGO
• Planetriva
• NV News
• Toms Hardware Guide

With the ERAZOR III Pro, the latest-generation 3D games and processor-intensive rendering programs using high fill-rates and resolutions are boosted with an additional increase in speed. An active cooling fan allows games freaks to tune the last reserves out of their board without risk of overheating.

Thanks to 2048 x 2048 pixel texture support, even the most complex surfaces and scenarios experience such a high depth of detail that one can truly speak of photo-realistic images. With a maximum 3D resolution of 2048 x 1536, the ERAZOR III Pro is superbly suited to very large screens.

Ingo Nadler, Product Manager at ELSA, on the outstanding performance characteristics of the new ERAZOR III variant: "Our clients expect mature leading-edge technology from ELSA, not technical fads. In our TNT2 Pro design, we have combined total reliability with top speed and all the well-known ELSA advantages, in order to build the ultimate graphics board with a first-class price-to-performance ratio for the gamer and the professional user. "

AMD released a very hot part with the Athlon CPU. I got hands on a complete AMD reference system and pushed it to its limit.

Introduction: AMD Athlon

Voodooextreme shows shots from the game The Whole Experience which demonstrate how programmers use the Hardware supported Cube Environmental Mapping: The Whole Experience Shots
In addition thereīs a critical article about the future of T&L and what is needed to use it: Making T&L Work

NVIDIA&DEV_00A0.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA Crush"
NVIDIA&DEV_0100.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce 256"
NVIDIA&DEV_0103.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA Quadro"

As you can read in the NVIDIA Chatlog at Bjorn3D, Crush seems to be the NVIDIA/ALI solution. New info about Quadro can be found at Voodooextreme:

For middle- and higher-end three-D graphics, spokesperson Derek Perez says Nvidia will introduce a faster controller, code-named Quadro. Quadro will use the same chip core as the GeForce, but it will run at higher clock rates. No doubt Quadro will come with other enhancements, including support for bigger frame buffers and higher-quality images, but Perez remained reticent about the details, pending the chip's public introduction (perhaps as soon as this month). Perez also was vague about who will sell the technology, but Elsa says it will base its upcoming Synergy III on the Quadro chip. As to price, we're making an educated guess that these boards will knock heads with the [3Dlabs] Oxygen GVX1 in the under $1,000 range."

Later in the article, a sections states:

"Closer to earth, an Elsa spokesperson told us he expected the Quadro-based Synergy III to achieve a score of about 30 on the ProCDRS OpenGL graphics measure from SPEC, the industry's premier benchmarking agency. That would surpass the [Intense3D] Wildcat 4105 by a small margin but undershoot the upcoming Wildcat 4110 by about 16 percent. Nevertheless this would be good considering the expected price.

• Creative TNT/2/Ultra drivers for Win9X
• Creative TNT/2/Ultra drivers for WinNT

I've been receiving many emails regarding the closeness of scores irregardless of resolution or machine specs when using my "Wicked" benchmarking demo. To summarize, the differences in benchmark stats differ by no more than 3 to 4 fps when comparing:

So, what's going on? I shot an email to both Tim Sweeney & Jack Porter and here's the reply from Jack:

We're lookng into why the demo playback is slower than actual gameplay. I have a feeling it's due to the overhead in reading and processing the network data from the demo file. It's definitely not lying to you because it always says the same number of frames rendered (+ or - a frame or so), and the elapsed time is correct.

I'll let you know when we determine something solid.

So, it looks like there is definitely some kind of a bug in UT's benchmarking (TIMEDEMO) code. Once I get any email from Jack regarding this, I'll post it here.

Comment: You now know what to do with Unreal Tournament Benchmark results....

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