Thursday, Mai 26, 2005

Talkin bout high temperatures in germany, Borsti has just updated his VGA-Charts at Tom's Hardware Guide:

In the newest edition of our VGA Charts, we compared 33 different PCI Express graphics cards. Included is Intel's GMA900 graphics processor. This device is built into Intel's i915G chipset as an integrated DirectX 9 graphics solution, which has also helped Intel to dominate the market in units shipped--clearly ahead of Ati and Nvidia.........

The VGA Charts for Summer 2005 consist of 29 different PCI Express graphics cards, three SLI configurations and Intel's GMA 900 graphics chip. We include nearly the entire product palette from Ati. For some reason, the leading vendors were either unwilling or unable to deliver cards with the 128-MB versions of Nvidia's GeForce 6800 GT as well as the GeForce 6800 LE.

To the VGA Charts Summer 2005:PCI Express Graphics Cards.

Wednessday, Mai 18, 2005

Albatron announced an adaptor card called ATOP (AGP to PCI Express) which allows upgraders to use their old AGP card in a new motherboard with PEG slot (PCI Express for Graphics). The photo shows the use of ATOP together with a low-profile AGP card. ATOP is a pure bridge card. Its VGA output is just for conecting the second VGA output of a low-profile card via cable.

Albatron explains that ATOP can also used with larger AGP cards, if the PC case has enough room. In addition, ATOP does only work with NVIDIA AGP graphic cards!

Thursday, February 10, 2005

New Features



• Anti-Aliasing. Application managed options include, 2X, 4X, 6X, and Enable Temporal Anti-Aliasing
• Anisotropic filtering. Application managed options include, 2X, 4X, 8X, and 16X.
• CATALYST™ A.I. (For RADEON™ 9700 and above). Options include:
  • Disabled
  • Standard
  • Advanced
• Mipmap detail level. Options include; High performance, Performance, Quality, and Highquality.
• TRUFORM™. Options include; Application pref, or Always Off.
• Wait for vertical refresh. Options include; Always off, Off unless application specifies, On unless application specifies, and Always on
• Direct3D Setting. Options include; Enable geometry instancing, Support DXT texture formats, and Alternate pixel center
• OpenGL Settings. Options include; Triple buffering, and Force 24-bit Z-buffer depth

Performance Improvements



• Efficiency improvements in vertex processing have produced performance enhancements in key applications such as Far Cry and 3DMark05 on RADEON™ X850, X800 and X700 series products
• Far Cry "Regulator" and "Volcano" scores are up as much as 20% on RADEON™ X800 PRO at 1600x1200 resolution
• 3DMark05 gains range from 1-3% on RADEON™ X800 series products to as much as 9% on some RADEON™ X700 configurations





Issues Resolved in CATALYST™ Display Driver Version 5.2





• 4x4 Evolution2:
  Attempting to play the game under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON™ X300/X600 series installed no longer results in the operating system failing to respond when the screen is set to 1600x1200 32bpp and OpenGL Renderer is enabled
• 4x4 Evolution 2: Display corruption is no longer noticed when having the display set to 1600x1200 32bpp along with the texture detail set to high and split screen rendering enabled


• Serious Sam: Playing the game under Windows XP results in the display flashing when TRUFORM is enabled
• Sims 2: Playing the game Veronaville under Windows XP while having the desktop set to 1024x768 32bpp along with AA set to 6X no longer results in corruption being noticed in the fields
• Selecting the option; Enable Video Mode, results in the CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER not being able to return to the default setting for the Enable Video Mode option
• Switching language support for the CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER no longer results in the slider bar for the engine clock being enabled when the option found in OVERDRIVE™ is locked
• Navigating to View->Define a Custom View and deselecting all options found in the 3D option of the Edit Custom View tab, no longer results in the Standard Settings option remaining selected
• Intermittent failure of the VPU Recover report not being sent is now resolved
• Double-clicking the slider bar found in CATALYST™ A.I. no longer results in the Disable CATALYST™ A.I. option becoming de-selected
• Disabling 3D preview no longer results in the preview continuing to run on a secondary display device
• Having the 3D preview running on the secondary display adapter and attempting change display modes, no longer results in the primary display device displaying a black screen and error messages appearing
• English is no longer the default language when installing the CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER under Windows XP Japanese version
• The CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER Version number is now displayed correctly in all localized languages
• The Display Manager Notification dialog box is now displayed in the correct localized language
• The OpenGL driver is no longer disabled after boot up when both AGP Read and PCI Read are disabled

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

The long awaited game Hald-Life 2 is almost here. Everybody is now waiting for Valve, to press the button to make this game playable via Steam. ATI released a new Catalyst v4.12 beta driver yesterday, which brings special performance enhancements for this game. Today NVIDIA also released a v67.02 beta driver with special Half-Life 2 performance enhancements. Each game gets its own driver... but, of course, there are also some other fixes/enhancements:

Friday, November 12, 2004

ATI released new Catalyst display drivers version v4.11. ATI also announces a new beta Catalyst 4.12 for next week for the best support of a long awaited hot game. It's not hard to guess that ATI speaks about Half-Life 2:

• Nvidia already shipping A02 and A03 versions of nForce4

• ATI's R430 to fight 6600GT and 6800 STD
• Dell booms in record Q3
• Taiwan market: First-tier 19-inch LCD monitor prices to drop 7-14% in December