3DHardware.net takes an extensive look at the much delayed Matrox G400 32MB.

New BETA drivers for you guys with the Asus 3800 TNT2s. V3800 Beta 5 for Win9x and V3800 Beta 2 for NT4.

Sharky and his band whip it out again for reviews of the Abit BE6 (with on board UDMA/66!) and the 3DLabs O2 VX1 32MB.

Solid as a Rock, Hard as a Mutha is the title of HardOCP's review of the Abit BP6 (dual celeries)

AMD's Athlon being the hot topic of late, Aces Hardware compiles a bunch of benchmarks that they found on this French Athlon hands-on preview site. For the majority of you that can't read French, I suggest you try this link out...I don't know how well this translating will work for most of you, but hey, it's worth a shot ;-) Anyway, here's the best part:

Quake III 1.05	INTEL Pentium III 550	Amd Athlon 600 MHz	Profit / Loss
640*480 16 bits	76,2	91,4	20%
1024*768 16 bits	55,4	57,7	4%

 

Quake II - Crusher	INTEL Pentium III 550	Amd Athlon 600 MHz	Profit / Loss
640*480 16 bits - Software	21,2	29,3	38%
640*480 16 bits	60,7	76,2	26%
1024*768 16 bits	57,8	66,7	15%

 

Half Life Cheat	INTEL Pentium III 550	Amd Athlon 600 MHz	Profit / Loss
640*480 16 bits - Direct 3D	44,6	62,8	41%
1024*768 16 bits - Direct 3D	44,2	57,5	30%
640*480 16 bits - OpenGL	57,6	72,2	25%
1024*768 16 bits - OpenGL	56,5	67,7	20%

 

Also of interest would be Carmack on "K7".

The Men in Blue reported about an "article in the Los Angeles Times Business section titled Apple Has Eye of Software Makers, looks at the changing fortunes of gaming on the Macintosh with guarded optimism, pointing out that the release of a Mac version of Quake III Arena concurrent with the Windows release is a positive sign, but how well it sells on the Mac will serve as a test of how successful a gaming platform it truly has become."

Overall, I'm a pretty big proponent of the Apple hardware," said Carmack, who said that his products run well on Macintosh G3 computers. "But a lot of Mac people do blind themselves as to the quantifiable performance. No one can honestly say [Macs] are faster than the PC--or even as fast." He called the iMac "marginally acceptable"--dangerously faint praise in an environment where fast, cheap PCs are ubiquitous.

And another quote on why he wants to support the Mac:

"I'm [supporting the Mac] because it's the technically right thing to do, and to support people outside the mainstream," said Carmack. "Microsoft dominating everything with what is basically an inferior technology would be a very bad thing."

Fullon3d has a short bit on what's shakin' over at Cyrix with the recent events (VIA's acquisition). Looks like they're still targeting the low-end while Intel and AMD shoot it out on the pricier points:

• both Gobi and Jalapeno CPUs are Socket 370, no more Super7. They are expected to cooperate with all Socket370 boards if the board maker adds the BIOS support so the full existing 370 infrastructure can be used and receive 3DNow! support via Cyrix CPUs
• the 3DNow! unit will run at full core speed and is dual-issue pipelined like the K6-X units
• the x87 units are improved by making them dual-issued and pipelined as well, as opposed to the MII FPU that is single-issue and non-pipelined. Source refuses to make claims on how much faster that makes them, though.
• Only Jalapeno is expected to hit 750/1000 MHz, which is expected to launch in the latter half of 2000. The release speed grade is up in the air for lack of silicon versions of the chip so far.

Hey it's the return of Kenn (FiringSquad), discussing next generation 3D accelerators from 3dfx, Nvidia, and others. They discuss the implications of T&L, massive-multitexturing, multiple processors, and more.

One big effect of geometry acceleration is the difference (or lack of difference) on lower-end PCs. Potentially, if you've got a P2-266 and a P3-500 side by side, the graphics portion of games such as Quake 2 and Unreal will run at near exactly the same speeds on each of the systems. Unreal might lag slightly due to more sophisticated AI, but you'll no longer need to worry about upgrading the CPU to get more FPS. Yep, this is probably Intel's nightmare as the CPU becomes a non-factor in the specifics of 3D performance

CPUReview takes a look at Mandrake Linux.

Extreme Hardware reviews the Vortex 2 based soundcard, Montego II Quadzilla.

FPS3D reviews the value targeted Creative Labs Savage4.

The ever expanding staff at VE have posted their quick couple of questions with Tim Sweeney. He's enjoying the spotlight lately, I'm sure :-)

VoodooExtreme:   Ok, the real one, now that you've had a LOT of experience with Direct3D, some with GLide, and with OpenGL, what do you feel are each APIs strong points and weak points? Do you forsee JUST going with Direct3D in the future?

Tim: Glide: Was a good and necessary thing two years ago, before OpenGL and Direct3D performed acceptably. Destined to become obsolete soon. Nobody working on a new engine nowadays is targeting Glide. OpenGL: The cleanest and easiest API to use. Driver quality is worse than for Direct3D, but I see hardware vendors making a serious effort to improve that. Direct3D: Has the best and fastest hardware drivers available. The API isn't very clean, but I see Microsoft making a serious effort to improve that.

PlanetRiva interviews Michael Hara about their announced hardware transformation and lighting technology. Nothing concrete yet on what we call the "NV10" though. Still, here's a bit on what hardware T&L will do:

Transformation and Lighting are the first two of the four major steps (triangle setup and rendering being the final two) in the 3D graphics pipeline, or series of steps required to produce 3D graphics.  Both steps are mathematically intensive and very specific in the mathematics they require.

<snip>

Dedicated transformation and lighting will have the same impact as filtering did for pixels, but much bigger.  Software transformation and lighting done by the host CPU today is the biggest bottleneck that has forced software developers to limit the geometric complexity and lighting sophistication of their 3D characters and environments.

Trying to squeeze a few more MHz out of that TNT2U? Check out the Detonator cooler at GU.

S3 is interviewed over at CTNews about the usual things.

VE noticed over on the DirectX site (Microsoft) that they have posted the slide show presentations from this year's Meltdown.

Creative Labs is on the ball with those TNT driver updates. They have new ones for Win9x users, but keep in mind that this is a beta release

Yo check this out! John Carmack has updated the .plan talking about AMD's Athlon (although he still calls it by its engineering code name, K7). Now I have got to check this hot little CPU out. Here's a bit from the man himself:

Run at 640*480*16 bit color to emphasise the cpu/driver performance rather than the hardware fill rate.

K7-600 K7-550 PIII-500
TNT2 ultra 16 bit 73.9 68.5 53.8
Voodoo3 3000 16 bit 70.5 65.2 46.0

He continues on with quite a bit more info as well as the usual work-log. Big thanks to Vic.

All you guys that haven't hopped on the new 3d card bandwagon might be wondering about the Permedia 3. Well PCParadox came through with a review of the Permedia 3 Create! (not too shabby, but I think what we're really waiting for is the next generation of tech) Well, I guess virtual texturing is new...

Virtual Texturing, I think, is the most important feature on the Permedia3. Virtual Texturing most importantly, works independent and invisible to the game, thus providing seamless integration into ALL games. Virtual Texturing alleviates a lot of strain from the on-chip memory, and cuts down on the use of the AGP bus. To put this in perspective, just think about what  effects of Virtual Texturing when you start to run Unreal Tournament and Quake III with scenes with large textures. Most other cards (other than maybe the Savage4) will have to slow down as larger textures are pushed through the bus, while the Permedia3 chops up textures into manageable chunks and keeps sending things through at the same speed.

3D128 has a step-by-step guide for you guys who want to set up a home network for a little at home deathmatch action.