HalcYoN: Believe it or not, the recent hype could be legit. If there was a leak of the NV20 preview .pdf sent to OEMs and card makers, it very well should yield the NVIDIA graphs and screenshots that seem to be showing up everywhere.

Nevertheless, we managed to make the memory work stable at 250 MHz (500MHz) with ASUS AGP-V7700 Ultra. Further overclocking was impossible because of blocking in drivers, since with the frequency increase the system would have buzzed. The graphics core operated steady up to 300 MHz (at 310 MHz it revealed some unstability).

Physically the card looks great. It's well made and features a Blue Orb from Thermaltake preinstalled. I took off the Blorb to find thermal paste between the GPU and the orb. This is definately a plus, since paste conducts heat a lot better than thermal tape. They obviously know what the end user wants.

OpenGL 2x2 - 48.6 fps	OpenGL 2x2- 60.7 fps
Direct 3D 3x3 - 44.3 fps	Direct 3D 3x3 - 51.1 fps

It's amazing how both API's yield similar images. Unless you look real close, it's hard to see any image quality differences between Direct 3D and OpenGL.

Got an evil eye? Let's hear about it in the forums.

HalcYoN: Looks like the market is dumping techs today.  NVIDIA is being hit hard as they have dropped 10 points already today in a massive sell off.

• x-bit labs has some info on Gigabyte's GA-6RX DDR motherboard for Intel Socket370 platforms.
• Athlonmb.com has a BIOS for the MSI K7T Pro 2 motherboard which allows selection of voltages up to 1.85v.
• The Tech Zone reviews ThermalTake's Blue Orb video card cooler.
• MikeC is trying to be funny again, but what he really needs is a good flogging...heh.

Tranzmit has a few more scene demos up for download. Recent additions include Aliennation, 74293945, LifLaf and Flashback.

On the motherboard side of things, Digit Life has the PR released by Gigabyte about the first socket 370 mobo that will support DDR RAM. Good days are a coming :)

The Geforce DDR has by far the best performance for buck and the TNT2, being ultra cheap is very good value.

HalcYoN: Hey, I mentioned they had the benchmarks.  Are you just jealous cause I beat ya to it? Heheh.

While GeForce S3TC has always been a bit of eyesore because of lightmap discoloration, the anomolies for 3dfx HSR include the floor disappearing and complete frame drops. The key thing to remember here is beta, so stability should increase.

So how does it work? No idea, but I imagine they have ported part of the T-Buffer to be a Z-Buffer. We will have to wait and see what hardware sites with Voodoo5 cards find when using the new drivers and how severe the visual anomolies are. Until then, there is a thread at 3dfxgamers on the subject if you are curious. There is no word yet on Direct3D compatibiltiy in the future.

HalcYoN: While the OpenGL HSR driver update isn't quite ready for primetime, it looks like 3dfx is trying to raise the bar a bit. Will NVIDIA counter?

This little guide will help you find the best deals for computer parts and much, much more. It is by no means comprehensive; this article is merely what we have come across. Some of you might be keen to everything we have to say, but there is always some poor soul who has been buying all his computer parts at CompUSA. Hopefully we'll help a few of you out; and who knows, maybe you too will end up with a system that is the envy of your friends, neighbors, and concubines.

The Athlon and Duron are both tremendous values currently. We would go with an Athlon over a Duron, seeing as the extra L2 cache helps performance significantly. If overclocking is your shtick, a Duron and a pencil can also get you tremendous overclocking potential.

HalcYoN: FYI, Tech Exteme also has a review of the HP 932C Printer.

Another GeForce2 MX Review? Yeah, since these cards are cheap, we just got ourselves another one for testing in the Planet Savage labs as well as for usage in a computer gaming center that is filled with Durons.

Anyway, here is a bit on the card and its cooling.

The sample I received didn't come with TV-Out. It did however come with active cooling, courtesy of an Evercool heatsink.fan combo, that is thankfully also removable. Not that it performs badly or anything, but the fact that it is removable, leaves some latitude for slapping blue orbs, or some other hardcore cooling solution on, without having to break off an epoxy setup.

We have a ton of reviews in the works just in time for the holiday gift-buying season. You could send the links to the reviews to your parents or spouses as subtle hints. But honey, it got over 8000 3D Marks, that has to count for something...

Winamp is still busy playing Radiohead KidA, but some recent additions include Geddy Lee My Favorite Headache, Cannonball Adderley Somethin' Else featuring Miles Davis and others, and Amorphous Androgynous (aka Future Sound of London) Tales of Ephidrena. I get a bit random when it comes to music...

Remember to hit the forum. Some one has to keep eesuposabeafiahcracka in line, might as well be you.

As always, thanks for supporting nV News.

Tweak3D wants to share a few tips for cooling and protecting your PC's components as well as eliminating the dead spots where heat builds up.

Overheating is the worst cause of electronic component death. You may also want to keep in mind that repeated cooling and heating of any component is bad. When something heats up it expands, and it will contract when it cools down. If this process is always repeated, you risk cracking the device. This is why I personally always keep my computer running. All the components are in a constant, and don't go through temperature changes often. However, I do let the hard drives spin down after a certain amount of time.

• GamePC reviews the SoundBlaster Live! Platinum 5.1 and Thermaltake's Pentium 4 Golden Orb.
• System Logic checks out the fUnc sUrface 1030 mousepad.
• GA-Hardware reviews the Thrustmaster Firestorm Dual Power gamepad.
• AthlonOC is hosting a competition for some of the best hardware destruction pics.
• Roscoe A. Sincero has posted an editorial entitled False Measures: More Than Just Black and White.

VoodooExtreme: What's the video card scene looking like right now?

Brian Hook: Nvidia won. I think that pretty much sums it up.

NVIDIA Licenses Breakthrough 3D Technology to Microsoft

Strategic Agreement Enables Key Innovations and Advanced Features in Microsoft DirectX 8.0

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 28, 2000--In a continuing effort to drive the evolution of 3D graphics technology, NVIDIA(r) Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA - news) today announced it developed and licensed enabling 3D features to Microsoft Corp. for their new DirectX 8.0 3D application program interface (API). NVIDIA contributions were in the areas of programmable vertex shaders, programmable pixel shaders, and rect/tri-patch support for high order surfaces. These features allow software content creators to use more elaborate artwork and flexible 3D rendering techniques in their applications and games.

"As a result of these new features, DirectX 8.0 will enable a new level of 3D graphics applications, and new GPUs, including NVIDIA's, bringing new 3D rendering and shading techniques to life," said Chris Jones, vice president of the Windows Client Division at Microsoft. "NVIDIA has been a great help in developing DirectX 8.0 as it is a leader in graphics technology."

DirectX 8.0 is Microsoft's latest and most advanced version of its popular 3D API that enables developers to write software for a wide variety of multimedia hardware including graphics, audio, video, networking, and input devices designed for PCs. NVIDIA and Microsoft worked closely during the development of DirectX 8.0 to jointly promote the API throughout the development community.

"NVIDIA's goal is to advance the state of the art in graphics technology," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO for NVIDIA. "DirectX 8.0 will enable stunning experiences on Windows platforms and will quickly become the industry standard for graphics and multimedia applications. Our cooperation with Microsoft will drive rapid adoption of these NVIDIA graphics innovations by making them standard on Microsoft platforms industry-wide."

This agreement is part of a relationship between the two companies, aimed at delivering a lifelike interactive 3D experience. Other activities include co-training of Microsoft DirectX developers, DirectX VA development, and development of two key processors, the Media Communications Processor (MCP) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), for Microsoft's highly anticipated Xbox.

Many geeks have declared in the past year that a 19 inch monitor is a must have. They will tell you that 15 inches is just not done, and 17 inches is ok if you don't mind going blind. Frankly, that's a crock. A decent monitor is a decent monitor, and though size does matter, desktop real estate is an important consideration...

Anyway, here is a bit on one of Gigabyte's DDR offering.

The above is the GA-7AM, Gigabyte's Socket-A DDR solution using the ALi MAGiK1 chipset. It supports AMD's 200/266 MHz FSB processors and 2GB of DDR SDRAM. That 2 DIMM limit rears its head again as far as attaining the 2GB limit of the chipset. The 7AM is a micro-ATX board, but we expect a standard ATX version to come along soon as well. Besides the GA-7DX (AMD 760 chipset) and the GA-7AM (ALi MAGiK1 chipset), Gigabyte also has DDR for Socket-370 processors. The GA-6RX is a standard ATX board featuring 4 DIMM slots for a total of 2GB DDR SDRAM, an AGP Pro slot, 5 PCI slots, and an AMR slot. The micro-ATX version, known as the GA-6RM, features just 2 DIMM slots.

EX Hardware has a review of one such devices from Innovatek.

HalcYoN: I was looking in to building an Athlon system for a home file server, but it looks like my Dell Workstation will suit those needs.

Overall we were pleased with the Abit Siluro MX. When you understand the nature of the Siluro MX, there are no major drawbacks with this card at all.

Simply put, there is nothing currently out on the market that can approach the level of performance you can attain with Creative Labs' 3D Blaster GeForce 2 Ultra. Its power is more clearly seen when running games at high resolutions, preferably from 1024x768 onwards. Being able to get a sustained 60fps when running games at 1280x1024 equates to gaming nirvana. But still, you have to ask yourself if the $500 asking price is worth it.

• OCZ GeForce2 MX 32MB - $119.99
• OCZ GeForce2 GTS 32MB - $229.99
• OCZ GeForce2 Pro 64MB - $339.99
• OCZ GeForce2 Ultra 64MB - TBA

• VIA Integrated Chipsets Roadmap
  
• VIA Discrete Chipset Plans
  
• AMD to Increase Duron Volumes
  
• EPoX's DDR Mainboard Plans for Nearest Future

Overclockers.com has a DIY on cutting a hole in your floor to draw cool air in for underneath from the crawl space.  Great in theory, but the invading skunk may have dampened the parade a bit.

Needless to say, his aroma permeated my house through my pipe. If anyone has knowledge of expunging the odor of a skunk, write me, please. Washing the interior of my house in tomato juice just ain't going to cut it!

If you click the title link, you will be whisked away to 3D Spotlight's OS Updates page which is regularly updated with Win98SE, WinME and Win2K patches and update links.  It takes some of the hassle out of downloading and installing just the Microsoft operating system patches you really need.

By far the best NVmax release yet with a wealth of new features including unlimited overclocking, an updated interface, installer and features users have requested. Below is a list of all the things changed.

Bug fixes, show Nvidia logo, custom LOD, fog table emulation, memory & core overclock (unlimited value!), device selection, 7.xx support, v-sync render ahead, OpenGL v-sync, Installer, updated interface, auto location, mipmap levels, run display panel

The OpenGL Performer 2.4 release extends its industry-leading capabilities by adding a host of advanced features such as layered fog, anisotropic filtering, rotorwash and advanced performance-analysis tools and extends scalable performance across the entire graphics product line of SGI systems.

Of more interest is the launch of the 1.7GHz and 2GHz P4 parts in Q2. Intel shows the faster of these two chips being equal to or greater than 2GHz and our intelligence points to the 2GHz chip arriving somewhat earlier than advertised, perhaps as early as January.

• NVIDIA Earns Top Spot on Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500 List
• NVIDIA Products Earn Prestigious Comdex Awards

HalcYoN: There are already some pretty impressive machines and modifications in the database...

RivaTuner is a very powerful tweaking utility for nVidia cards. All series of Detonator drivers have a lot of undocumented registry keys. Some of them don't affect anything, but some are very useful. In general they can't improve 3D performance but they can improve image quality and solve some compatibility problems. I've discovered a lot of undocumented Detonator settings. RivaTuner will help you to change them. Version 2.0 beta 2's minor bugfixes:

• Fixed issue with tray icon click
  
• Fixed LOD bias settings into Direct3D tweaking dialog
  
• Fixed W-buffer settings for 32-bit modes into
• Direct3D tweaking dialog
  
• Fixed default value for PCI texture heap

What's new:

• Build-in overclocking utility added for Detonator 3.xx and higher
  
• New more flexible and more comfortable build-in registry editor
  
• New RTD format. RTD databases can now contain string values, defaults and help on each entry.
  
• Full databases for the best TNT2 and GeForce drivers, Voodoo databases.
  
• Minor UI changes

So, with some consideration, we can pick a GeForce2 MX based card as the budget card of choice. Not only does the card shine in T&L intensive games, but it also has strong performance in all the benchmarks. In addition, many GeForce2 MX cards are currently on the market for around $100 or even a bit less.

I'm not having any luck getting to their site. Might want to try back later.

It turns out it was a silly coincedence, but for some reason certian driver revs (older revs) do not allow the GeForce2 PRO to be overclocked...

A free little AGP and PCI diagnostic utility for Windows 95/98 - Written to quickly test the supported and enabled capabilities of AGP cards (side-band addressing, pipeline, 2x/4x transfers, etc.), PCIList is a Windows utility that also serves as a general-purpose PCI device lister.

HalcYoN: Hey, one of those lists o' links was mine there, whippersnapper, heh.

• Linux driver
  
• OS/2 Driver

Action Trip has posted their Complete Loser's Guide To Counter-Strike.

Unless you've run into a group of guys that are about as brain-dead as your trusted teammates, there is zero to none chance you're going to find a half-decent opponent to play you. People are more likely to suffer severe bladder problems from all the hysterical laughing generated by your plant-intelligent taunting and the general appearance of your teammates. Oh, and don't forget to always take your teammates to the events (tourneys, LAN parties). It is imperative that people actually start recognizing you as "those lunatic asylum junkies looking to play CS with their excellent keyboards."

• Digit-Life has a rundown of the new chipsets which will emerge in hte first half of next year. Included in the list are Crush11 and Crush12 from NVIDIA.

• Planet Hardware gives the latest i815 motherboard from Soyo, the SY-7ISA, a run through.

• Euro Gamer teases us all with new screenshots of Dynamix's Tribes2. Quit teasing and release a damn demo!

• Overclockers.com has a Christmas buying guide for hard drives and video cards. May be a good link to send to the wife/parents as a hint...

• The Register found out the hard way that WinME, or any other 9X variant, con not support over 512MB of memory.

Anand Tech takes a look at the latest addition, the CeleronII 766. While it is a great upgrade for older machines looking for more performance in Microsoft Word, it may not be the gamer's choice because of the limited 66MHz FSB and potentially poor overclocking results.

• CPU-bURN 'sTreasure Chest of Fun Sweepstakes is coming to an end.
• The Tech Zone reviews the AOpen HX08 tower case.
• Ecronom covers upgrading a PC along with customizing a new case.
• Gaming in 3D checks out The Claw gamepad.

In Quake3 Pentium 4 1.4GHz performed very beautifully and surpassed Athlon 1.2GHz by nearly 30%, not to mention the Pentium III, of course.

At 1152x864x32 (85Hz) the RI-91 met its end, and produced a non-impressive picture that came nowhere near the G400. Very high resolutions such as 1280x1024x32 (75Hz) and 1600x1200x32 (60Hz) showed the most difference in which the RI-91 produced a series of tiny blurry horizontal lines, while the G400 was still on top of all benchmarks.

The card performs very well, especially at lower resoultions. The benefits of overclocking the FSB (7.0 x 120MHz) are apparent at 640x480 (16 and 32-bit color) and 800x600 (16-bit color) providing an increase in frames per second of around 15%. Of course the PCI bus, which runs at a default speed of 33MHz, is overclocked as well.

Similar to it's AGP counterpart, Quake 3 performance in 32-bit color begins to suffer at a resolution of 800x600. However, the percentage decrease is much sharper which is to be expected since it's a PCI component. But we finally have a GeForce2 graphics upgrade path for those stuck with a motherboard based on Intel's 810E chipset.

Unlike the Quake 3 shootout article, which was based on high quality settings, these results are from normal settings with texture compression enabled. Sound and vsync were disabled.

AnandTech has also posted a buyer's guide for value systems. The GeForce2 MX finds a home in their gaming and professional 3D systems.

For some, the issue of rolling lines is refresh rate specific.  For others, its resolution specific.  Most, including email I have received, have not had any problems at all.  The link to the thread has been sent to reps for NVIDIA and Creative, and I'll keep you guys posted.

I have tried settings where people have had the rolling lines, but no interference here.  This leads me to believe there is some very random yet frequent combination of conditions that leads to the interference.

In all probability, the Rampage will have a sufficiently powerful TCL unit to crank up the speed of the new generation of games with 100,000-200,000 polygons per frame and blast away!

• Programmable graphics processing unit.
• Up to 7 times faster than the Geforce 2 Ultra (depending on application).
• A 300 percent increase in FSAA performance compared to the GeForce2 Ultra.
• Able to handle one trillion operations and 100 gigaflops (floating-point operations) per second.
• Downloading large quantities of geometrical data should now flow substantially faster (hidden surface removal).
• Ramdac speed of over 500MHz.
• Enhanced shading rasterizer with support for 3D textures, curved surfaces and gradual fogging effects.

I want to let our visitors know that what we do not appreciate his comments whatsoever and are personally offended by them. You can read our original comments on the strong arm tactics here.

Click the title link for the IP address, and to give any input on the Quake3 Team Arena experience.

Björn's 3D World and NVIDIA invite you to help show the world the awesome power of the GeForce GPU! We are looking for demos that highlight the advanced features of the GeForce. The best demo, as determined by the staff of Björn3D, will win a GeForce2 Ultra from Björn3D and the chance of being showcased on NVIDIA's Web site!

Team Arena is using more visual effects than Q3A from a map, texture and shader perspective. We are looking at things to make sure that the hit on frame-rate is not too drastic. I've seen reports that frame-rate "feels pretty much just like Q3A" to "it was drastically slower". We will take a look and see where and when we are losing FPS.

• LCM-Network checks out the MSI StarMAXX32 (German).
• Digit-Life has posted reviews of the Asus AGP-V7100/2V1D and Elsa's Gladiac MX.

• Digital Web 3D reviews the MSI StarForce 816.
• Active Hardware checks out the Asus V7700 Deluxe GeForce 2 GTS.

• GA-Hardware reviews the Videologic Digitheatre 5.1 Speaker system. Sounded great but not quite that loud...

• Tweak Town checks out the MSI K7T Pro2A which adds multiplier adjustment and ATA-100 to the extremely stable MSI KT133 platform.

• Anand Tech also has the Intel mobile CPU and Chipset Roadmap posted today.

• Tom's Hard Where? adds an update to their Pentium4 review. Don't worry, it didn't get any faster all of a sudden.

• Amount of transistors: 50 million. It is twice as much as by GeForce2 GTS and 8 million transistors more than in Pentium 4.

• Heat dissipation: around 15W. This is quite a lot for a graphics accelerator. That's why new cooler construction may be required.

Clean rooms are 10,000 times cleaner than a hospital operating room. There are sophisticated air filtering systems which purify the air once every 10 minutes to keep the room incredibly clean. But keeping the room clean and having people entering in and out all the time is likely going to be disastrous.

GS: How do you see the modem and game downloads working in conjunction with the Xbox hard drive?

JA: It's our belief that the hard disk and online capabilities of Xbox will create opportunities to give games life beyond the retail purchase and open doors for new opportunities in game design. The hard drive is not just a massive memory card where you can store saved games, although it can be used for that. The hard drive actually adds more benefit to the game developers that are looking for new ways to extend the life of their games, whether it's through new downloadable content or online multiplayer play.

Even though there is no significant difference between 2x and 4x I always wanted to get 4x to work. I paid for 4X so damn it I want it! Now I found a way. It's called the AGP Driving Value. This value is located in the mobo's BIOS for those that use the VIA chipset. With some mobos the BIOS Setup program will have this option. There might also be an option called AGP Driving Control. This can be set to AUTO or MANUAL. Use MANUAL in order to set a value for the AGP Driving Value.

MikeC: Man, I just got a P3-700 and am already looking at 1GHz processors. Call it GHz envy.

On Friday 24th of November Mr.Tweak and raTus set out to do an easy task of turning a Pentium 75 chip into a keyring. We started of with a Ryobi drill and drill bit which turned into a hammer and nail punch...

Did I say this card is fast?

• In the specialized memory bandwidth benchmarking, Pentium 4 1.5GHz get ahead Athlon Thunderbird 1.2GHz (DDR) by +79 ~ +161%.
• In the specialized SSE2 impact benchmarking, SSE2 optimized boosts Pentium 4 1.5GHz performances up to +104%.
• In most of the games today, Athlon Thunderbird 1.2GHz (DDR) run faster than Pentium 4 1.5GHz.

If you look at the extended mode shot, you see that my Windows desktop has extended onto the second (smaller) monitor. The picture I took last night of the clone mode, which is shown in Internet Explorer, spans both monitors. I also have a column of icons at the far right of the second monitor as well (Quake 3 is on the top). Slick stuff.

Some report the problem as refresh rate specific, and others report the problem as resolution specific. Yet another individual in the Creative Labs forum reported that applying pressure up or down to the SVGA out cable cleared the wavy lines. I do not know if it is hardware or BIOS related. If your card works fine your input could be useful as well.

If you are having this problem try disconnecting power to the heatsink/fan unit temporarily and see if the interference clears. I also understand the number of those that experience the interference are definitely in the minority, most users have had no issues with their cards, myself included.

Thanks.

Click the title link, download the demo, and I'll give you NVIDIOT fraggers an ip address as soon I have it...

HalcYoN: I have a feeling Team Arena will be the given venue when the nV News Quakeheads take on NVIDIA's finest...

Mitch: Happy Holidays one and all...

Peace and have a great Thanksgiving for those of you that celebrate the holiday.

• Gamer's Depot has a review of the Hercules 3D Prophet II Pro GTS.
• GameSpy has posted a preview of Serious Sam which includes a few new screenshots.
• The Tech Zone checks out the Netgear RT314 Cable/DSL router.
• Club Overclocker is giving away an MSI 694D Pro motherboard with dual P3 700s overclocked to 933MHz in their latest contest.
• Sharky Extreme has more coverage (Intel, 3dfx, Tyan, ATI and AMD) from Comdex 2000.
• The Firing Squad also has more Comdex 2000 coverage including Quake 3 benchmarks from the Voodoo5 6000.
• Gaming in 3D takes a stab at explaining virtual memory to us.
• Digit-Life has information on Matrox's future plans and comments from Creative on GeForce2 Pro based graphics cards.
• Tech Extreme looks at NEC's FE-700 flat faced monitor.
• Euro Gamer has a preview of BioWare's upcoming RPG Neverwinter Nights.

The higher performance of the NV20 is based on a new architecture of the chip :the memory-interface has been completely revamped, so that the loading of large amounts of geometry-data is much faster.

The control interface is unwieldy too in the heat of battle - there's no real time to use the mouse to pick groups of creatures, formations, issue orders or even cast spells, forcing the use of hotkeys for everything pretty much from the start. That highlights one of Sacrifice's biggest failings - surely the interface should have been designed to actually be usable in play, rather than being window-dressing around the edge of the screen?

• The NVIDIA Shader Debugger has been posted.
• Two new vertex shaders: one on Anisotropic Lighting and another on Keyframe Interpolation have been posted.
• A number of bugs in the NVEffectsBrowser have been fixed, so be sure to grab the new version and recompile, or re-download your effects.
• The Adobe Photoshop Plugins have been updated to version 1.4, adding mip-map support.
• NVTriStrip has been updated to version 1.1. This version fixes a number of serious bugs and adds some new features.
• Finally, screenshots have been added to the effect pages.

Although the NV20 didn't make it out as NVIDIA's fall product, the part itself seems to be doing quite well and card vendors are expecting samples in December. With the part sampling next month, we can expect it to hit shortly thereafter.

HalcYoN: Well, not really "no more", but there has been quite a shakeup over the url.  The iXBT-Labs guys are back to their Russin roots with the English component living at the Digit-Life address.  The xbit guys take the ixbt page you have grown used to over the last few months with them....

MikeC: Double your Quake 3 fun!

Predictions have 3dfx turning things around, ATi gaining momentum and NVIDIA keeping the lead. Given the rumors of the Matrox G800's 3D performance and delays, they also predict that Matrox will bow out of the gaming market for the time being to focus on business applications. Don't count them out, though, the G800 should bring Matrox back to the 3D battlefront.

Update: There is another forward looking article on video cards over at 3Dn Hardware. They add the PowerVR guys into the fold.

I was also sent a link by Jon Lightner on Matrox's involvement in the next Amiga platform. click here for info.

HalcYoN: Here comes a shameless plug...

According to the docs, the new designed NV20 boasts the performance when high polygon counts come into play. As overdraw rises when more polygons are visible, the efficiency of NV20 rises due to its new unit, which tries to reduce overdraw. Nvidia's marketing docs expect performance gains between a factor 2 to 7 over the current GeForce2 ULTRA performance level.

• Fixed bug that could make the GTU display wrong settings (w2k)
  
• Added color correction support (w98)
  
• Some layout improvements :-)
  
• Changed the copyright status of the GTU (read the information box in the "information" tab of the GTU)
  
• Moved "DXVAEnable" from the beta options to D3D. I think it's to enable "DirectX Video Acceleration" (w98)
  
• 17 new options for Windows 2000. Examples: Direct3D, DirectX Video Acceleration, W-Buffer settings, Z-Buffer compression, OpenGL, Force 16bit Z-Buffer
  
• S3TC quality bugfix
  
• Added a beta settings tab in the W2K version!
  
• 4 New entries in the beta tab (w98) - one is: "UseIntelCompat"
  
• Added "Laser Sight" option to the Stereo3D tab (That's what I thought when I found the entry: "ASUS 3D See Through" ... But I guess I'm wrong.)
  
• 4 new options in the "General" tab: (w98)
  
  - Enable AGP Fastwrites
  - Disable AGP Fastwrites Disconnect
  - Enable AGP SideBandAdressing
  - Enable AGP FastWrites Strap

The card is in the first PCI slot directly under the AGP slot which has a yellow sticker attatched to it. The green debug led is just about in the center of the picture and is about the size of a pinhead.

This full size shot of the card shows the three indicators which are located at the very top center of the card.

Anyway, with 750MHz of P3 love and tv-out on a Savage mobile, it does make for a instant portable server at the next LAN party.

Here is a bit on the visuals:

This new engine includes support for the latest and greatest graphical tricks and special effects, including real-time shadows, 32-bit color, vertex lighting, detail texturing, etc. The end result is simply breathtaking! The mechs have never looked better than in Vengeance, complete with small details such as rust and chipped paint from skirmishes.

• Hidden surface removal which will provide a significant increase in performance due to less memory bandwidth utilitzation
• Four rendering pipelines each running at 300MHz
• DDR SDRAM operating at 250-300 MHz
• Programmable T&L pipeline with the ability to render 100 million polygons/sec and 32-64 light sources per scene
• Improvments and new features in NVIDIA's shading rasterizer
• 3D textures with compression
• Major overhaul of anisotropic filtering (24-32 samples)
• Improved mutil-sampling to support FSAA natively

• Overclocking @ QGL has a newly created case modification gallery.
• 3D Rage has posted a Windows 98 hard drive and memory performance guide.
• Athlon OC has posted an article on watercooling.
• Hardware OC has posted a comparison between Super Orb and The Overclockerz Store Monster II.

• Apu's Hardware has put up an excellent Bios guide for KT7 owners.

• Athlon MB reviews the Abit KT7.

• CPU Review has put up their Comdex Report.

As you can see, compared to NVIDIA offerings, the RADEON sports a fairly unique architecture, which is both a blessing and a curse. When running single-textured mode, it sports the lowest fill-rate of all. However, when running in multi-textured mode, we see it pick up and come in third behind the GTS (and in all fairness the GTS never reaches it's peak 1600MT/s).

Sorry about the less than stellar pic. I've got the heebie-geebies (sp?) from drinking too much coffee.

HalcYoN: Is it me or is just plain wierd to see a PCI video card?  I have become so used to the AGP slot connectors.

MikeC: Don't forget about the new poll which asks what kind of video card you have. So far (333 votes), the GeForce2 GTS is in the lead with 32% followed by the GeForce DDR with 21%. The GeForce2 MX is a distant third with 14%. Someone, or two, even said they have an NV20 reference card!

There are other resolutions (1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, and 2048x1600) that can be used although they are not officially supported.

When the time arrives that you need a USB hub to expand your connectivity, you will be faced with a simple choice. Either you get one of the standard fixed port hubs which offer no flexibility later on (Belkin produce a range of these too), and you save some cash, or you go for the slightly more expensive "hub plus" design and give yourself some small element of futureproofing.

This display is absolutely beautiful. Think i'm kidding? Head on over to your nearest computer shop and look at this display compared to other 17" displays. There are several things that make this display what it is, I will go into a few of them.

3DGPU: Now that NVIDIA has conquered the speed king crown, will NVIDIA start concentrating more on image quality, such as better 2D quality at higher resolutions (1600x1200 and up), and is FSAA a high priority on NVIDIA's list now?

BB: We will be concentrating on retaining the performance crown and offer image quality that no other 3D graphics chip can compare to. Our next generation product...oooohhhh...almost got me. (Editor's Note: Darn!!)

As the performance of our GPUs continues to increase at such a rapid pace, FSAA is affected in two ways. First, the frame rates with FSAA increase resulting in better game play in games where FSAA is a benefit. The second is to be able to run at higher resolutions, where FSAA is needed less and less. The important thing to remember is that FSAA is only one component to NVIDIA's image quality equation. We have more than just FSAA to talk about with Geforce2. Things like increasing the triangle count through T&L, adding the rich and accurate details that result from per pixel shading with the NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer, and adding multiple textures in a single pass for brilliant effects all add to superior image quality. The NV20 will add a ton of new features that will result in stunning image quality, things like...sic, got you again.

Proview GV500 is based on NVIDIA NV1 Multimedia Accelerator, with 2MB VRAM and upgradeable to 4MB with PCI 2.0 bus plug and play supported, a display resolution from 640x480 at 256/32K/16.7M colors up to 1024x768 256/32K/16.7M colors, 1152x864 256/32K/16.7M colors and 1600x1280 256/32K colors.

Ok so thats old news (1995 infact), but it is interesting to see how far computer graphics have developed in only five years. Imagine what our PCs will be doing 5 years from today.

Click here to read that press release.

60.1% - No more than 300 dollars.
24.7% - Up to 400 dollars.
7.9% - Up to 500 dollars.
2.5% - Up to 600 dollars.
0.6% - Up to 700 dollars.
0.2% - Up to 800 dollars.
4.1% - More than 800 dollars.

Next poll asks what card you currently have.

MikeC: OK, who's the guy with the NV20...heh.

HalcYoN: If you have any experience with SocketA cooling on a KT7, join in on this thread in our forum with any advice.

If I had to hazard a wild guess, I would say that it is because much of Q3's structure is broken up into nice separate phases, like game, cgame, front end, back end. The P4 relies on a trace cache for best performance, and it would have effects in some ways like a smaller instruction cache. It may turn out to be something unrelated, like a better bus interface helping the graphics driver more.

John Carmack

Almost as interesting, the P4T will also come with a mainboard adapter allowing the P4T to be mounted in a standard ATX case with out any modifications.

BTW, You may have to scroll down their news page a bit to get to the pictures and links to the .pdf.

HalcYoN: I am a bit of a purist when it comes to home theater.  I am currently running an Onkyo receiver (DTS/Dolby Digital) to matched JBL drivers and Yamaha powered sub, with a Toshiba Cinema Series 50" television.  The thought of using a PC to watch a movie was not too attractive until I got the Alienware system with the MidiLand 5.1 speaker setup.

The link on the first page to the second points to the German version. Click here to read the English version of the second page.

Q: How did you incorporate textures into this game and will it really take advantage of the new Geforce 2 cards and the future Geforce 2 cards?

A: Yes. Nvidia has been taking care of the Planet Moon guys. I believe that they got one of the first Geforce cards that came out so they have been able to take advantage of everything it has to offer. Which is great and it has been nice. At one point Giants was very VooDoo specific and it is no longer solely dependent on it now. so companies like Nvidia benefit from this because there technology is on most cards out today.

It's just a damn shame that the "latest" home user OS from Microsoft is so incompatible with such a large portion of the existing market. Essentially, ME comes across as a "latest hardware only, please" type of OS. I've had greater ease of matching up compatible hardware in Linux for God's sake.

• Ace's Hardware - GeForce2 GTS
• AnandTech - GeForce2 GTS
• Australian IT - GeForce2 GTS
• Firing Squad - GeForce2 Ultra
• Gamers Depot - GeForce2 GTS
• HardOCP - GeForce2 Ultra
• Hardware One - GeForce2 Ultra
• Hot Hardware - GeForce2 Ultra
• Sharky Extreme - GeForce2 Ultra
• Tom's Hardware - GeForce2 GTS, Quadro2

• Case Modders Australia have a 2 in 1 review of some Everglide mousing gear. Their famed Large Attack Pad and Mouse Bungee.

• 3D Gameman has a video review of the 800 MHz Duron.

• The ctrl-alt-del have a short HSF comparison between two socket A fans from the Overclockerz Store.

• Digital Silence has some news on Linux for Windows, definetly for the Linux newbie. This sounds quite interesting...

• Hardware Daily has a quick review of Labtec'sPulse-424 Speaker Set.

"Although relatively new to the workstation graphics market, NVIDIA is already raising the bar for high-quality products," says Arnie Williams, editor in chief of CADENCE. "We were especially impressed with the Quadro2 Pro, an affordable but powerful accelerator rivaling the performance of much more expensive cards."

"Recognition from CADENCE Magazine, the premier publication for the CAD industry, elevates the Quadro2 Pro to elite status among workstation graphics solutions," says Dan Vivoli, senior vice president of marketing for NVIDIA. "This award is a testament to NVIDIA's ability to deliver the premier 3D graphics solution for each market segment we target with our technology."

MikeC: I'm pretty sure that Leadtek will allow me to keep the two GeForce2 MX cards (AGP and PCI) that I am currently reviewing. You know what that means? I'll be giving them away as a token of our appreciation for your support of nV News.

From what I have seen so far, most gamers should not feel too compelled to run out and upgrade...

Luckee: How did you incorporate textures into this game and will it really take advantage of the new Geforce 2 cards and the future Geforce 2 cards?

Travis: Yes. Nvidia has been taking care of the Planet Moon guys. I believe that they got one of the first Geforce cards that came out so they have been able to take advantage of everything it has to offer. Which is great and it has been nice. At one point Giants was very VooDoo specific and it is no longer solely dependent on it now. so companies like Nvidia benefit from this because there technology is on most cards out today.

Just wanted you to see the great job ATI does on the heat sink attachment (NOT). Here is a scan of the removed heat sink. As you can see not many fins and the glue job almost scares me. It took almost no effort to get this off. Now I have a custom heatsink on the card using frag tape. I wish I could use Artic Sliver grease but there is no way to hold the heat sink on other than something sticky. As far as overclocking goes I am holding out for a ATI RADEON custom OC program. I don't like Powerstrip and don't want to pay for it.

HalcYoN: The manner in which card manufacturers attach heatsinks to video cards can be somewhat suspect.  My first TNT had just a touch of thermal glue holding it in place and I decided to remove it in favor of heatsink compound with a touch of super-glue gel in one corner to hold it in place.  The current crop of hetasink/fan units are moving towards the pushpin mount used by motherboard chipset heatsinks.

If you look here, you can see the pins to the upper left and lower right of the fan.  MSI, Creative, AbsoluteMM and many others have started using this type of heatsink/fan unit, not just for the Ultra cards, but for all cards.

HalcYoN: I'll probably end up adding more links to Pentium4 Previews here as they come in...

• Australian IT's link to their Pentium 4 Preview is back up.

• Dan's Data has their preview up which focuses on mulit-porcessing, the Northwood mPGA478 transition and Rambus.

• GamePC has 13 pages of Pentium4 specs, pics and benches.

• Planet Hardware is the first previews I have seen to use Expendable and MDK2.

• Tech Report discusses the Pentium4 debut and the effect the release will have on AMD and their roadmap.

• Gamer's Depot compares performance of the P4 1.5 GHz to T-Bird 1.2GHz and P3 1.1GHz.

• For about 24 hours we had a GeForce 2 MX for $58 including shipping, but as of last Monday it was no longer available!!!
• Added GeForce DDR back as prices have again dropped below $200.
• GTS prices actually rose a few dollars this week.
• All brands of GeForce2 Ultras are now well below the 500 dollar mark.
  

• 128Mb vs. 256Mb SDRAM
  When DDR RAM is just around the corner you can expect to find a stick of 256 MB PC133 under $200 US. So why not load up on a bunch? We have also seen the standard amount of ram bumped up to 128MB. So what kind of performance gain would you expect to see with 256MB? That is what we are here to find out.
• Optimizing your xDSL/Cable Modem Connection
  Is your @home moving along at a snails pace? DSL got ya down? Well, here's a guide to at least try and help you get the most bang for your buck... I'm not guaranteeing any "quick-fixes" but I can say with some assurance that you'll notice it when these settings are properly configured.
• The CompuNurse and The CP-Vue
  The CompuNurse can be used to take point reading of one of several different locations in your computer (video card, cd-rom, hard drive etc.) and the CP-Vue offers a readout of the ambient temperature of your computer case.

Well all things considered for the price this card goes for it is a pretty damned good deal. It is fast and stable and it certainly would rate highly on my Christmas shopping list.

• HardOCP
  We have been waiting for Intel to up the ante in the CPU market. Their attempt to lead the pack with the 1.13GHz processor was a dismal failure, and we were left wondering if the king had left the throne permanently. The Pentium 4 is Intel's attempt to once again snatch the speed crown from AMD's 1200MHz TBird. In fact, if the 1.5GHz P4 is successful, it will surpass AMD's next couple of scheduled processor releases if you consider GHz alone. We got to spend some quality time with the 1.5GHz P4, and we want to show you what it REALLY does.
• Sharky Extreme
  That's correct folks, the long awaited Pentium 4 processor has arrived. We have taken a fully equipped Pentium 4 1.5GHz machine and run it through the most comprehensive series of benchmarks to ever make its way into our lab. How does it compare to Intel's Pentium III 1GHz? How about AMD's 1.2GHz Athlon paired with the 760 DDR chipset? Would you like to super-size that?.
• AnandTech
  Today Intel is introducing the first two members of the Pentium 4 family, the 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz parts, which not only mark the first two x86 CPUs that make use of the NetBurst Architecture but they are currently the two highest clocked x86 CPUs available. And today, our job is to explain the performance of the Pentium 4 and give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down you're here for.
• Hot Hardware
  In the following pages we'll show you the inner workings of the all new Pentium 4 Processor, the Motherboard and Chipset that supports it and the performance levels that are to be expected across various software applications and operating systems.

• Croteam developer Dean Sekulic discusses the state of 3D.
• Apu's Hardware reviews the Mouse Bungee.
• Hexus takes a look at the Home Highway (ISDN).
• The-Ctrl-Alt-Del has put up a new forum.
• The Firing Squad has a preview of Mechwarrior 4.
• Insane Hardware covers the Computer Show 2000 and ITEX 2000.

All shots were taken in 32bit color on a GeForce 2. Looking over the images you'll notice incredible detail levels, and remarkable landscapes. Look for our full hands-on preview soon.

XBA is the result of those efforts. XBA is a tightly coupled graphics engine that encompasses high speed embedded memory (EDRAM) with a 512 bit memory interface that is 4X wider than the industry's current crop of 128 bit interface. This memory is used to the fullest by an 8-texel pipeline for the 3D processor market. These two components go hand in hand. Without the huge bandwidth of the embedded memory the 8-texel engine would stall and not be efficient or practical.

Nvidia is working heavily on bringing the NV20 to market and many 3rd party manufacturers have already received samples of the chip in order to design their own video cards. While we don't know the final specs of the NV20 we have heard some information about the NV20.

Ok, now we get to the meat of the review, is the Pentium 4 worth the money? At this time, no. It is the fastest thing on the market for 3D gaming right now, but with AMD's Thunderbird's so low in price, it's pretty tough to justify and extra $600-$700 for a very slight performance gain, not to mention the added cost of the Rambus DRAM sticks.

I have set gaming targets. These targets are different for different games. One target is to keep the FPS right at 20 at the slowest moment in demo001 of Quake3 Arena when the gibs are really flying, usually around 45-50fps average. Another is to maintain an average well above the 60fps mark, preferably 70fps.

This is only part one as he's yet to add some fins to the back side of the card. He's got his memory upto 385MHz!

On the way back from delivering the tread mill, I stopped by Electronics Botique with the intent of getting Baldur's Gate II. Instead I ended up grabbing a copy of Sacrifice for only $34.99. I was looking at the back of the box and noticed a few endorsements by various web sites. I was sold on the game when I saw 3DGPU's endorsement - every Aspect of Sacrifice blew me away.

NVIDIA's logo appears on the box as well as they offered the following - Sacrifice is a fantastic, visually stunning union of art and technology.

For more info, head on over to the official Sacrifice forum which is hosted by Voodoo Extreme.

I recently did a "Showdown" involving the newly released DirectX 8 Final build, the NVIDIA 6.31 drivers and the newly leaked NVIDIA 7.17 drivers. As soon as the review was posted I started receiving emails from helpful viewers letting me know that the 6.47 drivers were the best performing under Windows 2000. So I decided in all fairness I should do an update to my previous review and this time include the 6.47 drivers.

While completing the review I immediately ran into a problem. The 6.47 drivers that I normally used in Windows 2000 were now giving me the exact same problems that the 7.17 drivers were producing in 3DMark 2000. If your unfamiliar with the problem I am referring to, look here. Well, I was
finally able to figure out what the problem was.

That led me to think about his comment on T&L. Maybe I should open up a can of whoopass and take the Leadtek PCI GeForce2 MX and install it on the Pentium 90 that's sitting in the closet. I could compare performance against a Riva 128 (Diamond Viper V330) using GLQuake. Might make for an interesting project on the side assuming the MX would work in such an old system.

BTW, Kyle also received some specs for 3dfx's Rampage graphics chipset. Click here to check them out.

MikeC: My wife rarely enters the computer room. I never issued her a badge which would allow her to unlock the door using the electronic decoder mechanism...heh.

First we cover the specifications of each of the GeForce2 cards, then dive in to low-resolution and high-resolution performance. We wrap it up with a section on getting better performance by disabling a couple of Quake 3 frame rate killers.

If Quake 3 is your game and you like benchmark results (150 of 'em) with some analysis, this article if for you! Check it out here.

We love to overclock our video cards. It's a fact. With the simple click of a mouse one can increase his or her frame rates drastically. So why not do all you can to get the most out of your graphics card with RAM sinks. No - I'm not talking about buying those "fancy" RAM sinks from the store, I'm talking about making your own.

• Duron 900MHz $49.99
  
• Duron 950Mhz (unlocked and pretested) $54.99
  
• Duron 1000MHz (unlocked and pretested) $64.99

Look closely at the Ultra and we notice that it is a close resemblance of the reference design GeForce2 Ultra from NVIDIA. The card is of course equipped with a luxury 64 MB and to date fastest available DDR (Double Datarate) SGRAM (2x230MHz) running at a steady 4ns.

The e-GeForce2 MX TwinView card comes with a standard DB-15 Monitor Out connector and a standard S-Video Out connector for TV out capabilities, along with a DVI connector. The DVI connector on this model will not function with digital flat panel monitors, and is inteded to work with an analog adapter to allow the card to connect to a second CRT monitor display.

• The Squab came down with a case of the NOLF, and wrote a review about it.

• Overclockers Oz has a Socket Heatsink comparison up.  The six contestants include coolers from Alpha, Globalwin, Thermaltake and Agilent.

• Acid Hardware reviews the DFI AK74-EC JT133 motherboard.  So how does it stack up to the Asus A7V?

• Tech Extreme takes a look at a couple media blunders.  You can't trust anyone that reports news these days.  :þ  Biased...

• 3D Rage has an article of Windows 98/ME fixes.  Get tips to solve the little annoyances that make the OS's so lovable.

• Gaming in 3D reviews an adapter kit for Alpha heatsinks which allows you to bolt on an 80mm fan.

• Hardware Central has a Desktop Video Buyer's Guide.
  

• RAM Memory support for DDR PC1600/PC2100/PC2600

• Integrated graphics powred by the GeForce2 MX

• Also has a AGP 4X slot

• Supports ATA-100

• Integrated Ethernet 10Mbps/100Mbps controller

• AC'97 integrated interface

• As well as 5 PCI slots

The South Bridge is the MCP-1 announced by NVIDIA some time ago, but applied to gaming console X-Box. The link between the bridges in Crush will be performed via LDT bus designed by AMD. The bus will provide a top bandwidth of 800 Mb/sec. Unlike classic chipsets Crush will have a PCI controller transferred to the South Bridge. MCP-1 will support up to five PCI slots, ATA-100, two USB ports, Ethernet 10/100 Mbps controller and AC'97 interface. In the future versions of MCP such features as USB 2.0 support, internal hardware sound, etc are expected.

It will feature integrated GeForce2 MX graphics and use the MCPX as the South Bridge. Both the 64bit and 128bit versions will be PC1600 and PC2100 compatible, however the 128bit version will require DDR DIMMs in pairs, just like the old days of EDO.

Click the title link to get the most interesting news about release timeframes...

What amazed me was that at the demonstration of it, they ran a Toy Soldiers demo which was built specifically to stress the NV20. It ran perfectly on a laptop with only 16MB of memory. Thus, integrated graphics proved to be a very viable graphics solution. Laptops will never be the same anymore.

At the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Wolford told Gamecenter that the Voodoo5 6000 has not been cancelled; that 3dfx will not start selling current chipset technology to third parties such as Creative Labs and ELSA; that Voodoo products, including current graphics and TV cards, will continue to be manufactured; and that the company is not going belly-up any time soon.

Desktop Video Editing has quickly taken the computing world by storm. Even a few years ago creating a decent PC based video editing system would cost you more wealth than most people can imagine. Well, maybe not that much wealth, but it was an expensive and daunting prospect. Even so, these systems were typically very sluggish and prone to random failures and errors due to the complexity of video editing hardware.

Oh my, how times have changed, though. Desktop video has become a hobby for the masses. Where once only the richest of the rich could afford to edit video of a PC, now almost anyone with a decently fast processor and a capture card can produce remarkably good results.

Evil Kyro? Sounds like a character in your latest sci-fi horror movie? Well, thankfully no - it's PowerColor's latest graphics card based on the new PowerVR Series 3 "KYRO" graphics processor. Those of you who have been straying in the 3D market for a long time now would instantly recognize the PowerVR name as a challenger to the other graphics accelerators back then. The KYRO is the latest PowerVR chip to hit the market once again, this time taking on even tougher competition from the GeForce 2MX and Voodoo 4 cards.

We tried both the latest official and "Special Purpose" (AKA beta) Windows 98/ME drivers and a beta Windows 2000 set. We also did some limited testing of ATI TV Wonder compatibility, and checked out the DVD output using both ATI's player and Cyberlink's PowerDVD. Throughout testing, we tried to keep the "bang-for-your-buck" factor in mind. The prognosis was generally good, although we did see some driver-related quirks. Our most serious problems were encountered during our VIA/Athlon tests, although these were, for the most part, resolved with some BIOS tweaks. In our "Support" section, we provide a number of links for getting help if your Radeon proves to be
uncooperative.

In a clarification of its earlier statements, made in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, 3dfx said it will continue to address the retail graphics card market by outsourcing board production. The company will also seek out "additional retail partnerships".

• 29 (!!!) graphics card tested
• the latest October drivers for different cards
• 14 different games were used for testing
• performance, image quality analysis
• huge screenshot gallery
• which one is the best buy?

• 57.03% - no more than $300
• 27.76% - up to $400
• 9.41% - up to $500
• 2.44% - more than $800
• 0.58% - up to $700
• 0.12% - up to $800

When I installed the cards a few days ago to ensure they were working, I ran a couple of Quake 3 high quality benchmarks with sound disabled. The AGP card got 81.6 fps while the PCI came in at 72.5 fps. This was from the Detonator 6.31 drivers and at P3-700MHz running at 840MHz. So without further ado, here's a shot of Leadtek's PCI GeForce2 MX:

Has a final fix to the dual-card support problem; select up to 3 devices manually. Due to the change in code recently many options failed (FSAA, WBuffer, VSync), these problems have now been corrected.

I couldn't believe the performance of this card. When I had 256MB of PC133 Cas2 ram in the same computer as my test systems, and the card was overclocked, I was hitting about 75FPS in 1600x1200 with 32 bit color. Now that is just incredible.

The GeForce2 Pro is a nice interim solution between the super-expensive GeForce2 Ultra and the GeForce2 GTS, but it's certainly nothing to write home about. A little faster memory clock, and nothing else. Even worse, the only way you'll be able to see a performance difference between the GeForce2 GTS and GeForce2 Pro is if you've got a monster CPU that's not going to be the bottleneck. We're talking like 1.1 GHz and up here, anything below this will show barely any performance difference at all, and if there is a difference, it will only be in super-high resolutions.

In the past, we've had a tough time making the call between the ATI Radeon and the NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS, but the call always went to NVIDIA thanks to better drivers. However, this time around, GeForce2 Ultra card are finally available and the Ultra is the clear 3D acceleration champ right now.

We've had the opportunity to look at a few GeForce2 Ultra cards and the one that stands out in our mind is the Creative Labs Annihilator2 Ultra. It doesn't hurt that it also happens to be the least expensive.

Almost more interesting, the MCPX will indeed be the south bridge, featuring UDMA 100, 5 PCI slots, 2 USB ports, 10/100 ethernet, and AC97 sound at the minimum.

I've never been a camera buff but now I can appreciate the value of real light when taking photographs. Pictures come out so much better when sunlight hits the computer room and a flash isn't needed compared to artificial lighting (which consists of four 60 watt bulbs in the ceiling fan).

I guess it would be worthwhile to invest in some form of artificial lighting where a flash wouldn't be necessary. This is especially true when zooming in on a video card where the flash tends to be concentrated in a specific area. Anyway here's a shot of the Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 MX DH Pro TV (AGP) I took last night. I'll try to get a shot of the PCI model later on.

• Platinum GeForce2 GTS SE (Special Edition) 64MB
  
• Platinum GeForce2 GTS 32MB
  
• Platinum GeForce2 MX 32MB
  
• Platinum GeForce2 MX Power Up 32MB
  
• Platinum GeForce2 MX SE (Special Edition) TwinView 32MB

Get tips on faster load times, improved visuals and more...

Click the title and poke around for a while. NVIDIA's developer relations is one of the reasons they are making great in roads in implementing per-pixel shading and T&L usage in next generation games.

One of the sweetest deals going is the T-Bird 750MHz, most of which hit 1GHz, going for $124.50. Mate that CPU with a KT7 for $123.95 and a 128MB of CAS2 PC133 memory at $128.45 and you have one screaming platform for gaming.

Oh yeah, don't forget your $314.95 Anni2 Ultra...

• Glide Underground has posted info on day two. I would love to tell you more but I can not get to their site right now.

• PC Mech is pretty ho-hum about the whole thing, as ComDex's focus is on motherboards, gadgets and networking.

The MSI StarForce 818 proves that value does not mean sacrificing performance or options. It's the least expensive of the MX cards that we've looked at, and yet is the only one that features a TV-Out and performs nearly as good as the top-of-the line Hercules. Value buyers have never had it this good.

NVIDIA GPU Optimized for upcoming Intel Pentium 4processor

NVIDIA's GeForce2 Ultra is the GPU of choice for Intel Press Evaluation Program

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 15, 2000--NVIDIA(r) Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA - news) today announced that its GeForce2 Ultra graphics processing unit (GPU) was chosen by Intel(r) for the Pentium(r)4 press evaluation program. Combining the staggering performance of NVIDIA's GeForce2 Ultra with the latest Detonator 3 software, NVIDIA provides outstanding support for the Pentium 4 processor's new instruction set (SSE2). In support of its relationship with Intel, NVIDIA will be participating in the Pentium 4 processor independent software vendor's pavilion at Comdex.

``By combining the Pentium 4 processor's new instruction set with the power of NVIDIA's GeForce2 architecture, end users will experience a stunning new level of visual realism and interactivity on the PC not attained on any other computing platform,'' said David Fair, Intel Visualization Technologies Initiative Manager.

``NVIDIA has invested significant engineering resources in optimizing our software for Intel's new Pentium 4 processor,'' said Dan Vivoli, senior vice president of marketing for NVIDIA Corporation. ``With these new optimizations, NVIDIA looks forward to bringing an even higher level of performance and quality to end-users.''

This update of NVmax has better multi-card support over version 0.970, which was causing problems for many users. The internal code of NVmax has also changed considerably making it faster, smaller and more efficient.

HalcYoN: BUY IT, NOW!!! Heh.

The X-Box graphics will be based on a variation of the NV25, presumably the chip that will follow the NV20. Speaking of the NV20, we should expect an official announcement of the spring product around the February time frame.

We added GeForce 2 GTS Ultra cards, two of them (Annihilator & Gladiac) and they are still very expensive but prices have tapered off a little bit, to the mid-low $400's. Look for the cards to continue dropping in price, but I don't think they will catch on very much, they are just too over priced.

In a running trend, very much like my Review Fixations with mice and headphones in the yestermonths, tonight i'll introduce you to my new found friend - Thermal Epoxy. Yes, boyz and girlz, that thing that has been missing in your case-mod'ing mobo/haxoring days is finally here and revealed. Thermal Epoxy will add new meaning to the phrase "Heatsinks anywhere & everywhere".

In it's stock configuration, the Elsa Gladiac Ultra has a single analog monitor connector available. The optional video module comes with a nut-driver to remove the front plate. Once we had the plate removed, we connected the video module and new front plate. With the video module installed the Elsa Gladiac Ultra is capable of video in and out.

• CPU-Burn has posted the digital photos they have taken so far at ComDex.

• Insane Hardware sent a link featuring 3D Mark 2K scores of a Pentium 4/GeForce2 GTS.

• Hexus, the alternative medicine day-spa, has posted a review of the Adaptec 29160 SCSI U160 card. It's fast.

• Tech Extreme dives into the Future of FPS a second time, as they get Paul Jaquays of id and Alan Willard of Epic to answer a few questions on the evolution of the first-person shooter.

• NV Max has been updated to version .970

• ARS Technica has some day one ComDex coverage. They focus on wireless networking and net gadgets in this round.

• Hexus is giving away a free Duron computer to a random user of their forums! So sign up and post away!

• Jsi Hardware take a 700 MHz Duron up to 950 and live to tell the tale.

• Apu's Hardware beat up some perfectly goood monitors... :)

• Hexus reviews the Adaptec 29160 SCSI Card.

Currently, the external stereoscopic files needed for running in games in stereoscopic 3D are missing. In the next release we might see a nice stereoscopic game driver, for all NVIDIA based graphics cards that works in Direct3D and OpenGL. It looks like many games will be supported. Same functionality expected as most stereoscopic drivers available on the market, with tweaking and a real 3D screenshot tool.

NVIDIA's Technical Leadership Recognized by PC Magazine

GeForce2 Graphics Processing Unit and Company Chosen for Technical Excellence

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 14, 2000--NVIDIA(TM) Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA - news) today announced it has earned the PC Magazine ``2000 Award for Technical Excellence'' in the Components category.

The award, chosen by PC Magazine staff and editors, recognizes NVIDIA's GeForce2(TM) family of GPUs as a breakthrough product and technology that sets the pace for the graphics industry and serves as a benchmark for innovation. The award was made in Las Vegas on Monday, November 13, 2000, at the COMDEX '00 global information technology industry trade show.

They look at added features and software bundles, as well.

The company plans to close its Juarez, Mexico, card manufacturing plant and remove itself from the business of building the graphics cards that reside in desktop PCs. This is an abrupt switch from the December 1998 takeover of STB Systems, which 3dfx heralded as a move that would put them in charge of their own destiny. Instead, that move -- combined with numerous production delays and supply problems -- has removed the company from its once-dominant position in the industry.

"...In the past, we've put out a lot of expectations and have failed to meet them," said Nayan Patel, divisional marketing manager of desktop graphics. "We have a big black eye right now in our ability to execute. We know that."

4. Are there any features that you wanted to implement into the Serious engine but found that you couldn't due to current hardware restrictions?

Fast AGP (lets say, 32X:) - we want memory/AGP bandwith to keep up with speed of accelerators functions (T&L is a good example for that matter), so we can have both fully dynamic geometry and fast texture upload (that way we can create and change textures per frame basis)

demo1: P3-1GHz: 149fps / P4-1.4GHz: 202.3fps / P4-1.5GHZ: 210.3fps

• Added support for a new bundle of features of the 7.xx Detonator drivers. The new drivers have stereo capabilities! (That is what I think of this feature: This either is for multi-monitoring or the support of stereo glasses, such as the ELSA 3D Revelator.)
• Moved the W-Buffer settings from the Beta options to the Direct3D tab
• Added "Z-Buffer Compression"
• Some new beta options (e.g. "NV20Emulate" - The 7.xx drivers already support the NV20!!)

Once again, just as in my Windows ME comparison the NVIDIA 7.17 drivers did not perform well at all. Dead last in every benchmark to be exact!! I am curious what is causing this problem. Like I stated earlier I did a fresh install of Windows 2k. I used the VIA 4 in 1 4.25 drivers. I used the Microsoft AGP VIA Chipset fix. And did a clean install of the NVIDIA 7.17 drivers.

In the Quake III Arena benchmark 3dfx ran for us, the card delivered an impressive average of 65.1 frames per second at 1600 x 1200 with maximum detail and full-scene antialiasing (FSAA) enabled.

Another question we had for Nvidia was what some of their most anticipated titles would be for the Christmas season, stressing Nvidia technology. Games they are looking forward include: Sacrifice, Mechwarrior 4, Alice, Nascar 4, and I'm Going In. While these are mainly the two representatives opinions on important titles, we thought we'd still pass them on.

Thanks for your inquiry. At this time, we do not plan to sell the product at the board level. We will be introducing system level products (part of our AAlchemy family) that will contain the technology-- but we are primarily focusing the product on the visual simulation and training product.

Crush's major advantage in comparison to classic chipsets will be its system memory bus with the width of 128 bits as opposed to the classic 64 bits. So DIMM modules in Crush-based mainboards should be installed in pairs, but that will lead to some increase in memory subsystem performance. As for the graphics core performance, it is expected to be two times greater than that of the present integrated chipsets.

• Electic has some dirt on the EMMA chip from 3D Labs.  Truth be told, my first 3D accelerator was a Diamond FireGL with a Permedia2.  It was quickly replaced by one of the first Viper550's in Austin.

• The Squab reviewed the ABIT SA6R i815 motherboard which features ATA100 IDE RAID.

• Hexus snagged a couple of IBM Deskstar GXP 75 hard drives and RAIDED them.

• Puces 3D has a review of the ATi Radeon 64MB.  It is in French, but I think we can all read benchmarkese.

• AnandTech juices the Abit SA6R, as well.
  

Now I need a bit of help from you guys. I finally con, err... convinced my wife to get a digital camera so I can take pictures for our reviews. That way I'll be able to show TV-Out and Twinview working. I would appreciate your input if you have any experience with digital cameras. Head to the forum to help me out.

The one I have here is currently running stable with a core of 250 and a memory setting of 235. Not too shabby a core the same as an unclocked Ultra (250) and memory only falling short by 15.

HWSW: Intel has lately licensed the Pentium 4 bus technology to VIA to enable the company to produce chipsets for the Pentium 4 processor. Will these chipsets be DDR enabled or will they utilize the Rambus architecture?

Richard: We haven't signed anything with Intel, so we're still discussing this. But we have signed with them on Pentium III and it shows on both sides we need each other. And the relations are better. I think both sides want to come to an agreement on Pentium 4, but it's still not 100% confirmed yet. But I think all I can say that we don't do Rambus. I think the market has already sent a very clear message that it doesn't want Rambus. Our focus is
on DDR."

3dfx Interactive(r) Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX - news) announced today that it has licensed its 4-way Scanline Interleave (SLI(TM)) technology, based on the Voodoo5(TM) 6000 AGP project, to Quantum3D to be incorporated into their AAlchemy(TM) family of PC-based systems for visual simulation and training applications. The company also announced that its 4-way SLI technology, which has achieved 43 percent better Quake 3 graphics performance over leading competitive solutions, will be available exclusively from Quantum3D, and will not be available in the retail channel.

I have just returned from the NVIDIA press conference at the Harley Davidson Café in sunny (but cold) Las Vegas, Nevada. At that press conference they announced the GeForce2 Go, their first entry into the mobile graphics market, and it is a very nice entry indeed. To put it simply, NVIDIA plans to allow you to be able to Create, Present and Entertain everywhere. How do they plan on doing this? By putting the first ever GPU in a notebook computer solution.

3dfx announced that they have licensed their 4-way SLI technology to Quantum3D and the Voodoo5 6000 will not be available in the retail channel:

"Licensing our breakthrough 4-way SLI technology to Quantum3D is the best way to expend our engineering resources in a way that offers the best return,'' said Byran Longmire, vice president of the graphics business unit. "While we are sympathetic to the disappointment this may cause to a small number of our loyal gaming consumers, we are looking forward to seeing this incredible technology marketed to the visual simulation industry where visual quality is the most important attribute."

The demo's we saw were your standard, run of the mill, Nvidia demos. On display were the bubble, glass castle, small pond, and creature demos. The creature and castle demos strive to stress the polygon throughput of the T&L engine on the GeForce2 Go chip, though it didn't seem to break a sweat running either of these demos. The bubble and small pond demos strive to push the ability of the chip to render bump/cube mapped areas, which the chip was able to handle. The moral of these demos is that this chipset can handle them just as well as Nvidia's desktop offerings - impressive for a laptop.

David Monteith, Managing Director of Sensaura, said "We are delighted with this new partnership with NVIDIA who are widely acknowledged within the industry as leaders in the graphics chip market. The integration of Sensaura 3D Positional Audio onto their new audio processors will position NVIDIA as a leader in the new category of media and communication products".

40% - 17 inches.
37% - 19 inches.
13% - 21 inches or more.
9% - 15 inches.
1% - 14 inches or less

With 17 inches, im glad to see that I am still "normal" but only just...  I have allways wanted a couple of extra inches, but my wife said 19 inches is just too overwelming.  A dozen of you peewees only have 14 inches, you poor guys.

The next poll asks how much you will pay for an NV20.  You can vote now.

• NVIDIA GeForce2 Go Selected by Toshiba America
  NVIDIA Drives Graphics Franchise Into Mobile Market
• NVIDIA Announces GeForce2 Go -- Industry's First Mobile GPU
  First Design Win for NVIDIA Mobile Graphics with Toshiba, the World's Largest Notebook Manufacturer

This whopper of a cooler has a large grilled fan that spews out 38 CFM of air power over the aluminium extruded heatsink. The large heatsink fits any socket ('A', FC-PGA, or PPGA-370), and even fits a large number of cramped boards, due to the fact that the first half inch of heatsink have been trimmed back to allow for close proximity motherboard parts such as capacitors, etc.

Jonathan: I have the FOP-32, (only difference is it has 6 CFM of air less) and it, as well as my card cooler XT keep my overclocked PIII at a comfy cool 30 degrees celcius.

A maintenance release, PowerStrip 2.78 (644kb) addresses a handful of minor issues that afflict some older cards which are no longer actively supported, as well as some newer cards that are recognized but not fully supported.

The Geforce2go offers much of the performance of Nvidia's desktop PC chips while consuming a fraction of the power, Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang told CNET News.com. Some of the gains in power usage come from production of the chip using thinner, 0.18-micron wiring, but Nvidia got additional gains by allowing parts of the chip to power down when a particular function, such as video playback, is not being used.

An operating system that has been growing lately is the Linux operating system. It was developed for the Intel 80386 in 1991 by Linux Torvalds. It was made available for free on the internet, and basically has grown through collaboration by many users around the world. The similarities to UNIX can't be denied, and it was indeed designed to be UNIX compatible. However, it has grown out of becoming just another UNIX flavor to being it's own distinct operating system and has numerous distributions.

Intel has just released 733MHz and 766MHz Celerons, adding two more speeds to their Celeron line and raising their top value processor speed by 66MHz while keeping the same 66MHz FSB. We've tested the new 766MHz Celeron against the Duron 700, 750 & 800MHz CPUs as well as the 700MHz Celeron to see how it stacks up against the well-positioned competition.

JonathanM: Gotcha again! ;)

JonathanM: Gotcha! :Þ

Now, that's pretty cheap.

• TweakTown has uploaded DX Uninstaller to help remove that pesky DX 8. :)

• Frag Fest has posted their joureny overclocking a CeleronII on an old Abit BX6.

• PC Review reviews the Mitsumi Freestyle Optical Mouse for laptops.

• Best Buy has a 1 GHz Micron with 128 megs of DDR goodness.

• Quake3 World has some slobber in their forums about the V5 6000.

• The ctrl-alt-del has a nifty little file that allows you to tweak your DirectX settings.

Of great interest is the elusive NV2A video card that will run the Xbox's graphics and which has been something of an enigma to gamers. The confusion stems from original specs including the NV25, an NVidia chip set two generations ahead of the GeForce 2, being switch to the more obscure, NV2A. Microsoft has now said that the NV2A is basically the NV25 plus "a little more" and will be 8X faster than the NV20. They are currently suggesting that the NV2A will push out a max of 125M polys/sec and 100M polys/sec sustained, with texturing, etc.

nVIDIA will be announcing Geforce2Go, a 3D chipset aimed at the notebook market. It will be the first notebook chipset having hardware T&L + 3D functions.

It's competitor is the ATi Mobility 128, which is currently the fastest chipset. ATi has not announce Radeon based chipset for notebook thus not able to counterattack nVIDIA. It looks like ATi will lose out this time round since nVidia has solutions for desktop, servers, notebook, gaming platform - basically all platforms.

nVIDIA Geforce2 Go chipset will be showcased at Comdex/Fall on coming Monday and will announce it's benchmark results.

Q14.33: Well, as far as I know, the most recent racing simulation programs need a great deal of graphics horsepower. Somehow I have a feeling that you have had to change your S3 Trio64+ to be able to play them. Am I mistaken? That is, did you manage to obtain a better card than that? And what brand is it?

Alain: I've been a proud owner of the latest Millenium, but with long time ago in the previous millenium. Actually the graphic chip I use most is a NeoMagic 256, damn! when a laptop manufacturer is going to use our GeForce2Go? At home my son drive a GeForce2MX, and with my GeForce DDR I hardly manage to win 1 race out of 3...

AOpen has also included its ultra-flexible Open BIOS, which is great for tweaking and overclocking. It allows for easy adjustment of the memory clock speed, video core clock speed, V-Ref voltage, and memory voltage. Furthermore, the built-in hardware monitoring displays the GPU temperature and the fan speed.

HalcYoN: It's raining in Austin, again.  My yard has made a full comeback from the summer drought, it can stop now.

HalcYoN: Be sure to give our Video Card Price page a run.  Consider it an NVIDIA friendly interface for Pricewatch, heh.

At first, 3D acceleration was primarily used in big, symmetric-multiprocessor machines like SGI boxes; i.e. Onyx and Indigo. They were exceedingly expensive and pale in comparison to the raw, unrelenting, polygon crunching power of today's video cards. That in itself is amazing, isn't it?

• Dan's Data reviews the Pine Technology D'music SM-200C portable MP3 CD player.

• Tweak Town chugs out a three for the price of one SocketA cooler Review: Thermaltake Super Orb, Alpha PAL Socket A and a ArctiCooler Agilent.

• Tranzmit has a few more demos up for download. There are three new scene demos to show off your rig at tonight's LAN party.

• Overclocking @ QGL reviews the Ricoh MP7120A 12/10/32 CD-RW.

• PC Extremes caught a Hedge Hog and strapped it to a processor. The furry little copper critter performed admirably...

• Gaming in 3D has a collection of of amusing computer related quotes.

• Chick's Hardware has updated their Deals of the week section as well as their Babe of the week section.

• Chick's Hardware has also posted up a review of Soltek SL-75KV2-X KT133 based mobo that uses the new VIA 686B Southbridge.

Well as this write-up is based on the performance vs. pound ratio then we think that everyone should buy the Geforce MX, then overclock it, and your rocking. If you are prepared to spend more, and I mean 4 times as much, then you should look at the new Geforce Ultra based cards. These are serious power kits: maxxed-out graphics cards for all serious gamers.

• Added Windows 2000 support
• Added Detonator 2.xx series support in Windows 9x
• Added 20 profile places (now there are 40 places available)
• Added popup menu for tray icon
• Several bugs were fixed

The performance differences between the two cards are certainly measurable - although not so compelling as to be the only deciding factor. In cases where the bandwith of the card is being sorely tested, the Creative card performs almost as well as the e-GeForce2 MX (see the 3D Mark 2000 test above), however, in situations where there is a lot of back and forth activity in the memory (these are by far the most common situations faced by the average user and gamer) the SDR e-GeForce2 MX card zips ahead because it is not hindered by the latency issues that are inherent to DDR memory.

• TG2MXDHD, equipped with two D-Sub outputs to the monitors and a TV-out

• TG2MXDDV with one standard display output, one DVI-output and an optional TV-out.

Most likely chip and memory frequencies will be standard, so no other peculiarities of Tornado GeForce2 MX are to be highlighted.

As for ABIT s plans about developing its graphics cards Siluro, the company has refused manufacturing the card based on NVIDIA's GeForce2 Ultra chip. So the next representative of these cards is to be based on a new GeForce3 (NV20) chipset.

Now on to some news:

• Actu Micro (French) rounds up four popular GeForce2 MX based cards.
• Stereovision.net has information concerning 3D glasses support in the latest 7.17 Detonator drivers.
• Daily Rader takes a look at three graphics engines that are available for game developement on the Xbox.
• Digit-Life has completed a 1GHz AMD vs Intel processor shootout.
• Apu's Hardware has updated their KT7 FAQ.
• Tweak Files has an updated version of UT (Unreal Tournament) Tweak which lets you change graphics settings without starting the game.
• Hardware One review Everglides Mouse Bungee. Our review is here.

Q4: ...I have just seen at some site that a certain NV20 chip based card (I must admit that I do not know what sort of a creature it could be:) can be expected to cost as much as $800. I know it quite well that development and innovation consumes a great deal of money; still I think that this trend should be made an end of sometime. What do you think?

Alain: Graphics chips are increasingly complex (a GeForce2 GTS counts 23M transistors, a Pentium III 9M). However, the price of the chip is not increasing at the same pace. A big part of the additional cost comes from the frame buffer memory moving from 16 to 32MB to 64MB, from SDR to DDR technology.

Talking about cost of products to come is just pure and useless speculation.

• WinFast GeForce2 Ultra. The card will work at 250MHz/460MHz core and memory frequencies correspondingly and feature 64MB DDR SDRAM on-board. Besides, there will be a VGA-, TV- and DVI-Out.

• WinFast GeForce2 Pro. The card will work at 200MHz/400MHz core and memory frequencies correspondingly and feature 64MB DDR SDRAM on-board. Besides, there will be a VGA- and a TV-Out.

• WinFast GeForce2 MX DH Pro. The card will work at 175MHz/166MHz core and memory frequencies correspondingly and feature 32MB SDRAM on-board. Besides, there will be 2 VGA-Outs for proper Twin-View implementation.

• The ctrl-atl-del has posted a few SiSoft benchmarks from the Pentium 4.

• Hardware OC shows you how to build your own thermal sensor.

• Hardware OC also has a review of the new generation of the Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical.

• Apu's Hardware has reviewed CPUFX's Silver Paste Cleaning Kit.

• 3D Gameman has a video review of PCCHIP M754LMR Motherboard, which has an onboard TNT2, sound, modem and NIC.

The title link will take you to a thread in which Nick contends the Voodoo5 6000 will be on shelves early December at a price target of $350 to $400, with optional 3D glasses increasing the price to $450. The delays have been due to incompatibilities found on some systems between the mainboards and the Intel PCI bridge, which has been remedied by using a Hint PCI bridge.

HalcYoN: Call me a pessimist, but how can 3dfx afford to put the card out at the $400 price mark. We are talking 4 VSA-100 chips, 128 MB of fairly fast SDRAM, a Hint PCI bridge, very large PCB, external power supply, and now optional 3D specs. I can not see 3dfx releasing the card for under $500 retail, if at all...

Should you update to DirectX 8.0? For now they is no rush to upgrade to DirectX 8.0, unless of course that new game you are installing requires it, as it almost surely will. We will probably not see the true benefits of having DirectX 8.0 instead of DirectX 7.0 until applications and games are written for it, but those are just around the corner.

Overall I think this is a great little cooler which should help you get that last mhz from your video card, (it looks damn cool too) strap one to your northbride chip on your motherboard and it should help you get a more stable setup when running those high fsbs.

Overall if you need extra cooling then this is the heatsink to get.

Another very interesting thing, apart support for the unreleased NV20, is the stereoscopic support in Windows 9x drivers. Both the OpenGL and DirectX drivers have many references (around 20) to stereo support, stereo configuration and a stereo screenshot tool.

• Removed the 'How can I get the best possible speed from Quake 3 Arena?' question - attempting to use 24 bit colour mode actually just switches to 16 bit colour mode.

• Added 6.47 links and notes to all Windows driver questions.

• Added 7.04, 7.10, 7.16 and 7.17 links and notes to Windows 9x and Windows 2000 driver questions.

• Renamed, added 7.xx information and rewrote some of the 'What is the difference between the 3.xx, 5.xx, 6.xx and 7.xx versions of the drivers? question.

• Renamed and added ASUS A7V information to 'I have an ASUS K7M, A7V or Abit BE6-II motherboard and I have instability or tearing problems with the GeForce. How can I fix it?' question.

• Added 'What is the status of 2D stretched sprite smoothing in the latest drivers?' question.

• Added 'How can I use my ELSA 3D Revelator 3D glasses with my non-ELSA GeForce card in Direct3D and OpenGL?' question.

• Corrected broken links in 'How can I get my ASUS P5A working with my GeForce?' question.

• Added poor quality memory tip to 'My GeForce keeps on locking up. How can I fix it?' question.

• Updated all Creative driver links in all Windows driver questions including Windows 2000 FastTrax information.

• Added DMA Transfer tip and second ASUS card tip to 'My GeForce keeps on locking up. How can I fix it?' question.

• Virtual Pool - The demo has been updated for DirectX 8. Rack 'em.

• HoloDeathmatch - Multiplayer death match demo for Star Trek Elite Forces.

• Sno-Cross Extreme - Snowmobile racing sim, looks like fun, eh?.

• STCC Racing - Road course racing sim base on the popular(?) Swedish racing series.

• Win Tune - System benchmark utility, updated for WinME and Pentium 4.

• HalcYoN Sun - Look they named a game after me! Heh. 3D Space combat game with outstanding visuals.

On installation of the card, using Nvidia 6.31 reference drivers, the memory speed was indeed reported as being DDR, specifically 286MHz, or 143MHz real clock. I then thought, great, as this would mean a super fast geforce 2mx, so I quickly ran some benchmarks to confirm my first thoughts. Unfortunately the truth hit me then, while watching 3D Mark 2k run through, and then seeing the score at the end. Creative had used a 64bit memory interface (like on their TNT2 M64) instead of the 128bit interface, and then covered it up by using DDR memory to seem better than the rest.

I've been trying to put together an article on my 1GHz achievement when I ran across a dilemma that had me scratching my head. My 3D Mark scores seriously blew big chunks under Win 2K.

After arriving in Oklahoma City we checked in and headed over to the convention center to see what this whole thing was about. I was amazed at what computers have done to the car stereo industry. There where at least six cars there with full blow computers in their cars. I'm talking AMD T Birds and Pentium IIIs running Windows Me and 2000, not CE. They use the computer DVD ROM to play CD through the car stereo system.

• NewsForge has posted a review of the Belkin Omnicube 4-port KVM.
• FAST-MHz has 13 new case mods to check out for your enjoyment.
• Apu's Hardware is putting on a Countersrtike giveaway where you play the game to win stuff.
• FlipChip has updated their Mother of all Motherboard Lists (390 FC-PGA motherboards from 34 manufacturers).
• Hexus has posted a comprehensive guide to home networking.
• Shugashack funny screenshots section - a must visit.

• Consolidated interfaces for DirectDraw(r) and Direct3D(r) simplify application development and improve performance.

• Improved graphics authoring tool integration eases development of optimal 3-D characters and environments.

• Vertex shaders and pixel shaders improve image realism. Consolidated DirectSound(r) and DirectMusic(r) interfaces simplify application development.

• DLS2 audio synthesis support improves instrument realism.

• DirectInput(r) device mapping provides simplified device support. DirectPlay(r) performance and scalability for massively multiplayer games has been improved.

• DirectPlay IP voice communication support is provided.

• DirectShow(r) Editing Services APIs provide real-time compositing and editing of audio/video timelines.

• DirectShow supports reading and writing Windows Media(tm) Audio and Video (WMA and WMV).

• Microsoft TV Technologies support digital television.

Thank you very much for supporting nV News!

MikeC: Hey Neil - we need a new logo :)

HalcYoN: Yah, like "WAY over two million NVIDIOTS served"...

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia has made significant gains winning over longtime ATI customers, including Compaq Computer (NYSE: CPQ) and Gateway (NYSE: GTW). According to the Street, the shift has occurred because Nvidia has been more successful at rolling out improved chips every six months. In a press release yesterday, CEO and President Jen-Hsun Huang cited its newest GeForce chip, the GeForce2 Ultra, as cause for its expanding leadership position.

HalcYoN: Well in Austin, Hooked on UT has a different meaning. Instead of Unreal U's as tattoos, it's the fimiliar Longhorn symbol. Hook'em.

• 7.04 - W9x - W2K

• 7.10 - W9x - W2K

• 7.16 - W9x - W2K

So what did they think of the card?

Basically I think this card is pretty damn cool...

The latest pertains to DirectX VA, Microsoft's new DirectX Video Acceleration standard.

NVIDIA(r) Corporation (Nasdaq:NVDA - news) announced today that it has fully implemented Microsoft's new DirectX Video Acceleration (DirectX VA) standard, an application programming interface (API) that optimizes the interactions between all of the company's graphics processors and today's broad range of video decoder software products.

With full DirectX VA support, NVIDIA enables accelerated video decoding, including copy protected DVD movies, under Microsoft Windows 2000.

"NVIDIA's dedication to DirectX VA has significantly contributed to the momentum now enjoyed by the new API, and to the completion of the final DirectX VA specification," said Dave Marsh, technical evangelist for Microsoft TV and Video at Microsoft Corp. "Microsoft is excited to see DirectX VA fully supported across NVIDIA's family of GPUs."

• Tech Junkie takes a look at three VIA KT133-based motherboards (Abit, Asus, and MSI).
• Hardware Daily has updated their Deals of the Week section.
• CPU Burn is giving away some great prizes in their Treasure Chest of Fun Sweepstakes.
• Sharky Extreme has updated their High-End Game PC Buyer's Guide.
• GamePC takes a look at Lian Li's PC-60 aluminum case.

JonathanM: Here's a few more:

• TweakTown has a review of the MSI 649D Pro AR Dual FC-PGA motherboard.

• TweakTown also has a review up of Epox EP-8KTA2 Socket A motherboard.

• PC Review has posted their Duron Overclocking Guide.

• Hexus reviews the Super Orb.

• Hexus has put up an article on water cooling on a budget.

• Hexus also reviewed the Quantum Altas 10K II hard drive.

• And lastly, the scandal behind the move for Hexus from Hexus.com to Hexus.net.

This patch is a compilation of settings that the author has gathered which are designed to produce the best overall performance and quality of any Nvidia card using 5.xx, 6.xx, and 7.xx Detonator drivers.

The added value of the extra out ports is subjective. The GeForce2 Ultras DVD playback is excellent, if not quite as nice as the ATI Radeons, and the same can be said for TV display quality. The DVI port may be a consideration for gamers who can afford a Prophet II Ultra; just like the Prophet II Ultra is far more expensive than lesser cards, flat-panel displays are priced well above traditional CRT monitors.

After discarding FSAA, I moved on with enjoying my meal. But again I found something to bite on. This time I set to a routine work trying to recover my tasting ability, and installed Cyberlink's PowerDVD (ver. 2.55) bundled under various cloaks with most NVIDIA chip based cards (e.g. ASUS, Hercules and Leadtek). But much to my surprise, I was bound to observe that the DVD-player software could not handle the GeForce2 Ultra chip's hardware Motion Compensation feature with the latest official Detonator 3 driver (6.31).

Sadly, this symptom reappeared in the case of the whole range of the GeForce series. First I thought that this must be a driver issue as MC worked fine with pre-Detonator 3 driver releases. But then I made an attempt with WinDVD, with which everything ran as smoothly as possible. As the lack of hardware MC has a noticeable effect on the quality of DVD playback (as you can observe occasional frame-drops), I do trust that both Cyberlink Corporation and NVIDIA will make their best to fix this annoying issue as soon as possible.

Guillemot nous offre donc une carte parfaite pour les petits budgets. Moins chère que les geforces 256 DDR mais plus lente que cette dernière , cette carte n'en reste pas moins une valeur sure.

SSI announced today that they would be showcasing at Comdex their NEO 35, the first available system that allows users to download their entire music collection (81GB of storage/up to 34,000 songs) onto a single device and giving them the opportunity of choosing where to listen to them.

• NVIDIA Reports Record Revenues and Earnings for Third Quarter Fiscal 2001
  For the third quarter of fiscal 2001, revenues increased to $198.2 million, compared to $97.0 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2000, an increase of 104 percent.
• Nvidia Surpasses ATI In Desktop PCs, Study Says
  In the third quarter, Nvidia chips were in 48 percent of all desktop computers, more than doubling its market share from a year- earlier 20 percent, Mercury said. ATI slipped to 34 percent from 39 percent.

• Full Version
  
• Update

• GA-Hardware has posted their monitor buying guide.
• G256.com covers moving data to a new hard disk.
• DemoNews has an updated version of WinTune available for download.

Here is some of the information from the press release.

ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) today unveiled the RADEON(TM) VE graphics card. The RADEON VE graphics card is based on the highly integrated and cost-effective RADEON VE chip. The RADEON VE chip is a mainstream derivative of the award winning RADEON Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). RADEON VE leverages many of the strengths of the high performance RADEON GPU, but has been specifically designed for the mainstream market.

...The retail RADEON VE graphics card also integrates industry leading HydraVision(TM) technology for multi-monitor support to maximize productivity and functionality. Created by Appian Graphics, HydraVision is the world's leading multi-monitor desktop management software and is being heavily utilized in the workstation and financial markets. HydraVision will further increase the value of RADEON VE graphics cards.

...The RADEON VE, with connectors for traditional CRT monitors, flat panel displays and TV out, features 32 MB of DDR memory and multi-monitor support. Boards will ship in February 2001 and will have a MSRP of (USD) $129.

The Quadro2 MXR offers many advanced features for professionals, including NVIDIA's TwinView(TM) architecture for dual-display support, Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) for fine-tuned workspace color adjustment, and the NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR) that enables single-pass advanced per-pixel shading, as well as software optimizations for Adobe(r) Photoshop(r), AutoCAD(r), 3D Studio MAX(r), Maya(r), SoftIMAGE(r)/3D and more.

"NVIDIA is proud to be the graphics supplier to Compaq, one of the world's largest workstation companies," states Dan Vivoli, senior vice president of marketing for NVIDIA. "The advanced graphics functionality and performance of the Quadro2 MXR GPU provide Compaq users with an affordable but incredibly powerful workstation solution."

I almost forgot to add that after changing these settings by the using the reg key to goto advanced properties and uncheck-- fastmipmap linear, then check ansitropic filtering and or course alt depth buffing...try it in 16 bit and see if you dont agree...

Click the title link to download and extract the file to your UnrealTournament\System directory.

Today, we're taking a look at ASUS' AGP-V7100, a GeForce2 MX based video card. The card we tested sports a single VGA-out and a single DVI out, giving it dual-head functionality. We tested the card, running the benchmarks and using applications, to bring you this review.

So what is the Kyro? In case you missed our preview a few months back, the Kyro is a new video card based on a little something called PowerVR technology. PowerVR, if you remember the name, was released back when 3dfx's original Voodoo Graphics chipset was in its heyday. In addition, those of you with Sega Dreamcast consoles are using PowerVR technology in your living room, namely the PVR 2DC chip.

The Creative Annihilator 2 Ultra is a take no prisoner video card. It's not for the person looking for the best "bang" for the buck. Forget that. With an estimate street price of $500 the Annihilator will annihilate your wallet as well as Quake 3 benchmarks.

MikeC: First off, I'd like to thank the Academy... but most importantly the fans :) (the crowd roars)

The process will enter volume manufacturing next year with a die shrink of both the Pentium III and 4 and has the capability to deliver microprocessors containing more than 100 million transistors, running at multi-GHz clock speeds. Mobile Celerons are also likely to be amongst the first products to benefit from the new process.

The benchmark results say that the Blue Orb is NOT worth it. However, the price is very attractive, and some people may like to have the extra cooling that the Blue Orb does provide in spades.

Besides, how can you have an ultra pimp system without the coolest looking coolers in it? This Blue Orb is incredibly cool looking, and is one of few Orbs that are not all hype, this one is a great performer too! Unfortunately, it's intended to cool the portion of the video card that does not directly contribute too higher frame rates.

The registry patch is designed to give the best performance and visual quality available to NVIDIA cards using 5.xx drivers and up. Not exactly the most flexible tweak, I can't say that I recommend it...

Heh, scroll about half-way down this page and you'll see :)

HalcYoN: Little White Dog reports no loss in performance on their Win2K machine with DirectX 7.

JonathanM: Apu's Hardware have posted up some 3DMark 2000 scores on a Win2K machine with a TNT2 Ultra. They promise to add more later.

These are reported to be fully DirectX8 compliant.  No word yet on performance or compatibility.  Use at your own risk.

The VapoChill is the best overclocking products we have ever reviewed! I fully recommend the VapoChill to anyone who wants the highest speed at a reasonable price. The cost of the VapoChill is around US$650-750 with FCPGA kit and Chill Control. For being the best cooling method, we awarded the VapoChill as the best cooler and an overall of 9/10.

"Presario customers now have a wide range of NVIDIA-based graphics choices, suited to meet their individual computing needs," said Dan Vivoli, senior vice president of marketing for NVIDIA Corporation. "We are proud that Compaq, the world's largest supplier of PC's, recognizes the performance and quality of our products and makes such broad use of our GPU's."

Has anyone seen a hardware benchmarking site that does not acknowledge DDR's superiority over Rambus? This translates to Rambus' products being obsolete and unneeded after the P4 weans itself from its sickly symbiotic companion.

What can we say more than this is the best card to own at this given moment. Overclocking will allow you to boost 15-20% more out of the card and with our testing methods you can rest assure that the card will be stable at ~ 290MHz for it's core and ~490MHz for it's memory in any given system.

We've released the patch version 436 for the Win32 version of Unreal Tournament. Simultaneously. Westlake Interactive is releasing the Macintosh patch to version 436 and Loki Games is releasing the Linux patch. Version 436 clients are network compatible with all previous public releases of UT, but version 436 servers support only 432 and above clients, so we encourage everyone to upgrade as soon as possible!

Got the guts to water-cool your CPU? How about adding a Peltier to the mix? Hardcore and extreme? Maybe.... But it's not as hard or dangerous as you think. The Tech Zone takes a look at a nice, easy to assemble kit from Leufken Technologies. They used it to take their P3-700 all the way to 1050Mhz!!

You know all about Transmetas code morphing right? Well, AMD might be getting a little piece of that action in Sledgehammer. MS could possibly be jumping on board with Transmeta as well. MS already has tablets running Transmeta chips. Will they be in 100% production? Who knows. Still very interesting, and it looks like Transmeta is making quite an impact. Low power computing owns!

• Anand Tech has reviewed the Iwill WO2-R Socket 370 i815E ATX, with built-in ATA100 RAID.

• BX Boards has reviewed the Soltek SL-75KV2-X VIA KT133 motherboard.

• OC WorkBench has posted the Press Release for the EPoX 8K7A AMD 760 DDR motherboard.

• GamePC has a review of the Tyan Thunder i840 Motherboard. This thing is loaded down with dual FC-PGA support, onboard Ultra160 SCSI, 10/100 Ethernet, AGP4X and up to 2GB of RDRAM. Yikes.

• Insane Hardware has some info one 4 upcoming boards from Asus with DDR support for both the P3 and Athlon platfroms.

Update: George sends word of his performance with these drivers. He tends to get 54fps in q3a with the 4.04 drivers available in the 4in1 4.25a, where as he gets 63 fps with the 4.03e version. He also get an 11 fps increase in Q2 using the 4.03's. I'd say stay away from the betas. Thanks George!

This version fixes a few bugs and adds support for Win ME.

By extrapolation, we got performance numbers of both Pentium 3 working on 400MHz FSB speed that is employed by Pentium 4. For both Pentium 3 600 and Pentium 3 1000, a performance boost of 46% is obtained by increasing the FSB speed from 133MHz to 400MHz.

The demo will include the full tutorial and a choise of a few single player levels designed to show off the freeform mission structure and the consequences of choosing different gods. As far as release date goes, we are just pending demo approval from Interplay...

NVidia has FSAA in their drivers but it just does not look quite as good and even has problems in some games, such as Rogue Spear. I would not even consider nVidia a viable alternative if you need FSAA in your games.

The engine also features reflection mapping, a great feature that's been seen in Croteam's Serious engine, as we ll as bump mapping, environment mapping, and dynamic level of detail. Finally, the engine will also support what Crytek calls a "heirarchical" skeletal animation. In short, X-Isle will look nice.

This engine will support a number of different environments, both indoors and out. The game takes place on 5 differing islands, and Crytek wants to make the vegetation and general environments be slightly different.

DDR-SDRAM, on the other hand, is currently holding a 9% market share this year, expected to jump all the way to 20% next year, and estimated to be holding perhaps as high as 50% of all the memory shipped in 2002.

Overall I really liked the Asus V7700 Deluxe. Heck! I like most GF2 GTS boards for that matter. It also has the added benefit of fully featured but mediocre video digitizing.And despite all the extra hardware ASUS added for video digitizing, the deluxe performs with extreme stability.

• 3D/www.3dspotlight.com/contests/duron_combo/index.shtml" target="_blank">3D Spotlight is giving away an Abit KT7, AMD Duron 600 pre-tested to 1GHz, FOP32-1 heatsink/fan, and 128 MB Azzo PC133 SDRAM.
• GamePC checks out Tyan's new Thunder i840 motherboard.
• Sharky Extreme previews VIA's PM133 chipset.
• Gaming in 3D reviews Raytek's MiniTemp (temperature measuring device).
• The Tech Report takes a look at AGP performance under Windows 2000.

Taiwan, Taipei Nov.06 2000: ASUSTeK Computer, Inc. announces today its all new V7100 DELUXE COMBO graphics card - the GeForce2 MX graphics card featured with comprehensive video and entertainment functions. V7100 DELUXE COMBO not only completely exerts the power of NVIDA's GeForce2 MX GPU but also provides unlimited functions of entertainment including ASUS Digital VCR which lets you flexibly watch TV on your PC, real time video capture, video editing, ASUS VideoSecurity, ASUS SmartVR 3D glasses, TV-out, TwinView, among others. With this powerful card, the user can turn his PC into an all-around entertainment center.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 6 ELSA, Inc., a world leader in computer graphics and data communications solutions, today announced the availability of the ultimate gaming bundle. The ELSA gaming bundle will ship immediately and include an ELSA GLADIAC 32MB graphics board, a pair of the award-winning wired 3D REVELATOR gaming glasses, ELSA Best Select custom gaming bundle and ELSAmovie DVD software player. Based on the recently announced GeForce2 GTS from NVIDIA, the ELSA GLADIAC gaming bundle will be available in time to kick off the Christmas season. Priced at $299 SRP, the ELSA GLADIAC gaming bundle is available worldwide through GreenLeaf and Mini-Micro distributors.

JonathanM: Don't blame me... Mike and HalcYon ate up all the good news.

We have got a mail from Elsa that they are not going to produce a GeForce2 Pro-based Board. Elsa sees in the Cards with MX/GTS/ULTRA Chip the optimals. Now after Creative we had two Producers who will not produce a Pro based Board.

Tweak3D was able to test the ELSA VIVO module, as well.

HalcYoN: You have to love the international language of benchmarks...

We've added effects like dynamically changing reverbs, obstruction & occlusion filtering, and adjusted sound source parameters to many of the multiplayer and single player levels.

• Three way PC133 RAM comparison.
• MSI K7T Pro motherboard review.
• Guide to sharing an Internet connection.
• Dual power supplies?
• Proper installation of a socket A CPU.

Update: HardOCP also has news of Active Hardware's review of MSI's Starforce 815 (GeForce2 GTS). Our review of the same card is here.

Or maybe it's because nV News and their visitors rock!

MikeC: I'm looking forward to part 2 of Brian's review of the Annihilator 2 Ultra. Problem is that he appears to have an addiction to Quake 3 :)

HalcYoN: Addiction? Me? Naaah.  :þ

DELUXE COMBO not only completely exerts the power of NVIDA's GeForce2 MX GPU but also provides unlimited functions of entertainment including ASUS Digital VCR which lets you flexibly watch TV on your PC, real time video capture, video editing, ASUS VideoSecurity, ASUS SmartVR 3D glasses, TV-out, TwinView, among others. With this powerful card, the user can turn his PC into an all-around entertainment center.

"PC enthusiasts want the best 3D graphics power," says Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA has clearly positioned itself as the most innovative and important 3D graphics company in the industry, and will most certainly give Micron the winning edge."

Micron's high-performance multimedia PCs - based on the 733MHz to 1GHz versions of the Intel(r) Pentium(TM) III processor - are chosen by power users and PC enthusiasts. The company selected the NVIDIA GeForce2 MX based on its reputation as the premier 3D and 2D engine, and its leading-edge performance for demanding applications like gaming and high-end visualizations. Micron will also offer the NVIDIA GeForce2 MX on its Client Pro and dual-CPU Outrigger systems.

The SO is retailing for around $25 right now. $25 isn't that much for a heatsink, but considering the $15 Vantec heatsink totally annihilates it is pretty sad. What more do I need to say?

• When you use the large fonts on your pc then you'll like this update: All components are completely visible now!

There isn't much to say about the GeForce2 MX. It is dirt-cheap but it does not suck in terms of performance. Value is often mistaken for cheapness. Value means great performance at a justifiable price. Some products may be cheap but perform like crap and some products perform great but cost a fortune.

Voodoo Extreme: What do you think of the Radeon, and upcoming batch of next-gen video cards? Are we "there" yet?

Tim Sweeney: The Radeon is quite good. The great thing that has happened in 2000 is that all computers are now shipping with really competent 3D cards with good drivers. While only the high end PC's are shipping with GeForce's and Radeon's, let's keep in mind that the Rage128, TNT2, Voodoo4, and other non-T&L cards are still quite good for gaming. This is a big improvement over past years, when game developers simply couldn't count on the average gamer having a working 3D card.

At first glance, you notice they WANT you to look at their mainboard, almost as a piece of artwork! Once you open the larger-than-usual mainboard box, you see that the mainboard isn't housed in your basic foam lined electrostatic bag. Rather, it's in it's own fitted plastic display case.

I know a lot of readers have no use for integrated video - but that's not the point of the testing. There are a number of applications where it works just fine, 3D and gaming performance is acceptable, and integrated video is the best cost effective solution - expect to see more and more chipsets supporting it.

This edition dicusses the Linksys Etherfast Router and his DSL connection. Can it really be as easy as hooking up when it comes to PPPoE?

• GeForce2 MX

• GeForce 256 DDR

• GeForce 256 SDR

However, instead of the ordinary 5ns memory chips from EliteMT, not subject to good overclocking, SUMA equipped its new product with better Hyundai 5ns chips. Moreover, the memory chips on SUMA PLATINUM GeForce2 GTS Pro are covered with pin-heatsinks providing better heat dissipation than the conventional heatsinks typical of all GeForce2 Ultra cards. And of course we should also mention a very high-quality massive cooler on the graphics chip. Due to the combination of these indisputably positive features, SUMA PLATINUM GeForce2 GTS Pro can become one of the most overclockable GeForce2 Pro based cards.

Hexus was able to get their Duron750 to 1GHz using pencil lead and a big heatsink and fan. Sounds easy enough...

Hexuz has also put up a quick review of the Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer.

Quake3 FFA anyone?

HalcYoN: That should keep you busy while I try to sig up more news. *sips coffee* Bit slow so far this morning...

• Athlonmb.com has a review (specs, installation help, and benchmarks included) of the Thermaltake Super Orb cooler.
• Sharky Extreme checks out the VIA Apollo Pro 133 based Iwill VD133 motherboard.
• Radeonic covers the art of digital photography with the Fuji FinePix 4900zoom.
• PC Stats takes a look at the Acer 99sl 19" monitor.

And this from around the web:

• Shugashack has posted John Carmack's high school picture.
• Twin Galaxies has a specs comparison chart of the Indrema, XBox, and PS2 console systems.
• One2Surf has put up some performance numbers from a Pentium 3 using DDR memory (VIA's Apollo Pro266 DDR chipset).

Tweakbox.com is announcing its Grand Opening giveaway! Tweakbox.com is a case modding retail site based in Canada, and specializing in Canadian and International shipping. The product line primarily consists of PCmods' excellent products, and is continually growing. Our site is currently in English, but a French version will be launched next week!

To celebrate our grand opening we are giving away a Lian-li PC-12 case! This highly regarded case usually sells for around $300 Canadian ($200US)! Click here to enter!"

Yes, game developers are using T&L. Keep in mind that even GLQuake used hardware transformations as early as 1997. It does take a while for a new technology to catch on -- when a new title is released, there is a very good chance it won't take advantage of the latest whiz bang features in hardware because the title's original design/implementation/architecture was created with older hardware in mind.

As developers become more comfortable with newer technologies -- and this includes things like 3DNow!, vertex shaders, multitexture, hardware T&L, stencil buffers and destination alpha, etc. -- you'll see broader support, but usually at least 12 months after the hardware features start to show up in force.

• Vertex Programs for the Fixed Function Pipeline - this presentation describes the implementation of the fixed function pipeline in a vertex program.
• Vertex Program Modules - this one covers a number of interesting algorithms using vertex programs.

Q: Who do you think to be the main competitors for KYRO based cards? What do you plan to offer to beat them or to increase your presence at the market?

A: NVIDIA products are out main competitors. We plan to offer much better feature sets, future-proofing and better price/performance.

It is November and I still don't see a Voodoo5 6000. I think I am gonna call it a turd that never floated. Bubba will not answer my last couple of emails either. I will say this! I actually got to play Quake on one though. OOO, touch me baby! :)

JonathanM: My ISP still seems to not have updated the ip completly so if there's an error somewhere, be sure to give me a shout.

HalcYoN: I was able to fix the pic for Jonathan. I have had problems before when my ISP doesn't do a DNS update.

Update: Saw over at x-bit that the card is retailling for 580 bucks, quite higher than the average 500 range. Akiba has tons of close up shots of this card.

Try any one of the three modes; All out Speed, Speed and Quality, or All out Quality.

Remember to restart 3d apps after running it. And no, you do not have to keep it running in order to get the full effect.

This is due in part to increased color precision by sampling four pixels and averaging the color output, however, recent driver changes seem to have improved the image quality slightly. This same setting used to yield noticable squares in rocket smoke and gibs. I need to check with NVIDIA to see if they did indeed make changes to maintain a higher color depth precision when using FSAA.

Take a look at this screenshot and tell me what you think.

Also, did you notice the frames per second? 32fps in a rocket smoke-giblet bath. That was as low as I saw it when using this setting.

• When "Video Mirror Control"->"Full Screen Device" is "Disabled" in Clone mode, overlay cannot be activated and DVD players are also unable to play Macrovision DVDs.
  
• When entering DOS full screen in Extended/Clone modes, a 2nd display device will black out.
  
• When changing the resolution of the 1st display device, if the 2nd display device is TV, the TV will black out.
  
• Quake II is unable to start in Extended mode.
  
• Because 2nd CRTC does NOT support stereo modes, so when the 2nd display device's VR in Extended mode is disabled, we can still see "expanded" image on 2nd display device providing VR is on in Clone mode.
  
• Cannot switch to TV after changing from Clone mode to Standard mode.

We NVIDIOTS need to stay sharp, because the nerds over at NVIDIA want to go toe to toe.

MikeC: NVIDIA has accepted our Quake3 challenge. We will be working out the details following Comdex. This will be your chance to go head-to-head with a few of the folks who work at NVIDIA.

HalcYoN: Yup, still got it...

It was a great game, as I got lucky at the end to score a couple of quick frags to jump in the lead.

HalcYoN: Weren't all the 64MB cards supposed to be 183MHz? Guess not...

I got a note to remind me that only the 64MB VIVO Radeon will feature 183MHz core and memory clocks.

Microsoft has an update to IE 5.5  Internet Explorer 5.5 Service Pack 1 & Internet Tools features several bug fixes, improved DHTML and CSS support, and additional connection management flexibility.

This mousing surface appeals to me because it is two sided.  The rough side would work best for the big feet Intellimouse (non-optical) line, but the pointy toes of the BoomSlang command the smoother mousing surface.

The author of this ZDNet editorial is David Read of MacWeek.com. He has put together some solid evidence and reasoning that Apple may ditch the PowerPC platform. The potential that Apple may go to an x86 platform just irks me.

Could OS X be the next alternative to Micro$oft? Will Intel or AMD produce a Photoshop enhanced Athlons or PIII's?

It's breathtaking.

FiringSquad: What impresses you the most about NVIDIA?

BB: Execution, execution, execution. And not just going through the motions either. They consistently hit their marks for product cycles and come out with the best product. They have a very big picture plan for the company, they are not tunnel vision on one segment of a single market. They have addressed several markets with products in more than one segment of each market. They are on a fast track right now. That makes work fun and exciting. It also makes it possible for them to secure the resources need to insure their success.

• Riva Station reviews the Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS Pro.
• AnandTech reviews the Asus V7700 Deluxe.
• Hartware.net reviews Creative's Annihilator2 Ultra (German).
• Planet Hardware reviews Abit's Abit's Siluro GeForce2 MX.
• Tweak 3D reviews the Hercules 3D Phophet II MX.
• The Reverend checks out Unreal Tournament running the Loki S3TC OpenGL Driver.
• Robert Cyran has written an article/editorial about the future of NVIDIA.
• NVIDIA accounces its support for AMD's 760 chipset.

We have got a mail from Creative that they are not going to produce a GeForce2 Pro-based Board. The Performance of the Board would be between GeForce 2 GTS and GeForce 2 GTS Ultra, so say decided to produce no Board.

See you all in the morning...

Well, we changed servers and IP's and are working on importing the news posted over the last 24 hours. The move should be complete soon...

JonathanM: Awww man. I was getting ready to poke fun at one of you for the eVGA double post. :)

The SAA7108 offers high quality PC-99 compliant video capture and TV-out processing, with advanced features such as Macrovision detection and a 4-line multi-standard comb filter. With applications ranging from PC motherboards and graphics cards to videophones and set-top boxes, it provides designers with a one-chip solution for implementing video capture and output functionality at dramatically reduced cost - making it an excellent choice for modules such as this one. It includes advanced features that cover both Video Decoding, Video Scaling, and Video Encoding.

• Technoyard takes a look at Transcend's TS-ASL3 mobo.

• PC Review takes a look at Antec's SX830 Case.

• Hardware Daily check's out Logitech's Wheel Mouse Optical.

• Gamer's Depot take a look at Klipsch's amazing ProMedia 2.1 speakers.

• Sharky's got a hard drive guide posted up.

... if you want the fastest video card on the market, there's simply no other solution that comes close right now. Everyone knows that gamers will take hours of time to tweak a system to perfection, go to extreme measures to overclock a bit more, and will spend way too much cash in the process. Nothing else matters unless you can play Counterstrike at 120 FPS, and for folks like this, the GeForce2 Ultra is perfection right now.

Users of the TV-out feature on the NVIDIA-based graphics cards might want to check out this handy tool which greatly enhances the quality and usability. The latest version has been updated with and new Zoom, resizing for DVD movies and better NTSC output.

3D MARK 2000, 1024x768@16bpp
6.34 Drivers: 3731 3D Marks
6.47 Drivers: 5080 3D Marks

Quake III 1024x768@32bpp
6.34 Drivers: 88.6 FPS
6.47 Drivers : 88.5 FPS

The most amusing thing about, though, is we actually thought about using NVIDIOT.com for this site when we made the jump to UGO, heh.

• MSI Starforce 816 GeForce2 MX video card
• Abit KT7-RAID motherboard
• 128 Meg Corsair PC-133 SDRAM (3 sticks, 1 per winner)
• Unlocked Duron 700 that runs at 1000Mhz
• Sound Blaster Live! Value
• AMK 3333 Overclocker's Case

These docs cover using BRDF-based illumination in real-time apps. They begin from the basics ("What is a BRDF?") to actual implementation details. Source code for generation of textures for use with BRDF-based lighting is included.

When we wrap up this article we can make note of a few issues. To overclock a Socket-A CPU you need take note of several issues that need careful consideration. First of all, a good mainboard is of course very important if you want to tweak your CPU. At this time ABit's KT7 (RAID) is the mother of all mainboards. Secondly the CPU. Earlier batches of Socket-A Thunderbird and Duron CPU's where where unlocked so the multiplier can be changed from within the mainboards BIOS. I was lucky and have such a CPU and it makes overclocking the CPU very easy. If your CPU is locked then there are several ways to unlock them.

Looks like a hydraulic potato masher! :) Seriously, the design is pretty ingenious yet much more simple than what we saw with the slotted clamshells we were left to deal with last time.

Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia is hoping the chip will take sales from Canada's dominant ATI Technologies Inc. and others that make components to enhance graphics on laptop PCs. Graphics- chip contracts for notebook PCs are typically more profitable than those for desktop computers, although fewer notebooks are sold, analysts say.

You have heard all the hype, we are sure. Now let's cut to the chase with a few facts and a few solid benchmarks that will show us if the new AMD 760 Chipset supporting Double Data Rate Ram is all it is cracked up to be.