Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/297
It's about that time again and summer is rapidly approaching. We all know what that means, right? The weather is absolutely beautiful before changing over to the muggy summer months in North Carolina. And most importantly, school is just about over with, or already done for some of us ;) That of course means its time for AnandTech to switch into high gear and we kicked it off with our trip to E3 in Las Angeles, California
While E3 is aimed more at the gamer than the hardware junkie, AnandTech decided to pay E3 a visit anyway. After all, last year's show featured a number of new hardware technologies up for public display for the first time. Due to scheduling conflicts, we missed the first day of the show, so we had to cram as much as we could into the last two days of the show and we sure did our best. Here's what we got to see:
3dfx
After
wandering around the show and figuring out where everything was, our first meeting
was with 3dfx. Out in the booth, they were show casing the Voodoo3 as expected.
There was of course the V3 2000 and 3000 models running all the latest and greatest
games on big flat panel screens. What was more interesting was the 3500 model
that they were showing.
Originally planned to be a 183MHz version of the V3 with the addition of a digital flat panel output and SGRAM, the 3500 has changed quite in the past few weeks and 3dfx made an official announcement regarding this just about a week ago. The flat panel output and SGRAM have been dropped in favor of a TV/FM-tuner with video capture capabilities.
Much like ATI's All-in-Wonder 128, the V3 3500 features MPEG-2 video capture when paired with a Pentium III CPU. Also just like the the All-in-Wonder 128, it also features a nice break out box so you don't have to get behind the computer to change all the inputs and outputs. The break out box is connected by one of the largest cables (click here for a picture) in recent memory- most likely because the monitor also attaches to this cable. 3dfx claims that such a high quality cable will prevent any signal degradation that might otherwise occur.
The Voodoo3 core is still clocked at 183MHz. Due to the greater yields at the 183MHz speeds 3dfx needed, SDRAM is now used instead of SGRAM . Despite early review boards having a heatsink/fan, the shipping model will include a monstrous heatsink without a fan. Despite all the changes the 3500 still retails at the original $249 announced months ago.
As for next generation 3dfx technology, they wouldn't tell us much, no matter what we tried. They did tell us that we will see a new core that would be "revolutionary" in the next 12 months, but that does not really tell us much. Clearly, 3dfx would not be wise to release another part without 32-bit rendering. Only time will tell what actually shows up.
Creative Labs
We had a bit of time before out next meeting, so we stopped at the Creative Labs booth that was right next to 3dfx. With Creative's recent announcement of a "unified" driver with Glide support for their 3D Blaster TNT, it's a miracle that no fights broke out ;) Regardless, Creative had a number of interesting items to show off.
Of course there were video cards everywhere, from Savage 4 to Ultra TNT2. The first thing we asked was the clock speed of the Creative's TNT2 cards. Both the standard and Ultra TNT2 will be clocked at the NVIDIA recommended speeds of 125/150 and 150/183 (core/memory). Overclocking, however, will be supported with a small utility and even encouraged to a certain extent. They make claims of a special "heat dissipating PCB" among others.
Creative's Savage 4 also looks to be a relatively standard Savage 4 product. In the Creative tradition, these cards are all named such that the chipset is quite clear, such as 3D Blaster Ultra TNT2. Not too original, but it certainly makes things a lot less confusing. As with the previous generation of cards, Creative is focussed on bring the best value to the market with extremely competitive pricing.
Creative did have a couple of new things that had never been shown before. Their portable MP3 player, the Nomad, was by far the most prominent. Creative has improved over Diamond's Rio with a smaller design that features rechargeable batteries and a built in FM tuner. The Nomad can also be used as a digital voice recorder or a small hard drive. It uses a docking cradle (click here for a picture), similar to many PDA's, that allows the transfer of songs while simultaneously charging the batteries. All control buttons (click here for a picture) are on the side of the Nomad for easy one hand operation. Like the Rio, the Nomad uses a parallel port interface. How long will it take for everyone to start using USB?
They were also showing off their new Live Works 2.0 software for the Sound Blaster Live!. The core is available for download from the Creative Labs website, but to get the full software suite, you'll have to send in $10 to cover shipping for a CD containing all the goods. There have been a number of changes in Live Works 2.0, including new EAX capabilities. We'll take a look at Live Works 2.0 shortly and include comparisons with A3D 2.0 cards.
Guillemot
Nothing particularly new was to be found at the Guillemot booth, but we did get some interesting information on their upcoming cards. Their Ultra TNT2 will be clocked out of the box at 175/200 and the standard TNT2 at 135/150. Looks like they're poised to go head to head with Hercules and take out the rest of the TNT2 competition.
Matrox
Matrox was of course touting the upcoming Millennium G400 and G400 Max. These two cards feature the new G400 chipset from Matrox that offers a number of new and unique features. Most prominent are the two focused on in the booth - bump mapping and Dual Head. Bump mapping was of course from the tech demo that they've been showing everywhere (a variety of screen shots are available from the official Matrox G400 page). Dual head was used in two different ways. The most useful was the use of DVD on a TV from one of the outputs and the Windows desktop on the monitor output. The other was a flight simulator demo running with the standard cockpit view on one monitor and other camera angles on another.
Most importantly, however, was the demo of Quake 3 that ran quite well and showed that Matrox does in fact have a working ICD. It was playing reasonably fast in full 32-bit color up to 1024x768. The visuals looked absolutely beautiful under this old build of the ICD - newer ones are faster and more stable according to Matrox. Super 7 users rejoice - a full team is working on Super 7 compatibility and 3DNow! and K7 optimizations are already being worked into the drivers.
Unfortunately, we also learned that there is no ICD available under NT at this time, but that they are working on it. On the brighter side, they will be ready with full Windows 2000 support upon its release from Microsoft.
We were also assured that G200 users have not been forgotten. Thanks to similarities in the two chips' architectures, Matrox claims it will be easy to work backwards from the G400 ICD to produce a fully functional ICD for the G200.
Microsoft
Microsoft, as usual for a trade show, had an enormous presence at E3. Although there was a strong focus on Microsoft's huge number of upcoming games, there was some neat hardware to play with. By far the most prominent item was the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer - Microsoft's first optical mouse. As claimed, the mouse tracked well on any surface - I even tried it on my pants - and had no moving parts. It does have a big red light that glows underneath that serves no special purpose other than to look cool. Improvements over older Microsoft mice include a more comfortable shape and two additional buttons on the left side of the mouse. The additional buttons are mapped by default to forward and back in IE 5.
There were also two new Sidewinder gamepads on display. First is the DualStrike, which features a unique design clearly intended for first person shooter type games, such as Quake 3. The right side of the pad actually rotates in all directions and is meant to be used for aiming and looking around. The left side is essentially a traditional game pad, where the directional arrows are designed for movement and strafing. The second is the Sidewinder Gamepad Pro. It is more of a typical gaming pad, featuring a more comfortable grip, more buttons, and and is basically the latest in the Sidewinder series. Both pads are USB devices (probably USB only) and will ship in October for $40-50.
AMD, ATI, and GoD
Across the street from the LA Convention Center where E3 was being held, was a small group of trailers that affectionately became known as the trailer park. Sponsored by AMD, ATI, and God (Gathering of Developers), a variety of trailers were set up to showcase a number of upcoming games from God A live band was there to help entertain everyone who decided to come out, relax in the beautiful weather, and have a few drinks.
Not particularly interested in the games on display, we decided to speak with AMD first. They told us that the K7 is still on schedule and will ship at 550 and 600MHz. A 200MHz bus runs between the chipset and the processor, while the RAM runs asynchronously at 133MHz. The first chipset will be from AMD, but VIA, ALi, and others will follow.
When they let us know that the games were being shown on K7 systems, we immediately jumped in line to check out the demos. We saw Heavy Metal: FAKK2 running a K7/550 with a TNT card running at 640x480. Nothing else was known about the system. Heavy Metal features the Quake 3 engine with quite a few enhancements. The frame rate appeared to hover near 30fps, although no frame rates were given.
Speaking to the guys from Ritual, the game's designers, they let us know that they could not make any comparisons to other processors. However, they did tell us that they expected the K7 to be very competitive with the Pentium III and had been quite pleased with their development system. In the one week that they had the system, they said it only crashed once. One developer did go as far as to say "the K7 could finally be the thing to knock off Intel." Of course, we'll have to wait and see if that really happens, but it sounds like there is definitely hope.
ATI let us know that the All-in-Wonder 128 16MB boards should be shipping any day now, so expect those on store shelves soon. The 32MB model won't be available for a few more months, unfortunately.
NVIDIA, Hercules, and Diamond
Although scheduled to display their goods, both NVIDIA and Hercules pulled out of the show at the last minute. The areas designated for those booths were just completely empty. No word on why this happened exactly.
Diamond was not scheduled to be there and thus wasn't, but a number of developers featured Diamond V770 TNT2 boards in their game demonstrations.
Conclusion
This year's E3 was a little more subdued than past years, especially on the hardware front where very little that was new was shown. This is no surprise since gaming truly is the focus of E3 and hardware manufacturers generally do not gear up for a big show at E3. Nevertheless, there was a lot to be seen and was well worth the tired feet at the end of the day.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
