02/28/98 - Saturday's News:
- 3Dfx Voodoo 2 Update: My Voodoo 2 card won't be here until Tuesday I'm now told. It was originally to arrive yesterday. Other Voodoo2 News:
- Initial reports from a reader at Best Buy was that the card does not work in a Mac with the current drivers. GlideLib errors were reported. Greg Laughlin reported:
"Just installed the last of about 5 Voodoo2 cards that the local Best Buy received today and it DOESN'T WORK. I tried Quake, Carmageddon, and the 3D demos on Techworks CD and nothing works. Quake 3Dfx.out says: gd error (glide): grSstSelect: non-existent SSTgrSstSelect:
non-existent SST"
- Creative's 12MB card ships with the SLI (Scan Line Interlace) Cable too long (3" instead of 1.5"). The SLI cable is used to connect two Voodoo2 cards for the ultimate setup - each card draws every other line for incredible performance (100fps in Quake II at 1024x768 is claimed).
- Rumor of heat issues with initial boards - not seen in initial board test on loaded a PII 300 however.
- Diamond now says they will ship a $299 12MB board as well, with game bundle for $299 in 2nd quarter. Creative 12MB card is shipping now, but with no games.
- PC performance is said to be almost twice the original Voodoo card in Quake, Quake II, Turok 3D, etc.
- Card stock clock speed is 90mhz - up from 50mhz on the original cards.
- Existing Tweakers will not work - new variable for clock speed tweaks. Win95 Tweaker being released now.
- California Graphics announced a 12MB card with TV Out for $299.
I'll keep you up to date on the latest Voodoo2 card news - check here daily.
- RealPC/MacPicasso 3D Overdrive Update: I installed RealPC and the 3Dfx Beta2 updates last night (well, 3AM this morning) and noticed that the MacPicasso 3D Overdrive card was not detected by Windows 95. A workaround I am going to try is to install a Power3D, install the 3Dfx Glide software/Direct X support drivers, then replace the 3D Overdrive card. I'm not sure this will work but it's worth a try. I post the results of this workaround here later tonight or tomorrow.
- Umax G3 Models - some assembly required: In order to work around Apple's restrictions, Umax will have customers install the G3/750 CPU upgrade according to this Cnet article.
- Adatpec 3940UW Bios Update: Version 3.0 of the Adaptec 3940UW dual-channel SCSI card is available at: ftp://ftp.adaptec.com/pub/BBS/PowerMac/. Or click here to download the file from their site (the FTP site may be busy at times - you may have trouble connecting).
- OS 8 MacBench Boost? I thought that OS 8 was no faster (or a tiny bit slower) than OS 7.6 in MacBench 4.0 on most tests, but according to Newer Tech's G3 FAQ OS 8 is one heckuva performance upgrade all by itself! They say: "About 200 points (on a MacBench score) is usually gained from this upgrade.". Maybe I've got the wrong copy of the CD ;-)
OS 8.1 is faster than previous versions from what I've seen in actual use. The rewritten memory and disk code seems faster. Floating point performance (FPU) has been reported to be 30% faster than OS 8.0. I personally no longer use LibMoto for other than benchmarking now, as I never saw any real boost in other than MacBench. Reduced accuracy and isolated compatibility problems are another reason (I hear Myth netgames have trouble for instance unless all players are using LibMoto and Carmageddon is said to have graphics artifacts with LibMoto active). I have to use it for MacBench tests, to allow 1:1 comparisons with past results where LibMoto was used.
- Newer CPU Card Bundle Changes: Kelvin Ritchie writes that the MaxPowr Pro 250/125 bundle has shrunk along with the price:
"
I just received my Newer G3 250/125 512k board. I was disappointed in
that Newer no longer seems to bundle Ram Doubler, Speed Doubler and
Virtual PC Dos as I was led to believe several months ago. I purchased
it from Cyberian Outpost. What I did get is SpellTools and the Newer
utilities.
Besides that, I'm very pleased with the card. Now if Netscape would just
rewrite its browser for the Mac. Lets hope NS 5.0 is out soon.
"
Newer Tech should have made that publicly known in my opinion.
- New PowerBoost Pro Adjustments: If you have a PowerBoost Pro with the new remote control that has the bus ratio adjustment on the remote - be sure to use the settings shown in the loose sheet manual addendum for adjusting the bus speeds. The original manual tables are not updated for the new card/remote. Pete Fugelli writes:
"
Just a quick mail to thank you for your reply to my upgrade forum
e-mail. I went back and checked all the things you said, and Lo and
Behold... it WORKED!! It turns out that the settings in the included
manual have changed as this is a newer card with all three dials on the
remote. There was a loose sheet of paper with settings on it which when
I first glanced at it, seemed identical to the one in the manual, but
what has changed is the settings for controlling bus ratios. When I set
the bus speed ratio to the suggested setting from the original manual, I
was actually setting it to 3.5:1, and this is what was causing it to
crash on startup or after afew minutes. Does this seem right? I wouldn't
have thought that it going slower, would cause it to crash 46.6 bus
speed * 3.5 = 162.35 MHz. Anyway, it works like a charm now, especially
with games! It topped out at 257.55 (bus speed at 51.55, with no L2
cache), and loading pages, scrolling, and applying p'shop filters are
all awesome!!"
In other PowerLogix News, Robert Jagitsch wrote: "
You might want to make a note of our current crop of cards. We are sold out of the 250/250/1Mb, and are now shipping 275 cards as our high-end. I'd like to send you one to test. We are passing all of them at 300/300 prior to shipment, and we know they will go even faster." Looks like it's going to be a really interesting year - stay tuned for the latest from the Kings of Speed!.
- Apple Info Updates: Info Alley has updated information on Mac OS 8.1: Sharing CDs on PCI-based Mac Using the Apple CD-ROM Driver (#22158) and PowerBook SCSI Disk Mode and Mac OS Extended (#24398.
To check on the latest Apple software updates visit: http://www.info.apple.com/swupdates
- Hackers Beware: The DOJ is setting up a special unit to address hacking according to this news.com article. (There goes another billion dollars ;-)
- Court rejects Net law in Virginia: In a surprise move (for those of us that work in the private sector), a federal judge has struck down a Virginia law governing Internet usage by state employees. News.com has the full story. I don't normally cover this type of news, but since I'm a Virginia resident and it's the weekend I made an exception.
In case you missed them,
check out their Mac DVD-RAM and Monitor Costs articles as well.
Yesterday's News
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