Oder besser gesagt sicherlich 12 verschiedene Produkte mit wesentlch weniger unterschiedlichen GPU's (MX, Go, Ti).

The Adrenaline Vault haben ein Editorial zum Thema "Zukunft der 3D-Grafik" online, welcher sich auch mit der paradoxen Situation der Spieleentwickler und der sich immer schneller drehenden Hardwareschraube beschäftigt.

Blackcomb(Microsoft's new Windows version) will also handle all desktop windows and images as a 3D texture instead of a 2D bitmap. This change in how graphics are handled by the operating system places a hugely increased burden on the video chipset, with the potential for dozens of applications fighting for processing time simultaneously in a 3D environment. Graphics hardware is going to have to change radically to meet this demand.

HomeLan Fed haben ein Interview mit Scott Miller online, wo es z.B. um der Verkauf der Max Payne Rechte geht.

GameSpy haben ein kleines Preview samt neuer Screenshots online. Hier gibts auch noch ein kleines Video.

Aces Hardware haben verschieden OpenGL-Beschleuniger aus dem verschiedenen Marktsegmenten(von value bis highend) miteinander verglichen.

• 3DLabs Wildcat III 6110
• 3DLabs Wildcat II 5000
• ATi FireGL-2
• ATi FireGL 8800
• Nvidia Quadro 2
• Nvidia Quadro4 900XGL
• Nvidia Quadro4 750XGL
• Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4400
• Nvidia GeForce 4 MX460
• Nvidia GeForce 2 Ti 200

Beyond3D haben einen interessanten Thread im Forum. Dort wird John Carmack zur Technologie von Doom III gelöchert. Weitere Fragen folgen.

Wer die Doom III Screenshots als TGA's mit bis zu 1600x1200 haben möchte, der sollte hier vorbeischauen.

Jolt.co.uk haben ein Interview mit den Kreed Machern und exklusive Screenshots.

Bei MSNBC gibt es ein Interview mit John Carmack. Hier geht er auch auf Fragen zum Thema ATi's R300 bzw. NVIDIA's NV30 ein.

"NVidia has been stellar in terms of driver quality and support and doing all of the things right," says Carmack, who has been an outspoken evangelist for NVidia?s GeForce technology. "For the past few years, they have been able to consistently outplay ATI on every front. The problem is that they are about one-half step out of synch with the hardware generation because they did Xbox instead of focusing everything on their next board. So they are a little bit behind ATI."
"I told everyone that I was going to demonstrate Doom III on the best hardware, and there has been no collusion or kickbacks or anything like that going on. Our objective is the technical merit."
"The new ATI card was clearly superior. I don?t want to ding NVidia for anything because NVidia has done everything they possibly could; but in every test we ran, ATI was faster."

Hier vergleicht er eine frühe Version von ATi's R300 mit einem höher getakteten NV25 von NVIDIA, denn NVIDIA's NV30 ist zur Zeit noch nicht lauffähig.

The Doom 3 demo was running on the next-gen ATI stuff, which is clearly superior to everything NVIDIA has to run Doom 3 on.
This is NOT because R300 is faster than NV30. This is because NV30 is not yet at a stage where ANYTHING can be run on it at all, and therefore the contest was between early R300 stuff and NV25 (GeForce 4).
This is what Carmack meant when he said "The new ATI card was clearly superior. I dont want to ding NVidia for anything because NVidia has done everything they possibly could; but in every test we ran, ATI was faster." He means faster than a GeForce 4 Ti 4600. Before ATI's next-gen silicon got to him, Ti 4600s were outpacing Radeon 8500s by a good margin in the Doom 3, despite the ATI's cards ability to handle things in fewer passes.
To be clear: despite what phase of production R300 and NV30 are at now (and I'm under NDA so I can't say), nobody is yet sure when either product will ship. It's likely they'll both be this fall, and nobody has any idea which one will be faster until stuff like clock speeds and the like are determined.

P.S. Doom III lief auf der E3 nur in der mittleren Detailstufe!

Wie Toms Hardware berichtet, gab es auf der E3 läuffähige Versionen des Parhelia 512, welche verschiedene Demos und Spiele befeuerten.

Mit ca. 220 Mhz soll der Matrox Parhelia 512 zu Werke gehen. Angesichts des 0,15µ Fertigungsprozesses und der 80 Mio. Transistoren recht okay, wenn auch nicht überragend.

Hier kann man gut sehen, dass kein intergrierter Chipsatz an die Leistung einer GeForce 2 MX 400 herankommt.

Hier gibts ne PowerPoint Präsentation zum Xabre 400.

Langsam aber sicher rüsten alle Hersteller ihre GPU's mit einer AGP 3.0 (8x AGP) Option aus. NVIDIA wird den NV18 (4xAGP=NV17), sowie den NV28 (4xAGP=NV25) zur Computex vorstellen. Auch andere Hersteller, wie ATi, Matrox, 3Dlabs und SiS werden den AGP 3.0 Standard unterstützen. Ob 8x AGP einen Vorteil gegenüber 4x AGP bringt ist natürlich fraglich, gerade wenn man sich die wichtigen DirectX 9 Features ansieht (Displacement Mapping, Adaptive Tessellation), welche die Polygonlast auf dem AGP-Bus erheblich reduzieren.

Bei Crytek heißt es "Polybump", id software sagt dazu "renderbump" - beide haben hier das Rad nicht neu erfunden, sondern verwenden hochdetailierte Polygonmodelle um detailierte Texturen zu rendern und nicht zu zeichnen. Es werden vom "high poly" Modell Bump Map Texturen erzeugt und diese auf ein "low poly" Modell gelegt. Somit wird der Eindruck eines ähnlichen Detailgrades, zwischen "low poly"und "high poly" Modell erzeugt, jedoch unter der Verwendung von wesentlich weniger Polygonen.

Laut dieser Quelle sollen Parhelia Karten ab August ausgeliefert werden.

Hier gibt es ein zweiteiliges Interview (Teil 1, 2) mit id software.

Hier gibt es einen großen Bericht, mit vielen Bildern, von der diesjährigen E3.

Digit-Life haben eine großen Vergleich von prof. 3D-Karten unter 3D-Studio Max 4.26.

3DNow Galaxy haben einen Treibervergleich online - 9016 vs. 9031

Chip haben einen Test des Xabre 400 veröffentlicht.

Microsoft hat die Beta 1 von DirectX 9 veröffentlicht. Hier gibts den inoffiziellen Download - Achtung: Die Beta 1 läuft am 20. August aus, wer keine Beta 2 bekommt, darf Windows neu aufspielen oder kann nicht mehr zocken - Vorteile dürfte die DX9 Beta 1 für Endbenutzer kaum bringen....

x-bit labs haben die GeForce 4 Ti 4600 mit der GeForce 3 Ti 500 verglichen, unter 3D-Studio Max.

Zum Game wird man unterschiedliche Meinungen haben, an der Extraklasse der Gameengine (Grafik, Physik + Kollisionsabfrage, Sound, Netzcode) gibt es aber nichts zu rütteln. Die Physikengine wurde ebenfalls kräftig verbessert.

Reactor Critical haben ein Interview mit Club3D online.

"... New solutions powered by ATI, such as the RV250 and the R300 will be announced during Computex 2002. Mass production is expected in August 2002, R300 will be announced a week after RV250. The RV250 GPU features integrated Hardware MPEG in the chip and also VIVO functionality will be implemented. R300 is expected to have three times higher performance compared to the competitors..."

Wie aus ATi's Pressemeitteilung zu erfahren war, lief Domm III auf ATi's next-gen ultra high-end GPU.

ATI's chip was chosen because it offers the most advanced, high-performance graphics architecture to power the demonstration at E3 2002. DOOM III(TM), scheduled for release in 2003, has been highly anticipated both as an unbelievable game and as a true measure of today - and tomorrow's - graphics architectures. Also highly anticipated, ATI's next generation product, scheduled for release this fall, will cement ATI firmly as a leader in the ultra-high-end 3D and gaming graphics market.

"ATI's next generation hardware has an ideal feature set for the DOOM III engine, and at the moment is the fastest platform to run the game on," said John Carmack, Chief Technical Officer & co-founder of Id Software, Inc.

Beyond3D haben ein paar Fakten zum Matrox Parhelia 512 von der E3:

• 1. displacement mapping absolutely rocks . Adding arbitrary geometry to figures or in outdoors terrain is a serious step in the right direction.
• 2. FAA absolutely also rocks. Swimming textures in buildings in FS 2002? GONE.
• 3. 10bit color was a little bit of a disappointment. Because the LCD monitors that were used in the demo, it downsampled to 8bit color. While there is a difference in banding, it was less apparent than I expected. When I test the card with 3 CRTs I'll take a deeper look into it.
• 4. It will not be a Quake3 Geforce4 Ti killer with the way most reviewers run the benchmarks. Of course with 80 million transistors on a .15um process, there's likely to be a lot of heat, and it's unlikely that the Parhelia 512 will have a more than 300mhz gclock.
• 5. Having said that, Matrox suggests, and I agree with them 100% that performance in Quake3 is fast enough today. Turn on FSAA (games with stencil buffers have issues with FAA) anisotropic filtering and Surround Gaming , and it should be completely playable
• 6.Surround gaming absolutely rocks. I got to play Quake3 and on 3 monitors it was absoletly smooth. One little note, while playing , I didn't consciously look to my right or left, but in my peripheral vision caught movement on the extra monitors and I was able to react without thinking
• 7. Matrox suggests, and after walking around the show floor, I agree, that DX 8 games will be more prevalent this Christmas. The number of DX9 games will be very limited if any at all. Thus their decision to go with DX8.1
• 8. If you have a chance and are at E3 go to the AMD/Matrox/Alienware lot (last year's G.O.D) lot , take it. Soldier Of Fortune II and F1 2002 makes great use of surround gaming . The HUGE monitors for the racing game are the way to play a racing game.
• 9. Parhelia 512 can multipass render . 8 textures per pixel is possible on a Parhelia
• 10. Review cards are likely to be sent out in early June. WOOHOO!!! Final retail boards will likely be out in late June/early July.
• 12. Did I mention Displacement Mapping totally rocks ??? Watching a character be N-Patched , then displacement mapped, makes a totally different look
• 13. To give you a sense of how powerful the pixel shaders are capable of being. The ocean demo with a shark, the bass, a school of fish? Everything is bumpmapped and using 4 textures per pixel. The Bass consists of 8 pixel shaders with 100 pixel shader instructions.
• 14. The anisotropic filtering did sharpen Quake3. The Parhelia is capable of dynamically allocating 64 texture samples in a pass . In other words 1 pixel with 64 sample anisotropic filtering, or alternatively 4 pixels with 16 sample aniso in a single clock.
• 15. Performance hit with 16x FAA in one application (no numbers, sorry) was about 20% with their 4x FSAA around 50% . Sorry , can't say more.
• 16 Only one mode of FAA 16x at the moment

Ein wenig Werbung kann ja nie schaden, leider gibt es in der Pressemitteilung, ausser einem Kommentar von John Carmack, keine genauen Aussagen zum Thema Pixel Shader 1.4 ...

Gamers.com haben ein kleines Interview mit John Carmack.

Da brauch man nix zu sagen, einfach geniesen.

Laut DigiTimes soll es den NV18 sowie den RV250 im Juli im Laden geben, bereits im Juni soll er in Taipei gezeigt werden. Der NV30 sowei der R300 sollen nicht vor dem Ende des dritten Quartals vorgestellt werden.

3DCenter haben die aktuellen Gerüchte einmal zusammengefasst.

Hier ein paar Fakten zum SiS 330:

• der Xabre ist voll DirectX 8.1 (PS 1.3) fähig
• 24 Mio. Transistoren
• Leistungsmessung: 3DMark 2001SE: 6456, Quake3: 160 fps 1024x768 32bit HQ Einstellungen - 2Ghz P4+256MB DDR. Nature Test lief ohne Fehler.
• Der Preis soll in den Regionen der GeForce4 MX liegen,...
• Vertex Shader wird in DirectX 8 per CPU berechnet.
• es werden keine fremden OpenGL Extensionen unterstützt (NVIDIA / ATI...).
• Fertigung in 0.15µ .
• DSOP Speicher, Xabre 800 wird wahrscheinlich BGA Speicher verwenden, wegen der Zugriffszeit von 3.3ns.
• eigener SiS FSAA Algorithmus (OGSS Supersampling) wird verwendet, welcher bessere Leistung als das Multisampling der GeForce 4 MX bringen soll.
• Anisotropisches Filtern wird unter DirectX, jedoch momentan nicht unter OpenGL, unterstützt.
• Es wird eine "eigene" Speicherarchitektur verwendet.
• soll ab Juli 2002 im Laden stehen
• Alle Xabre Versionen verwenden den gleichen GPU.

3DGPU haben ihr ersten "nicht-NVIDIA GPU Review" online.

SPEC haben offizielle Resultate (NVIDIA, ATi, 3Dlabs) ihres prof. OpenGL Benchmarks Viewperf 7.0 veröffentlich.

Dabei handelt es sich um eine AGP-Karte (mit digitalen Ausgängen - DVI, TV-Out(HDTV) ), welche das Videosignal der on-Board Grafikkarte enthält.

Meiner Meinung nach, war Deus Ex (was übrigens auch verfilmt werden soll!) eines der besten Spiele der letzten Jahre, ein echter Warren Spector Klassiker (wie auch Ultima Unterworld I & II, System Shock I & II, Thief I & II). IGN hat endlich ein Preview zum zweiten Teil online, welcher die neue Unreal Engine verwendet und somit auch grafisch den hohen Ansprüchen gerecht werden sollte.

t-break haben ein Review der Xabre 400 online.

Angeblich hat ATi den DirectX 9 Support für ihren Next-Gen mobile GPU gestrichen, DirectX 8.1 Support sollte eigentlich auch erstmal genügen...

Nachdem es schon einige Kritik an NVIDIA's GeForce 4 MX (NV17) gab, weil er keine Pixel Shader bot, wird NVIDIA diesen bald gegen den NV18 austauschen.

HomeLan Fed haben einige E3 Banner.

3Dlabs Tim Lewis geht in diesem Artikel auf die bisher erreichte Qualität der Echtzeitdarstellung ein und gibt einen Ausblick in die Zukunft.

Beyond3D haben sich die Wildcat III angesehen. Diese Profikarte bietet SuperScene AntiAliasing, welches wirklich beeindruckend aussieht.

Matrox Parhelia 512 wird von UMC gefertigt, die Pressemitteilung gibts hier.

Team Xbox haben ein Interview mit NVIDIA's David Kirk geführt.

Hier gibt es ein PDF, welches sich mit dem Thema Ray Tracing auf programmierbaren GPU's beschäftigt. Dies dürfte ein Blick in die Zukunft sein, haben doch 3Dlabs, ATi und NVIDIA daran mitgearbeitet.

Direkt aus dem Forum von Matrox.

Q: Unfortunately all isn't perfect with the Parhelia's FAA engine; there are situations where the fragment detection doesn't work perfectly and the result are annoying artifacts in the game. For those situations your only option is to either turn off FAA or resort to Matrox's supersampling AA algorithm which will take a performance hit similar to that of the Radeon 8500. There is no way to predict under what games FAA will result in artifacts but it does happen. Matrox mentioned to us that out of approximately 40 games they tested, around 5 - 7 exhibited artifacts with FAA enabled. As you can expect, we'll attempt to compile a list as soon as possible to help point out what games do and don't work properly with FAA enabled.

A:That's true. When stencil buffers are used in the game, faa will give you this artifact. That's why we will give the user the option to switch to fsaa or disable faa, their choice.
I don't think too many games use stencil buffering and for the ones that don't, you really gotta see it.


Q:Yes i was meaning occlusion Culling
I did not notice it in any spec.
Is it there?

A:No it's not there.


Q:Don't you think you need it?
or are you going to do it another way

A:No I don't think we need it. As Moep said, we have the bandwidth. Also, if developers start implimenting our tesselation support ("Depth acceleration unit for advanced Z processing"), there's no need since it lowers the amount of polys to draw in far away objects.


Q:Why did you choose the Pixel Shader 1.3 version is it for maximum compatibility?

A:With regard to 3D features, the Parhelia-512 is positioned between DirectX 8.1 and the next version, DirectX 9. The quad vertex shader (v2.0) corresponds to DirectX 9, whereas the pixel shader still follows DirectX 8.1 version 1.3, as used by NVIDIA in its GeForce 4. At first glance, this is an odd combination, since vertex shaders can be emulated by the driver, while the emulation of pixel shaders can only be achieved with extreme loss of speed. Matrox argues that this is exactly why a modern vertex shader unit is worth it in practice. Game developers can use vertex shaders via emulation, without fearing that the functions won't work with end users. Therefore, it can be expected that the the newest versions of shaders will always be used in games. With pixel shaders, however, the developers have to be more careful because the latest versions of these functions can only run on a few cards. Pixel shaders from v1.3 and up will be most widespread among games, and in the future, they will become somewhat of a standard.

SimHQ haben ein Interview mit Matrox geführt. Hier die wichtigsten Punkte:

SimHQ: What do you see as your advantages and disadvantages over NVIDIA and ATi right now?

Sebastian: Well, they are bigger than we are, have deeper pockets and are more established in the enthusiast market than we are. However, they don't have the Parhelia-512 and the quality, performance and features it offers. Matrox also has a loyal fan base. We've been in the graphics card business and have been profitable for over 25 years and a lot of people don't know that. I still hear from some contacts who are running their original Millenniums and refuse to put anything else in. But most importantly though is our reputation for quality and multi-display computing that has made our technology in these areas the standard by which all other hardware is compared to.


SimHQ: Is Matrox going to compete on a six-month cycle? If not will you have a cycle or just introduce cards when you?re ready?

Sebastian: The Parhelia-512 will become the basis for a whole slew of products in the future. We'll be offering different versions of the chip and boards to cater to different markets, however, we won't be radically changing this architecture in six months.


SimHQ: Can you talk about your commitment to FSAA and "image quality" specifically? How is your image quality "better" than NVIDIA and ATi?

Sebastian: In our white papers in the section on quality you will find information on our FAA-16x and Ultra Sharp Display outputs. If we take a look at FAA-16x, the Parhelia-512 only anti-aliases the edge pixels in a scene because let's face it, that?s really all that needs to be anti-aliased anyway, right? Internal textures get blurred when you filter back down in FSAA and the bandwidth requirements are huge. The edge pixels represent only a fraction of the 3D scene and therefore will result in only a fraction of the bandwidth hit, while also allowing us to obtain true 16x quality. I'm a huge aviation buff, you know that Bubba, believe me when I tell you that nothing beats Flight Sim across three displays with FAA-16x, it is THE way to play Flight Sim. As for the Ultra Sharp Display outputs, we decided that it wasn't good enough to simply say we have the best 2D quality, we wanted to quantify it and that's what we did. We took oscilloscopes in house to measure things like over and under shoot, PLL jitter, frequency response and the proof is in the pudding. The Parhelia-512 offers the best signal integrity and our results prove that. The components we used on the Parhelia-512 are the best quality parts on any graphics chip today. We simply didn't cut corners to save cost, we went all out with 2D quality this time and the best part is that Microsoft is dedicating considerable resources to things like color quality, management and the move to 10-bit color support in Longhorn, indirectly acknowledging quality messaging we've been pushing for so long.


SimHQ: Can you talk about drivers? How mature will your drivers be? It does little good to introduce great hardware if the drivers are not ready for "prime-time" yet

Sebastian: It is still a little early to talk driver at this point, as we haven't gone into full-fledged production yet. But, we've been demoing this stuff for some time now so our drivers and hardware can handle it, but as usual for Matrox, we have no intention of releasing hardware with wonky drivers. That?s not our style and isn't consistent with what Parhelia-512 stands for. These drivers have been built from the ground up, so as you can imagine through your experiences with 3dfx this has required a fair amount of effort on our part, but we're confident that come shipping time support and stability will be right where it should be


SimHQ: Matrox has been reluctant in the past to reveal Core and Memory speeds. Why is that and will you continue that policy into the future?

Sebastian: Yes, we have never revealed that info mainly because it is something that can't always be guaranteed based on chip level info and we have no intention of announcing numbers we aren't prepared to keep come shipping time. There are also plenty of utilities available to find out that info.

PCPOP haben ein paar Bilder von einer Matrox Parhelia gemacht.