Saturday, March 11, 2000

Broussard, Part II -- 11:54 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Shugashack has posted the second part of their interview with George Broussard, head honcho behind Duke Nukem 4 Ever. Some of the questions are profoundly stupid, but there are still some good points to be gotten from this part of the interview.

5.08 Drivers, Part II -- 9:53 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Thresh's Firing Squad has put up their second look at NVIDIA's 5.08 Detonator drivers. They run scads of Quake III Arena benchmarks on a DDR GeForce and a TNT2 Ultra. The Ultra saw some modest performance increases (but 5 fps is 5 fps, no matter how you slice it). The GeForce sees far greater speed-ups. Their conclusion (which is confirmed by an NVIDIA engineer) is that the T&L parts of the driver have been seriously tweaked, leading to these performance increases. NVIDIA is supposed to have "official" versions of these drivers out in a week or so. Until then, if you have any NVIDIA graphics card, it's worth your while to check these drivers out. Thanks Shugashack.

Friday, March 10, 2000

NVIDIA Stock -- 7:19 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Spurred on by the news of GeForce-esque chips powering Microsoft's X-Box, NVIDIA's stock finished at $118/share today. Remember that it started the week at $59.25. *cough*

More X-Box -- 7:03 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

This interesting article on MSNBC documents how the idea of Microsoft making the X-Box came about. It shows some of the thought processes that came into play to make the X-Box what we will see next year.

This ZDNet article gives some information on how Intel undercut AMD's prices to win the X-Box contract. Thus the processor of choice for the X-Box will be a Pentium III-600.

Perhaps most interestingly both articles mention that the OS for the X-Box will be a scaled-back version of Windows 2000. We'll see how that one goes, especially in less than 64M RAM. Thanks Stomped for the links.

Something Hysterical -- 2:22 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Every since I found out about JeffK, I've made daily stops at Lowtax's hysterical, although often ribald, Something Awful site. Lowtax daily rips, skewers, and generally pokes fun at the weirdness that is the web (thankfully, he hasn't found this site yet). This week, his target is extremely awful white rappers on the web. He even takes a closer look at some of the "lyrics" (song #1, song #2). You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll learn a little bit about yourself. Or maybe not. One warning: the lyrics contain some strong language. The really sad thing is that these "rappers", under our current shoddy system of government, are allowed to reproduce. Thankfully, no girl with an I.Q. higher than that of a glazed doughnut would dare come within howitzer range of them.

The Master comments: BWAhahahahAHAHAHahahaha *snort* *gasp*

Checklist for Linux Newbies -- 1:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

FirstLinux has posted a checklist for people who are trying to install Linux for the first time. Linux installation is not as daunting as it used to be, but on the other hand some preparations are certainly beneficial if not necessary. This is a first-draft document and FirstLinux welcomes your comments. Thanks Linux Today.

XFree86 4.0 Released! -- 1:46 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Slashdot is reporting that version 4.0 of XFree86 has been released! This version includes the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI), although there are only DRI-enabled drivers for Voodoo3 and Voodoo Banshee cards. Basically, what DirectX is to Windows, DRI is to Linux. Be forewarned, this is pretty bleeding-edge stuff. Everything might not quite be there yet. I'm going to wait until Red Hat comes out with a new distribution with XFree86 4.x rather than try to wrestle with it myself.

Scott Draeker on Slashdot -- 1:37 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Slashdot has posted a Q&A with Loki Software's president Scott Draeker concerning many subjects dealing with gaming under Linux. This quote caught my eye:

There are big differences in the quality of drivers available. The 3dfx and Matrox cards are well supported. ATI support is also progressing well. The NVidia drivers, however, are in really bad shape because the source they released is obfuscated -- to play on an analogy from Bob Young, it's like being allowed to work on your Ford, but being given only metric tools to do it. Without the necessary information, its simply not possible to create decent NVidia drivers, and until the drivers improve we can't officially support those cards. NVidia has promised to release closed source drivers which will improve performance.

OK, NVIDIA! Use some of that money you made this week from your stock going through the roof, get some coders, and get those drivers fixed! I've tried to play games in Linux using the current NVIDIA drivers and I must agree. It's a mess.

George Broussard on the 'Shack -- 10:01 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Shugashack has posted an interview with 3DRealms' George Brussard, the braintrust behind Duke Nukem 4 Ever. All the questions were submitted by 'Shack readers. The Q&A includes tons of screenshots. Hustle on over and check it out!

X-Box: Even More Official -- 9:49 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As promised, Microsoft's official X-Box site is online with details on their forthcoming gaming console. Here are the official specs:

• 600 MHz x86 compatible CPU
• Custom 3-D NVIDIA graphics processor
• 64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)
• Custom 3-D audio processor
• 8GB hard drive
• 4X DVD drive with movie playback
• Four game controller ports
• Expansion port
• Proprietary A/V connector
• 100 MBps Ethernet

Is it just me, or does 64M of unified memory seem too little? Of course, I have no idea how much memory is in the Dreamcast or Playstation 2. It probably also won't have to run full versions of Windows 98/2000 which would eat 64M for breakfast. I found it interesting that the site does not mention the Athlon specifically as the CPU of choice. You can also check out the full press release. The site looks like crap in Netscape 4.x but renders fine in Mozilla.

Past Two Days' News

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