MPC 1998 01-web

MAJOR RELEASES 

/REVIEWED

CYRIX 

• 58 Dream Machine 98 

Picking only the best parts across 17 different 

component categories, we build the ultimate 

$5,000 PC. Whether you're building a computer 

from scratch or simply want to upgrade 

a single key part, don't make a move until 

you're fully armed with this year's Dream 

Machine buyer's guide. 

We've seen the future, 

travel itinerary for all the n rnr~>c•,nrc 

AMD, Cyrix, and IDT/Ce 

out during the next year 

53's Terry 

53's CEO doesn't have 

ViRGE chipset's limp n~>r-rnrm ~"'""'-''"' 

up to evangelize 53's 

Terry Holdt and his Sa\rag.e3[)\ac:celleraltor. 

might just be fast enough to e 

Vl 

m 

~ 

\D 

00

We respond. Personally. 

Can't take the heat? Then 

Comm Port. 

17 Meet the Crew 

PC Advisors are ready to serve. 

starting line-up, and choose 

your favorite player. 

27 Fast Forward 

CPU guru Tom Halfhill 

explains his dream operating 

system-a VirtuaiOS that's 

immune to "system crashes, 

evil viruses, and monkey 

damage." 

29 On the Line 

Internet ingenue Shel Kimen 

leads you through the kitschkinky 

world of online pornand 

finds that sex leads 

technological advancement. 

31 Game Theory 

Veteran computer gamer T. Liam McDonald 

says games don't have to be pretty to drop 

you into an immersive Ia-Ia land. 

164 The Saint Industry troublemaker 

Alex St. John explains why Quake-that's 

right, Quake-is the only platform that has a 

shot at killing Windows. 

_.... NEWS 

40 Inside Source Janet Reno leads 

the antitrust assault against Microsoft and 

Intel: Pundits sift through the carnage .. . 

DVD-RAM: Who's to blame for the slow 

road to retail? .. . Socket X: A handy new 

motherboard interface for pop-in graphics 

chips. Micron and Rendition built 

it, but will we come? 

miroVIDEO DV300, p.139 

~ TECH 

77 Ask the Doctor Medical ; 

for all the PC ills that ail you. Ask away. 

We will make your machine happy aga~ 

149 Terminator All our gee~ 

terms explained in plain English. Even?( 

boys will learn a thing or two. 

_.... PRODUC 

21 Peripheral Vision Theca 

high-tech gear to soup up your PC and 

lifestyle. If it comes in brushed steel or ~ 

black, you'll find it here. 

86 Previews Early looks at cutti 

edge hardware and software in developr 

53 Savage3D, C-Cube DVxpress, HiVal C 

RAM, and Illustrator 8.0. 

94 Reviews starting 

with an intense dissection 

of the first K6-2 

machine to the hit lab, 

we present the most 

thorough, hands-on 

hardware and soft- OuantiiX QP6/400, ~ 

ware reviews you'll 

ever read . Highlights include an i740 vid€ 

card roundup, a hyper-speed CD-ROM d 

expose, an intense study of three PCI sou 

cards, and reviews of the most powerful 

design tools in the software universe.

Yeah, we're tal 

over the edge. 1 

screaming at a 

equipped this In 

features arounc

Do you feel the G-forces when you sit down at your PC? If you answered yes, you're at a PC powered 

by one of NVIDIA's award-winning RIVA 128'" 3D graphics processors. If you answered no, read on. 

3D graphics is the next dimension in personal computing. It's finding its way into everything 

from mainstream business applications to multimedia games. And NVIDIA is 3D at its very best. 

While others are stuck on 64-bits, our RIVA 3D graphics processors deliver 128-bits of the highest 

image quality and brain rattling high performance you can buy. 

Some of the biggest names in the business, including Dell Computer, Gateway 2000, Micron, 

Packard Bell NEC, Diamond and STB have already selected the RIVA family of 3D graphics processors. 

Perhaps you should too. 

So to see what we mean by performance that's measured in G-forces, see us at 

www.nvidia.com. And hang on tight. 

C Copyright 1998 NVIOIA Corporation. NVIDIA, the NVIOIA logo, RIVA TNT and Bringing 

30 to the World are trademarks of NVIOIA Corporation. RIVA 128 and RIVA 128ZX are 

trademarks of NVIOIA Corporation and SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics. All other names 

are registered trademarks of their respective companies. All rights reserved. 

nVIDI.A

100°/a Pure PC Power 

co 

"' b: 

UJ 

V> 

we share your 

passion for 

Kick-Ass PCsr 

itrs because 

we do. For us 

at Maximum 

PCr This ain•t 

just a job-it•s 

an adventure! 

here's never been a magazine 

for experienced PC 

owners. In the past, you've 

had to wade through all the 

corporate mags, hoping for 

a few stray pages that might 

suit your needs, and then 

feverishly scan the daily 

newspapers and web sites 

for some tech tidbit. 

But now there actually is 

a magazine just for you. 

Welcome to Maximum 

PC, the only magazine/ 

CO-ROM/web site/ Internet 

radio show dedicated to the 

PC owner. 

Month in and month 

out, we create the short 

list of the latest gotta-have 

gear for people that get 

off on tech. If it'll give you 

the edge, whether in the 

office or in the latest 3D 

fragfest, we're all over it. 

If it'll allow you to unleash 

your creative imagination 

in bold new ways, we've 

got you covered. 

Remember: This magazine 

is all about you. 

If you're into it, we'll 

cover it. No holds barred. 

We promise here and now 

to dedicate every page of 

every issue of Maximum PC 

to what you care about: 

Pure PC Power. And we 

guarantee you'll never see 

the stench of advertiser 

influence in these pages. 

The Maximum PC editorial 

team has a long and wellearned 

reputation as some 

of the hardest critics in the 

industry, fighting nonstop to protect 

your interests as PC owners and 

getting in the face of anyone who 

would hype a half-ass product and 

try to pass it off as Kick Ass, our 

editor's choice award that goes only 

to the best-of-the-best. 

To accomplish this, we do the most 

in-depth reviews you'll ever read. 

When it comes to systems, we open 

the case and test every component to 

the breaking point. We deliver benchmarks 

based on the type of tasks you 

use your machine for and we report 

metrics in units you understandframes 

per second, time to render, 

MB/sec throughput-not some abstract 

numbers that mean nothing. 

And every hardware test is performed 

by the reviewing editor, not 

some lab-coat lackey or flaky freelancer, 

so you can believe us when call 

'em like we see 'em. And we aren't 

afraid to call bunk on the big boys 

when their big toys aren't up to snuff. 

But it's not just about hardware. 

We'll also keep you up to speed on the 

software needed to fuel today's muscle 

machines, complete with step-by-step 

projects to expand your repertoire. 

From adrenaline-pumping games to 

apps that let you work smarter, from 

utilities that unleash the beast in your 

box to programs that flex your creative 

muscle, we've got it all lined up. 

If all this sounds like we're on the 

same page as you, it's because it's 

true. We share your passion for the PC 

and all the amazing things you can do 

with it, because we're PC owners too. 

We share the pride of ownership you 

feel for your PC because we feel it too. 

We're not a bunch of crusty old professional 

cynics, feigning objectivity. 

We love this stuff and it shows. 

If you ever have a question about an 

emerging technology, or need the inside 

scoop on some new gear, or want the 

truth behind the hype, or want to know 

just what the hell we were thinking, or 

just want to brag about your very own 

dream machine, simply drop me a line 

at bdoslandwmaximumpcmag.com. 

I assure you, I personally read every 

letter that comes in, so I can tailor 

this magazine to you. 

So hop on and brace yourself, it's 

gonna be a wild ride! 

Eadem mutata resurgo, 

Brad "Big Daddy" Dosland 

Editor in Chief 

IOftwant editor Rick Popko 

online editor Gordon Ung 

elise editor Kenn Durrence 

contrlbutlns edlton Tom Halfhill, Shel Klmen, 

T. Liam McDonald, Alex St. John 

contrlbutl"' writers Laurence Bartone, Tara 

Callshain, Chris DiBona, Sean Downey, Dave 

English, Phil Lacefield Jr .• Frank Lenk, Tommy 

Maple. Bob Senoff. Dan Simpson, Paula Reaume. 

Rick Stevens. William Trotter, Tm Tully. Daevid 

Vincent, Scott Wolf, Paul Worthington 

.... ART 

art diNCtor Kevin Ashburn 

auoc1ate art diNCtor Sherry Monarko 

,..,hie deslper Linda "Lulu" Aldredge 

contrlbutl"' photocnphers Aaron Lauer, 

Mark Madeo, Ansel Adams 

contrlbutl"' Ulustrators Scott Laumann. 

Scott Peck, Gerry Serrano, Frttz Striker 

.... PRODUCIION 

production diNctor R1chard Lesovoy 

production c-nllnator Glenn Sadin 

.... ADVERTISING 

SAN FRANCISCO 

senior rqionaJ Ales manapr Chris Coelho 

marketplace manqer Ed Baucage 

acllmarketing c-rcllnator Jennifer Barbeau 

NEW YORK 

east coast ad diNCtor Pete Bechenbach 

rqtona1 Ales m....,.er Ed Rogers 

account executive Jennifer Lopes 

IRVINE 

,.tonal Ales manapr Nicole Boice 

account -utlve Esther Rodriguez 

.... CIRCULA'IION 

subscription director Stephanie Flanagan 

-stand director Bruce Eldridge 

newsstand m......, Thea Selby 

fulfillment manqer Peggy Mores 

direct mall manapr Amy Nlbbi 

direct marketing specialist Clara Pon 

fulfillment specialist Kristi Chezum 

newsstand marketlns analyst Christopher Boily 

... MAXIMUM PC 

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uri www.maximumpcmag.com 

subscriptions phone 800.274.3421 

subscriptions back Issues/Ales 800.B65. 7240 

subscription e-mail 

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.... IMAGINII MEDIA INC 

publisher Gene Bums 

vke president of drculation Holly Klingel 

vke presldent/CFO Tom Valentino 

presidentll..,.tne Dilftal Mark Gross 

CEO Chris Anderson 

1ntemat1ona1 Llcensins Representative 

Robert J. Abramson and Associates Inc. 

720 Post Road, Scarsdale, NY 10583

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Hardw 

As a magazine 

the problem, l 

an article on he 

Hardware a< 

Thousands of F 

addiction. Manl 

step toward ge 

that one has a t 

cognizant of th 

Only their spou. 

can see they ha 

the signs it's of 

Hardware a 

only: power. Th 

PCs can give th 

can't stand not 

the block. 

l t starts inn 

the top-of-the-li 

their new systen 

game they've b 

cackle maniacal 

how fast the ga 

better the graph1 

system. But at s 

happen-they in 

expansion slots! 

their gnarled mi 

"Upgrade, upgra 

awaken from a d 

they're hyperven 

spouses with the 

new PC might ru 

another Voodoo 2 

frown. Deeply an 

the PC addicts w 

use their credit c 

Monster 3D lis o 

ages delivered to 

the parcels arriv 

cover of night w 

ingly in the arms 

How do you 

any of the follow 

hardware addict: 

can't stand to se 

buy hardware ju 

to see how great 

buys a piece of h 

one too, but get 

sive. Your PC has 

than your TV. Yo 

the balance of yo 

The madness 

responsibly on h 

must stop makin

Hardware Addiction 

As a magazine that perpetuates and even encourages 

the problem, I believe it is your responsibility to do 

an article on hardware addiction. 

Hardware addiction is no laughing matter. 

Thousands of PC owners suffer from hardware 

addiction. Many of them don't even know it. The first 

step toward getting help is usually acknowledging 

that one has a problem, but few hardware addicts are 

cognizant of their condition or willing to admit it. 

Only their spouses, significant others, or close friends 

can see they have a problem, but by the time they see 

the signs it's often already too late. 

Hardware addicts crave one thing and one thing 

only: power. They demand the most their 

PCs can give them-and then some. They 

can't stand not having the fastest PC on 

the block. 

It starts innocently enough: They buy 

the top-of-the-line system. They take 

their new system home and plug in a 

game they've been playing lately. They 

cackle maniacally and clap their hands at 

how fast the game runs and how much 

better the graphics look on their new 

system. But at some point, it's bound to 

happen-they inevitably remove the 

cover from their new machine and find 

to their horror/ secret pleasure ... empty 

expansion slots! A voice deep inside 

their gnarled minds begins to chant, 

"Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade." They 

awaken from a deep reverie to find that 

they're hyperventilating. They go to their 

spouses with the suggestion that the 

new PC might run a little better if it had 

another Voodoo 2 card. The spouses 

frown. Deeply and darkly. That very night 

the PC addicts will surf the Internet and 

use their credit cards to purchase 

Monster 3D lis or Pure3D lis. They'll have the packages 

delivered to the offices via Next Day Air. When 

the parcels arrive, they'll install the cards under the 

cover of night while their spouses slumber unknowingly 

in the arms of danger. 

How do you know if you're a hardware addict? If 

any of the following are true, you may, in fact, be a 

hardware addict: You buy a new PC every year. You 

can't stand to see empty expansion slots/bays and 

buy hardware just to fill them up. You buy games just 

to see how great your hardware works. If a friend 

buys a piece of hardware, you feel compelled to buy 

one too, but get something better and more expensive. 

Your PC has central air. Your monitor is bigger 

than your TV. You owe more on your credit card than 

the balance of your mortgage. 

The madness must end! Maximum PC must report 

responsibly on hardware products! Maximum PC 

must stop making hardware sound so sexy! 

-Ray Gero6ki 

Sweatin' to the Oldies 

I have a DX4-100 machine with 32MB RAM. Is it 

possible to overclock a 486-based machine? 

- Kevin BeM 

Technical Editor Sean Cleveland replies: 

Oh yes, they are very overclockable. Try setting the 

bus to 33MHz and the multiplier jumper to 4.0 first. 

This will make your machine run at 133M Hz. If that 

doesn't work, try changing the multiplier to 3.5, 

running the machine at 116M Hz. If you have to 

reduce the bus down to 25MHz just to get the 

machine to run at 125MHz with a multiplier of 5, it 

may not be worth the effort. It's actually better to run 

at 100MHz with a 33MHz bus speed. If 

you're currently running at 25MHz with 

a multiplier of 4, at least change the bus 

speed to 33MHz with a multiplier of 3. 

You'll notice a difference. 

AM Debate 

I have finally found a product that 

actually lives up to the hype-the 

wonderful AMD K6-z. This was the first 

product I have ever bought that has 

worked perfectly straight out of the 

box and actually benchmarked as 

promised. I purchased this after reading 

your preliminary reviews and would like 

to thank you for convincing me to buy 

this wonderful CPU. I'm so thankful 

AMD came to my salvation and came 

out with something that could compete 

with Intel and that I could afford. 

- Drew Wil60n 

Before people get all crazy, you have 

to hear my complaints about the AMD 

K6-z processor. 

1. It runs Windows 95 in the same 

time that my old Cyrix P150•!. I notice almost no 

speed increase. 

2. It is not as fast as a P-11 z66-it posts a 90 

bootMark! I was hoping at least a 120 bootMark. 

J. When I overclock it to 350M Hz, it doesn't power on. 

Is this how AMD believes it's going to beat Intel? 

I don't think so. 

-A l~re do £. Lopez 

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid 

OK, I'm scared .. 

Since the release of DOS, Microsoft has always 

been a go-to company in my eyes. When I was old 

enough to buy my own computer, the first operating 

system I used was MS-DOS J.I. I can still remember all 

the commands I used then. Currently I use Windows 

95 and Windows NT 4.0, and I think both operating 

systems are good in their own way, but I can 't wait 

for Win98. It sounds really stable. 

Send your missives: 

commport@ 

maximumpcmag.com

Officellax· 

--- - 

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I'm writing this letter because I'm 

scared. 

I'm scared that the DO] will bust 

Microsoft up into smaller companies. I'm 

scared that the rest of the vultures will 

swing in with their flavors of operating 

systems and cause absolute chaos. I 

know Win95/ Win98, WinNT, Windows 

CE, even DOS are not perfect operating 

systems, but they are from one company. 

In our office, we're switching over from 

MacOS to NT, and some of the problems 

of "transferring" data have caused major 

setbacks and time delays. For every 

problem beyond our scope, we've been 

able to call Microsoft and get an answer 

to our questions. I can 

imagine the nightmare 

of new operating 

systems springing up 

all over the place and 

bringing the computer 

industry to its knees. 

You think you have 

problems now with 

Microsoft operating 

systems? What about 

companies that could 

be using four different 

operating systems from 

different companies 

under the same roof? 

That would be an 

absolute nightmare 

for any computer tech. 

Looking at the huge 

company that Microsoft 

is, most people know 

that their hold on the 

computer industry is 

flimsy at best. While 

Microsoft has money 

coming out its ears and 

lots of smart people working for tit, so 

did IBM and Apple in their highlight 

years. Most Americans (and I am one 

of them) always think the grass is 

greener on the other side. If Microsoft 

falls, another company will be eagerly 

waiting to fill its shoes and continue 

that company's regime of products that 

dominate the market. I'm not saying 

we should sell out to Microsoft by any 

means, or buy more Microsoft products 

to keep them afloat. But I do think we 

need to look at Microsoft as a necessary 

evil that keeps the lid on the computer 

industry and tries to maintain some sort 

of compatibility. 

- Matt Cummard 

Pralasslanal 

l:urlasltr 

As a SysAdmin for a plastics thermoformer, 

I have a bit of "professional 

curiosity." Who takes care of networking 

in the Maximum PC offices? Do you 

have an MIS department, or, in a land of 

technomavens, are things just done "by 

committee"? Do fights over individual 

upgrades result in bloodshed? Or has a 

certain editor in chief decreed, "There 

shall be no PC greater than mine"? 

-Brad Spaulding 

lditor In Chief Brad Dosland 

repll .. : Imagine Media provides an 

MIS department for all the publications 

here (PC Gamer, Next Generation, 

MacAddid, etc.), but Maximum PC 

is the bane of its existence. Every time 

the phone rings over there and it's one 

of the MaximumPCrew, they cringe. 

"Uhhh ... my PC is smoking, and molten 

plastic is flowing through the vents. Can 

you fix it while I'm still working. I don't 

want to shut down." When they do 

get us away from the system and look 

under the hood, they discover a slew of 

unmarked alpha silicon from yet-to-beannounced 

companies running on beta 

drivers and alien technology. Lately 

they've been putting stickers on our 

cases that read "If this seal is broken, 

fix your own damn machine!" 

As for my imperious decree, I'm 

currently chugging along on a P-Pro 

200 while my minions breeze about on 

P-11 power. But just wait till my Xeon 

arrives, then they'll feel my wrath. 

Upgrade Your Eyes! 

I'd like to know why people even care 

what happens beyond 6ofps? The 

human eye can only register 6ofps. 

That means the Voodoo 2 has us seeing 

(or not seeing) an average of 14fps over 

what our optic nerve can register. 

Once the 6ofps to 70fps range is 

reached, the graphics people, hardware 

and software, should concentrate on 

bringing us stunning visuals. 

-jame6 H. Hughe6 

Executive Editor Jon Phillips 

replies: You're right. The typical 

human eye can't register framerates 

faster than 60fps. But that 60fps must 

be absolutely, positively locked in with

no dips whatsoever-any hiccups and the 

immersive experience is destroyed. Also 

remember that a particular 3D card might hit 

75fps in a particular game, but only 35fps in 

the next big hit that features more polygons, 

larger textures, and richer special effects. 

3D chipset developers therefore must 

concentrate on pure speed so that software 

developers can throw better visuals at us 

without sacrificing that locked-in 60fps 

framerate. 

Sell Your Soundcard 

I'm somewhat amazed with the soon-to-be 

Microsoft Digital Sound System 8o, which 

receives its information via the USB port. It 

is my understanding that it is not connected 

to the soundcard, at least not directly. I'm 

very curious as how this all works. Is this 

something so new as to say that a soundcard 

is not needed for these new speakers? 

- ]a6on Hamilton 

Senior Editor Andrew Sanchez 

replies: Your PC will convert the audio 

signals into a straight digital signal that can 

be transported across the USB bus. Once it 

enters the speaker system, a Digital-To- 

Analog converter inside the subwoofer 

box converts the digital 

signal back into a format feasible 

for all the analog speakers. 

The Microsoft speaker system 

is both a digital (USB) and analog 

device, meaning you can hook 

up the speaker via regular 1/8- 

inch mini stereo cable or USB. 

In theory, a soundcard is not 

necessary if you go with USB, 

as your digital sound, equalization, 

and volume control will be 

routed into the USB port. The 

Microsoft speaker system will 

have its own control applet for 

volume, effects, etc., so you 

bypass any soundcard altogether. 

Although, if you do 

own a CD-ROM/DVD drive 

(and who doesn't?!), you'll still 

need to connect that device to 

something in order to get 

sound into your system-such 

as a soundcard. 

We'll have to wait until we get final 

product in order to fully decipher 

Microsoft's USB plan. 

Privacy Piracy 

No matter what anyone says, 

you can't justify Blizzard's decision 

to read data off people's 

hard drives while playing their 

games online. By doing so, we 

are saying that anyone has the 

right to barge into our privacy, 

be it home or PC. My PC is my 

virtual home. And I do not feel 

comfortable having others 

barge into my home without 

me knowing and retrieving 

whatever they please. I'm sure 

there are other legal means of 

handling this situation, other 

than illegally retrieving data 

from peoples PCs. 

I understand Blizzard's 

dilemma. But, like with any 

other authority in this country, 

there is a right way of handling 

these problems, and this 

is not it. Pirates aren't in the 

right, but two wrongs don't make a right. 

Is the violation of our privacy a worthwhile 

sacrifice for catching a few criminals, 

WHY WAIT? 

You don't have to wait for the latest 

technology for a faster Internet 

connection. It's already here. Checklt• 

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you do on the Internet by as much 

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This is not just another web page 

caching tool. If you're using a modem 

and either Netscape• Navigator or 

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performance improvements after 

tuning up your computer with Checklt 

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See how fast you 

could be going. Visit 

netoptimizer.com/gofast2.htm and try 

out our on-line Internet benchmark. Or. 

pick up a copy of Checklt NetOptimizer 

today from your favorite computer 

retail store. 

lwchstone' 

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even if those not pirating are also 

being violated? After all. they did find 

out that some were "manufacturing 

problems, stores that were reselling 

returned copies .... " What of the lawabiding 

citizens whose privacy was 

violated? How do we justify that? If 

authorities seeking to convict murderers 

need warrants, what makes the software 

industry any different? 

- jack L. Cri6o6tomo 

I am demanding that Maximum PC 

execute an immediate and total recall of 

all current issues. This morning, as I was 

turning the pages of the issue, I received 

a lateral microincision 

of the left forefinger. 

That's right- a papercut. 

How can you litter 

the streets with such a 

patently dangerous 

product? Did you even 

bother to get this magazine 

safety-approved? 

And, as for the CD-ROM, 

I dropped it on my 

crotch, burning Mr. 

Bobo beyond recognition. 

(Wait-forget I told 

you that name.) Be 

assured, Mister(s). a 

lawsuit of elephantine 

proportion is heretofore, 

forthwith, and 

verily, uh, comin' at ya. 

Regarding this 

Blizzard nonsense (if I 

may be serious for a 

moment): Blizzard did 

the right thing. Perhaps 

it was poor execution, 

but it was trying to do 

right by its customers. Anyone who 

feels his privacy has been violated, well 

obviously you have something to hide. 

The rest of you who feel that Blizzard 

betrayed your trust by gathering system 

information for marketing purposes, 

I've got news for you: every time you 

use a credit card, shop at a major 

department store, register at a hotel, 

vote. go to a new doctor or dentist, or 

get arrested-people, your name is for 

sale. Big business has been keeping 

tabs on us far longer than the software 

industry has been around. Live with it 

and let Blizzard get back to making 

great games. 

- Chabuhi 

Canlig.Sis 

I'm a woman who loves computer hardware 

and software. I get excited by it. I 

work for a software company, and today 

I tried to join a conversation with two 

men about hardware upgrades. I know 

about this sort of thing, believe me, 

through lots of hands-on experience. 

I've upgraded three systems, testing and 

returning a lot of inadequate hardware. 

Well, all I got was blank looks from 

these two guys. And this has not been 

my only experience with the brush-off 

during computer conversations. I love 

computers and I love to talk about 

them, but men perceive women as 

unable to have a valid opinion when 

it comes to computers. 

I see no difference in my passion for 

computers than any man's. Why then do 

I get laughed at or given the big cold 

shoulder when it comes to talking about 

computers? I admit no other woman in 

my office shares my passion. but I don't 

think I'm that unique. And I certainly 

don't see why anyone would be uncomfortable 

talking to me. 

There's a comic going around the 

office where a woman asks her son why 

all games are written for men. The boy 

replies that women should stop complaining 

and program their own games. 

The son ends up in the corner facing the 

wall. But this is downright invalid. I love 

the games out now! They aren't geared 

for men or women. 

Female Maximum PC readers, am I 

that unusual in loving games such as 

Quake II and Blood 2 , and daydreaming 

about the latest in computer hardware? 

- Heather Walton 

Whither USB? 

When will we get to use our USB ports? 

USB ports have been in new machines 

since 1996, and I still haven't seen a 

single peripheral that uses it. When can 

we expect to be free of this multitude of 

cables we're currently forced to live with? 

I long for the day when I can remove 

all those cables and just use a hub, plug 

them in, and not have to worry whether 

I have the correct cable type or whether 

it will fit into my computer. 

- Michael Irving 

News Editor Bryan Del Rizzo 

replies: Now that Windows 98 is 

unleashed on the J 

start to see a prolifl 

devices flood the ~ 

working on a huge 

upcoming issue of 

already we've got 

products, including 

mice, hubs, scanne 

game controllers. B 

actually work. Just 

you're on your wa 

Online S 

Binge 

One late night not t 

up doing a bit more 

planned, and in the 

17-inch DEC VRCI6- 

morning after the h 

I decided to check o 

vious night. What II 

monitor 1 had purch 

BNC-type video con 

me to do a little res 

familiar with anythi 

15-pin units. One ite 

find was that most 

manufacturers do m 

unit. What I want to 

have just purchased 

or I just got a stella 

Executive Edito 

replies: One late 

ago I ended up doin 

than I had planned, 

purchased a 1,343- 

too had BNC conne 

freaky international 

Anyway, it's strange 

turer would outfit a 

with BNC connector 

bandwidth video sig 

and is typically the p 

interface for high-en 

Sure, you can use an 

your monitor up and 

video signal will top 

quality. If this solutio 

you, I should let you 

the market for a ne 

Pumping 

in Your

unleashed on the world, you should 

start to see a proliferation of USB 

devices flood the market. We're 

working on a huge USB feature for an 

upcoming issue of Maximum PC, and 

already we've got a bunch of USB 

products, including cameras, keyboards, 

mice, hubs, scanners, adapters, and 

game controllers. Best of all, they 

actually work. Just plug 'em in, and 

you're on your way. 

Online Shopping 

Binge 

One late night not too long ago I ended 

up doing a bit more surfing than I had 

planned, and in the process purchased a 

17-inch DEC VRC16-HA monitor. The next 

morning after the headache went away, 

I decided to check on my work the previous 

night. What I learned is that the 

monitor I had purchased had only five 

BNC-type video connectors. This caused 

me to do a little research, not being 

familiar with anything but the standard 

15-pin units. One item of interest I did 

find was that most after-market cable 

manufacturers do make a 15-pin-to-BNC 

unit. What I want to know is whether I 

have just purchased a new boat anchor 

or I just got a stellar deal on the web. 

-CW2 

Executive Editor Jon Phillips 

replies: One late night not too long 

ago I ended up doing a bit more surfing 

than I had planned, and in the process 

purchased a 1,343-foot ocean liner. It 

too had BNC connectors. I blame those 

freaky international maritime specs. 

Anyway, it's strange that a manufacturer 

would outfit a 17 -inch monitor 

with BNC connectors. BNC offers higher 

bandwidth video signals than 15-pin, 

and is typically the preferred connection 

interface for high-end 21-inch displays. 

Sure, you can use an adapter to get 

your monitor up and running, but your 

video signal will top out at 15-pin 

quality. If this solution doesn't appeal to 

you, I should let you know that I'm in 

the market for a new boat anchor. 

Pumping Polygons 

in Your lap 

What happened with 3D cards for notebooks? 

''What more can be said? 

The Canopus Pure3D II 

kicks maximum ass." 

- Boot Magazine 

" ... its extra features give it 

(Pure3D II) an edge over the 

competition." -PC Gamer Magazine 

The ONLY 3D video card to 

earn a perfect 10 from boot 

"Bottom line is that Canopus has done it 

again. They've produced what can best be 

described as the Mercedes of Voodoo 2s 

and for the most demanding gamers, this 

is the thing to get." 

- Adrenaline Vault (http:/;avault.com) 

I 

I 

• The WdchDoctor 4MB RIVAJ28 20130 ACP lr.IPii&s mt 

• Connect ANY Voodoo2 board to external "reverse " 

pass-through for improved sharpness in high resolution 

desktop graphics modes. 

• Use Canopus drivers and Quick Control real-time screen 

adjustment software 

• Add TV-out to ANY Voodoo2 board 

• Use with Pure3D II cards via the INTERNAL pass-through 

port (no cable clutter) 

..-.. 

The Canopus Pure3D II Is available at: 

The PC 

T~..,TRh' 

~ne· ~5I.! 

•.. ~ .. f 

t~.~ .. ~. 

''Overall, the WrtchDoctor casts 

a strong spell for a gamer's 

happiness, and wins big by 

providing the best foundation 

for a Voodoo2 card yet." 

- Craig Campanaro, Hardware Director 

www.cyrellis.com 

canopus 

1-1100-408-9663 1-800-INSIGHT _. http:/ jwww.canopuscorp.com 

I

News Editor Bryan Del Rizzo replies: 

3D chips, not cards, are already available for 

notebooks. In addition to the MagicMedia 

256AV, we've also seen 53's ViRGE/MX and 

ATI's Rage LT Pro. Although they do provide 

Direct3D compatibility, they don't exactly 

give desktop Voodoo-based cards a run for 

the money. Still, they're a good first step 

into making notebook computers just as 

"video powerful" as their desktop brethren. 

Son of A&P 

What's the deal with AGP 2.0? I'm looking 

into replacing the mediocre AGP card that 

came with my P-11 266 with something with 

a lot more pixel-pushing power. I'm considering 

either an STB Velocity 128 (8MB) or 

a Real3D Starfighter. However, the 

Starfighter's specs on a vendor page state 

that it's an AGP 2.0 card. Looking through 

the motherboard manuals, the only thing 

I've been able to determine is that I have 

a 440LX bus. There's really nothing on AGP 

levels. I was hoping you guys could 

enlighten me. Basically, I just want 

to know if the StarFighter will work 

on my system. Also, while you're at 

it... What the hell is AGP 2.0? 

- Alexander Aguilar 

Executive Editor Jon 

Phillips replies: Your motherboard 

is outfitted with the 440LX core-logic 

chipset, which does indeed support the 

AGP 2.C>-enabled StarFighter. And why 

shouldn't it? Intel makes both the 440LX 

and the i740 chipset used by the 3D card. 

AGP is an Intel technology that lets your 

computer store 3D gaming textures in main 

system memory. Before AGP, textures could 

only be stored in the memory soldered to 

your videocard-about 2MB to 16MB worth 

as opposed to the 32MB to 128MB that's 

plugged into most computer motherboards. 

With voluminous amounts of texture storage 

space at their disposal, game developers can 

now use higher-res textures, and thus make 

3D worlds more breathtaking. 

The second version of AGP is simply a 

faster iteration of the spec. In AGP 1.0, 

the AGP data bus is a one-way streetthe 

videocard can't request textures from 

system memory while system memory is 

sending textures to the videocard. AGP 2.0, 

however, introduces a "sideband" through 

which the videocard can send texture 

requests at the very same time when 

textures are leaving system memory 

and heading toward the videocard. 

Two last things to remember: AGP 

doesn't mean jack unless you're playing 

a 3D game with extra large textures. 

I'm an avid gamer and work in a computer 

store chain. l believe the web degenerates 

customer service in most companies. just 

look at the number of patches downloadable 

from the web sites of most major companies. 

l understand how much it helps, but how 

much does it hurt? Do companies send out 

games that are not completely done, knowing 

they can put a patch on their web site thinking 

this would satisfy us? When companies 

put out patches on disks, it cost the company. 

This made them put out a better product in 

the first place because they didn't want to 

spend the cash. The web makes its easier 

for them to have a lazy mentality and 

shoddy product. I'd be ashamed of putting 

out even one patch. I'd praise a company 

that sent out a patch that gave registered 

users new features, not fixes, for free. In 

fact, I'd support that company for life. 

- Michael Kurtz 

My So-Called 

SCSI life 

I've had an Adaptec 2940W for four years 

and have rebuilt my computer three times 

around this card. l currently have a 1GB 

Seagate SCSI hard drive with an Iomega jaz 

drive. All are SCSI 2. I'm considering adding 

a SCSI wide hard drive to my system but am 

having a hard time finding one. Can this 

card support SCSI Ultra Wide or SCSI 3 7 

- Luigi Tiberi 

Tech Editor Sean Cleveland replies: 

No, it cannot. You would need Adaptec's 

2940UW (Ultra Wide) controller or equivalent 

from another manufacturer. But if 

you 're really going to take the plunge, 

you may want to look into Ultra 2 SCSI. 

Adaptec's Ultra 2 card is called the 

2940U2W and is currently available. 

This next-generation SCSI offers a total bus 

width of 80MB/sec as opposed to Ultra 

Wide's 40MB/sec. Even though a singlE 

hard drive would never fill this, we hav1 

found that Seagate's Cheetah Ultra 2 d 

do indeed burst at 45MB/sec! Its throu 

put is also phenomenal at 16MB/sec, a 

seek times are at a steady 8.5ms. If spe 

is your need, then definitely look into tl 

combination. If you have trouble findin 

these drives on shelves, it's due to lack 

demand. Most companies can order eq 

ment, and a list of resellers is usually all 

able from the manufacturer's web site. 

Slow as a SnADL 

Why is AOL so slow? l can't get less tha 

450 ping while I play Quake II. It takes 

seconds to even fire the first shot off 

rocket launcher, and by then the perso1 

moved. I have a 300MHz P-11, V.90 mod 

and I'm even using AOL's V.90 access li1 

What gives? 

- Dan the piMed-obb g 

Online Editor Gordon Ung replie 

AOL slow? Say it ain't so! Yov 

problem probably relates to t 

amount of traffic AOL handle! 

with its millions of customers. 

networks really aren't configu 

to handle the intense gaming 

Quake II requires. There are a 

few tricks you might want to 

though. Some people have reported Ia~ 

being induced by the V.90 protocol. T 

dialing a non-V.90 line like a 33.6 line, 

turning software compression off unde1 

advanced setting on your modem. You 

also want to try updating your winsoc 

dial-up networking to 1.2. A great pia 

start is www.navpoint.com/ -zephed/ 

qx2.html. The site has tips on configuri 

X2/V.90 modem init strings for optimu1 

Quake gameplay. The final tip would b 

to switch to a true ISP. If you love AOU 

community forums but want an additio 

ISP for online gaming, you may want t~ 

change your rate plan to the low usag 

plans AOL has available. 

The Rabbit Died 

please help 

i have become satisfied with my curr 

computer and feel no compulsion to 

upgrade it 

please, please help me 

i do however have an overpowering 

to overclock my vw rabbit 

- Stephen D. Goglin

Andrew Sanchez 

.. SENIOR EDITOR 

Andrew's the man in 

charge of the entire 

review well in the 

pages of Maximum 

PC. You'll see his 

name attached to 

many of our hardware 

features, especially 

anything related to 

3D accelerators. 

Jon Phftlps 

"'EXECUTIVE EDITOR 

Straight from the 

mean streets of 

Richmond, CA (with a 

layover at The Net 

magazine), Jon's the 

man who crafts the 

feature well of 

Maximum PC every 

month. He's also 

become a CPU guru. 

ing 

ck of 

equip 

avail 

e. 

han a 

es five 

fmy 

son's 

odem, 

line. 

gamer 

ies: 

our 

the 

les 

s. Its 

Sean Cleveland 

.. TECHNICAL EDITOR 

Sean's a freak for the 

geekier stuff: blazing 

hard drive spindle 

speeds, cool network 

hubs, CD-ROM drive 

architectures, flavors 

of SCSI. When not 

hobnobbing with 

engineers, he's in 

charge of the lab. 

Rick Popko 

.. SOFTWARE EDITOR 

A grizzled veteran of 

Multimedia World 

and Digital Video 

magazines, Rick's 

brimming enthusiasm 

(not pictured) guides 

our coverage of the 

games, utilities, and 

apps that show off 

your killer hardware. 

Bryan Del Rizzo 

.. NEWS EDITOR 

Bryan's the man on 

on the asking end of 

the hard questions in 

our monthly interview 

and in charge of the 

news section in print 

and online. Being on 

the road so much, 

Bryan's also the master 

of mobile tech. 

WE'LL LEAVE THE 

STARRING RDUS 

TD THE HARDWARE, 

BUT YDU'LL BE HARD· 

PRESSED TD RND A 

BEnER SUPPDRTINii 

CAST DN AllY BACKLDT 

IN THE BUSINESS 

Sarah Plrdl 

"'MANAGING EDITOR 

The flaxen-tressed 

Sarah came to 

Maximum PC from 

Unix Review and 

reads every word in 

the magazine each 

month. In addition to 

her language skills, 

Sarah stays hands-on 

with the mouse beat. 

Kevin Ashbum 

"'ART DIRECTOR 

Kevin was a freelance 

designer for boot 

magazine. He was 

hired as associate art 

director, and by noon 

that flrst day he was 

the full-fledged art 

director. He's just that 

good ... and he's wiRing 

to work insane hours. 

Sherry Monarko 

"'ASSOC. ART DIRECTOR 

Eclectic Sherry is our 

colorful spark plug. In 

addition to lay out 

chores, Sheny makes 

sure all our pages are 

prepped and ready to 

go to the press. She 

also spearheaded the 

design of our web site 

and Deluxe CD-ROM. 

_,.y,~, 

/- .. - -- -( 

I 

' 

" -l 

, . . ·.· 

.. ~- 

L's 

ional 

to 

ge 

Gordon Ung 

"'ONLINE EDITOR 

Gordon reads, edits, 

and posts the flood of 

letters that come into 

the magazine. With a 

daily newspaper background, 

crafty guy 

Gordon also kicks in 

on the news and 

soundcard coverage 

in Maximum PC. 

Unda Aldreclp 

"'GRAPHIC DESIGNER 

The newest member 

of the Maximum PC 

team, Unda has lent 

her design skills to PC 

Games, Mother Jones, 

and •surface magazine. 

Her arrival at the 

magazine immediately 

attracted a bevy of 

amorous stalkers. 

rrent 

g urge 

m• 

t 

I 

•> 

Kenn Durrence 

•DISC EDITOR 

Kenn's the guy who 

pulls together all the 

phat demos, utilities, 

drivers, and shareware 

that come on the 

Deluxe version of 

Maximum PC's mega 

650MB CD-ROM: 

Maximum CD. He 

also bats clean-up. 

Brad Dosland 

.. EDITOR IN CHIEF 

Our own Svengali, Brad tries to get everyone on his 

suspiciously dedicated staff to spend every waking 

hour in our cramped office (must be those blazing 

blue eyes). He's held almost every position in publishing 

on magazines such as boot and Thrasher. 

G-Burns 

•PUBUSHER 

Gene's been the biz 

force behind some of 

the most successful 

magazines in tech 

publishing, such as 

NetGuide, Home PC, 

and Windows mag. 

His tireless drive is a 

motivating force for 

all at Maximum PC.

Who hasn't been there when someone's started dealing 

business cards as if it were a game of five card stud? The Palm Ill" 

connected organizer lets you dispense with that 

ritual- without gambling with your precious 

information. Now infrared transfer makes 

:.·::~&., 

,.. .. .. > 

it possible to transfer your business card and 

other information (including applications) directly to and from other Palm Ill 

users. And HotSync"' technology lets you exchange data with your PC- great 

for quick backups and seamless data entry. Of course Palm Ill still keeps 

track of appointments, contacts, to-do lists, e-mail and expenses- and 

applications created by thousands of developers make this organizer 

even more powerful. Palm Computing products are the fastest selling 

handheld computing products in history and soon not having 

one will be like running out of business cards- a big 

business faux pas. For a Palm Ill retailer near you, 

visit www.palm.com or caii1-B00-861-2529. 

Palm, Ill" 

e. 

The con nected organi zer. 

PalmPilot"' Professional - $299• 

• Instantly syncs with your PC 

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Palm Ill Organizer - $399• 

I Includes PalmPilot Professional 

features plus) 

• Infrared Transfer 

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• Applications available from 

thousands of developers 

• links to Symantec ACT! and 

Microsoft Outlook 97 included 

• All prices U.S. list prices. MacPac connection kit. required foc Macintosh connectivity, sold separately for $14.95. Palm"' Mail and Expense applications 

and some links to desktop software not supported on Macintosh. © 1998 3Com Corp. 3Com, the 3Com logo, Palm Computing, and HotSync 

are registered trademarks. and PalmPilot. Palm Ill, Palm, the Palm Ill logo. and the Palm Computing platform logo are trademarks of 

Palm Computing, Inc. or 3Com Corporation. Other product and brand names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. 

This product is not manufactured by Pilot Corporation or Pilot Corporation of America. manufacturers and distributors of writing instruments. 

Optional links (sold separately) 

available for: 

• Ascend 97 

• ECCO 

• GoldMine 

• Lotus Organizer and Notes 

• Maximizer 

• and more 

Palm"' Mail compatible with· 

• Eudora 3.0.3 or higher 

• lotus cc:Mail v 7.0, 6.0. 2.5 

• Microsoft Exchange 4.0 or htg 

• Microsoft Outlook 97 

• Windows Messaging 4.0 

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__ ... 

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--PALM 

C0MPUTINcf 

PlATFORM

call1-800-861 -2529. 

Advanced lntellige t Tape (Atn is 

high-speed, large- paclty storage for 

large-scale netwo servers. IBM's Adaptive 

Lossless Data Co pression (ALDC) has been 

adopted to doub e the 25GB uncompressed capadty 

50GB. The $5,58 AIT uses Sony's memory in cassette 

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media load times (1 0 sec). The sustained 

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AIT holds up 

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bunts at 

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3MB/sec. And 6MB/sec when transferring compressed data. Burst 

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The $5, 589 SDX- 300C/ES comes equipped with two 68· 

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a 4MB buffer and has a drum tational speed of 4,800RPM. 

Sony; 888.531.7669; ww .ita.sel.sony.com/products/ 

Wipa Dull ~ 

When your audio COs start skipping or your r-nrnn>ftPr 

spits out scratched CO-ROMs, you no longer 

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Scratches simply confuse 

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Esprit Development Corp.; 908.284.0426; 

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Dlympus DIDDD 

When a genius idea hits you, just pick up your D1 000 digital voice 

recorder, hit record, and download the audio file to your PC later for 

easy transcription to text. Olympus hooked up with Intel and IBM to 

bring you the world's first digital voice recorder with removable storage 

media. Using an advanced algorithm, the D1000 applies an extremely 

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miniature cards. Olympus includes one 2MB card (additional cards 

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can transfer recorded DSS files to your PC. Once the audio is transferred 

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The $299 D1000's compact designit 

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and weighs only 6oz with batteriesmeans 

portability. Supercool! 

Olympus; 516.844.5000; 

www.olympus.com 

LCDihows 

time left, 

and time, 

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iCam ~ 

With the $9,000 iCam, you can be 

at once. Using telepresence '"rnnr'"'""' 

see and hear a remote locatio 

were there. Web-based 

Web-based 

controls tilt, 

and zoom 

~ Sony IDD Disc library 

In need of an inexpensive solution for sharing a plethora of CO-ROMs? 

The Sony CDL1100 CD-ROM library is the perfect, if not the only, 

choice in its price range. Packaged in a small desktop tower, this 

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a P-CAV architecture and 

throughput of 8x 

of up to 

12x (1.8MB/sec.). The average access time is 130ms. SmartCD software 

gives you simple access to discs via Windows Explorer and only requires a 

single drive letter to access all CDs. 

Sony; 888.531.7669; www.ita.sel.sony.com/produd s 

1oo-clisc changer 

cleliven 65GB of data 

Targeted at home and 

iSwitch is more than a 

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D IGITAL C REATIVITY I MAG ING CENTER 

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our 

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Compaq Presario 5030 

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Intel Pentium II Processor, 300MHz 

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2X AGP Graphics w/2 MB SGRAM 

Creativity Action Center 2 USB/1 Game Port 

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Microsoft® Windows®98 

Presario MV 700 Monitor (15.9" VIA) 

Campaq Presarlo 5140 

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Intel Pentium II Processor, 400MHz 

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• 96 MB SyncDRAM expandable to 384 MB 

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• 1 OMbps Ethernet port, Cable Modem Ready 

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and 

'Ore year pans ar

lex St. john designed 

DirectOS-his dream operating 

system-so now it's 

my turn. 

In some ways, my 

VirtualOS is similar to his, 

but with some twists-and 

I'll crawl out on a limb to 

predict that my approach is the wave of 

the future. 

Like the Saint, I want to rip apart the 

OS kernel from the application programming 

interfaces (APls). Today's leading 

OSes are criminally bloated. The more 

code there is, the more opportunity for 

bugs. And the main reason they're 

bloated is that APls-the software layers 

that provide services to applicationsare 

growing fatter than a sumo wrestler 

on a chocolate binge. 

The low-level duties of an OS kernel 

haven't changed much in the past ten 

years. Yet, the ballooning bugs in highlevel 

APls are sabotaging the reliability of 

the kernels. It's time to separate the lowlevel 

functions of the OS from the higherlevel 

functions of the APls. 

ages over time. Also, I'd like to maintain 

separation between apps and APls, just 

as I do between APls and the kernel. 

That way, APls can evolve without 

requiring anyone to repackage the apps, 

and apps would automatically take 

advantage of upgraded APls. 

So I would implement the APls as a 

virtual layer on top of the kernel. Apps 

would arrive on the machine in the form 

of intermediate pseudo-code, not native 

code. The software installer would really 

be a compiler that converts the pseudocode 

into native code without user 

intervention. Alternatively, a just-In-Time 

(jlT) compiler could convert the pseudocode 

into native code as the program 

runs, based on actual profiles of how 

you're using the program. jlT compilers 

optimize a program in ways that static 

compilers can't, because static compilers 

are oblivious to runtime variations. 

If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, 

it's pretty much how java works today. 

java bytecode is intermediate pseudocode 

that usually gets interpreted or 

compiled into native code at runtime. 

Your Next OS Will Be Virtual 

other 

TH E ULTIMATE OS LOOKS A LOT LIKE JAVA. .. AND THAT'S GOOD 

What does a kernel need to do? Not 

much, really. It needs to handle memory 

management, task scheduling, interrupts, 

device drivers, interprocess communications, 

and a few other critical functions. 

I'd store my VirtualOS kernel in switchprotected 

Flash ROM 

so it's upgradable if 

necessary, but 

immune to system 

crashes, evil viruses, 

and monkey damage. 

Now, here's where 

my Virtual OS diverges from Alex's 

DirectOS. Alex would package the API 

libraries required by a program with the 

program itself. Every program installs its 

own APls at runtime. 

Frankly, his concept has a lot of 

merit. I like the idea of reducing the 

state information on a machine. But the 

unchecked growth of APis might lead to 

horrendously bloated application pack- 

The java platform APls, which are written 

in java, form a virtual layer that separates 

java programs from the OS and the CPU. 

As a result, the system software and hardware 

can change at any time without 

breaking the APls or your programs. 

also in the temporal 

dimension (across 

platforms that will 

exist in the future) . 

The year 2000 

problem teaches us 

that code often lives 

for 20 or 30 years. 

Can you predict 

which native platforms 

will be 

popular then? 

A reasonable 

objection is that a 

VirtualOS is too slow, 

especially for games. 

Point well taken. But 

while progress is 

underway to boost 

java performance, 

it'll never be as fast 

as plain C code or 

assembly language. 

That's OK, because 

java allows programmers 

to call native code if they need more speed, 

and my Virtual OS would, too. Games fall out 

of fashion faster than 

software, so longterm 

compatibility isn't 

so important. 

I'm not saying java 

is the ultimate solution. 

I consider java to be 

VirtualOS 1.0. Even if 

java fails as a platform, the concept won't 

die. It has too many advantages for users 

and developers, and the idea has been 

planted in too many brains by now. 

Another Virtual OS would rise from the 

ashes to fix the problems that killed java. 

On-site maintenance isn't available for a Voyager probe that's 

circling Saturn, so the OS had better be able to recover from 

errors on its own. 

Only the java virtual machine and the 

compilers must be changed. 

One advantage of a Virtual OS is that it 

would spur more competition for better 

OS kernels and CPUs. Software compatibility 

limits those choices today. 

Another advantage is that VirtualOS 

software is cross-platform compatible, not 

only in the horizontal dimension (across 

multiple platforms that exist now), but 

Eventually, a VirtualOS will succeed. 

And there won't be only one 

VirtualOS-there will be several. Some 

might be designed to run business software, 

while others might be optimized for 

consumer software. Someday, all platforms 

will be virtual platforms. In fact, I'd 

bet money that somewhere deep inside a 

secret lab in Redmond, Microsoft is 

working on one right now . •

ecently made a shocking realization. 

In all the columns and 

articles I've written about the 

online world, I've never covered 

the topic that's easily the most 

obvious: Porn. 

Articles about the legal quandaries 

surrounding the issue are 

plentiful; the shutting down of ISPs, pushy 

government regulation, and how porn 

exploits women and children (and farm 

animals). We don't need to go there today. 

It's also easy to find reams of blue-nose 

reports railing on about how online pornography 

is leading to the decline of 

western civilization (and millions of hairy 

palms). It's more difficult, but still possible, 

to find pro-porn articles. Pieces exist that 

maintain porn actually empowers women, 

gives sexually frustrated "weirdos" a safe 

environment to act out their "twisted" fantasies, 

and is one of the only economically 

sound ventures on the entire web. 

But it's almost impossible to find 

mainstream articles that explain the nuts 

and bolts of online pornography. How do 

you get it? Can it be discreet and secure? 

Web Whacker 

TRACKING ELUSIVE PORN ONLINE 

And how do you pay? 

To get an overview of how Internet 

users think about the subject, check out 

Survey Net's sex questions (www.survey 

.net/sv-sex.htm). Over 25,000 mostly 

heterosexual males (74%) in their twenties 

(more than so%) have 

responded since 

October 1995. 

Highlights include: 

-32% say the Internet 

has made them more 

open-minded 

-19% say the Internet encourages perversion 

-10% say the Internet promotes deception 

-s6% download erotic pictures 

-22% talk dirty in IRC 

Go to the site and answer the survey 

to get the rest of the sundry details. 

But how to find the action online? 

The obvious: Yahoo and Alta Vista. 

The word "sex" pulled up a mere 2,226 sites 

on Yahoo, but it piled up a staggering 

3,844,209 on Alta Vista. Clearly Alta Vista 

gets you miles more sex-related content, 

but it's also in a million different languages, 

and in no particular order. 

To help filter through the noise, some 

engines cater to your kinks. But beware: 

Many of these are just fronts for push 

sites that blast you with self-spawning 

banner windows for pay-to-play sites, 

very few actually offer impartial reviews. 

The best resource is jane's Reviewed Adult 

Links at www.powerotic.com/jane/. 

This site is both well organized and well 

designed, reviewing the entire gamut of 

sex-related sites. And the reviews are 

professional and intelligent. It also 

includes weekly picks, a special "for 

women" section, and consumer tips. 

A reasonable alternative is Persian Kitty 

at www.persiankitty.com. It's more of a 

Yahoo-esque listing with links to nearly 

1,000 web sites, categorized and alphabetized. 

It's a little too blinky blinky for my 

tastes, but it gets the job done. It also has 

quick links to sites offering free goodies. 

As far as required hardware and plugins, 

the sex industry is not technology shy. 

In fact all the bells and 

whistles behind the scenes 

often require well-hung 

machines with accessories 

such as QuickCams and 

video players to get the 

most out of your online 

rendezvous. Remember: 

online sex is mega money, so the purveyors 

can afford top-notch programmers. 

Surfing at work? Worried about 

privacy? A few tricks offer to keep the 

rubbernecks at bay. First, to hoax your 

admins, make sure to go through a private 

proxy that filters out 

headers and source 

addresses. But security 

watchers take 

note: no chaining, 

encryption, or log 

security is built-in 

according to a privacy 

report found at 

http://www.cs. 

berkeley.edul 

-daw/privacy 

compcon97- 

www/privacyhtml.html. 

If you don't want 

to get caught lookingeven 

anonymouslyuse 

an offline web 

agent (a web snake). 

While you're running 

Excel on the desktop 

you could be happily 

using one of the tools 

from several companies 

such as Milktruck (www.milktruck.com) 

or the Maximum PC crew's favorite, 

Anawave (anaserve.com/anawave/websnake/), 

to download the content for 

later, more private, viewing. 

The payment structures vary. Many 

sites participate in AVS (Adult Verification 

Services) content networks that take your 

cash monthly and verify that you're over 

18 (to protect the sites). Payments from 

$1.95 to $19.95 per month seem standard. 

Adult Check, probably the best deal, 

offers IJ,OOO• sites for one year at $16.95. 

Adult Check Gold, at $14.95 per month, 

promises the best sites on the Internet. 

"jane" speculated that this new system is 

The sex industry is not technology shy. In fad, the bells and 

whistles behind the scenes often require well-hung machines 

to get the most out of your online rendezvous. 

back door that hides your identity. This 

will also keep header hunters from getting 

your e-mail and IP addresses for future 

unwanted pornspam. 

The easiest free way to do this is with 

Anonymizer at www.anonymizer.com. 

The service also offers for-pay accounts ($15 

a quarter), which are much quicker because 

the company says it reserves bandwidth for 

those with cash. Anonymizer employs a web 

an answer to third parties passing old passwords 

(such as Pirate Lynx-www.piratelynx.com) 

to the masses and cutting down 

Adult Check and the web site's profits. 

Sixties free love may be over, and the 

age of lusty disco has passed, but there's 

no mistake that any tango you could 

possibly imagine is ready and waiting 

in the playroom of your choice online. 

Oooh baby baby. •

owever large the wads of 

sputum clogging the cogs 

of computer gaming may 

get, a precious few jewels 

of quality always manage 

to remind us what this 

medium can do. We may 

be drowning in a sea of 

mediocrity, but there are always islands 

of quality to provide refuge. 

That's why we bother. 

As I've said before, no matter how few 

good games come out each year in proportion 

to the bad ones, there never seems to 

be a shortage of quality games. That was 

brought home to me this week when I 

finally finished, after some 100 hours, 

Might and Magic VI. One-hundred hours 

away from family and friends, stuck in 

front of a flickering monitor that is probably, 

at this very moment, rendering my 

sperm inert. I have people to see, books to 

read, a golf game in serious need of help, 

and a whole season of "She's the Sheriff" 

on tape that I haven't yet watched. 

Yet almost every night I trudged out to 

my office and, for a few hours, went away 

roam the countryside and finish off any 

quests or dungeons you might have 

missed, borne along by a level 90• party.) 

What explains the appeal of this antisocial 

experience? Traditional noncomputer 

games are the antithesis of computer 

games. They are a social experience. We 

game partly for the challenge and pleasure, 

but more as a way of interacting with 

other human beings. When it's raining at 

the beach house, you don't all go to your 

separate corners and play solitaire. You 

haul out the Risk board and a case of cold 

ones and crush each other. 

And online gaming is no replacement 

for this social element. There's no chance 

to interact with fellow humans in a Quake 

II deathmatch. The times you do, you 

regret it as you realize many of the people 

playing are juvenile cretins in real life. I 

finally gave up most online action gaming 

because of the lame, testosterone-induced 

posing of the average player. 

Good computer games offer something 

you can't find anywhere else: full immersion 

in a vast and interesting world. Neophytes 

may compare it to television or 

Why We Game 

THE RARE GREAT GAME TRANSCENDS THE MEDIUM 

to the world of Enroth to battle some adequately 

rendered monsters. Why? I had 

already filed my review, thus freeing me 

from any occupational need to finish the 

blasted thing. I had promising new games 

such as Unreal, Operational Art of War, and 

Freespace waiting, and 

indifferent games such 

as X-COM Interceptor 

and vangers requiring 

evaluation. So why 

go back? 

It wasn't just that 

I'd gotten so far that I felt, "might as well 

finish it." I actually enjoyed it. (If that 

sounds strange, consider my job: enjoying 

a game you are required to evaluate is 

pretty rare.) I even looked forward to it. 

And when the Hive queen was dead and 

Prince Nicolai had knighted us all, I felt 

a bit sad that it was over. (I was pleased 

that New World Computing lets you go 

back to Enroth after the endgame, to 

movies, but gaming is much more. Films and 

TV are completely passive, engaging neither 

the body nor the imagination nor the mind. 

All that games borrow from motion media is 

the motion: moving images on a screen. 

Quality games are most like good novels. 

succeed best when 

they create a worldbe 

it a fantasy empire, 

a nascent civilization, 

or Gettysburg-and 

leave you to direct 

the "story." 

Technology helps 

game creators offer 

more believable 

environments for this 

mental process, but 

in truth, it's not 

essential. Visually 

immersive games 

such as Sin, Unreal, 

and Quake II are not 

the most emotionally 

compelling. They 

hone in on one or 

two emotions-fear 

and aggression-and 

strike them over and 

over again. They can 

be exhilarating, like a 

roller coaster, but rarely engage the mind 

on a more subtle level. 

Might and Magic VI, by comparison, is 

technologically inferior in almost every 

way. The framerates are poor, the textures 

aren't hardware-smoothed, the figure 

modeling isn't fluid. But the world has 

characters, stories, far-flung locations, 

magic, monsters, an epic battle between 

good and evil, heroes, and even a few challenging 

puzzles. The environment feels real 

not because it looks real (it often doesn't), 

but because the little details, such as an 

obnoxious clerk or snooty peasant, make it 

seem like a real place in time and space. 

That's why there's hope for computer 

Technology helps create more believable environments for 

this mental process, but in truth, it's not essential. Visually 

immersive games are not the most emotionally compelling. 

They draw you into a world that is partly 

the work of the creator, but partly the work 

(through the imagination) of the user. 

Instead of imagining the sensory elements 

as you do in a novel, you use your imagination 

to direct the action itself. The visual 

and aural elements are in place, but what 

you do with them is what engages and holds 

the user. This applies to every type of game, 

not just narrative ones. Strategy games 

gaming. A medium that so completely 

engages the imagination is far too powerful 

to be surrendered to the Deer Hunters 

of the world. Through technology, entire 

realms of the mind may be evoked, and 

the control of these worlds is placed in 

the hands of average consumers for 

$49.95. And if that isn't the most impressive 

creative medium since the motionpicture 

camera, I don't know what is . •

... Asusand 

Sea_g_ate UDMA 

Prolilems 

their hardware. Asus's reply 

didn't seem to be a satisfactory 

answer to us or to Mr. 

Kwan, who had this to say: 

Kwan Asus should 

check its own support 

forums. I searched and 

· 1nHr ~. · .·,;, 

Dear Dog I'd like everyone to 

know about a problem with found more than 100 

Asus P:ZB motherboards and 

posts on the problems 

the Seagate Medalist Pro 

~ ~ H n __• 

with the Seagate drive and 

' : 

hard drives such as the 

. .. Asus. It seems to me that 

ST34520A 7,200RPM IDE drive. 

. . 

they're passing the buck. I'd 

Although quite a few people ASUS PlB motherboard like to know what firmware 

in the Asus newsgroup are experiencing revision they had on their test hard drive 

the same problem, Asus doesn't seem to and how I can get that firmware revision, 

have an answer. The problem occurs either because I've searched all over the Seagate 

when you use the Intel 3.01 bus-mastering web site and haven't found it. All I want is 

drives or when you enable the DMA mode to have my hard drive working at 100% 

of the hard drive in the device manager instead of just limping around. 

and the Ultra DMA mode in the BIOS. The Dog Since the buck was passed, we 

When you do this, the Win95 registry followed the money to Seagate, which congets 

corrupted and you must reformat finned a compatibility problem. Apparently, 

your hard drive. The fastest way of 

the speedy 7,200RPM Medalist is too 

checking for this problem is to run 

fast when used with the Asus P2B 

scandisk in Win95. It will detect multi- 

and the Intel bus-mastering drivers. 

pie copies of the FAT table. 

But whose fault is it? Intel, Asus, or 

The temporary fix to this problem 

Seagate? Seagate product marketing 

is to disable all the DMA settings, 

manager Jack Schiffhauer graciously 

but by doing this, your drive runs as 

refuses to point the finger at anyone 

slow as molasses. Basically it runs . and says it is the shared responlike 

a three-to-four-year-old hard Seagate Medahst Pro sibility of all parties involved. 

drive using mode 4. This should piss off He did add that the particular hard drive has 

anyone who just spent more than $350 been used with more than 120 systems 

on the fastest EIDE drive in the market. without glitches. Since learning of the 

-Fred Kwan problem, Seagate engineers issued a 

finnware update for the 

The Dog We contacted Asus officials 

about the problem. Their response follows: 

Asus We did a test for the ST34520A 7200 

RPM on our P2B motherboard, and it works 

without the problems you described. The 

problem you have experienced may be due 

to older firmware on the hard drive. You can 

drive that makes it run 

reliably on the P2B. The 

finnware upgrade is available 

on Seagate's web site. 

People can also get the 

update by writing to discsupport@seagate.com. 

All 

update firmware and try it out. We have not shipping drives have been 

~ received a lot of feedback from the field of updated as well. Schiffhauer 

~ similar problems, at least there is no record says Seagate takes pride in its products and 

~ of this being a known issue. Oftentimes, the its technical support and apologized if Mr. 

~ information on the Usenet group on the Kwan's e-mail was lost. 

3 Internet has similar issues clouded together 

: that do not reflect the true situation. 

: The Dog We scanned Asus support forums 

~ and found several messages from people 

~ confused about this same situation. Some 

>- 

reoorted similar oroblems. while others said 

..,. No~ 

Fantasy For Me 

Dear Doa: I'd like you to let readers 

won't be a game 

ay. 

for 

may 

say u100% lntel-compatible 

CPU required," it's not 

detailed enough. 

After the game 

wouldn't work on my 

machine, I contacted Final Fantasy's 

technical support, which said " some older 

Cyrix chips are not completely compatible 

with Final Fantasy VII. The only way 

to solve this is to upgrade your CPU . Best 

Wishes, Eidos." 

That's it. Did Eidos mention anything 

about a patch in the works? No. Did they 

mention this on a single boxed copy of 

Final Fantasy VII? 

With dozens of games using their own 

3D engines, what makes Final Fantasy VII 

so awesome that it had to use lntel-specific 

assembler instructions? Eidos says its game 

is compatible with anything that is DirectX 

5.1 compatible, which a Cyrix 686 chip is. 

Shame on Eidos, and shame on the game's 

developer, Squaresoft, for making fans wait 

so anxiously, only to be let down. 

-Shaun Thomas 

The Dog We contacted Frank Hom, a producer 

for Final Fantasy VII, who defended 

the company and product. Hom says the 

problem lies in the CPU, not the code. 

Developers wrote the game to a 

certain spec. 

~~::;;.-.~ and certain 

~ l"Cylhc 686 CPUs 

- ~- JfJ didn't meet that 

~+"' ~ · spec, he says. 

• ~ Final Fantasy VII uses 

a time-stamping function in 

the CPU that the Cyrix chip 

does not support correctly. 

While Eidos tries to ensure 

that its games are compatible with most 

CPUs, it was impossible to change code for 

just one CPU, Hom says. Newer Cyrix CPUs 

are compatible and run Final Fantasy 

VII without a glitch, he says. 

But you're not totally 

screwed. Despite what customer 

service told you, Hom 

maintains that the com anies 

Vl 

m 

::j 

\D 

(X)

LIPS 

~ betfeK? 

• 

Squaresoft has supplied source code for 

Final Fantasy VII to Cyrix to help it create a 

patch. Keep your eyes on the Watchdog for 

an update when this patch is available. 

...,_ Wrong Tool For 

The Wrong .Job 

Dear Dog In 1997, I bought a "cutting 

edge," highly acclaimed, multiple-editor'schoice-award-winner 

Number Nine 

Imagine 128 Series :Ze. Yes, I was 

impressed by its apparent speed, and the 

visual clarity was a wonder to behold. 

But in Directx, the card is less than 

impressive. I couldn't initialize many 

games requiring DirectDraw or Direct3D 

features without error messages. It began 

to look as if the videocard was the culprit. 

A visit to Number Nine's technical support 

provided updated drivers that were 

Windows Hardware Qualified , and a 

couple of optimized drivers that supposedly 

improved on that. OK, I thought. 

Number Nine is on top of things. 

But nothing worked. I despaired for 

days, poring over my system's software 

and hardware trying to derive a fix, but 

without success. These were 2D software 

titles requiring only DirectDraw, so I wasn't 

asking too much out of my Imagine 2. I 

was willing to suffer framerate performance 

hits; I just wanted to make the games 

work. You see, I paid a whopping $335 for 

the videocard and couldn 't bring myself to 

spend more so soon afterward. 

So, I contacted Number Nine's technical 

support. I was told to uninstall DirectX, 

uninstall Imagine 2's drivers, uninstall the 

game, and reinstall everything using current 

drivers. This would work, I was told. The 

card was DirectX capable. But this didn't 

work. So, I contacted Number Nine with 

this information and was flatly told to buy a 

3Dfx card. This would solve my problems. I 

told Number Nine this was not acceptable, 

if they wanted me to have a 3Dfx 

card, then they should send me 

one. The Imagine 2 was capable 

and certified to run the games, 

even by Number Nine's own claims. 

"Please ensure you have the 

latest drivers," I was again told. 

"Make sure you have installed everything 

correctly, " I was told . I'm no computer 

invalid-1 checked myself over and over. 

Everything was done correctly and should 

have been ready to go. Number Nine 

assured me they would not abandon me. 

This had to be a driver problem, I pleaded: 

" Please get some updated drivers for this 

blasted $335 card!" 

The Number Nine Imagine 2e cards, 

which were so highly acclaimed when 

they were released, were marketed way 

past their expiration date, and 

Number Nine won't take 

responsibility for it. 

-Paul Stock 

....,_ Rocket .Jockey 

Glide Hockey 

Dear Dog A couple of months ago, I read 

a magazine that mentioned a patch that 

enables 3Dfx support for Rocket Science's 

game Rocket Jockey. The magazine in 

question said to call SegaSoft, which would 

then send out a CD. I did that, but was 

promptly treated like a leper and told that 

this patch was just a rumor. What gives? 

-Pete Leeman 

The Dog Since Rocket Science no longer 

exists, the Dog contacted SegaSoft to find 

out the real scoop behind this 

patch. Here's what 

out: 

Although a 3Dfx 

The Dog We contacted 

Number Nine officials, 

of the game was 

un;"IIJ,

CXl 

1- "' 

0.. 

L.U 

Vl 

the older Monster 3D version, as I know 

that the performance is still quite impressive. 

After getting my card home, I installed 

the Monster 3D card (I've been installing 

hardware for seven years now) and booted 

up my machine. Well, I tried to boot up my 

machine. You see, as long as the card is 

installed, my machine won't boot. 

After going to Diamond's site, I tried all 

relevant solutions to my situation. After two 

hours or so, nothing helped me out. At this 

point I was mildly irked at the problem. 

So I e-mailed support for a hand with my 

problem. I was immediately notified of the 

further steps needed to complete my e-mail 

request and told that I should hear back in 

two to four business days. I e-mailed back 

my BIOS version, driver info, etc. (which 

took me about 30 minutes to compile) and 

waited for a response that would open a 

dialogue to assist with my problems. 

And waited. And waited. 

Five business days after my first request 

for help, I decided to call because I was 

getting a little agitated at the delays. I 

called the non-toll-free line and was 

greeted by a friendly voice that told me 

that my call would be answered shortly by 

a representative. And he told me again 

and again that my call is important. 

Guess what? He told me that for 73 

minutes! From Canada, that's 25 cents for 

every minute. That's $18.25 for nothing. 

Why nothing you ask? Because as my call 

was finally transferred, I was 

disconnected by the network. 

You can even begin to imagine 

the expletives that escaped my 

mouth at that moment. 

But wait-it gets better. 

Furious, I called the toll-free customer-service 

line (I wasn't 

paying for nothing again) where I 

was greeted (after a 17 minute 

wait) by a friendly CSR. Mustering all the 

restraint I could (it's not her fault), I 

explained my situation, and she politely 

transferred me to another group, where I 

waited an additional five minutes. I was 

greeted by an equally polite CSR who 

asked me to reiterate the story. Once I 

(again, with great restraint) explained my 

situation she told me that it's no problem to 

get a callback from technical support. Just 

to verify the validity of that claim, I asked 

how long it would be, to which I received 

the response "Right away!" 

Finally-progress. Except the call that 

was coming right away never came at all. 

So here is the reality of the situation. I feel 

as though I will never spend my time or 

money on one of Diamond's products 

again. Now multiply that lost revenue by 

the number of people in my situation and 

you get the picture. Too bad Diamond's 

service doesn't "shine" as much as its 

products. As Quark is finding, it takes 

more than good products to survive. 

-lssa Breibish 

The Dog Ouch! Knowing the reputation 

of Diamond's polished products, we 

contacted a company official about Mr. 

Breibish's problem. A Diamond spokesperson 

contacted Mr. Breibish with this: 

Diamond Dear Maximum PC Reader and 

Diamond Customer: 

Recently you wrote a letter to Maximum 

PC detailing an experience you had with 

Diamond Multimedia's technical-support 

process, and we are sorry about the frustration 

and inconvenience you encountered. 

Our goal is to keep the technical-support hold 

times to an average of four minutes or less. 

While I agree that continued improvement 

is needed, we frequently meet 

that goal--especially for 

3D support calls. 

the month of June, 

month of your call, 

or beat our goal over 

of the days. Our average 

hold time was below six 

minutes 92 % of the days in 

June. Since our records do 

not show a call hold time close to 73 

minutes on the day of your call, we suspect 

that your call may have been misdirected by 

our phone system . This may have resulted 

in your call never ringing at the desk of a 

support representative. Our phone system 

specialist has been asked to put in place a 

plan to avoid this happening in the future. 

Additionally, in response to the issue of 

why you did not get a return call from our 

support group, I can only say the callback 

request must not have been processed correctly 

to ensure a callback. Our goal is to 

return calls within 24 hours. 

Lastly, as far as our automated e-mail 

process, this service is designed to give our 

customers immediate access to common 

issues 24 hours a day. More than 60% of 

our e-mail interactions are handled through 

Diamond Monster 3D 

this automated service. The instructions our 

customers receive after requesting a support 

document include directions on how to get 

support from a technician should the automated 

service not provide you with an 

answer. We hope you will try this service 

again in the future. It has greatly improved 

our ability to assist our customers. 

I'm confident our follow-up since your 

original Diamond technical support contact 

has been satisfactory. 

Regards, 

Jim Hafner-Eaton, Director of Technical 

Support, Diamond Multimedia Systems 

The Dog We gave Maximum PC reader 

lssa Breibish a chance to respond to 

Diamond to see if he was happy. 

Breibish I just got a call from Mary at 

Diamond Multimedia. She asked if I had 

had my issue resolved yet and I told her 

that I hadn't. She seemed surprised. She 

was very polite and assured me that the 

director of technical support at Diamond 

Multimedia would call me to determine 

what the problem was with my card . She 

has also promised to send me out a 

Monster 3D II, at no charge, for my 

trouble. With technical support calling I'll 

be able to get an RMA number and return 

this card to the reseller. 

After letting me know what I was to 

receive as compensation (an unexpected 

event, but very appreciated), Mary willingly 

opened a dialogue as to my thoughts and 

feelings about the whole ordeal. I answered 

honestly, reiterating many of the points 

made during my letter. Mary thanked me 

for bringing the issue up and assured me 

that steps would be taken in the future to 

prevent situations like this from arising. 

Mary then gave me a direct line to her if I 

should need anything else. 

All in all , it seems that everything ended 

on a positive note. Diamond Multimedia 

may look at its strategy for interaction 

with its customers on the support end of 

things. And I got more than I bargained 

for and the support needed to use it. 

I'm still a little leery about dealing with 

Diamond Multimedia-! would have to 

see evidence of some changes before 

buying again-but I would [buy again] if 

those changes happened . People like Mary 

give me faith that there is accountability 

by these companies. 

Give the dog a bone and submit your consumer 

problems, scam alerts, and gripes to 

thewatchdog@maximumpcmag.com. 

While the dog promises not to get to everyone's 

complaints, the dog will try to resolve 

some issues.

news ....,. government 

Feds Go on 

the onensive 

DOJ/FTC launch two-fisted attack 

against Microsoft and Intel 

Paratroopers rain from the 

sky. G.l.s storm the beaches. 

And tanks clank across the 

Rhine. It's D-Day, circa 1998, 

with the federal government 

launching a full-scale invasion 

of the Win tel Empire. 

If you've been sleeping 

under an Amiga since the 

1980s, you might not know 

Wintel. The alliance runs an 

estimated So% to 90% of consumer 

PCs. Probably yours. 

In twin assaults from the 

east and west this past spring, 

the Department of Justice and 

Federal Trade Commission 

sued Microsoft and Intel, 

respectively, accusing both of 

anticompetitive acts and 

unfairly leveraging their 

monopolies against corporate 

customers and competitors. 

Using Microsoft's own documentation 

as ammunition, the 

DOJ accused the software giant 

of plotting the death of rival 

browser vendor Netscape by 

forcing consumers to use 

Internet £xplorer 4· o in the 

new Windows 98 operating 

system. The government says 

Microsoft recognized the threat 

a browser-centric, Javaenabled 

world posed and 

wanted to slap it down. 

The DOJ's documents 

include e-mail and memos 

from Microsoft CEO Bill Gates 

pushing hard for America Online 

to adopt Internet £xplorer 

ahead of Microsoft's own online 

service MSN, effectively "putting 

a bullet through MSN's head." 

Intel, playing Italy to 

Microsoft's Germany, stands 

accused by the FTC of bullying 

its customers and competitors, 

namely lntergraph and Digital, 

into relinquishing intellectual 

property or risk being cut off 

from key technologies. This is a 

more narrowly focused suit, and 

observers don't believe there 

will be a short-term impact on 

consumers. However, many 

predict the FTC's investigations 

are far from over and may act 

like a rock in Intel's shoe as it 

moves forward. 

While both suits may 

seem esoteric to the average 

consumer, what's at stake, 

the government contends, is 

the incredible shrinking consumer 

choice. 

But Microsoft and Intel 

argue otherwise. Microsoft 

claims its innovations have 

given consumers more choices 

and more software for far 

lower prices than before, while 

Intel says it was obligated to 

protect its property when it 

enters into litigation with a 

competitor or customer. 

But some industry 

observers say otherwise. 

"Both [suits] have been 

designed to protect consumers," 

00 

0\ 

h: 

u.J 

Vl 

JDfx's Banshee 

Screams Into 

Reality 

CompUSA is now the owner lf ~=~:r::ri~=~~~. 

of more than 90 Computer j[ 

City stores, solidifying its 

position as the nation's 

largest computer retailer. 

3 Dfx has officially taken the 

wrapping off Banshee, its 

128-bit 2D/3D video chip 

that promises intense 2D 

acceleration as well as excellent 

3D performance. 

Based on a single texelfx2/ 

pixelfx2 Voodoo 2 , Banshee is 

NOT a Voodoo 2 -killer. Specs 

include 1 x AGP, 16-bit floating-point 

Z-buffer, bumpmapping. 

"This acquisition will allow us 

to provide our customers with 

additional products, superior 

service, and added convenience," 

said James F. Halpin, 

CompUSA president and CEO. 

"Banshee is a mainstream 

product," says 3Dfx, which 

encourages hardcore enthusiasts 

to step up to dual 

Voodoo 2 SLI for their 

maximum gaming needs. 

Good. Now you'll have one 

less store to go to for lousy 

service and support. 

We just got one in-house, but 

the drivers are too early to 

call. But the buzz is already 

negative.

says james Love, 

director of Ralph 

Nader's Consumer 

Project for 

Technology. "Both 

[companies] are 

capable of crushing 

anyone who 

wants to play in 

the game." 

Love says true innovation 

has come from outside the 

walls of Redmond, WA, in the 

last few years. He cites 

Internet development, java, 

and a host of technologies that 

has sprouted outside the 

shadow of Microsoft. 

Carlyn Clause, a San 

Francisco attorney specializing 

in anti-trust and anti-competition, 

agrees OEMs are stifled 

by Microsoft but said it's difficult 

to gauge the long-term 

impact on consumers. In the 

short term, Clause says, there 

are signs OEMs are beginning 

to 'act like their own companies' 

again. Since the DOj's 

action against Microsoft, companies 

such as IBM, NEC, and 

Gateway will offer customers a 

choice of Internet browsers. 

' Knowing that the justice 

Department is out there 

looking at Microsoft has probably 

given some companies 

the feeling that they are able 

to speak up when they would 

have been reluctant to do so 

before," Clause says. "Only 

time will tell what's really 

true. Is the market really 

competitive without govern- 

"Both 

[companies] are 

cap;lble of 

cntshing 

anyone who 

wants to play 

in the game.'' 

-James Love, Director. 

Consumer Project for 

Technology 

ment intervention 

or not?" 

Love, who 

claims there is 

no competition 

now on PCs, 

says OEMs are 

still reluctant 

to try anything 

other than Microsoft operating 

systems or office suites. 

"What goes on PCs-and how 

it looks-is dictated by the 

secret licensing agreements 

OEMs sign with Microsoft," he 

said. He also suggests that 

although Linux isn't generally 

offered on most PCs today, 

it's rapidly continuing to 

grow under the free Internet 

development model. 

"''m looking at RedHat 5.1 

now and it's cool," Love said. 

"I can tell you that given 

what I've seen in the last 

six months, if Microsoft isn't 

worried about Linux, than it 

should be." 

With signs of closer scrutiny 

by the government, Love says 

we may see more choices when 

the smoke clears. 

"Before everything is over 

I think Microsoft is going to 

have serious competition in its 

core area of the OS," he predicted. 

"A year from now 

you're going to see PC makers 

shipping OSes different and 

better than Windows." 

As the months grind on, one 

thing that's up for grabs is how 

the suit will be viewed. An 

opinion poll by Time and CNN 

shows 53% of people opposed 

the government's actions 

against Microsoft, while 39% 

supported regulators. Similar 

polls across the country show 

strong sympathy for Microsoft 

and Intel, as well. So is it an 

Allied attack on an unholy 

union or a fascist assault on 

the free enterprise system by 

overzealous bureaucrats? 

Attorney Hillard M. Sterling, 

who specializes in antitrust 

cases and information-technology 

issues, said he doesn't 

see either case having much of 

an impact on consumers. 

"I don't believe Intel will 

materially alter its business 

practices," Sterling said. And in 

the DOj case, where more 

"smoking guns" were evident, 

Sterling thinks regulators are 

faltering. "The government's 

case is unraveling," he said. 

"If the DOj does not shift focus 

rapidly, its case will fall apart 

before our eyes." 

And if the government does 

lose a battle or two to Intel or 

Microsoft. it doesn't mean the 

end of the war. 

' Almost never does the government 

throw in the towel, " 

said Sterling. "Notwithstanding 

the impeding potholes, this is a 

do or die time for the government 

right now." 

At press time, the FTC's 

suit was slowly winding its 

way toward a court date on 

january 5, 1999. Microsoft is 

scheduled back in federal 

court on Sept. 8. * 

Chronology 

In its long battle with the 

government, Microsoft 

has played a hard game 

of brinkmanship more 

often than its Intel allies. The 

question is who will blink first? 

199J The Department of Justice 

begins a wide-ranging investigation 

into Microsoft's bundling packages 

and allegations of anti-trust violations. 

1995 Microsoft agrees to a consent 

decree barring it from forcing OEMs 

to license other Microsoft products in 

order to have access to Windows 95. 

1996 DOJ opens separate investigation 

into alleged violations of the 

consent decree. Netscape accuses 

Microsoft of giving OEMs a break on 

Win95 if Internet Explorer is bundled. 

1997 Judge Penfield Jackson orders 

Microsoft to stop forcing OEMs to 

bundle IE and Win95. Microsoft cuts 

deal with DOJ to issue Win95 without 

IE icon on desktop but appeals order. 

lntergraph files suit against Intel, 

charging it with attempting to bully 

away intellectual property. 

March 1998 Federal and 27 states' 

attorneys general marshal forces. 

April1998 A U.S. District Court in 

Alabama orders Intel to sell parts to 

lntergraph and dresses intel down. 

Former Senate leader Bob Dole and 

anti-Microsoft forces agree to lobby 

government officials to push for closer 

scrutiny of Microsoft. 

May 1998 D-Day. DOJ and state 

regulators file two suits charging 

Microsoft with anti-competitive acts. 

June 8, 1998 The FTC accuses Intel 

of cutting Digital, Compaq, and 

lntergraph off from key technology. 

June :ZJ, 1998 U.S. Appeals court 

overturns Judge Jackson's 1997 ruling. 

Sept. 8, 1998 Microsoft's and regulators' 

scheduled court date. 

Jan. 5, 1999 Court date for Intel 

and the FTC. 

NEWS 

DETAILS 

QUOTE 

OUR SPIN 

Jeff Hawkins, vice president 

of Palm Computing (and 

creator of the Palm PDA) and 

general manager Donna 

Dubinsky, have left 3Com to 

start their own company. 

They're leaving just as the 

Palm PDA family faces stiff 

challenges from Microsoft. 

Dubinsky and Hawkins have 

licensed the Palm OS. 

"Now is a great time to leave 

because Palm is in such good 

shape," said Dubinsky. 

If Jeff's newest products are 

half as good as the Palm 

PDA, we can't wait! Best of 

luck, Jeff and Donna! 

Even though the boards 

won't be out until this fall, 

Diamond, Hercules, and STB 

have all announced plans to 

get jiggy with 53's latest 

2D/3D graphics chip. 

The boards will indude 8MB 

of local video memory, lVoutputs, 

and full AGP 2x 

compliance. Features indude 

full hardware texture compression 

and 24-bit rendering. 

"After evaluating Savage3D 

for 3D performance and 

quality, we dearly believe 53 

has a winning product," said 

STB 's Nathan Bozeman. 

Based on our benchmarks 

(p. 86), this chip looks hot 

It's good the indusby hasn't 

lost confidence in 53. 

l! 

I

trends ~ dvd 

The (De)Evolution 

of DVD·RAM 

Drives finally emerge from primordial ooze 

All emerging technologies 

require a maturation period to 

find their legs, but DVD-RAM 

has taken so long it seemed it 

might slip back into the soup. 

Companies that promised 

DVD-RAM drives in early 1998 

failed to deliver and are barely 

now starting up production. 

Panasonic shocked the industry 

at the end of last year by 

announcing it would have drives 

available in january. Turns out 

those drives were just for sampling. 

Mass production didn't 

ramp up until April, and it'll take 

a few months before Panasonic 

can seed the retail channel with 

enough product to quench 

demand. The demand is so 

strong, people are resorting to 

illegal activities just to get their 

hands on one. Case in point: 

Panasonic's first shipment of 

drives was stolen from under 

the noses of U.S. Customs officials 

in Holden, Nj, while en 

route from the manufacturing 

plant in Osaka, japan. 

In any case. DVD-RAM won't 

be a presence until the end of 

the year at the earliest. 

So what caused the delay? 

Nobody is saying for sure, but 

rumors abound regarding low 

yields from production facilities 

due to mechanical problems on 

the production lines and instabilities 

in the firmware. 

"We tolerated a few months 

of humiliation so we could 

deliver a rocksolid 

product," 

said Andy Marken, 

a Panasonic 

spokesperson. 

'The market 

·~e tolerated 

a few months 

of humiliation 

SO we could 

wouldn't have for- deliver a rock- 

solid product." 

-Andy Marken, Panasonic 

given us if we had 

hastily shipped a 

product that was 

dead on arrival or suffered 

infant mortality." Part of the 

delay, Marken contends, was 

due to copyright 

issues that had to be resolved 

before any product could be 

made available. 

Of course, it didn't help 

matters that the industry as a 

whole couldn't agree on a DVD 

RAM spec. A 2.6GB spec was 

first approved by the DVD Forum 

in mid-1997. A week later, a 

faction headed by Sony, Hewlett 

Packard, and Philips Electronics 

announced its own beefier 3GB 

spec, dubbed DVD•RW, which 

they claimed offered better 

compatibility with other DVD 

and CD formats. Of course, since 

DVD•RW was based on CD 

patents that Sony and Philips 

owned, they may have been 

motivated by revenue streams, 

rather than the underlying technology. 

Ultimately, survival of 

the fittest won outthe 

DVD Forum has 

since decided to 

adopt DVD•RW as a 

DVD-family format 

for authoring use, 

but is now simply 

calling it •RW. • 

DVD-RAM Roster 

If you're itching for a 

drive today, keep in 

mind the low yields are 

inflating prices. Once 

yields improve, they should 

drop by the holidays. 

Company Panasonic 

Drive LF-0101 (internal SCSI-2) and 

LF-0111 (internal AT API) 

Type DVD-RAM 

Prlclnc S600 

Availability SCSI is shipping now; 

AT API version is due September 

Company HiVal 

Drive Panasonic LF-0101 (internal 

SCSI-2) 

Type DVD-RAM 

Prldnc S5oo 

Availability End of August 

Company Creative Labs 

Drive Creative PC-DVD (internal 

SCSI-2) 

Type DVD-RAM 

Prlclnc $500 

Availability Shipping now 

Company LaCie 

Drive Panasonic LF-01 01 (external 

SCSI-2) 

Type DVD-RAM 

Priclnc s 700 


Company Toshiba 

Drive SD-W1101 (internal ATAPI) 

Type DVD-RAM 

Prlclnc $700 


Company Hitachi 

Drive TBA 

Type DVD-RAM 

Priclnc N/ A 

Availability 04 

DVD-RAM Media 

Single-sided $18 

Double-sided $30 

DVD-RModla 

Single-sided $40 

SPIN CYCU 44 ~ 

HEADLINE 

co 

"' b:: 

Ul 

Vl 

..... 

AMDRepoltll 

SeCOIICI ......... 

Avalon: A 

Computer Like No 

other 

Even with the successful 

launch of its K6-2 processor 

in late May, AMD found itself 

losing money-more than 

$64 million--for the quarter 

ending June 28, 1998. 

Los Alamos National 

Laboratory builds new supercomputer, 

dubbed Avalon, 

that can crunch scientific 

data at 19.2 BOPS for only 

$150,000. 

Although AMD shipped more 

than 500,000 K6-2 processors 

in the quarter, declining sales 

from other divisions caused 

the loss. 

Under the hood lie 68 Digital 

Equipment Corp. Alpha 

processors running in parallel, 

all connected by 3Com 

network switches. It runs 

Linux, not Windows 98. 

"The Computation Products 

Group, which shipped 

more than 500,000 K6-2 

processors, had an excellent 

quarter," said W.J. Sanders Ill, 

AMD's chairman and CEO . 

AMD Isn't alone Weakening 

demand in the global semiconductor 

industry and 

increased price pressure are 

affecting evetyOne. 

" Each of these processors But will it play Quake II? 

theoretically is capable of 

performing over one billion 

operations a second, " said 

Michael Warren of the 

Theoretical Astrophysics Group 

America11 Airlines an 

""

trends ...,. technology front 

Micron and Rendition 

Unveil Socket K 

New graphics architedure faces uncertain future 

If Micron, and its newly 

acquired subsidiary Rendition, 

have their way, soon you won't 

have to buy a 3D card to pop 

into your PC-a chipset will 

just plug onto the motherboard. 

Unfortunately, the 

pop-it-in and pop-it-out technology-dubbed 

Socket X 

faces an uphill battle not only 

from OEMs who would have to 

modify their motherboard 

designs, but especially from 

graphics vendors, most of 

whom have been quick to 

dismiss the idea as a grandiose 

marketing ploy. 

Socket X isn't a typical soldered-down 

solution, but 

rather a new socket standardspecifically 

for graphics chipsthat 

would allow system OEMs 

(or consumers) to pull out the 

chip and upgrade to a faster 

one. At first glance, Socket X 

appears to be a good idea, and 

with motherboard real estate 

rapidly increasing in value, the 

ability to swap out the graphics 

sub-system without having to 

modify the internal design or 

mechanical configurations 

would likely be a boon to 

system OEMs. The concept is 

similar to what Intel is doing 

Reduce 

graphics 

cost 

Provide PC 

OEM 

flexibility 

in graphics 

solutions 

Improve 

graphics 

performance 

with Slot 1 and Slot 2, and a 

swap-out would require nothing 

more complicated than a quick 

BIOS modification. In addition, 

the spec also supports 2x and 4X 

AGP and includes two independent 

DACs (Digital/ Analog 

converters) to drive multiple 

outputs. It'll also include a 

24-bit digital interface for the 

next-generation of flat-panel 

monitors. 

Socket X will also employ 

embedded memory to increase 

the graphics pipeline. 

'The fundamental problem 

is that the bandwidth for external 

memory will limit the nextgeneration 

video solutions," 

said jim Peterson, Rendition's 

co-founder. "With embedded 

SOCKET X OUT OF THE BOX 

In a perfect world, the technology 

could be a boon to consumers. 

memory, you're not limited to 

a 64-bit or 128-bit bus. You can 

have as much memory as you 

want and have better efficiency 

because you don't have 

to go through so many layers 

of allocation of resources." 

At the heart of the dispute 

is whether or not Socket X 

actually limits consumers' 

choices. "Having more functionality 

on the motherboard 

improves reliability, can lead 

to higher performance, and 

reduces cost," said Dean Klein, 

Micron's chief technical officer, 

"but the catch is that it almost 

Socket X I 46 ... 

3D-Day Underway 

.lim Peterson 

(co-founder of 

Rendition) tells us 

why Socket X is so 

important, and how 

the add-in card 

markets will be 

aHected. 

MPC Just what is Socket X? 

Peterson It's a new graphics 

socket standard for the 

motherboard. You can pull 

out the chip, and upgrade to 

a faster one. 

With Socket X, OEMs 

can choose very late in the 

game which graphics chip 

to include on their motherboard. 

And the graphics 

chip can be changed 

without having to modify 

the motherboard. 

Motherboard real estate 

is really expensive, but 

because the Socket X 

graphics subsystem is just 

one chip, you can easily 

reduce the area required. 

The fundamental problem 

we face today is that the 

bandwidth for external 

memory will limit the nextgeneration 

video solutions. 

Realizing that the jump in 

performance is approaching 

sx per year, we've been 

talking with Micron 

Technology about the future 

in PC graphics. The products 

coming out this year are 

.. ... 

00 

"' E 

L.U 

Vl 

ESDRAM and DDR 

ESDRAM Approved 

By Memory 

Committee 

Computer Sentry Software 

has won the U.S. Commerce 

Department's approval to 

export its new 448-bit 

"Blowfish" encryption software, 

CyberAngel EXR. 

The Joint Electron Device 

Council memory committee 

has approved Enhanced 

Synchronous DRAM 

(ESDRAM) as a superset of 

SDRAM. 

Intended fOr networlced computers, 

it lets employers 

recover empiQyee enaypled 

data, but le5lrids other 

accesses, including those by 

law enforcement. 

166MHz ESDRAM combines 

two 4K 10ns SRAM page 

caches and two 8MB 22ns 

Fast DRAM banks on one 

circuit. The design should 

reduce I 

"Key escrow [retaining a copy 

of the encryption key for 

decryption by a third party J is 

still an invasion of privacy," 

says Chris Dibona. of 

SecureRemote. 

"ESDRAM and DDR 

ESDRAM has an advantage 

over RAMBUS, and both are 

backward compatible," said 

EMS vice president Craig 

in speed. Better make sure 

yours does.

~44 

probably OK, but as we go 

forward with zD and 3D 

graphics chips, it became 

abundantly clear we would 

need a lot more bandwidth, 

and some kind of fundamental 

paradigm shift. 

MPC Why employ embedded 

memory? 

Peterson We'd thought 

about embedded memory for 

several years, but it wasn't 

cost-effective before. But 

because embedded memory 

will allow us to have 4MB, 

8MB, or even more onboard 

memory, those bandwidth 

requirements will be met. 

There's nothing really new 

to the concept of embedded 

memory, but the practicality 

of it has really come into play 

now as the technologies get 

to the 64MB• region for the 

memory technology. 

MPC You talk about swapping 

out the graphics chip. Won't 

this wipe out the add-in card 

market? 

Peterson The add-in card 

~ 44 I Socket X 

locks the user into one specific 

solution." Klein says Socket X's 

open architecture "solves this 

problem and is the only technology 

that can provide the 

memory bandwidth for continued 

improvements in graphics 

performance." 

Unfortunately, the majority 

of graphics cards vendors disagree. 

"The rate of graphics 

market has a cost disadvantage 

and isn't primed for 

volume. I don't know if it will 

ever go away, but the real 

performers of the future are 

going to be Socket-type chips. 

Chips are finding their way 

innovation would be severely 

limited by Socket X," said Derek 

Perez, nVidia's public relations 

manager. "The constraints it 

places on packaging, pin count, 

and frame-buffer sizes would 

hurt OEMs and end users." 

And not everyone is convinced 

embedded memory is 

the way to go. "Embedded 

DRAM technology is only used, 

at least in volume, in portable 

down to the motherboard 

today, but because they're 

soldered down, you're stuck 

with it. With Socket X this 

isn't the case. 

MPC What about industry 

heavyweights such as 3Dfx? 

Peterson The industry will 

move toward single chips for 

volume. Niche players may 

have some board-level products, 

but the cost-effective 

way to get performance in 

the long-term is with embedded 

memory. 

That's not to say you 

wouldn't want to design a 

system that had a multiplechip 

videocard for a really 

high-end product line, but 

the mainstream will be in 

single-chip embedded 

memory. 

MPC So how does Rendition 

fit into the big picture? 

Peterson We want to be a 

player in what we think is the 

mainstream. Expect motherboards 

and chips [from other 

vendors] to show up toward 

mid-1999. • 

PCs where power and footprint 

are very highly valued," said 

Andy Keane, 3Dfx's vice president 

of marketing. Keane 

agrees that having a standardized 

pinout is a good idea for 

the PC makers, but said 

"embedded DRAM has not 

proven cost-effective enough 

or dense enough to meet 

the requirements of the midrange 

and high-end graphics 

segment, particularly the 

needs of 3D gaming." 

Of course, before Socket X 

becomes a reality, it'll have to 

be adopted and ratified by the 

industry's leading memory and 

system OEMs, and graphics 

card companies. Micron says 

it is trying to finalize a Socket 

X consortium by the end of 

this summer and hopes to 

have the first Socket X 

compliant systems available 

next spring. Based on early 

reaction however, Micron's 

going to have a tough time 

getting anyone to hop on the 

bandwagon. 

"It's going to be very difficult 

to line up a bunch of 

rodeo riders in the graphics 

business, corral them all, and 

move them all in one direction," 

said Terry Holdt, S3's 

president and chief executive 

officer [see Interrogation, page 

sol. 'There's a tremendous 

feud that all of us can do 

better than the next guy, and 

standardization brings a 

certain degree of leveling the 

playing field. " 

He may be right. Of the companies 

we spoke to-S3, Matrox, 

nVidia, PowerVR, and 3Dfxnone 

were remotely interested 

in implementing Socket X. 

"Our direction is not to 

adopt Socket X until there is 

sufficient proof of its value 

and demand from OEM customers," 

said 3Dfx's Keane. 

"At this point, there is no proof 

or demand." • 

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HEADLINE 

...... ArH10181CeS Intel has laid out its late5t Coppennine wiftlead a new "In 1999, we're going to We don':t care What the ana- 

.._Proc_ors roadmap and it includes two desktop and mobile family, deliver a number of new .18- lysts say. we want more 

brand new processors: and Cascade is geared Inward micron processors-for all power! Brjng'em on baby! 

Coppermine and Cascade. workstations and servers. Both market segments," said Seth 

will appear in late 1999 and Walker, Intel spokesperson. 

adopt the .18-miaon process. 

AMD, Motorola AMD has penned a seven- Copper has better conductiv- "Copper is necessary to Read above comment. 

year deal to use Motorola's 

Strike Copper Deal 

ity and heat resistance than increase processor speed and 

copper interconnect techno!- aluminum and should result in performance and represents a 

ogy to help its upcoming K7 smaller and faster CPUs. key element in our 'GHz 2000' 

(or K8) hit 1 GHz clock speeds Motorola can also use AMD's goal," said W. J. Sanders Ill, 

!98 Real 30. RE 

ron and the Mtc

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And he would be ... ? 

Terry Heldt scores a hat trick as 

53's current Chief Executive 

Officer, President, and Chairman 

of the Board. His latest stint 

marks a return for this whitehaired 

wonder, who came out 

of retirement after previously 

serving as President, CEO, and a 

Director of the company from 

1992 until 1996. Terry Heldt is 

53's supreme god, overseeing 

everything from product development 

to packi ng materials. 

And I would know 

him from ... ? 

53 used to be the leading manufacturer 

of graphics chips to the 

entire computer industry. But 

after its ViRGE chipset failed to 

wow garners, the company 

found itself in the unenviable 

position of having to play 30 

catch up. The 5avage3D is its 

salvation. But will it be yours? 

And I would care 

because ••. ? 

If you're interested in finding 

out why the ViRGE chipset 

hasn't yet met with the Grim 

Reaper, of if you want to learn 

why Banshee will be the bane of 

3Dfx's existence, or discover 

how 53 plans to climb back up 

the ladder of success, after 

falling down a rung or two 

thanks to such industry players 

as ATI and nVidia. 

Maximum PC Where did the name 

Savage3D come from? 

Holclt Our view is that the engineers developed 

the product, and although the engineers get 

involved, it's fundamentally our marketing and 

communications groups that selects the name. 

We wanted to set a "take no prisoners" attitude. 

Our intent was to conjure up a notion of a tough, 

competing product that won't lose. 

MPC So can Savage3D compete? 

Holdt I certainly believe it can. From the data 

we've seen so far, it's the highest performing 

product out there. It certainly has the most costeffective 

bill of materials for an 8MB solution that 

we're aware of. We know we have a considerable 

way to go in coaxing additional performance 

out of this product, but we feel it's going to 

be the most competitive product in the 8MB 

space. As for any products coming into the 

16MB space, we think we'll have the most compelling 

offering, as well. 

MPC Is the 8MB memory limit some sort of 

handicap ... ? 

Holclt [interrupts] No. No. There's a notion 

out there that "big is always better." That's the 

American way I guess [laughs], but in fact, big is 

also much more expensive. And there's a lot of thud 

created in the marketplace relative to 16MB~ 

~-that they're an absolute necessity. The 

truth of the matter is they're not. 

We're in an AQE world now. You no longer need 

to store all textures in the frame buffer. You can 

store textures in system memory and bring them 

across the AGP ~ very effectively. Secondly, the 

notion of 16MB only rea lly has applicability if you're 

talking about a frame buffer to service an extremely 

large, high-resolution monitor-such as I6oox1200. 

Nineteen-inch monitors are probably in excess of 

$1 ,000 today, and that's less than 3% of the market. 

So for those who need 16MB to satisfy that very 

small niche of the market, we say, "fine ... go get 

yourself a 16MB part. " But for the 97% of the world 

that wants the highest performance in 8MB, this 

product is the way to go. 

The other thing we offer-and nobody else has-is 

the S3 texture compression (SJTC) technology. And if 

you look at our texture compression ratio of 6:1, then 

the amount of actual effective frame buffer space 

available to the Savage3D chip is really far more than 

a 16MB frame buffer could ever offer a system. So for 

people who don't investigate these things, the perception 

is 16MB must be better. But once you strip all that 

back, you rea lize the performance is no better, the 

cost is worse, and the actual amount of frame buffer 

available to textures in a texture compression 

environment (like the Savage3D) is much bigger. 

MPC Perhaps the buffer limitation is not a 

technical liability, but what impact is it as a 

marketing liability? How can an 8MB 

Savage3D card compete against a 16MB 

card on the retail shelf? 

Holdt I admit that's a tough one. In one sense, 

we rely on people being knowledgeable about the 

different 

numbers that 

can be batted 

around, and 

ultimately we need 

to clarify and crystallize 

reality as much as we can 

for the end user. They're liable 

to shell out the additional dollars 

without recognizing it doesn't buy 

them anything in terms of performance. 

products they're buying. 

But you're right. If you 

just slap a number 

on a box, people 

We need to convey this message to everybody 

who will listen. 

don't know any 

better. There 

are a lot of 

It's not j ust in S3's best interests, but in reality 

the industry wins if users ultimately get the best 

product they can for their dollars. 

MPC Microsoft licensed 53's compression 

technology for DlrectX 6.0. What makes your 

scheme so special? 

Holclt Ease of use. It can be done on the fly,

CEO Terry Holdt 

is coming back 

to resurrect 

3D's former 

king-of kings 

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transparent to the user. And its 6:1 compression 

ratio frees up additional memory for the 

OS and application software, such as DirectX. 

MPC But isn't there always an 

inherent danger of visual quality 

degradation whenever you talk about 

compression? 

Holdt We don't see that at all, compared 

to competing products. In addition to 

texture compression, we also have larger 

texture sizes. A typical texture size is 64x64, 

but we allow developers to go up to 

256x256. In itself this gives you a higher 

image quality and plays more and more into 

the very large texturing being done in some 

of the newest software-primarily gamescoming 

out. This will be a huge advantage. 

MPC Will developers actually take 

advantage of these higher textures? 

Holdt Obviously, they'll embrace it because 

it provides a higher-quality imaging system 

for them. And it'll happen within the next 

year. The adoption rate in this industry for 

new features is pretty fast. Our customer 

base in the gaming community is a very 

sophisticated organization of people who 

adopt emerging technologies very quickly. 

MPC What were your original performance 

vectors for Savage3D? 

Holdt Back then, we realized the everincreasing 

level of texture detail would 

haves" for next-generation consumer PCs. 

MPC Why wasn't full bump mapping 

and multitexture in a single pass 

implemented? And do you think this 

will this become a liability with 

DirectX 6.0? 

Holclt The release of DirectX 6.o with 

TriTech-style bump mapping and multitexture 

support definitely led to lots of 

internal discussion, but, in the end, we 

decided getting product to market was far 

more important than having every single 

DX6 feature implemented in hardware. 

Bump mapping seems to be a red herring. 

No one's excited about using it, and very few 

people lined up to implement the TriTech 

bump-mapping technology in this round of 

products. In fact, you could argue that if 

Microsoft knew TriTech wouldn't be able to 

deliver bump-mapping hardware ultimately, 

they wouldn't have included the support in 

DX6. Microsoft's policy seems to be adding 

only features there's hardware support for. 

As for multitexturing, Savage3D's sustained 

fill rates give it very good Quake II 

numbers compared with Voodoo'. If you 

add in 4X to 6x texture compression, detailed 

texture sets, and 1024x768 resolution, 

Savage3D brings Voodoo' to it's knees. 

And, if you move to AGP texturing, neither 

Voodoo' nor Banshee even play in this space. 

And in that sense, we let down some of our 

customers. From the time we brought out our 

first products way back in 1992, customers 

expected S3 to be there at every turn of generation 

with the next leading-edge product. 

We grew only because we met those expectations. 

We were the first company to bring out 

16-bit and 32-bit acceleration under Windows. 

We drove the transition from VRAM to DRAM. 

And unknown to many garners out there, the 

ViRGE was actually the first 3D chip in the 

marketplace, although today it clearly cannot 

be viewed in a class of 3D gaming leadership. 

MPC You acknowledge that the ViRGE 

was a substandard product? 

Holclt No, not at all! When ViRGE came 

out, it was the leading 3D product in the 

industry. This is a product that's viewed as 

substandard today, but over the last three 

years has probably sold in excess of $500 

million. That's somewhere between 40 and 

50 million chips! There's no higher installed 

rate of any graphics accelerator in the 

world, I'd venture to say. 

MPC Impressive numbers for sure, 

but how many of those chips are 

people actually still using? 

Holdt Systems are rendered obsolete pretty 

fast, so I wouldn't know. But yes, by today's 

standards, a two-and-a-half-year-old chip is 

substandard. But let's not measure that 

''The tone we wanted to set (with the Sa1 

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quickly blow games out of the frame buffer 

and into AGP system memory, leaving AGP 

texturing rates as the limiting factor for 

framerates. We knew trilinear filtering 

would replace bilinear filtering as the imagequality 

standard for next-generation games. 

And we saw the need to address monitor 

resolutions such as 1024x768. With these 

things in mind, we set the performance bar 

for Savage3D at 125MPixels/sec sustained fill 

rate with trilinear filtering on, while moving 

large amounts of textures across AGP. 

MPC What features were drastically 

changed, dropped, or added before 

the spec was finalized? 

Holdt From the start, the 3D feature set 

remained relatively constant, with most of 

tte changes coming on the video side. TV-out 

and DVD decode support were added in the 

final hours. With Microsoft pushing video 

e

Holclt We're still selling ViRGE/ DX chips, 

primarily in the Far East. It's still a reasonable 

product for entry-level machines. 

MPC How much of the ViRGE has 

been carried over to the Savage3D? 

Holclt None. It's a whole new architecture. 

MPC Would you consider the 

Savage3D more of a Fred Savage type 

of card, or a Randy "Macho Man" 

Savage type of card? 

Holclt [laughs! I'd like to say it has emerged 

from the wonder years of S3, and feel it 

could be a contender for the world title. 

MPC When was the Savage3D originally 

slated and why was it late? 

Holclt We put together a team of designers 

and architects who started fleshing out the 

specs in terms of fill rates and targeting 

performance, and we did the engine architecture, 

algorithms, and micro-coding and 

development back in the middle of 1996. 

We originally targeted that product to come 

out in the third quarter of last year. It clearly 

took longer to get through than it should 

have. So far, we're about nine months late. 

We think Savage3D is a leadership product 

now, but think what we could've had if it 

had come out on time! 

It's changed some since its very early 

inception days, but the fundamental engine 

architecture was defined back in that time- 

D] was a 'take no prisoners' attitude.'' 

going to deliver. We may have disappointed 

them-we certainly disappointed ourselvesbut 

there were other alternatives to turn to. 

For all those consumers who feel 

burned, obviously all of us here in the 

company feel bad about that. And to some 

extent, they're right: They should have 

expected more from us than they got. 

MPC Let's face fads: 53 touted the 

ViRGE as a leading product for more 

than two years. 

Holclt Our mistake was that we didn't 

follow up the ViRGE with a next-generation 

engine architecture. What we did, and I take 

full responsibility, was that we implemented 

a strategy that had worked for all our prior 

graphics products. We followed up our 

DRAM-based product with basically the same 

engine, but with a video RAM frame buffer 

instead. This dual-port memory provided 

higher performance, so we followed that 

same strategy with the ViRGE/VX-basically 

the same engine, but with higher memory. 

What we didn't see happening was that 

video RAM had basically lost its performance 

edge. Major innovations were occurring 

beyond EDO. Frankly, we stuck with video 

RAM one generation too long. And because 

we didn't move quickly enough, we clearly 

opened the door for others. 

MPC And is that door now closed? 

Holclt For us? No! This company still has 

immense strengths that many of our competitors 

don't have. We've got a strong central 

engineering organization that allows us to 

bring out new products quite quickly and we 

have a semiconductor knowledge base that is 

second to none in the industry. The fact that 

we missed that generation hurts-there's no 

doubt about it-but it's certainly not the last 

round of the fight by any means. 

MPC So then ... is ViRGE officially 

dead right now? 

Holclt Nope. ViRGE and its derivative 

products will continue to sell in the lowend 

though the end of this year, and maybe 

a little bit beyond. 

MPC Really? 

frame. From third quarter of last year to the 

time it came out, the targeted specifications 

never changed at all. 

MPC Did the delays affect the entire 

company? 

Holclt You could imagine how devastating 

it has been for a lot of the employees of S3, 

particularly the engineers and architects, who 

saw the criticisms of S3 as being "they don't 

know anything about 3D." But they knew a 

leadership product was being implemented 

and was going to take two years, but hadn't 

come out yet. We were taking some very 

heavy hits by a lot of the pundits in the business 

who said "S3 was out of the game," when 

in fact we had a winning product all along. 

It just wasn't out yet. 

MPC Can you ever regain the top 

spot again? 

Holclt Yes. I could be wrong here, but I 

don't think anybody is close to us in terms of 

sheer volume. And by the second half of 

next year, we'll be strongly positioned again. 

MPC Well then, how far has 53

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dropped from number one? 

Holclt I believe to number two. If it has 

not done so yet, ATI will shortly surpass us 

in terms of the sheer number of unit accelerators 

shipped in the marketplace. 

MPC Who do you consider your main 

competition right now? 

Holclt For mainstream? It's definitely ATI. 

We allowed ATI into this marketplace when 

we didn't have AGP and they did. They took 

advantage of that and executed very well. 

In terms of high-end, it's probably nVidia . 

MPC What do you think of nVidia's 

new TNT4 card? 

Holclt Haven't seen it. We hear about it. It 

sounds like it will be a very viable product 

for that 16MB space it's targeting. But I don't 

think it will be a cost-effective solution at 

8MB from a performance-per-dollar standpoint 

for the user. But for those with large, 

high-end monitors, it'll probably be a viable 

product for them. I just don't think it's for 

the mainstream consumer. 

MPC By mainstream, do you 

MPC Do you think Banshee is a step 

backward for 3Dfx? What would you 

have done differently? 

Holclt I would've assured myself that my 

bus structure to the texture memory was 

more powerful than IX AGP. Obviously 3Dfx 

is getting a lot of leverage from Banshee's 

2D performance, which is now more of an 

issue than 3D performance. That alone tells 

me 3Dfx may not be clear it's made a big 

step in 3D performance relative to Voodoo 2 

MPC Can 3Dfx be credited for permanently 

changing the 3D landscape? 

Holclt For bringing very high-quality 

arcade gaming to the PC? Sure. I think it 

clearly made strides with its product that 

we were unable to make with our several 

generations of ViRGE. There are always 

companies that move the industry forward. 

I think 3Dfx did that in the early days of 

gaming, but it's not clear that baton is going 

to be held by them too much longer. 

MPC Just how much longer does 

3Dfx have? 

money on other things." Does this still 

hold true? 

Holclt I think the issue is not "can" but 

"should" the company be spending its 

money on developers. We certainly want 

to make sure we're in developers' minds 

in the context of making sure they know 

what Savage3D is all about. But at the same 

time, we have to make sure we're putting 

our dollars into hardware development. 

Because ultimately, what wins the battle 

is solid. high-performing chips. By far, the 

bulk of our dollars continue to go into that 

arena because that's really the only thing 

that can make a difference. 

MPC Some companies charge that the 

Savage3D can't be a contender due to 

its high price. Is the price too high? 

Holclt One shouldn't assume that $35 (in lots 

of JO,ooo) renders a product noncompetitive 

in a mainstream marketplace. If you're $10 

higher than that, you're pushed into the 

ozone layer. But S3's structure and cost is 

among the strongest in the industry. I believe 

''The gaming community is a very sophisticated 

organization of people who adopt new emerging 

technologies very quickly." 

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mean add-in cards or motherboard 

integrations? 

Holclt Both. You don't need 16MB to go 

after those markets. And with texture 

compression, 8MB is all you really need. 

MPC Is Matrox on your radar? 

Holclt It is. We just don't talk a lot about 

it! Matrox has done a fairly reasonable job 

of executing, but we'll have to see what 

kind of an impact it'll make, if any. 

MPC So you don't consider 3Dfx a 

true competitor? 

Holclt Well, it's done a remarkable job 

establishing its position in the gaming 

community, especially with Glide and the 

good performance from both the Voodoo 

and Voodoo 2 . But it's not clear that Banshee 

is the answer people are looking for. The 

jury is out on that, and it's just not clear 

how long Glide will carry the company 

before DirectX 6.o and DirectX 7.0 allow 

users similar performance. 

We certainly see 3Dfx as a continuing 

contender on the 3D gaming side, but S3 

certainly paid a dear price for not having 

the right level of AGP when the industry 

wanted it, and I expect that 3Dfx will pay a 

similar dear price for IX AGP on Banshee. 

Holclt The question is "how much longer 

can Glide hold on as a proprietary API?" It 

will certainly give out next 

year, but can it even hold 

out throughout the 

Christmas season this 

year? I don't know the 

answer to that. The gaming 

enthusiasts will have to 

decide that. Right now, 

Glide is 3Dfx's greatest 

leverage, not its hardware. 

There are other productsincluding 

Savage3D-that 

are going to have as good 

performance, if not better. 

MPC 3Dfx and 

PowerVR have each 

accused the other of 

buying software 

support for their proprietary 

APis. But your 

predecessor, Gary 

Johnson, once said "53 

doesn't have to spend 

money to woo developers" 

and that "the 

company can spend 

there isn't a company in the business that can 

produce it more cost-effectively than SJ. One

shouldn't necessarily confuse cost with price. 

MPC What about criticism that the 

5avage3D is silicon heavy? 

Holclt While 5avage3D weighs in at more 

than 5 million transistors, 53's manufacturing 

strengths are more than adequate to 

ensure that this will be a volume product. 

MPC Is it possible for 53 to develop a 

single chip that can outperform duai- 

5LI Voodools? 

Holclt [pauses] Is it possible? Yes. 

MPC Is it probable? 

Holdt No comment on that. 

MPC Can we explore that a little? 

"No comment" sounds like you can't 

do it. Is this the answer you really 

want to give? 

Holclt The technical feasibility of such a 

production is not the limiter. It's more of an 

issue of should the company be putting its 

most critical resources and architecture and 

development and engineering talent to 

attack that part of the marketplace. It's certainly 

a viable part of the marketplace. We 

recognize the heavy hitters and game developers 

who attain that level, but for us it's a 

trade-off. We need to look at how large that 

particular part of the market is, versus the 

resources it takes to accomplish that task. 

[grinning] That's my "no comment! " 

MPC Is Voodoo2 the be-all-end-all of 

3D accelerators? 

Holclt Oh no. That implies there's no place 

else to go in 3D. If you believe in the notion 

of suspended disbelief and the implementation 

of 3D through very high-quality transforms 

and lighting, and all the other 

technologies that drive 3D, it's an almost 

insatiable demand for transistors. Look at 

the CPU marketplace and the communication 

markets and you can envision a reasonable 

limit for CPU transistors. In a few years, a 

CPU with x million transistors should be 

enough to satisfy the demands of say, the 

communications pipe, perhaps video (in 

terms of fps), AC3 audio, and so forth. 3D is 

completely different. 3D's an issue of "how 

good is good?" It's no longer measured by 

the bandwidth of a broadband link or the 

number of frames you can coax out of a 

video. It's determined by the proven experience 

in terms of gauging an event and relating 

it to reality. In that context, the quest 

for transistors is going to go on for years. 

It's probably the most identifiable technology 

arena where it's not clear where the 

end is going to be with transistor counts. 

Even today, 3D chips produced by 53 and 

others are achieving transistor counts that 

are at, or exceeding, the CPUs. Five years ago 

that was unheard of-the CPU was clearly the 

dominant force in the PC, and everybody 

else was relegated to tens of thousands of 

gates. Literally, in·the course of two years, 

the demand for high-quality imaging in 

the 3D environment has driven that one 

segment of the PC right past the CPU 

in terms of complexity. 

MPC Yet 3D cards don't earn 

the respect that CPUs have. 

Holdt There's certainly no shortage of frustration 

to those of us in the graphics industry 

who are producing the most complex devices 

in the business, only to have them relegated 

to a cost point so dramatically below that of 

CPUs. It's the 3D imaging devices that deliver 

the differential benefit of one system to 

another. It is responsible, more than any 

segment of the PC, for the user experience. 

And because there are so many of us in the 

business, it's driven the value of that segment 

of the PC to almost commodity-like numbers. 

Which is great for consumers mind you. 

But it's a tough environment for somebody 

in the graphics arena. 

MPC What features have yet to be 

conquered in 3D? 

Holclt High-quality lighting and transform 

capabilities. Possibly higher levels of fill 

rates. Not fill rates per se, but higherquality 

imaging. However we get there. 

Through fill rates or through increasing 

the bandwidth across the bus to move 

textures to the imaging stream itself, and 

I suspect there are a million other issues 

our architects worry about every day. 

MPC Does 53 spend a lot of 

resources developing pseudo-CiL 

drivers for games? 

Holclt We allocate a fair bit. We'll have a 

full OpenGL lCD for 5avage3D. There are a 

number of games that run with OpenGL, 

and obviously Quake is something we have 

to support. 

MPC How important, realistically, is 

full OpenCiL support? 

Holdt A number of years ago, it was relegated 

more to pure workstation environments 

and wasn't a particularly large factor 

for us. But at this point in time, there's clearly 

a market for high-end OpenGL products. 

Products such as 3D Labs Glint have managed 

to carve out a pretty decent niche in the 

high-end marketplace, but how long they will 

continue to be a factor is hard to judge. 

MPC In terms of software drivers, 

who should be responsible for them: 

you, the OEM, or Microsoft? 

Holdt If it's a product developed by 53. 

then we're ultimately responsible for it. But 

if I hand those drivers off to someone who 

modifies that code in a way that I'm not

aware, I may end up being pulled into the 

loop to figure out what's wrong. But it's 

hard for me to hold my people responsible 

for code they didn't write. Many times we 

get involved in the solution process, independent 

of whether or not we actually 

wrote any of the code. It may not be fair, 

but that's the business we're in. 

MPC What did 53 gain from purchasing 

the Exponential patents? And how 

much did it cost you? 

Ho1c1t [pauses] I don't think we ever went 

public with the exact figure, but this I will 

say: We paid enough to buy them! We 

bought them because we felt they were a 

strong patent portfolio that we could 

potentially utilize either offensively or 

defensively in the future. 

MPC Patents seem to be the name 

of the game these days. Don't you 

think patent battles ultimately only 

harm end users, especially since they 

generally restrict innovation and the 

creation of new products? 

Hohlt Well, innovation and creation 

belong to the people who own the patents. 

You either develop patents on your own. or 

you acquire patents on the open market. 

And they ought to be protected. 

MPC Sure, but companies are 

choosing to battle it out in court, 

rather than spending that money 

recognition of that fact 

by the courts. 

MPC What's your 

opinion of the 

Micron/Rendition 

initiative dubbed 

Socket X? 

Holclt I think it's a very 

good idea if you're in the 

memory business. 

[pause] It's not a great 

idea if you're in the 

graphics business trying 

to establish a differentiation 

of your products. 

It will be good for 

consumers if a large 

enough consortium is 

actually pulled together. 

One of the technical 

issues is, there is a limitation 

on frame buffer because it's all integrated 

DRAM. If you reach forward, there is 

a technology limitation where memory technology 

is in terms of being able to embed 

inside the graphics, which could ultimately 

be a problem on the consumer side, in terms 

of performance. As long as the embedded 

DRAM side can keep up with the overall 

frame-buffer demands in a single chip, there 

would be less of an impact on the consumer. 

The biggest issue is always one of ecofuture 

a little bit? 

Holclt I could, but I would prefer not to. 

MPC Why's that? 

Holdt When we were the leader, we had 

the largest engineer head count in the San 

Francisco Bay Area in graphics, we tended 

to be a supplier of engineers to a number of 

other people in the industry. And there is 

not necessarily an attendant level of confidentiality 

held by everyone when they transition 

from one company to another, so we 

''There's certainly no shortage of frustration to 

those of us in the graphics industry producing 

the most complex devices, only to have them 

relegated to a cost point below that of CPUs." 

00 

CJ\ 

f 

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and resources on building better 

products. Isn't there something 

inherently wrong with that? 

Holdt Well, let's talk about what patents 

are all about. A patent, in and of itself, does 

not confer any necessary rights to utilize 

that technology on the person who holds 

the patent. What it does confer is the right 

to prohibit others from using it. People 

have a right to innovate, which costs 

money, and they have a right to protect 

that innovation, which also costs money. 

don't see why we should treat those individuals 

any differently in terms of their 

rights to enjoy the fruits of their work and 

have to associate it with the end user. 

All I'm saying is, if anyone is in violation 

of what we feel is ours. then we deserve 

nomics. If they can pull enough graphics 

vendors on to the Socket X bandwagon, it 

could be a positive. But it's going to be very 

difficult to line up a bunch of rodeo riders in 

the graphics business, corral them all, and 

move them all in one direction. There's a 

tremendous feud that all of us can do better 

than the next guy, and standardization brings 

a certain degree of leveling the playing field. 

Most people, particularly aggressive people, 

aren't likely to want to give up their edge. 

It's going to be a severely uphill battle. 

MPC Has 53 been approached to join 

the Socket X consortium? 

Hohlt Yes, but no decision has been made. 

MPC The Savage3D is the first 

product in a whole new roadmap for 

53. Can you give us a peek into the 

try to retain as much confidentiality as we 

can. It's difficult enough dealing with that 

problem, without overtly making statements 

about new products. 

MPC Aside from Savage3D, what 

application or piece of hardware are 

you most anticipating? 

Holclt Microsoft's upcoming Chrome 

technology. 

MPC What do you think of products 

such as AMD's K6-2 with 3DNow! 

and Intel's Katmai? 

Holdt In the context of being able to 

enable 3D, they're good building blocks. It's 

one more level of capability that all of us in 

the graphics silicon chip development 

process can use to provide the user with a 

better experience. We welcome them. * 

Par 

and 

itn, 

Vt 

-800-

We Hand-Pick the 

t7 Best Components 

lor the Ultimate PC 

Screw the "sensible" computer. Go for the 

best. The best CPU, the best videocard, the 

best hard drive. The best motherboard, the 

best soundcard, the best monitor. 

The best individual components your 

hard-earned money can buy. 

And when you put them all together, 

you have a dynamic, balanced, perfectly 

integrated system that outperforms the 

sum total of its individual parts. A machine 

built with intelligence. A machine built with 

passion. 

Hemming and hawing over those awesome 

$250 speakers with the butt-rattling 

subwoofer? Don't sweat the details, brother. 

Get it all. 

Get it all. Dream Machine 98, the ultimate 

hand-built $5,000 PC. 

Our team of experts picked the best 

parts across 17 different component categories 

and assembled a machine optimized 

for performance and expansion. On the following 

pages, we describe our reasoning 

behind every component decision and detail 

how you can supercharge your own handbuilt 

PC. For good measure, we also name 

the best component choices for a low-cost 

PC and a gaudy high-end workstation, and 

even pit Dream Machine 98 against the best 

$5,000 systems that two retail manufacturers 

could muster. Finally, we sticks our asses 

on the line by predicting some of the components 

for Dream Machine 99. Whether 

you're building a PC from scratch or simply 

want to upgrade a single key part, don't 

make a move until you're fully armed with 

the right information. This isn't your car 

we're talking about. This is your computer. 

Vl 

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I "

this 400MHz processor to 

450MHz and performance 

increased across the board. 

The extra heat generated by 

overclocking can destroy a 

CPU, but we feel our case is 

more than adequately cooled 

by six fans. The jacked-up 

processor ran flawlessly during 

48 straight hours of a looping 

Quake demo, and hasn't 

exhibited any instability during 

general testing-and we 

haven't shut down the 

machine for more than 20 

minutes since we built it! 

Tyan Thunder 100 

Besides offering more expansion 

and 1/0 interface options 

than we've ever seen, this 

motherboard's mouse-driven 

BIOS (AMI BIOS 2.5) gives you 

control over every operation 

the board will ever execute. 

For hard-core system tweakers 

only (and the user's manual 

simply rocks). 

.,._ CPU 

The 400MHz Pentium II ($642, www.intel. 

com) is currently the fastest beast in Intel's 

consumer desktop arsenal and the only logical 

choice to drive Dream Machine 98. Based on 

last year's core Pentium II technology, the 

400MHz sports 512K of closely coupled L2 

cache running at half the CPU speed. New to 

the mix is a faster system bus, which speeds 

up information transfer between the memory 

and CPU from 66MHz to 1 OOMHz. The faster 

bus requires newfangled 1 OOMHz SDRAM. 

The latest iteration of the P-11 lacks the 

enhanced floating-point instructions of AMD's 

recently released K6-2, but its normal floatingpoint 

power is second-to-none. This translates 

into stellar performance for applications that 

rely on this type of number-crunching 

Photoshop and 3D rendering apps such as 

Lightwave, for example. Simply put, the 

Pentium II is the best all-around processor, and 

with Intel's aggressive price cuts, you can 

expect it to cost about half as much toward 

the end of the year. 

ALTERNATIVES: If we were simply looking 

for excellent gaming performance at a great 

price, we'd have gone with the 333MHz AMD 

K6-2 with 3DNow! technology ($369, 

www.amd.com). 3DNow! is a 

synonym for 21 special floating-point 

instructions that 

speed up the rendering 

process in 3D games-just as 

long as you have 3DNow! 

optimized drivers for your 3D 

accelerator card, or your 

games are specifically coded 

to leverage the technology. 

Unfortunately, the K6-2's 

nonoptimized floating-point 

performance is dodgy, making 

the CPU a poor choice if 

you're a graphic designer, 3D 

modeler, or spreadsheet 

cruncher. 

For maximum power, muscle-bound 

technophiles will 

Simply put, the 

Pentium II is 

the best allaround 

CPU, 

and with Intel's 

aggressive price 

cuts, you can 

expect it 

to cost about 

half as much 

toward the end 

of the year. 

want to wait for Intel's 450MHz Pentium II 

Xeon ($3,690). Packing up to 2MB of L2 

cache, this workstation/server-level processor 

may just be the ticket to processing nirvana. 

Sadly, the power doesn't come cheap, and 

you'll need a motherboard outfitted with the 

450NX or 440GX core-logic chipsets to dance 

with Xeon. 

.,.. Motherboard 

Because Dream Machine 98 uses a 400MHz 

Pentium II riding the 100MHz system bus, compatibility 

issues dictated that our motherboard 

be based on the Intel 440BX core-logic chipset. 

But after fulfilling this prereq, we had room to 

splurge. Deciding not to skimp on the one component 

that determines what a computer can 

and cannot do, we landed upon an ATX board 

that has it all: the titanic Tyan S1836DLUAN 

Thunder 100 ($559, www.tyan.com). 

Dual Slot 1 interfaces accept all sorts of 

Pentium lis, from the 233MHz entry-level 

model to the 400MHz Deschutes. Four 168-pin 

DIMM sockets can take you to 1GB SDRAM 

heaven. While the board comes with Ultra 

DMA-compatible bus-mastered EIDE ports, we 

were most turned on by the built-in Adaptec 

AIC7895 Dual-Channel Ultra 

Wide SCSI chip. A lone 50-pin 

SCSI-2 port and dual 68-pin 

high-density Ultra Wide SCSI 

ports await all the storage loving 

you can throw at it. 

The ATX 1/0 header 

connector houses every 

input and output known to 

man. Besides the obligatory 

dual-serial/single-parallel, 

mouse/ keyboard, and USB 

ports, you get a built-in 

10/1 OOBaseT Ethernet port. 

Also soldered to the board is 

a Creative Labs Vibra 16XV 

chip for kooks who must 

have 100% Sound Blaster 

compatibility. 

Construction Tips 

lor MaJdlnum Performance 

If you want to learn how to build a computer 

from scratch, you'd do best to watch an expert in 

action and pick it all up through osmosis-sort of 

like working on that old Chevy Malibu with your 

dad. If this strategy is out of the question, check 

out www.motherboards.org. The link titled "How 

to build a PC" contains a lot of essential information, 

along with a list of books on the subject. 

And, of course, all your individual components 

should come with installation instructions. In lieu 

of taking you step-by-step through the construction 

process-that's for another month-here are 

some specific tips on how we optimized Dream 

Machine 98 for power, stability, and expansion. 

'I

: •• A 

or 

A Machine For Every Budget 

Here are the final price tallies for Dream Machine 98, also an 

inexpensive alternative and the obscenely powerful supercomputer 

we'd build if some rich guy gave us a pile of money. 

Prices were culled from manufacturer-suggested street prices 

and quotes from reliable retail vendors. You should be able to 

find even better pricing by checking out www.pricewatch.com. 

Component 

Dream Machine 

Conspicuous Consumer 

CPU 

Motherboard 

Memo 

Videocards 

Soundcard 

Hard Drive 

CD-ROM 

Removable 

Storage 

Floppy 

Modem 

Monitor 

Speakers 

Keyboard 

Mouse 

Case 

AMD 333MHz K6-2 

with 3DNowl $369 

FIC PA-2013 $130 

64MB SDRAM DIMM $85 

Matrox Mystique G200 16MB $189 

Creative Labs Vibra 16XV 

{on motherboard) SO 

10.1GB IBM DeskStar 14GXP $350 

Toshiba XM-6202B 32x $129 

Iomega Zip $75 

Tin of kippers $5 

Asonic 56K $34 

Any 19-inch Hitachi-based 

monitor $600 

Altec Lansing ACS-48 $79 

flea market special $5 

CompUSA special $1 

CompuDEX IW-0500 $130 

Linux SO 

Intel 400MHz Pentium II $642 

Tyan S1836DLUAN Thunder $559 

128MB SDRAM DIMM $179 

Matrox Mystique G200 16MB 

$189; Canopus Pure 3D 1112MB 

$329 

Turtle Beach Montego 

A3DXstream $130 

9GB Seagate Cheetah Ultra 

Wide $790 

HiVal 40x40 $200 

Iomega Zip $75 

Alps Floppy Drive $18 

3Com U.S. Robotics 56K $200 

Sony GDM-400PS $900 

Cambridge SoundWorks MicroWorks 

$249 

Intel 450MHz Xeon $3,690 

Tyan S1836DLUAN Thunder $559 

4256MB SDRAM DIMMs $3,100 

Matrox Millennium G200 16MB 

$228; Dual Canopus Pure 3D II 

12MB $658 

Event Electronics Gina $500 

Dual 9GB Seagate Cheetah 

Ultra Wide $1,580; Adaptec 

AR0-1130CA $260 

HiVal 40x40 $200 

Iomega Zip $75; 

Iomega Jaz 2 $450; 

Plextor PlexWriter CD-R $380 

LS-120 $90 

3Com U.S. Robotics 56K $200 

Sony GDM-F500 $1,900 

Cambridge SoundWorks MicroWorks 

$249; Cambridge SoundWorks 

PSW1 subwoofer $700 

Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite $65 Cherry G81-8004 $85 

Logitech MouseMan+ 541 

Addtronics 7890A $198 

Windows 98 5170 

Logitech MouseMan+ $41; 

Microsoft SideWinder Force 

Feedback Pro 5122 

Addtronics 7890A 5198 

Windows 98 5170 

TOTAL 

52,181 

S4,9J4 

S15,4J5 

Mountlnc your .MotherbHfd 

Ensure your motherbolrd Is securely mounted to 

the case (or in our example. mnovable bracket) 

and not lil contact wltb lnY bare metal, lest you 

short the poor thing out If your case has nylon 

spacers to help seat the board, use them Also, make sure your 

mounting screws have those tiny cardboard ringlets that keep 

bare metal sc:rews from touching the motherboald Finally. I( 

you don't align the motherboard just-l'f&ht when you mount It 

your expansiOn cards won't line up properly with the grill on the 

bade panel.

humble DIMM isn't officially 

sanctioned by Tyan, but costs 

less than "approved" memory 

and works just fine, thank you. 

Mystique G200 Matrox's 

new vidcard offers superlative 

2D acceleration and enough 

3D power for all but the most 

demanding games. 

Pure 3D II This add-in 3D 

accelerator from Canopus is 

the best implementation of 

3Dfx's state-of-the-art 

Voodoo 2 chipset. Dig the fan 

for overclocking madness I 

The S1836DLUAN offers six PCI slots, 

along with one AGP slot and a lone shared ISA 

slot. While server-level motherboards that 

offer a similar bounty of slottage can be had, 

this particular Tyan board is the only consumer 

product that offers more than five PCI slots . 

Once you see all the add-in cards we picked 

for Dream Machine 98, you 'll see why we 

needed so many cots in the barracks. 

ALTERNATIVES: The Tyan S1836DLUAN is 

about as close to motherboard perfection as 

you 'll find; perfectly suited for both a $5,000 

system and a $50,000 system . However, if you 

crave not on board SCSI or that fancy sixth PCI 

slot, the Micronics Helios ($269, www. 

micronics.com) is a sweet alternative. This 

board is similar to the Tyan board , but comes 

with five PCI slots , no SCSI , and an ESS 

Maestro-2 PCI sound chipset instead of the 

Creative Labs Vibra. 

If you decide on going the Socket 7 route 

with the AMD K6 -2 processor, take a peek at 

FIC's PA-2013 ($130, www.fic.com.tw). Based 

on the VIA MVP3 core-logic chipset and 

armed with 1MB of L2 cache, a 1 OOMHz system 

bus, and the promise of full AGP 2x com 

pliance, it's an ideal match for the K6-2 CPU. 

..,. Memory 

Selecting memory used to be easy: Buy some 

generic module at the corner computer store 

and pop it in . But with the advent of the 

tight PC1 00 SDRAM spec, motherboard manufacturers 

recommend that you buy only 

"approved " memory to avoid problems. 

Thanks, but no. At more than $400 for an 

approved 128MB DIMM, we decided to buy 

128MB of generic SDRAM from Central 

Computing ($179, www.centralcomputer. 

com). Dream Machine 98 runs just fine with 

the renegade RAM, and we're just smitten 

with the cost savings. We decided against 

ECC RAM partially to avoid the slight performance 

hit and because of the high quality 

of today's RAM, which rarely incurs errors. 

ALTERNATIVES: You can easily shave about 

$100 off the price of your machine by buying 

just a 64MB DIMM. On the high end , you 

could pay up to $3 ,100 for four 256MB ECC 

SDRAM modules from Cosair Memory 

(www.cosairmicro.com) in order to get Dream 

Machine 98 to its 1GB memory limit. The 

Cosair SDRAM is approved by Tyan , and if 

you're going to pack this much memory on a 

board, you might as well play it safe. 

....,. Villeocarlls 

For no-apologies video performance, we split 

duties between two Kick Ass add-in cards. The 

Matrox Mystique G200 16MB ($189, 

www.matrox.com) delivers flicker-free , highres 

2D acceleration , while the Canopus Pure 

3D II 12MB ($329, www.canopuscorp.com) is 

the best 3D accelerator currently available. 

Based on Matrox's own proprietary MGA 

G200 chipset, the Mystique's 16MB SDRAM 

and 230MHz RAMDAC deliver a maximum 

resolution of 1920x1200 at 70Hz. 1600x1200 

refreshes at 85Hz, while other resolutions can 

be had at rates up to 200Hz. Res 'n' refresh 

aside, the Mystique packs twin 64-bit buses 

operating in parallel to accelerate 2D performance 

like Matrox has never done before. 

The 128-bit DuaiBus also does wonders for 

this AGP 2x part's 3D acceleration. We'd have 

never have predicted it six months ago, but 

Matrox now delivers 3D performance that 

approaches the likes of 3Dfx. The Mystique 

can crank up 24-bit Z-buffered gameplay at 

1 024x768. Throw in TV-out, full-screen anti 

~ . and 3D display in full 32-bit color, 

and you 've got one bad mutha. And besides 

DirectX/Direct3D support, a full OpenGL K:.Q 

delivers acceleration in 3D rendering apps. Yes, 

this card is a workstation dream. 

Glide support, you ask? We couldn't resist. 

Last-minute price drops allowed us to whittle 

down the total price of Dream Machine 98 to 

accommodate the Canopus card, which we 

consider to be the best implementation of the 

3Dfx Voodoo 2 chipset. And, yes, the Pure 3D II 

is a faster 3D accelerator than the Mystique, 

which we chose for its 2D power and versatility. 

Armed with 12MB of 100MHz illQ 

Seat your expansion 

canis properly 

Do you stare at a blank ~after 

--..- flipping your power switdt? Does your 

MOtherboard beep at you Hke a scolding 

mother? A lot of problems can be traced to Improper 

expansion c:an1 teatin&- AGP cards sit a bit deeper then 

PO cards. so make sure yows es firmly lnserled And 

be careful when you scmv down any card: The physical 

aet of screwing can pop 1M card ever-so-slightly 

out of the slOt 

Keep the RAID 

portfNe 

All those open PCI slots 

look mighty Inviting, but 

you'D want to leave a special 

one free for future expansion. The PCI 

slot directly below the AOP slot has the 

extended connector that'$ required for 

installing a RAID coirtrolter. Leave this slot 

open, lest you're forced liD shuffle your 

canis at a later date.

a 

lit 

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Ve 

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Q 

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to 

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lity. 

Montego A3DXstream 

Supporting both A30 and 

Direct5ound3D, this PCI sound 

card is perfect for games that 

boast 30 positional sound . 

Digital ports turn the card into 

a desktop recording studio. 

Cheetah Ultra Wide 

Seagate's 9GB hard drive spins 

at 1 O,OOORPM and rides the 

Ultra Wide SCSI bus. Put the 

speedy spindle and fat pipe 

together, and you've got 

throughput to write home 

about. Remember, a drive like 

this needs the appropriate 

Ultra Wide SCSI controller. 

Luckily, Ultra Wide SCSI support 

came stock on the Tyan 

motherboard. 

DRAM, nothing about the Pure 

3D II is ordinary. Canopus shaved 

an inch from 3Dfx's Voodoo 2 

board reference design (making 

the card a better fit for AT motherboards) 

and added an integrated 

fan on top of the card's pixeiFX2 

chip for extra cooling action (feel 

free to overclock the card to 

1 OOMHz without incurring a meltdown). 

Throw in S-Video/composite 

outputs for TV action, and you 

can play your favorite games on 

the boob tube at 800x600. Finally, 

creme-de-la-creme video drivers, 

which grant you absolute control 

over all Voodoo 2 functionality, are 

the frosting on this delectable 

polygon pastry. 

ALTERNATIVES: The ultimate 

videocard array consists of two 

Canopus Pure 3D II boards running 

in ill mode, along with 

Matrox's Millennium G200 16MB 

Modern 

sound cards 

ride the PCI 

bus, which 

lightens the 

processing 

load of the 

CPU and 

allows it to 

do more of 

what it does 

best: crunch 

polygons for 

faster framerates 

in 30 

games. 

($228). The Millennium is armed 

with a 250MHz RAMDAC, uses 

faster SGRAM instead of SDRAM, and refreshes 

at 76Hz at 1920x1200. If you want to save 

some jingle and go the one-card route, buy 

the Mystique G200. Its 3D firepower won't let 

you down. 

...._ Sounllcarll 

It wouldn't be Dream Machine 98 if it contained 

an old-school JSA soundcard. Modern 

soundcards ride the PCI bus, which lightens 

the processing load of the CPU and allows it 

to do more of what it does best: crunch polygons 

for faster framerates in 3D games. We 

decided to go with the Aureal Vortex-based 

Turtle Beach Montego A3DXstream ($130, 

www.tbeach.com). 

With a signal-tonoise 

ratio of >92dB, 

the Montego is library 

quiet, supports blQ, 

QjrectSound, and 

DirectSound3D for all types of 

gaming madness, and streams 

up to 64 voices from a 4MB 

patch set stored in system 

memory (the MIDI samples are 

top-grade for a consumer 

gaming card) . An optional 

S/PDIF port is good news for 

folks who want to record and 

play digital audio at up to 

48Hz sample rates. And you 

have to love the daughterboard 

interface for attaching 

an external MIDI device. The 

Montego offers legacy support 

for DOS and Sound Blaster 

compatibility, but since this 

takes up two l.Bili. we 

mapped the secondary IRQ to 

the first and said to hell with 

Sound Blaster emulation. 

ALTERNATIVES: If you 

don't care about 3D sound or 

are simply a tight-wad, stick 

with the Creative Labs Vibra 

16XV that's soldered to Dream 

Machine 98's motherboard. If you're serious 

about audio recording, multiple 1/0 is the 

key, and you should check out the Event 

Electronics Gina ($500, www.event1 .com). 

Two input and eight output channels give 

you 20-bit, 128x oversampling via quarterinch 

jacks. S/PDIF 1/0 gives you up to 24-bit 

audio quality. Line quality is excellent at a 

>98dB signal-to-noise ratio. Like almost all 

high-end audio solutions, the Gina is devoid 

of any synth engine. 

...._ Hartl Brive 

Like the motherboard, the hard drive is too 

important a component to skimp on quality. Its 

1/0 interface and spindle speed dictate read 

and write times, which affect overall performance 

when your system runs out of memory 

and begins using your hard drive as a swap 

disk. That said, a 10,000RPM drive was in 

order, and we wanted an Ultra Wide SCSI 

Overctocking generates excessive 

heat and can destroy your CPU if 

ifs not suffidently cooled, so tread 

carefuHy into the dark arts-over· 

VI 

docking 1sn't covered by warranties. $ 

That said, with some~ motherboards, you li 

can increase your CPU's core speed by raising the 

system-bus speed via a BIOS tweak. We were 

able to boost our 400MHz CPU to 452MHz by 

inaeaslng our bus speed from 100MHz to 

11 3MHz (The faster speed IS defined by the 

prOduct of 113MHz and the 4 0 multiplier. Go to 

VMW.mulm111DpCm81.CQm for the tuft story on 

oven:loctcln8 ) 

I

00 

0'1 

l:i:: 

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drive, which uses Zen 

Research 's TrueX technology, 

promises 40x performance. But 

wouldn't you know it, when 

we benchmarked the drive, it 

rated 45x. Whoah! No complaints 

here, Chester. We'll 

take the extra speed and owe 

you 5x. 

Take Home the 

Dream Machine 

Do you feel the need? 

The need for ultimate PC 

speed? Do you need 

450MHz of P-11, 

10,000RPM hard drive 

spin, true 45x CD-ROM, 

and 67W amplified 

sound? Then you need to 

the Dream Machine 98. 

And the only way to get 

the actual Dream 

Machine 98 is by entering 

our online contest at 

www.maximumpcmag. 

com. Log on for details 

today. 

device to go with the dual-channel Ultra Wide 

SCSI adapter that comes stock with our motherboard 

. Say hello to the 9GB Seagate 

Cheetah Ultra Wide ($790, www.seagate. 

com), the fastest drive ever to grace the lab. 

With a 10,000RPM spindle speed, 

12.6MB/sec peak read throughput, a random 

access seek of 8.5ms, and 1MB of cache, the 

Cheetah is guaranteed to set new land speed 

records. Its SCSI architecture also takes the 

burden off the CPU, demanding only about 

7% of its attention. We could have saved 

money by going with a 4GB version of the 

drive, but decided this capacity was too small 

for the sundry duties our versatile machine 

would be tackling. 

ALTERNATIVES: Save a few bucks with 

the 10.1GB IBM DeskS tar 14GXP ($350, 

www.storage.ibm.com). It spins at 7,200RPM 

and uses the Ultra DMA interface for fast 

throughput. For extreme 1/0 mayhem, throw 

down for a second Seagate Cheetah and race 

the two jungle cats in tandem via RAID 0 data 

striping. Luckily, our Tyan motherboard has 

the requisite RAIDport II slot to pull off this 

little trick, but we would also need to buy the 

appropriate controller card-such as the 

Adaptec AR0-1130CA ($260, www.adaptec. 

com). It comes with 16MB of data cache for 

accelerated performance. 

..._. CB·RDM 

We briefly considered a DVD-ROM drive to 

handle both DVD multimedia content and 

traditional CD-ROM duties. But a lack of 

DVD-ROM games and the prospect of slow 

CD-ROM read times convinced us to go with 

the fastest CD-ROM drive we've ever tested , 

the HiVal40x40 ($200, www.zenresearch . 

com) . Based on Zen Research's TrueX technology 

and manufactured by Kenwood , this 40x 

drive uses a Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) 

architecture. Unlike Constant Angular Velocity 

(CAV) drives, which reach their highest speeds 

only on the outer tracks of full discs, CLV drives 

spin at a constant rate, providing peak throughput 

across all points of the disk. TrueX CLV 

drives also read seven tracks at a time. This 

allows them to achieve their 40x throughput at 

slower spindle speeds and thus avoid the spindle 

vibration problems suffered by drives that 

have to spin much faster to reach their advertised 

performance spec. Fact is, our HiVal drive 

spins at around 3,000RPM (a speed you'll find 

in 6x to 10x drives), but delivers 6.7MB/sec 

throughput for spec-busting 45x performance. 

ALTERNATIVES: There is no high-end alternative 

for TrueX technology. The HiVal drive 

costs relatively little for the best CD-ROM performance 

on the planet. To save a few yen, 

however, go with the Toshiba XM-6202B 32x 

($129, www.toshiba.com). Of all the 32x

II 400MHz ov1 

•••••• •••• 

·= •••••• :1 

•••• 

Eeww, It's All Scuzzy lnsid 

resist a mobo that comes with built 

bus supports Ultra Wide, while the 

both Ultra Wide and SCSI-2 (50-pir 

It's Like a Nitrous Kit ... But 

here chart describes the jumper settir 

ing your processor. Unfortunately, ou 

jumper overclocking, so we had to gt 

increasing our system-bus speed in tt

Zip Drive It might hold only 

100MB, but Iomega's Zip is 

the most popular removable 

storage drive on the planet. 

And that's what we're looking 

for: ubiquity (so we can swap 

discs with friends). 

Alp~ Floppy So we decided 

to install a floppy. Big deal. It's 

not like we want a medal or 

anything. Soon enough, floppies 

will be as passe as Crystal 

Pepsi. 

56K Voice Faxmodem 

Pro This dandy from 3Com is 

stylish, USB-ready, and comes 

with a high-quality speakerphone. 

We wanted USB, so 

the modem wouldn't eat up 

an IRQ. 

Sony GDM-400PS If you 

want a bright, brilliant, colorful 

display, you need an aperture 

grille monitor. Sony's 19-incher 

is the best available in its size 

category. 

ATAPI drives we've tested, it was the 

only one that didn't suffer from spindle 

vibration. 

~ Bemova/Jie Storage 

We couldn't build Dream Machine 98 

without an Iomega Zip drive ($75, 

www.iomega.com). Sure, it's relatively slow 

and tops out at 100MB capacity, but ubiquity 

is the name of the game, and with 

millions of Zips out there, trading files via 

sneaker-net would be painful without this 

legacy drive. We reached for the internal 

IDE version. We could have gone for the 

internal SCSI version for $25 more, but 

decided, "Hey, it's a Zip! We're already in 

the sticks, so let's enjoy the grits!" 

ALTERNATIVES: The Zip is the cheapest 

removable storage solution around, 

so stick with it if you're building Cheap 

Machine 98. If you're looking for the ultimate 

removable storage scenario, keep 

the Zip or even the SyQuest SparQ 

($200), and add an Iomega Jaz 2 ($450) 

and Plextor PlexWriter CD-R drive ($380, 

www.plextor.com). The 2GB Jaz 2 offers 

SCSI performance and backward compatibility 

with the original Jaz. The SCSI 

PlexWriter's 4x writes and 12x reads are 

tops for CD-Rs these days. 

~ floppy 

Sure, we could have set Dream Machine 

98 to boot on the internal Zip drive, but 

eventually someone would have sent us a 

file on a damn floppy, and we'd be ruing 

the day we made our gutsy decision. 

"Top-quality" floppies from Sony and Teac 

start around $35. We opted to grab a 

cheapie from Alps ($18, www.alps.com). 

Does it really matter? No. 

ALTERNATIVES: How about a tin of 

kippers ($5 from any 

supermarket)? It costs less 

than a floppy drive, and 

has a longer shelf life. If 

you want an uber-floppy, 

buy the LS-120 ($90, 

www.ortechnology.com). 

It's a removable storage 

drive that reads both traditional 

floppies and its own 

spacious 120MB capacity 

discs. 

~ Modem 

The 56Kbps modem is still 

the only viable, inexpen- 

In an era of 

larger screens 

for smaller 

prices, we 

swatted all 

17 -inchers from 

contention and 

went with the 

best 19-inch 

monitor we've 

sive option for most home computer 

owners. We're going with the 3Com 

U.S.Robotics 56K Voice Faxmodem Pro 

($200, www.usr.com). It's X2- and ITU 

V.90-compliant, and, most significantly, 

sports a USB port, which we used to free 

up another IRQ. This external model also 

gave us the luxury of a pro-quality, fullduplex 

speakerphone. 

ALTERNATIVES: The cheapest 56Kbps 

modem quote on Pricewatch (www.pricewatch.com) 

is $34 for the internal A sonic 

56K (www.asound.com) . You'll have to 

download the V.90 upgrade yourself for 

full compatibility with all ISPs. Will it give 

you 56Kbps throughput? Sure. But that's 

where the pampering ends. On the highend, 

we suggest you look into 384Kbps 

ADSL, 400Kbps wireless, or 10Mbps cable 

modems-all of which are unavailable in 

the vast majority of the United States. The 

client hardware for all these solutions 

costs about $250. Monthly service prices 

vary, though ADSL and cable typically cost 

between $40 and $50 every 30 days. 

~ Monitor 

In an era of larger screens for smaller 

prices, we swatted all17-inch monitors 

from contention, and went with the best 

19-inch monitor we've ever seen , the 

Sony GDM-400PS ($900, www.ita.sel. 

sony.com). With refresh rates of 85Hz at 

1280x1 024 and 75Hz at the maximum 

resolution of 1600x1200, the 18-inch 

viewable display is flicker-free. More 

importantly, the 400PS is currently the 

only 19-inch aperture grille monitor available. 

The garners and graphic designers 

among us are sticklers for this technology's 

superior brightness and uniform color 

intensity-continuous tone images simply 

look better when shot through a grille. 

The monitor has a varying grille pitch of 

0.25mm in the center of the display 

widening to 0.27mm on the edges, and 

boasts near-imperceptible 

geometric distortion, and 

near-perfect color convergence. 

Brilliant. 

ALTERNATIVES: If you 

must save money, go for 

any one of the many monitors 

that use Hitachi's original19-inch 

shadow mask 

CRT. Monitors that use this 

tube have flooded the market 

and can be had for as 

little as $600. For $300 less 

than the Sony display, you 

get the same amount of 

screen real estate, but less 

ever seen. continued on page 69

Our Machine Can Kick 

Your Machine's Ass 

In this age of build-to-order computers, retailers can sell you 

almost any configuration you request. But can they build a better 

$5 ,000 machine than the grease monkeys at Maximum PC? 

Gateway 2000 is a global leader in direct-order sales. Polywell 

is a small vendor of high-powered, custom-built systems. We 

challenged the two companies to send us computers that would 

beat Dream Machine 98's features and performance. The rules 

were simple: They had to use Windows 98 (for the sake of a 

common benchmarking platform), and their machines had to be 

available for retail sale at the price and configuration quoted here. 

Dream Machine 98 

Gateway 2000 

Polywell 

Car 

Mic 

lites 

and 

ofU 

aim 

tortt 

$4,924/Not for Sale/Build your own! 

$4,772/800.846.2000 

$4,998/800.999.12 78 

Key Features: 

Key Features: 

Key Features: 

.,. 400MHz Pentium II overclocked 

to 450MHz 

... 128MB generic 1 OOMHz SO RAM 

.,. Matrox Mystique G200 16MB, 

Canopus Pure 30 II 12MB 

.,. Montego A3Dxstream sound card 

.,. 9GB Seagate Cheetah Ultra Wide SCSI 

hard drive 

... HiVal 40x40 CO-ROM drive 

.,. 19-inch Sony GDM-400PS monitor 

.,. Cambridge Soundworks Micro Works 

Warranty responsibilities prohibit retailers 

from selling overclocked processors, but we're 

not shackled by such bureaucratic wimpitude. 

Hence, our Pentium II 400MHz is jacked up 

to 450MHz. We also boast the best motherboard, 

videocard array, soundcard, CD-ROM 

drive, and speakers. Unfortunately, because 

we're not a large manufacturer that can buy 

wholesale parts, we were unable to fit 

decadent amenities into our budget. That 

meant we got toasted by Gateway's 384MB 

of RAM, TV tuner, and 21-inch monitor, and 

Polywell's 256MB of RAM, Ultra 2 LVD SCSI 

hard drive, and CD-R drive. It's sad but true: 

If you 're looking for a complete system, you 

can get more for your money by buying from 

a retailer (who can also offer tech support 

and a warranty). On the flipside, building 

your own machine is a helluva lot more fun, 

and our brazen overclocking helped Dream 

Machine 98 win four out of the five 

benchmarks that demand CPU firepower. 

.,. 400MHz Pentium II 

... 384MB 100MHz SDRAM 

... STB Velocity 128ZX 8MB, STB Black 

Magic Voodoo 2 12MB 

... STB TV Tuner 

.,. Sound Blaster Audio PCI 64V soundcard 

.,. 14.4GB IBM Deskstar Ultra DMA hard drive 

... Toshiba SD-M1102 DVD-ROM drive 

... IDE Zip drive 

.,. 21-inch Gateway VX1100 monitor 

.,. Boston Acoustics speakers with subwoofer 

This pumped-up version of Gateway's G6- 

400XL came with 384MB of RAM on its 

Tabor motherboard. The extra memory came 

in mighty handy during the Inspire test, 

which Gateway would have won if we hadn't 

overclocked Dream Machine 98. We also 

liked the 21-inch monitor and spacious 

14.4GB hard drive. Unfortunately, the 

videocard, Voodoo 2 card, MPEG-2 decoder, 

and TV tuner take up nearly all the PCI slots. 

with only a shared slot remaining should you 

decide to disable the sound chipset soldered 

to the motherboard and upgrade to an add-in 

card . Other minuses include only 8MB of 20 

video memory, just two 5.25-inch open drive 

bays, only one processor slot, and a single fan 

to cool the entire mass of circuitry. But who 

can argue with the benchmarks? In all, we 

liked this machine's raw power, but would 

have traded some of the memory for a CD-R 

and higher-quality parts across the board . 

.,. 400MHz Pentium II 

... 256MB 100MHz ECC SDRAM 

... 30 Fusion 8MB AGP with DVD, 

Diamond Monster 2 Voodoo 2 

.,. Turtle Beach PCI Surround soundcard 

... 9.1GB Seagate Cheetah Ultra 2 LVD 

SCSI hard drive 

... Hitachi G0-2000 DVD-ROM drive 

.,. HP SureStore 7200 CO-Writer Plus 

... SCSI Zip drive 

.,. 19-inch Sampo monitor 

.,. AIWA TSCD40 speakers with subwoofer 

This machine is the best value of the three, 

and we're shocked that Polywell will sell it to 

you for $5,000. Highlights include TV-out on 

the DVD-ROM drive, a dual-slot motherboard, 

ECC memory, a Diamond dual-line 

modem for up to 112Kbps net access, a 

removable/lockable hard drive with the 

fastest SCSI interface around, and an Ultra 2 

SCSI controller card that also has an Ethernet 

port. And who can scoff at both a Zip and 

CD-Rewritable drive for removable storage 

duties? The only disappointments were the 

19-inch Sampo (who?) monitor, tinny AIWA 

speakers, and modest amount of 20 memory. 

Strangely, the Polywell didn't do too well on 

the benchmarks, taking only Direct30 gaming 

and HD Tach (look at the awesome throughput 

that the Ultra 2 SCSI interface provides!). 

Still, this system is packed with awesome 

extras. Let us know if it's missing your 

favorite accoutrement. 

Na1 

The 

squ1 

So v 

fron 

fruresp 

NOTE: Our Windows Apps benchmark wasn't yet available when we tested these systems. Full benchmark explanations on page 94.

ld 

be 

here. 

er 

e, 

it to 

ton 

- 

~e 

aming 

ughides!). 

Cambridge SoundWorks 

Microworks Two crisp satellites, 

one 6.5-inch subwoofer, 

and a 67W amplifier define one 

of the best speaker rigs at 

almost any price. Just ask our 

tortured neighbors. 

Natural Keyboard Elite 

The ergonomaniacs among us 

squealed for a fancy keyboard. 

So we chose a USB number 

from Microsoft. It's not too 

fru-fru, and has great finger 

response . 

color brilliance and uniformity, 

and slight focusing problems. 

Still, it's a fine display for casual 

computer use. If you're itching 

for a 21-inch display, you 

can't get a better deal than 

the Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 

91TXM ($1,100, www. 

mela-itg.com). This bright, 

true aperture grille monitor 

offers a 0.28mm grille 

pitch and does 75Hz at its 

1600x1200 maximum resolution. 

If you don't give a hoot 

about price, wait a few weeks 

for the 21-inch Sony GDM-F500 ($1 ,900). 

This monitor's screen is truly, absolutely flat for 

reduced geometric distortion and screen glare, 

and must be seen to be believed. And are you 

ready for the F500's superfine 0.22mm grille 

pitch from edge-to-edge, and 80Hz at the 

maximum resolution of 1800x1440? Well, are 

you? Sadly, the GDM-F500, like the two awesome 

18-inch flat-panel LCDs we've seen, is 

priced way beyond our $1,000 ceiling for the 

Dream Machine's display component. At least 

for now. Expect all monitor prices to drop as 

manufacturers push 19-inchers into the price 

slot previously occupied by 17-inchers. 

This thundering 

box emits rumbles 

akin to 

World War II 

subsonic warfare 

experiments. 

And that's just 

with the volume 

at "2." 

bastic, freak-nasty bass possible, 

add the Cambridge 

SoundWorks PSW1 subwoofer 

($700) to the mix. 

With a 12-inch subwoofer, 

140W amplifier, and frequency 

response down to 20Hz, 

this thundering box emits 

rumbles akin to World War II 

subsonic warfare experiments. 

And that's just with 

the volume at 2. Quake II 

..... speakers 

There are multimedia speaker manufacturers, 

and then there's Cambridge SoundWorks. 

Engineering expert Henry Kloss's company has 

become synonymous with awesome speakers 

at reasonable prices, and the Cambridge 

SoundWorks MicroWorks ($249, www.hifi. 

com) exemplify the master's vision to the letter. 

This three-piece subwoofer/satellite combo 

is the best-sounding system under $500. How 

such strong mid-bass comes out of those tiny 

3-inch satellites is beyond comprehension, but 

the end result, when combined with a 6.5-inch 

subwoofer, is a match made in aural heaven . A 

bi-amped 67W amplifier feeds the 

MicroWorks all the power it needs. 

ALTERNATIVES: If you want the most bornand 

Unreal become full-body, 

force-feedback experiences, 

and you'll have battlefield 

flashbacks well into next week. 

If you're looking for rich sound for less than 

$100, buy Altec Lansing's ACS-48 three-piece 

subwoofer/satellite system ($79, 

www.altecmm.com). The sub kicks out beefy 

bass, and the satellites pump warm midranges 

and sparkly highs. 

..,. Keyboard 

Half of us didn't want to spend jack on the 

keyboard . Hell, we'd just as soon buy a used 

model from Jackie's Swag Shack. The other 

half of us wanted a fancy-boy ergonomic 

model to pamper our precious little carpals. 

But we all agreed the keyboard should be 

USB. We eventually reached an amicable compromise: 

Microsoft's Natural Keyboard Elite 

($65, www.microsoft.com), an ergonomic 

beauty with support for both USB and PS/2 

(adapters included). The sleek Elite has a small 

desktop footprint, and newly designed halfsized 

function and cursor control keys. All the 

keys have resounding tactile response and are 

intelligently spaced and positioned. 

ALTERNATIVES: To save money, visit your 

local flea market and buy any $5 keyboard that 

doesn't appear to have weird stains on it. If 

ergonomic keyboards just plain disgust you, 

consider Cherry's G81-8004 ($85, www. 

cherrycorp.com), a full-sized 104-key keyboard 

with 43 programmable keys and an integrated 

side-mounted smart card reader/writer. 

ilt' System Properbe!S IJil Optimize CD-ROM settings 

HodDOki,_D .. CD-ROM IR~-Dak) T...-) 

Don't forget to enable your CD-ROM drive's 

i"n~ l,t(rtdo¥ftuat$hae~ktpedormanc:e~ 

Direct Memory Access (QMA). DMA takes a 

~ w.t.enaCO-ROMdoiYeiraltachedto)'OU'~ 

load off the CPU, transferring data directly to 

....... 

memory instead of relying on the CPU to negotiate 

.S~cachesile: Stnal -~L.I L.arge 

the data flow. Go to the appropriate drive under 

a.o-"""".-n"' lo-~h!lw 3 

Device Manager, click Settings, and enable the DMA option 

(if it's present). Now set the drive's cache. Under System 

Properties click the Performance tab, then dick the File 

System button and select the CD-ROM tab. For best results, 

set the CD-ROM cache to Small for multimedia and gameplay, 

or to large for database access. Optimize the access 

pattern for quad-speed or higher.

00 

"' b:: 

UJ 

Vl 

MouseMan+ This Logitech 

mouse has four programmable 

buttons and a rolling finger 

wheel. But that's just icing. We 

chose it because it feels so 

damn good. 

Addtronics 7890A We 

were sold on the beefy 300W 

power supply, seven 5.25-inch 

drive bays, and eight fan bays. 

A perfect case for expansion 

and chop-shop tomfoolery. 

Windows 98 What can 

you say about Windows 98? 

It's not the most stable, most 

powerful, or most inexpensive 

OS. It simply is. And it runs 

all our favorite games and 

applications. 

.., Mouse 

Half our staff uses the 400dpi Logitech 

MouseMan+ ($41, www.logitech.com), the 

best mouse we've ever seen . Molded to fit 

your hand, it's designed for comfort and ease 

of use, with four programmable buttons, 

including a thumb button and a rolling finger 

wheel. Logitech's outstanding MouseWare driver 

software lets you program all four buttons 

for any of 50 functions accessed through the 

control panel, including all the F-keys, nav 

keys, modifiers, and a bunch of time- and 

motion-saving capabilities. The wheel even lets 

you scroll up and down and zoom through 

interfaces within most Win98 documents. 

ALTERNATIVES: For a cheap and basic alternative, 

you can go to your local CompUSA and 

get a no-name, two-button rodent for $1 with 

rebate. And since you can't get anything better 

than the MouseMan+, you might want to 

choose a game controller to go along with 

your mouse. The Microsoft SideWinder Force 

Feedback Pro joystick ($122 , www.microsoft. 

com) is the best-implemented force-feedback 

joystick available. 

..... case 

Is bigger better? No. But more drive bays is 

better, and the Addtronics 7890A ($198, 

www.wco.com/-addtron) had us in expansion 

heaven. It features seven 5.25-inch drive bays 

that slide out on rails, along with eight fan 

bays-we filled five of them for more-thanadequate 

chilly-chill. To power all the fans and 

peripherals, we opted for a 300W power supply. 

The swing-out doors, height-adjustable 

feet, and detachable motherboard tray helped 

seal the deal. 

ALTERNATIVES: For a slightly cheaper 

option, we recommend the CompuDEX IW- 

0500 ($130, www.compudex.com), a full-size 

tower beauty. And, of course , there's no proof 

that you can't mount your parts in an old frig. 

Boy, boy, crazy boy. Keep cooly cool, boy ... 

..... operating System 

Windows 98 is the OS-du-jour and will cost 

you $170 to buy it outright (an upgrade from 

Windows 95 costs $90) . Until Windows NT 

offers full application and Directx support, 

we'll be sticking with Microsoft's consumer 

OS. It's got a browser built right in, and, hell, 

some newbies say it's is even easy to use. 

ALTERNATIVES: The irrepressibly customizable 

Linux (www.linux.org) is the darling of 

most web admin types and is absolutely free. 

Unfortunately, its hardware and application 

support is still too sketchy for us to fully 

endorse it for Dream Machine 98. + 

us away from 

II Katmai. This CPU if ol o 

lineage we're all f iliar w -L2 cad 

amount and spee won't c ange-bul 

will include 70 new instruc i ns design 

to boost 3D-gaming pe rm nee. 

In 1999, AGP x videocards will be 

ready for prime ti e, promising even 

faster texture me ory storage and ext 

cution. Games will Be optimized ~a..bi 

res textures and de col r ep 

1024x768, so pre re you f for kiiiE 

immersion. 53's S vage3D, flJumber 

Nine's Ticket To Ritle IV, nVi ia's TNTLI 

and 3Dfx's next-g n ace e a or (c e 

named Rampage) II look like strong 

contenders to fulfi I Dream Machine 9 

video duties. 

The sound battle leok~to be..JJgly 

System and speaker manufacturers wil 

push for true digital audio piped throu 

USB ports-thus killing the necessity f. 

soundcards. Soundcard manufacturers 

meanwhHe, will fight to maintain relevance 

by trumpeting support for 3D 

audio APis. Regardless, in 1999 we'll ! 

need hardware support for Dolby Digi 

Next year's hard drive will use Ultr< 

LVD (Low-Voltage Differential), delive 

ing wider bus bandwidth and burst 

potential of up to 80MB/sec. While 

10,000RPM Ultra DMA ATAPI drives ' 

be emerging, we predict we'll be stick 

with SCSI due to IDE's architecture 

restrictions. Regardless of interface, pr 

ing will force us to decide between a ! 

gle large drive (around 18GB) and tw< 

drives in a RAID array. CD-ROM? 

Fawgetaboutit. DVD-ROM drives will 

reading CO-ROMs at 32x, and DVD 

ROM software will be ubiquitous. 

Finally, in 1999 Windows NT 5.0 ~ 

replace Windows 98. Games and gam 

hardware should take advantage of N 

multithreaded environment and dualprocessor 

capabilities. 

And our case? We're hoping for 

hunter green.

a~~ production 

CPU 

CYRIX 

Q199 

500MHz, new core 

technology • for Slot A 

(mechanically identical to 

Intel's Slot 1, but 

electrically incompatible)

The road to processor perfection is long 

and gnarly-and Intel isn't the only trailblazer 

kicking up dust. Before you buy a 

new system, chart your own personal 

course on the CPU Roadmap and make 

sure a better processor isn't waiting to 

ambush you from some lonely ridge. 

QJ99 

We've invaded the labs of Intel, AMD, 

Cyrix, and IDT /Centaur, and have the 

confirmed travel plans of all the processors 

that are slated to be released through the 

new millennium. Unless specified, all chips 

are .25-micron fabs. And remember: All 

travel itineraries are subject to change. 

Q499 

-Bryan Del Rizzo 

N 

W~ E 

s 

MXi 

M II core with 

enhanced FPU • 

for low-cost PCs 

_________ ,.,.. 

---- 

PC On A Chip 

Fab unknown • will 

integrate all PC 

functionality except 

RAM on a single chip • 

for consumer 

electronic devices 

-- 

-- KS 

Will use copper fab, 

possibly 1GHz core speed • 

other details unknown 

..,._,. TheM II is a "performance rated" 

part. In other words, its numerical 

name doesn't reflect actual core 

speed in megahertz. The MediaGX's numerical 

name does reflect core speed in megahertz. 

A joint project of Cyrix and National 

Semiconductor, PC On a Chip aims 

to include CPU, core-logic chipset, 

and video functionality-everything in fact, save 

RAM and power supply. The first iteration will 

use the MediaGX core. The chip is aimed at the 

emerging "Information Appliance" market. The 

devices will have special low-power requirements 

and will be x86-compatible to take advantage 

of the huge base of Windows applications. 

lOT's WinChip 2 3D and WinChip 

2+ processors will directly compete 

with Intel's Celeron. The IDT chips 

will include 3DNow! instructions and support 

a 100MHz bus. The 2+ family will also include 

128K of L1 cache . 

The WinChip 2+NB isn't a Socket 7 

processor. It will require a customized 

otherboard and is being targeted at 

sub-$500 PCs. "NB" stands for "Northbridge 

chip," a core-logic chipset component. 

..... -- 

..allliiiL._--- 

WinChip 3 

500/600MHz, new 

superpipelined core technology 

with improved integer 

and FPU • for low-cost PCs 

Coppermine 

Speeds and cache unknown, 

.18-micron fab, includes Katmai 

• for desktops 8.._ ~ 

r _.... 

Cascade 

Speeds and cache unknown, 

.18-micron fab, includes Katmai 

• for workstations and servers 

WinChip 3+NB 

adds core-logic chipset 

Merced 

aka IA-64, .18-micron fab, 

unspecified design and 

features • for enterprise 

servers 

Intel's Katmai is a series of 70 new 

instructions that will be added to 

both the Pentium II and Pentium II 

Xeon processor families (the new instructions are 

an addition to the existing 57 MMX instructions). 

Like the competing 3DNow! technology, Katmai 

will enhance 3D performance by improving 

floating-point calculations. 

Intel will start converting all chip 

fabs across its product lines from 

25-micron to .18-micron in the first 

half of 1999. The leaner chips will appear in 

computers in the second half of the year. 

Merced, Intel's 64-bit processor, 

is expected to sample in 1999. 

High-volume production has been 

moved from late-1999 to mid-2000. Merced is 

aimed squarely against workstations from 

Digital Equipment and Sun. 

Chip comes to market 

Road conditions clear • 

travel plans solid 

Unchartered territory • details 

of road conditions sketchy

More PCI, Fewer IRQs? 

I would like to build my first PC and am looking for a 

motherboard with five or more PCI slots and dual 

Pentium II support. I saw the Tyan S1836DLUAN, 

which meets these requirements, but in addition it 

has a soundcard, SCSI, and Ethernet built in. I'd like 

to know if the six PCI slots are going to be useful, or 

are all the IRQs going to be used up by onboard features? 

Does Tyan have another set of IRQs for these 

features? Or, maybe IRQs can be shared by the PCI 

architecture 7 

-Ed Sanchez 

an ST-11o24A and the other an ST-3144A. The original 

BIOS does not recognize the hard drives. 

-David Scannell 

The Doctor Check out DrivePro from Micro 

House software (www.microhouse.com). It comes 

with a utility called EZ-BIOS that replaces the conventional 

Master Boot Record, taking up residence 

on the hard drive instead of volatile CMOS. It 

comes with support for almost all hard drives. You 

can also get this kind of support from Ontrack 

Disk Manager (www.ontrack.com). 

The Doctor Responds Six PCI slots will be very 

useful and we hope will be the minimum on all 

motherboards. Numerous IRQs will be required, 

although they can be shared when using cards 

that comply with the PCI 2.1 specification. That 

particular motherboard also gives you control over 

every aspect of the BIOS, making it easy to 

control IRQ assignments manually. 

No Power, 

Power Supply 

Will an ATX power-supply fan come on if the power 

supply is plugged in and turned on? I have a new ATX 

case, and when I turn the power on the fan doesn't 

even come on. I have checked all the connections 

several times. I think the power supply is bad. 

-Scott Dahlstrom 

The Doctor Plugging in a power supply, turning 

it on, and getting nothing doesn't necessarily 

mean its bad. Many require at least one device to 

be connected to complete an electrical circuit and 

supply "pull." If you've done this and it still 

doesn't work, then it is indeed bad. If the power 

supply works, yet the fan doesn't come on, it's a 

good sign that the power supply will soon fail, 

most likely due to overheating. 

Phat utility 

Have you ever heard of a utility that will convert my 

hard drive to FAT32 without formatting my drive and 

losing all my data? I know the hard way, but I'm too 

impatient to wait half a day to back up my whole hard 

drive and reformat it again. 

-Javier Villa 

The Doctor Actually, Windows 98 comes with a 

utility for doing just that. You can also use System 

Commander Deluxe from V Communications, a 

handy utility that converts FAT16 to FAT32 and 

vice versa; it's great for when you need to install 

OSes that don't support FAT32, such as NT 4.0. 

BIOS Overlay 

Is there such a thing as a BIOS overlay program? I have 

a 486DX computer with two Sea gate hard drives, one 

Stuck in DOS 

Compatibility Mode 

I have an 85oMB Conner hard drive in my home-built 

PC. When I click on Control Panel, then System, it 

reports that the drive is using MS-DOS compatibility 

mode. I know it's been in normal 32-bit mode before, 

and I'm not sure how to get it back to that mode. I 

need the 32-bit mode to run Windrenalin! 

-Justin Thompson 

The Doctor It sounds like you don't have the 

correct Primary, Secondary, or both busmaster I DE 

drivers loaded, they're loaded improperly, or the 

drivers can't load due to lack of resources (an IRQ 

or memory address that is either unavailable or in 

use). Open the System icon in the Control Panel 

and check the Device Manager for any yellow or 

red exclamation marks that would indicate a 

problem. If you have a ATX motherboard, then 

you most likely need to download the busmaster 

IDE drivers from Intel 's site (developer.intel.com/ 

design/ pcisets/ d rivers/inf _update. htm). 

Black Bars On 

Channels 2 And 14 

I have a problem playing games on my new 19-inch 

monitor. I love the monitor but none of my games use 

the full screen. I have a 2-inch black strip down the left 

side of the monitor for most of my games. Is there any 

way to correct this? My zD/ 3D videocard is the Diamond 

Stealth II S220, and my 3D card is a Monster 3D. Please 

let me know if there is a workaround for this situation. 

-Joe Pounder 

The Doctor Assuming you're only playing 3D 

games at full-screen, this is solely a Monster 3D 

issue. First, you can try playing at different resolutions 

until you find one that defaults to fill more 

of your screen. The rub here is that low resolutions 

look pixelated, and high resolutions can 

slow framerates to a crawl. Second, in lieu of resolution 

tampering, you can use your monitor 

controls to expand the image defined by the 

Monster 3D's video signal. You'll fill a bit more 

screen real estate, though two inches will be a 

stretch. (You can also reposition the image so you 

have an equal amount of dead space on each 

side of the screen.) Third, try mucking with the 

ofPCs 

comes clown with a bug 

every now and then. 

That's when you need 

to call the doctor and 

get a diagnosis that'll 

have you up and running 

in no time. 

Send your symptoms 

to: doctor@ 

maximumpcmag.com.

00 

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Monster 3D's refresh rate. A lower rate 

could pop the screen back in place. 

Fourth, update your Monster 3D driversupdated 

software never hurts. Finally, you 

can just accept reality and live with the 

2-inch black strip that everyone else has 

encountered. 

Adding On And On 

I'm thinking of building a system with an AGP 

videocard, a Voodoo' 3D accelerator, and an 

MPEG-2 decoder card. I know that both the 

Voodoo' card and the MPEG-2 decoder board 

require video pass-through. So, how would you 

set that up? 

-Czechguy7 

I'm currently shopping around for a 3D 

videocard, but there is one detail I need to 

straighten out first. My 2D card is a 4MB 

Matrox Millennium, and I recently bought a 

Creative Encore Dxr2 DVD kit. The videocard 

connects to the Dxr2 decoder card via a loopback 

cable. If I get a 3D card that also uses a 

Ioopback cable, in what order should the three 

cards be connected? Should it be 2D card, 3D 

card, then the Dxr2 board, or should it be 2D, 

Dxr2, then 3D? 

-David Greer 

The Doctor takes out two birds with 

one stone Most folks will want to get 

their daily dose of TV-output, so you 

should put the Dxr2 at the end of the 

video signal chain. You can now play your 

3D card through it and get hot polygon 

action on your boob tube. The chain 

should look like this: 2D card ->3D card -> 

Dxr2 (MPEG-2) board. 

Scotty, Get Me 

Those Framerates! 

I recently bought a Diamond Monster 3D II and 

I can never seem to get the framerates cited in 

various magazines. 

I'm running a 266M Hz Pentium II with 128MB 

of SDRAM on an Abit LX6 motherboard. For 2D 

I'm using a Viper V330 AGP. When I run GLQuake 

II with timedemo2, I only get 37fps at 64ox480. 

I'm not overclocking my system and in the BIOS 

I'm using the default settings for a 266. 

I know I will not get 88fps, but I should be 

getting more than 37fps. I'm at a complete loss. 

I have tried to use overclocking for the Monster 

that is provided with the drivers, but that did 

not help. 

-Dominique Demore 

The Doctor Remember, many other publications 

test Voodoo 2 boards with practically 

everything else disabled-this includes 

sound, network, and so forth, which will 

affect benchmark scores. 

We just tested a Voodoo 2 reference 

board on a 266MHz Pentium II (64MB 

EDO DRAM, etc) at 640x480 Quake II and 

got 45fps. To get higher framerates, go to 

your Advanced Properties sheet in your 

Voodoo 2 Control Panel, and check the 

Don't sync to vertical refresh rate button 

on both Glide and D3D. This permits the 

Voodoo 2 board to continue to update your 

display without having to wait to sync with 

the vertical refresh rate. In theory, this will 

give you faster framerates, but may induce 

visual artifacts in the form of shearing and 

tearing of graphics. If it'll make you feel 

better, run your Quake II tests and disable 

all your other options. 

Onboard Video 

Welded On 

I have an older 1ooMHz Pentium, a Hewlett 

Packard 7050, and want to install a new videocard. 

The current S3 Trio is soldered onto the 

board, so I have to screw around with jumpers 

to correctly detect the new card. I looked for a 

diagram of the board, searched HP's entire site, 

and even called them, but I think my service 

warranty has expired, which means $25 per 

hour for help. 

I have looked for books with my weirdo 

motherboard, but none exist. I finally tried 

experimentation, mixing and matching the 

jumpers, and booting the sucker, but that didn't 

work either. I would try a Voodoo board, but 

they are expensive (at least more than I'm 

willing to pay) and only accelerate full-screen 

graphics. 

I'd also like know if it's possible to put a 

new Ultra DMA drive in my machine. It has 

EIDE and I don't care about the DMA mode. 

-Frank Moskos 

The Doctor I hate to be the one who 

breaks it to ya, Frank, but you cannot 

disable that on board 53 chip. This was told 

to me by an HP service rep and was also 

tested in our labs. So no jumpers in the 

world will allow you to banish that dreadful 

thing. A word of advice, though--don't go 

monkeying around with jumpers without 

an instruction sheet handy-bad things can 

happen to your system. 

You can add a Voodoo board into the 

mix, but it will only do full-screen graphics. 

But why would you want to play your 

games in a window, anyway? This may be 

weird in an integrated situation such as 

Microsoft's forthcoming Chrome 3D 

desktop application, where D3D hardware 

acceleration is called into action for your 

desktop display. Other than that, you're 

DirectJD Tweaks? 

Everything I've read on the net and 

every overclock tweak program I have 

tried only help with Glide/OpenGL programs. 

Can you help with overclocking 

Direct3D on a Voodoo card? 

-Anon 

The Doctor Go into your 

AUTOEXEC.BAT file and look for the 

line: 

SET SST_GRXCLK= 

This variable sets your Voodoo board's 

clock speed (in MHz). This speed adjustment 

will affect both D3D and Glide 

applications. Most will default to 50, so 

all you would need to do is change the 

number to a higher value and reboot 

your system. Folks have taken their 

Voodoo boards up to around 57MHz 

without any major problems, but bear in 

mind that you will be pushing the chips 

harder, thus they'll generate more heat, 

which will shorten their lifespan. Unless 

you plan on giving these chips generous 

cooling (via fans, heatsinks, or both), 

your pixelfx/texelfx chips may melt into 

puddles of silicon sludge if you're not 

careful. You have been warned. 

Overdocki 

Rendition 111 

I own a Diamond Stealth II card and I've 

been desperately waiting for an article on 

how to overclock a Rendition V2100 videocard. 

Please, point me in the right direction. 

I've done web searches, but I can't seem to 

locate a "how to" page for overclocking this 

card. My suffering goes on. Thanks in 

advance for any information you can offer. 

-Brian Smith 

The Doctor For the Verite V2100, the 

easiest way to overclock your board is 

to download any of the Verite tweak 

programs available. Try visiting some 

Rendition fan sites-two that spring 

to mind are Bjorn's 3D World (www 

.bjorn3d.com) and Nine's Rendition 

Quake and Quake II Workshop (www 

.nine3d.com). If you feel the need to 

hack it yourself, you should create or 

edit your configuration file in your 

80 ...

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only other add-in card choice would be 

one based on PowerVR's PCX-1 architecture, 

but we wouldn't recommend it for 

your CPU speed. 

Ultra DMA drives are backward compatible 

with EIDE. Although there is a very slight 

risk of data corruption, we haven't experienced 

that, nor has it been reported to us. 

Confused About JD 

I own an HP Pavilion 8260 266MHz Pentium II 

and would like to get a graphics accelerator. 

But every time I read an article, review, or 

preview I'm sent back to square one with more 

information but less of a direction in which to 

go. Since I have an AGP slot, wouldn't it 

behoove me to use it instead of a PCI card? Is it 

necessary to have more than 1oofps to enjoy a 

first-person shooter? Shouldn't the i740 chip be 

given more credit for delivering the numbers it 

did in screen resolutions over 8oox6oo? 

-Mark Fecheimer 

The Doctor With regards to your AGP 

slot, use it! There's a mess of new 3D 

accelerators coming out that will give you 

the same 3D performance as a single 

Voodoo 2 card. Read up on page 86 for 

53's latest, the Savage3D. Matrox is also 

coming out rip-curled and ready to pump 

you up on page 109. But, nothing coming 

out this Q4 will match the raw fury of dual 

SLI Voodoo 2 But, not everyone has $600 

to blow. Although 1 OOfps is overkill for 

today's games, any card that can push that 

now should have the horsepower to pump 

next-generation games that will push twice 

the amount of polygons and bump up 

those textures at 40fps to 60fps. The i740 

is a great entry-level 3D accelerator card, 

but its time in the sun is waning fast, as 

Matrox's newest board is slapping it all 

over the place. Six months is a long time in 

the 3D accelerator world. 

Can't Get No 

Quake-isfadion 

I recently purchased a Diamond Stealth II G46o 

AGP videocard that uses the i740 chipset and 

8MB of SGRAM. I am having some problems 

running Quake II in OpenGL. The Intel i740 

chipset is supposed to support OpenGL, and 

even your magazine commented on how good 

Quake II looked with it. Do you think Diamond 

altered the support capabilities of the chipset 

or does this sound like a common problem for 

all new videocards? 

-Open GL Blues 

The Doctor It sounds like you've 

got the older Stealth II G460 drivers. 

Diamond recently released its latest 

display drivers, complete with OpenGL 

lCD for your Quake-ing pleasure. Go to 

www.diamondmm.com and download 

the latest drivers. Once you do, when 

you fire up Quake II, simply choose the 

Default OpenGL driver and it should load 

the i740 driver. 

AMD Su,ports 

100MHz RAM? 

I was looking at getting a 300M Hz AMD K6. Do I 

need to purchase the PC10o SDRAM, or can I 

stick with my normal SDRAM? I guess the real 

question is whether the K6-3oo has support for 

10oMHz RAM. 

-Neil E. Christensen 

The Doctor Which K6 do you plan on 

shackin' up with? If you go with the 

regular 300MHz K6, then 66MHz SDRAM 

will work fine. But if you plan on going 

with the newer 300MHz K6-2 with 

3DNow! technology, go with 100MHz 

SDRAM. Also, check the motherboard 

specs to see what memory your core-logic 

chipset will support. 

Annoying 

DirecfJD Pause 

How can I get rid of those annoying pauses in 

every D3D game I play in Win95? Every few 

minutes or so, I encounter three short pauses 

(no matter what the game is). I think it's 

because of the swap file. But wait a minute, I 

have 32MB RAM and my swap file is 100MB in 

size (both min and max setting)! It shouldn't be 

my hard drive either, since I benchmarked it 

around 4.5MB/sec. So I'm totally frustrated with 

this problem and don't know if I should get 

more RAM or a new drive. 

-Richard Chiu 

The Doctor Which games are giving you 

the hiccups? To check if it's the swap file, 

try firing up one of your D3D games, then 

observe the hard drive LED as you play-if 

it lights up and your gameplay bogs down 

simultaneously, then it's your virtual 

memory playing tricks on you. Believe it or 

not, 32MB is bare minimum for today's 

memory-hungry apps, and with a bloated 

OS sitting there (mis)managing memory, 

you're bound for some trouble. 

A couple of quick things to try before 

dipping into the ducats and splurging for 

more memory-do a thorough defrag of 

your hard drive and make sure you also 

defrag the swap file as well. 

If you have a separate hard drive partition 

that's not being used at the moment 

\windows folder. It's called VERITE.INI, 

and if you don't have one already, you 

can create one in notepad. 

If you have a VERITE.INI file already, 

make a backup of it, then open it with 

Notepad-you should see: 

[display] 

m=xx 

n=x 

SCikP=x 

MCikP= 

where 'x' is a numerical value that acts 

as multipliers for the memory and core 

engine speeds. The formula for memory 

speed is: 14.318*m/(n*MCikP) MHz, 

while the core engine speed formula is: 

14.318*m/(n*SCikP) MHz. By default, 

it sets to m=14, n=1, SCikP=5, 

MCikP=2. From here, you can start fiddling 

with these numbers to squeeze 

out that extra frame or five. 

1) First, set new values for n, SCikP, and 

MCikP to: 

n=2 

SCikP=4 

MCikP=2 

2) The m value will be the major factor 

in your overall Stealth II speed. From its 

default, try changing the value to: 

m=45 

Now, save the file and reboot the 

system, then benchmark away with 

Quake II. See any difference? If you 

want to squeeze a little more, you 

can bump up the m value by 1 or 2 

and continue this until you encounter 

problems, such as lock-ups. Remember, 

write down the original settings 

and make sure you create a backup 

copy of your old VERITE.INI file 

before attempting any madness. You 

may also want to look into some type 

of cooling. 

Riva Overclocking 

Could someone show the viewers at home 

how to overclock nVidia's Riva 128! 

-Ed Lingenfelter 

82 ~

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or has very little data, try pointing your 

swap file to that drive. If your games still 

stutters, you'll need to bump up the RAM 

to at least 64MB-a preferred place to be 

in a Win95/98 situation, to be honest. 

RAM Killed 

The Radio Star 

Only the Gods of Arcane Technology can 

answer this one. I have a generic Socket 7 TX 

chipset motherboard running a 233M Hz AMD 

K6 with 64MB of SDRAM. I have overclocked it 

to 75MHz on the bus and decreased the multiplier 

to 3x for a chip speed of 225MHz. This 

configuration puts out more power than the 

66MHz bus and J.5X, 233MHz configuration. 

With these settings, this little puppy puts out a 

score of 98 in Norton's System Informationnot 

too shabby. 

My problem is that when I yank the two 

32MB DIMMS and put in one 64MB SDRAM chip 

that is 1ooM Hz compliant, I got the same score 

of 98 (as expected). But if I mix the 64 and 

32MB chips to get 98 megs of blistering SDRAM 

the bootMark drops to 70! I've set the clock 

speed back to 66MHz X 3·5 and the bootMark is 

still 83 with nonmixed RAM and 70 with mixed 

ram. What happened? 

-Joe Page 

The Doctor Mixing memory types in 

systems is always a recipe for trouble. 

Speed difference between SDRAMs may 

cause timing problems, which will result in 

those lower scores. First of all, check your 

BIOS settings to see how your RAM 

timings are set-you should set them to 

conform to the type of SDRAM you have. 

The best place to get the proper settings is 

to go either to your motherboard's web 

site and check for any FAQs on your particular 

board, or to the memory manufacturer's 

site to check if they have proper 

timing settings for your RAM. 

Generally, for optimal performance, you 

should only use identical memory types if 

you plan on going with more than one 

DIMM. You may need to bite the bullet 

and decide whether you want to get 

another 64MB DIMM from the same place 

you bought your first one, or just sit on the 

chicken-combo you already have. 

Sun Sets On Monster 

I think my Monster I has met its end because 

every time I start Quake II or Unreal my system 

locks. I have deleted and reinstalled the 

Monster drivers and Voodoo Direct3D drivers. 

Glide 2-43. OpenGL, and the games too. I have 

changed memory-range settings and even formatted 

my PC and started over from scratch. 

What else could be wrong here? I mean. the 

refresh rate test utility works fine, why not the 

games? 

If this is the end of the road for this beast, 

who is the fastest Voodoo 2 right now? 

-Dory Hayes 

The Doctor It looks like you've done just 

about everything you can, but did you also 

re-install DirectX? Also, check your soundcard 

to see if any weird IRQ conflicts exist. 

Have you tried Direct3D games? Fire one 

up and see if it works. Ensure your 

Monster 3D is properly seated in the PCI 

slot-try powering down the system, 

pulling out the videocard, then reseating it 

into the PCI slot. Fire your system up and 

check again. You may also want to move 

the Monster 3D to another PCI slot. 

A great way to test whether it's the 

hardware is to try slapping your Monster 

3D into another machine, if you have one 

handy. 

If all this doesn't work, and the Monster 

3D has shuffled off its mortal coil, try 

seeing if you can get Diamond Multimedia 

to replace it, if it's still under warranty. 

1 n any event, if you decide on falling 

into Voodoo 2 's arms, then Canopus's Pure 

3D II is a great place to start. With TVoutput 

and a smaller formfactor than the 

average Voodoo 2 board, it's a winner in 

our book (being overclockable to 100MHz 

doesn't hurt either). Not interested in TVoutput? 

Try either Canopus's Pure3D II LX 

or Metabyte's Wicked3D Voodoo 2 board. 

Quakeless in Seattle 

I'm having problems running GLQuake on my 

ancient 166M Hz Cyrix PC that I recently retrofitted 

to a zooM Hz AMD with a PowerVR card. 

After running Quake II for a few seconds. it 

shuts down, leaving me with an oversized 

desktop and a very unhappy expression on my 

face. The software-rendered Quake runs fine, 

and even the "OpenGL" version using the Cyrix 

chip doesn't have any problems (except 

unplayable slowdowns). I'm guessing that the 

john Doe motherboard doesn't support the 

AMD zooMHz CPU even though voltage settings 

are OK and the BIOS detects the CPU perfectly. 

I'm looking forward to buying a brand new 

Pentium II computer with the best available 3D 

card in a couple of years. For now, I would like 

to know what my immediate solution should be: 

new board, or go for a new Intel zooMHz MMX 

Pentium CPU and let the AMD and Cyrix sit on 

the shelf? 

-Patrick Boutin 

The Doctor Before you chuck your old 

AMD CPU to the curb, triple check some 

things. First off, see if you can find some 

The Doctor There are ways of monkeying 

around with the memory speed 

of the Riva 128, but quite honestly, 

there may not be that big of a perfonnance 

boost from doing so. 

Overclocld 

Multiplicati"!n 

I finally cranked up the internal clock 

speed of the motherboard (a Mustang-534f> 

from 66MHz to 75MHz. My 2ooMHz MMX 

Pentium system seems to be fine, reporting 

a 225MHz CPU. There is also a footnote on 

the manual indicating an 83MHz setting, 

but I wanted to remain conservative for 

my first overclocking attempt. What I 

really wanted to know about are the Infamous 

multiplier settings that keep getting 

mentioned whenever someone talks about 

overclocking a CPU. They don't seem to be 

explained anywhere. It seems to be taken 

for granted that the reader knows what 

they are. I hate feeling like an Ignoramus 

for asking, but if I don't ask, I'll never 

know. What exactly are they, and how are 

they set? 

-Pablo R. Arevalo 

The Doctor The multiplier setting is 

a set of jumpers that determines what 

number to multiply the system-bus 

by. These numbers will range from 2.0 

to 5.5, moving in .5 increments. For 

example, 200MHz would be obtained 

by setting your system bus speed to 

66MHz, then setting your multiplier 

to 3, resulting in 66MHz x 3, or 

198MHz. What you did in your situation 

is bump up the system-bus speed 

to 75MHz-75MHz x 3=225MHz. 

Take a close look at your motherboard 

and look for a tightly grouped set of 

jumpers. Nearby should be a chart 

that tells you how to set for different 

multipliers. By fiddling around with 

these settings alongside your systembus 

speed, all types of crazy speeds 

are possible. But beware, by fiddling 

with the system-bus speed, you'll also 

be overclocking your PCI slots, which 

usually sit at half the system-bus 

speed, so at 66MHz, the PCI bus 

speed will be 33MHz. Bumping it up 

to 75MHz overclocks the PCI slots to 

37 .5MHz. Some components, espe· 

cially videocards, may freak out when 

bumped up in this manner. 

Lot 

a VII 

YOI 

thE 

on 

tak

1 

hard specs on that motherboard to see if The full install version includes a boot disk The Doctor Assuming you're using a 

the board truly supports AMD's K6 CPU. with generic IDE CD-ROM drivers on it Voodoo-based board and not a Voodoo 

Make sure you're not overclocking your and scripts to get you on your way. You Rush, you shouldn't have to worry about 

motherboard and/or PCI slots. If you're should also note that you can perform a it. Resolutions set for your Voodoo card 

running faster than a 66MHz system bus, full install from the upgrade version of only affect applications or games that are 

this may cause problems. Windows 98. The installation process will using it. Setting your primary adapter to, 

Second, you may want to re-install your ask for your Windows 95 disc as proof that say, 1024x768, will have no impact on 

Quake games. Adding hardware and other you have it when installing to a newly for- your Voodoo card. 

experiences tend to make Quake act the matted hard drive. If you can't find the full 

fool. Make sure you have the proper version on the shelves, some vendors are 

c~ 

OPENGL32.DLL placed in the proper direc- offering OEM versions of Windows 98 on 

RAM Hungry 

tories and download the latest version the Internet with the purchase of certain 

Windows On 

of the driver from PowerVR's web site components. One way to install from fresh 

(www.powervr.com) or go to Matrox's site is to boot off disk with DOS CD-ROM 

I have a zooMHz MMX Pentium, which I 

VOl 

(www.matrox.com). 

drivers, FDISK the drive, reboot, FORMAT 

recently bumped to 64MB of RAM. While 

Ba~ 

the drive, click over to the Win98 directory 

playing around with System Monitor, I saw 

on the CD, and start SETUP.EXE. 

that Windows was using a constant 17.7MB too 

of my RAM for hard drive cache! Is this the 

Wu 

It Locks Me Up 

price I pay for zero swap-file activity? Is 

I have an Asus 440BX motherboard, and ever 

there any way I can limit the cache size? 

Ping Too Fast 

since I got this board, Quake II seems to lock Please help! ThE 

up on me and kick me out, giving some fault Could you please tell me how too slow the pro- -Dan Grove opp 

error messages. Is it the board, the videocard grams PING.EXE and NETSTAT.EXE so that I can inc! 

(it's a Millennium II with a Voodoo 2 MonsterJD), read the screen before it shuts down? The Doctor Windows 95 eats RAM like nex 

or something else? Unreal and Fonaken also -Ceizer people eat popcorn. If you edit your ne\1 

lock up on me. 

SYSTEM.INI file in your Windows directory, 

-X-Man The Doctor Simply invoke the commands you can add these two lines to limit the you 

from a DOS box in Windows 95 and amount of RAM set aside for caching full· 

The Doctor That combination of hard- append it with !more. Example: under the [vcache] section and then this 

ware has been used successfully here. "C:\PING.EXE !MORE". reboot. 

There could be several things affecting 

your system. If you're overclocking your 

MinFileCache=O 

machine or videocard you might try taking No Sound On MaxFileCache=8192 Mel 

it back down. Have you loaded the latest 

exp 

Soundcarcl 

video drivers and reinstalled DirectX 5? It specifies minimum and maximum file mos 

I upgraded to Windows 95 and my soundcard 

Reseated the PCI cards? If you have the 

size for a disk cache. What's the right 

step 

doesn't work anymore. I can play music CDs in 

backup components, you can swap out 

size? That depends on what your needs 

the drive, but nothing else makes noise. 

devices one by one until you isolate the 

are. 

and 

- TeamShowMe 

bad part. Unfortunately, from the information 

you've supplied, it sounds like it could 

The Doctor It's tough to gauge your sitube 

almost anywhere in your system . 

ation without a little more info. Try double- Where Did 

clicking on the speaker icon in the system 

Suspend Go? 

tray on the right-hand side of the screen . A while back, I had to reinstall Windows 95 

You'll see different slider controls. Make for the "umpteenth" time. I had to have my 

Give Me The 

Full Install sure the sliders for volume and wave are computer manufacturer on the phone. A long 

I plan on building a new computer with the cranked up. You can also try updating to distance call. They gave me an option to 

hottest components but have little experience the latest drivers for your card by down- remove my Suspend feature in my Start 

in operating systems. I was wondering how to loading them from the web. You may also menu. They actually took me to one of many 

install the most current OS, Windows 98, for want to try removing the soundcard from screens in DOS with features I could change 

my new boot system. Almost everywhere I look the Device Manager accessed through the for Win95 while they were walking me 

I find upgrades. I know Win95 upgrades WinJ.I System icon in the Control Panel. Windows through numerous options. Anyway, Win9s's 

and DOS, and the Win98 upgrade changes 95 should autodetect the card and reinstall running A-OK so far, and tech support didn't 

Win95, WinJ.I, and DOS to Win98. However, I drivers for it. Also look for IRQ conflicts say Suspend must forever be gone. Now I'd 

would like to get one package to be able to go within the Device Manager. like it back, but I forget how to do this. And 

straight to Win98. Is there such a thing? And without wasting money on a long-distance 

• 

once I pull everything out of the box, piece all 

phone call, how can I get my Suspend mode 

• 

co the components together, and power it up how 

feature back into my Start Menu? 

0'1 

Turn OH Voodoo 

• 

I- do I install this OS? -Ryan Weber 

"- 

LJJ 

V1 

-Gary Hammond Can a 3Dfx card be turned off (on-the-fly) so I • 

~ can use resolutions higher than 8oox6oo The Doctor Assuming you're running the • 

I 

The Doctor Microsoft currently offers without investing in another 3Dfx card7 I use OSR2 version of Windows 95, go to: Start, 

both a full install and an upgrade version Photo6hop a lot and need to access my video- Settings, Control Panel, Power, Advanced, 

of Windows 98. The full install should be card for higher resolutions. and then click on the "Show Suspend on 

on store shelves by the time you read this. -Jaff 9 Start Menu" box. • 

G 

nE 

Wit 

feat1

S3's Savage3D 

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.,.. 53 Savage 3D 86 

... C-Cube 89 

... HiVal DVD-RAM 90 

.,. Illustrator 8 92 

After the crucifixion of its last socalled 

3D offering, you'd think 53 

was dead meat on a dull stick, 

nothing but stinking carrion. 

But 53 is staging a 3D 

resurrection with its Savage3D, a 

new 2D/3D videocard architecture 

hell-bent on silencing the 

naysayers (present company 

included) who've said it could 

never be done. 

Savage3D's initial specifications should send a 

tingle up even the most jaded video chip enthusiast's 

spine. Unlike the ViRGE's bolt-on faux 

"3D," the .25-micron tab Savage3D 

53 is back 

follows the Matrox MGA-G200's penchant 

for dual processing, implementing 

a 128-bit rendering pipeline via dual 64- 

bit processors working in parallel. Like 

the MGA-G200, the Savage3D will 

render scenes internally at a higher color 

depth than what may be finally used, in 

this case, 24 bits. 

Rendering will be performed via the 

standard vertex-based rasterization process, as 

opposed to the "chunking" -style rendering 

architecture used by PowerVR or WARP 5. The 

Savage3D does use a tile-based memory system 

and will be API-friendly, so ~/Di rect3D 

games as well as OpenGL applications (via lCD) 

will take advantage of this chip's new power. 

Packing much of the same power of more 

silicon-intensive cards, the Savage3D utilizes a 

single-cycle 3D pipeline-meaning it can perform 

many advanced 3D functions, such as trilinear 

mip-mapping, without suffering performance hits. 

In fact, one of 53's highest priorities with the 

Savage3D was to add full-speed trilinear filtering 

to the mix, so a fair amount of silicon real estate 

is devoted to this purpose, triple the amount it 

would take to perform bilinear filtering at the 

BENCHMARK MACHINE: Micron Millennia Xru with 

300MHz Pentium II processor. 64MB of DRAM, Intel 

Atlanta 440l.X ATX motherboard, Windows 98 final release 

with DirectX 6.0 beta. 

with a savage 

vengeance and 

benchmarks 

that beat 3 Dfx. 

same rate. This translates into an 

extreme 20% of logic in the 3D 

engine. While the architecture 

does support DirectX 6-friendly 

features such as anisotropic filtering, 

it will take a performance hit. 

Other major features and 

performance claims include: 

... AGP 2.0 sidebands with DME or 33MHz PCI 2.1 

.,.. 5Mtriangles/sec Triangle Setup Engine 

.,..125Mpixels/sec trilinear fill rate 

.,..16- or 24-bit floating-point accurate Z-buffer 

(stored in frame buffer as 16/24-bit fixed) 

.,.. Support for triangle strips and fans 

.,.. Edge anti-aliasing with 4x oversampling 

.. specular lighting and diffuse shading 

.,.Alpha-blend modes 

.,.. Void and Cluster dithering for 16-bit rendering 

.. support for up to 125MHz SGRAM (SDRAM 

also supported) 

.,.. 64-bit Synchronous Memory bus 

.,.. 2MB, 4MB, or 8MB maximum local video memory 

... 60MHz VIP port 

.,.. Hardware assisted features such as: bumpmapping, 

anisotropic filtering, shadows, texture 

morphing, reflection mapping, environment 

mapping, procedural textures 

53's biggest coup is that the Savage3D is 

the only forthcoming 3D accelerator to support 

Microsoft's DirectX 6 Texture Compression 

scheme in hardware. This is a no-brainer-after 

all, Microsoft licensed the compression technology 

from 53. Compression always reduces the size 

of the data, with the rate of compression fully 

adjustable. Up to a 5:1 compression ratio can 

be used, so 30MB of textures can be stashed 

onto 6MB of local video memory (in an 8MB 

configuration, including frame-buffer). With 

compression engaged, Savage3D can move 

more textures across the AGP bus per given 

clock cycle than any other videocard . This will

allow game developers to quit punking out 

with small 64x64-res textures, and bump 

those bad boys up to 256x256 and beyond, 

resulting in a more realistic 3D immersion . To 

comprehend the difference texture size makes, 

play Quake II (which relies on 64x64 textures) 

and Unreal (256x256-res and higher textures) 

and compare the two. 

But compression is a double-edged sword . 

No matter how good your compression algorithm 

is, there's an inherent danger that visual 

quality could suffer. This will manifest itself as 

checkered patterns or washed-out colors on 

textures . This could be the weak chink in the 

Savage3D 's armor. So 53 will allow enabling or 

disabling of texture compression via a control 

panel option. 

Don 't think all this talk of trilinear mip-maps 

and textures means Savage3D's 2D performance 

will be soft. On the contrary, its 2D heritage can 

be traced back to the 128-bit Trio3D chipset, 

Turok's first-person mayhem 

moves faster on 53's newest chip 

than on a solo Voodoo 2 board. 

On the Savage3D, Forsaken at 

1024x768 is also crisp, with the 

correct alpha-blends and colored 

lighting in place. Sparks and 

electricity rip through this enemy 

fighter. 

with massive 

amounts of 

design and software 

optimizations 

heaped on 

top-nothing 

from the ViRGE 

era survives in 

Savage3D. 

RAMDACs can 

be pumped as 

high as 250MHz, 

so refresh rates 

at high resolutions 

shouldn 't 

be an issue for 

2D videophiles. 

32-bit resolutions 

as high as 

1600x1200 are 

expected. The 

architecture supports 

memory 

configurations 

up to 8MB 

of SGRAM/ 

SDRAM. 

Whether this 

becomes a bottleneck as future games start to 

use higher color-rendering states and triplebuffering 

(which both require heaps of local 

videocard memory) remains to be seen. Software 

DVD is also high on the Savage3D's priority list, 

with MPEG-2 motion compensation (for lower 

CPU utilization) and a high-quality scalar in the 

mix for DVD junkies. For those who still wanna 

groove with a hardware DVD decoder, the 

Savage3D also allows a glueless interface. 

The first vendor to announce plans to 

walk on the savage side is Hercules, with its 

Terminator Beast. Taking the design parameters 

to the max, the Terminator Beast will come with 

8MB of local memory, a 250M Hz RAMDAC, and 

TV outputs. STB, with its TV-output enabled 

Nitro 3200, and Diamond also plan on taming 

that Savage3D chipset. 

At this year's Game Developers Conference, 

the Savage3D was out pixel-pumping 3Dfx's 

Voodoo 2 card under the Turok: Dinosaur Hunter 

benchmark, much to 3Dfx's chagrin . While the 

Voodoo-boyz claimed 53 wasn't using the 

native Glide version for the tests, 53 pointed to 

Glide's inability to run at 800x600, where the 

tests were being conducted. 

To settle these arguments, we fired up a 

revision "A" 8MB Terminator Beast (a Savage3D 

reference design) in our 300MHz Pentium II 

benchmark machine, and 

under our controlled 

environment, proceeded 

to see who was the boss 

of whom . 

Against a single 

Voodoo 2 board , the 

Savage3D flexed its 

polygon pectorals. While 

640x480 remained a 

Voodoo 2 party, at 

800x600, the Savage3D's 

power could not be 

denied, besting 3Dfx's 

silicon-heavy add-in board 

on the benchmarks we 

threw at it. 

53's worst enemy, despite this blatant display 

of 3D power, is itself and its patently limp 

ViRGE legacy. While the thought of being a 

" 3D decelerator" is furthest from 53's mind, 

this negative moniker may linger in the hearts 

of many who've fallen victim to the ViRGE 

debacle. Only time will tell whether its bitter 

taste will disappear beneath a flood of texturemapped 

polygons running at 60fps+. 

Regardless, 53 is back, and it's most certainly 

on the attack. 

-Andrew Sanchez 

Available July 1998 

Price $199 

Company 53 

Phone 408.588.8000 

URL www.s3.com 

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C-Cube's DVxpress Chips 

MPEG·~ video 

encoding on the cheap 

Videotape is dead. Long live digital video. 

C-Cube, manufacturer of MPEG-1 and -2 

encoder/decoder chips, has recently developed 

the DVxpress, a new MPEG-2 (Motion Picture 

Experts Group) encoder/decoder chip that can 

handle two streams of video and a transition in 

realtime. What's more, it's cheap. In mere 

months, you'll find the chip on consumer-level 

capture boards allowing you to digitize all your 

home movies in the MPEG-2 format. Even 

better, these MPEG-2 movies can be burned to 

a DVD-RAM drive (see HiVal DVD-RAM drive 

preview on page 86) and played out 

to your television. 

C-Cube has two new chips 

targeted to MPEG-2 desktop video 

editors. The DVxpress 7112 is a 

single-chip MPEG-2 codec that 

operates at 1 OOMHz, handles up to 

50Mb (which will become a necessity 

when the new HDTV format arrives), 

and requires only 8MB of unified 

memory. The test board, Picard, is 

a PCI v2 .1, half-length card that 

encodes/decodes MPEG-2 video 

to and from a composite or S-Video 

source at 720x480 (NTSC or PAL). C-Cube's 

second DVxpress chip, the 7110, gives you everything 

the 7112 offers, but maxes out at 15Mbps, 

doesn't support 4:2:2 color sam 

-~~~• piing, and doesn't give you dualstream 

video output. 

The proprietary 

PerfectView MPEG-2 

compression algorithm 

features advanced 

multilayer motion 

estimation, improved 

error masking to 

eliminate common 

MPEG artifacts, and 

proprietary quality metrics to ensure optimal bit 

allocation for every picture. And the embedded 

digital signal processing (DSP) coprocessor performs 

roughly 1.6 billion arithmetic, pixel-level 

operations per second. 

After evaluating DVxpress using the Picard 

board (a C-Cube reference design), we concluded 

that in the near future, all video cameras will 

have these types of chips embedded in them, 

capturing video directly to hard drives or DVD-Rs. 

Because C-Cube has brought all this technology 

onto one chip (it used to take more than 15 to 

accomplish the same tasks), expect to see entrylevel 

consumer products for less than $1,000. 

The DVxpress 

chip takes in 

analog video and 

encodes it into 

an MPEG-2 

stream that can 

then be played 

back from 

consumer DVD 

RAM drives. 

The DVxpress 

also has interchip 

hooks that allow 

multiple chips/ cards 

to be daisy chained 

to improve throughput for those 

who need to edit, say, two streams 

of HDTV-quality (100Mbps) video in 

realtime. And finally, the DVxpress 

chips include C-Cube's proprietary, 

frame-accurate MPEG editing 

(FAME). FAME lets users start, stop, seek, and scrub 

along the Intra, Predictive, or Bidirectional frames. 

C-Cube expects the first products using its 

chip to ship around the end of the year and the 

IEEE 1394 version of the card to ship six months 

after that. So far, two companies have 

announced they will be developing products 

using the chip. Pinnacle Systems, which 

wouldn't reveal what it's working on, and 

Fast Electronic, which is working on a 

professional-caliber product called 601, a 

$15,000 frame-accurate, multistream 

editing and realtime special-effects card that 

should be available by 04 this year. 

We have yet to see a software editor that lets 

you cut and paste on IPB frames, and add transparent 

tracks, multiple layers/audio tracks, and 

transitions. But be assured that when someone 

does, we'll see a desktop-video revolution that 

will rival, if not exceed, the desktop-publishing 

revolution of the early 1990s. 

-Rick Popko 

Available 04 1998 

Price Depends on volume 

Company C-Cube 

Phone 408.944.6300 

URL www.c-cube.com 

THE •11 ON MPEG-2 

What makes MPEG-2 special is 

its incredibly low bit -rate and 

high picture quality. To give 

you an idea of the substantial 

space savings MPEG-2 brings 

you, 10Mbps (which is 

extremely high quality) 

translates to roughly 

1.2MB/sec of regular 

Motion-JPEG video (that's 

about one-third less space 

than IEEE 1394 video 

requires). Currently, if you 

want to encode highquality 

digital video, you 

need to use either a IEEE 

1394 card such as DPS's 

Spark (encodes video at 

a flat 3.6MB/sec) or a 

Motion-JPEG card such 

as Pinnacle Systems' 

miroVIDEO DC30+ 

(encodes between 

5MB/sec and 

6MB/sec). Broadcastquality 

boards require higher 

bit-rates, such as Truevision's 

RTX (which requires roughly 

12MB/sec) and Matrox's 

Digisuite (for truly uncompressed 

video, uses between 

22MB/sec to 24MB/sec). 

Sustained data rates such as 

these require expensive and 

dedicated SCSI drive arrays. 

MPEG-2, on the other hand, 

only requires between 2Mbps 

and 10Mbps. And the picture 

quality is superb. MPEG-2 

technology is used in products 

such as satellite TV receivers, 

video on demand, and set-top/ 

computer-based DVD players. 

The Picard board 

was designed by 

C-Cube to demonstrate 

what the chip is capable 

of. Expect similarlooking 

cards from Fast 

Electronic and Pinnacle 

Systems in the coming 

months. 

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DVD-RAM, PD, DVD 

ROM, DVD-R (Disc-at 

once), CD-ROM XA, 

CD-R, CD-RW (Variable 

Packets), CD-DA, Video 

CD, CD-EXTRA, 

PhotoeD Multisession 

We celebrated the day we received 

HiVal's pre-production Panasonic 

LF-0101 DVD-RAM drive, the same 

one that'll be in its DVD-RAM kit. 

DVD-RAM is a rewritable standard 

that can record up to 2.6GB of data 

per side and can play back DVD 

ROM and DVD-Video media in addition 

to all existing CD formats. 

HiVal's kit will include the drive, an 

Adaptec 2904 PCI SCSI host 

adapter, a piece of single-sided 

DVD-RAM media, recording 

software, a few movies, and at 

least one game. Optionally, 

you can also get Sigma 

Designs' EM8300 REALmagic 

Hollywood+ DVD/MPEG-2/ 

MPEG-1 decoder board and a 

pair of high-frequency RF 

transmitters that allow the 

viewing of DVD movies on 

your television. They send a 

2.4GHz Wavelink signal from 

your computer up to 300 feet 

to your TV and can penetrate 

up to five walls, floors, or ceilings. 

This frequency is far superior to 

current 900MHz phones and 

won't interfere with them or 

your garage 

door. 

We tore into 

the drive as soon as it 

hit the lab. CD-ROM 

testing showed that it 

performed almost on 

par with its specs, spinning 

a disc at 20x. This 

drive reads CO-based 

media using CAV technology, 

so read potential 

doesn't occur until 

the drive head reaches 

the outer tracks, and 

the drive acts accordingly. 

It garnered a 

WRITE DVDI 

Sigma Designs' 

EM8300 REALmagic 

Hollywood+ is a DVD 

decoder board that 

allows the playing of 

DVD-Video movies on 

your computer. The 

playback on this board 

was the sharpest picture 

we've ever seen on a 

computer monitor. This 

could very well be the kit 

to beat with regard to 

hardware DVD decoding. 

drive rating of 

15.4x and read at 20x 

(2,955K/sec) on the 

outer tracks. Random 

seek was a sluggish 

98ms, but remember, 

this is a pre-production 

drive and settings 

that affect scores such 

as these usually aren't 

tuned till just prior to 

shipping. CPU utilization 

(at 19x) was 

only 6%, which is 

expected in a SCSIbased 

drive. The drive 

reads DVD media 

using CLV technology 

so that data is delivered 

evenly across the whole disc. 

DVD Tach delivered a drive rating of 

2.1 x, an excellent score for this 2xrated 

drive. 2,780K/sec of 

data was delivered 

comes stock with 

a 2MB buffer. 

It uses a red 

(650nm) laser, 

a brushless 

spindle motor, 

and vibrationsuppressing 

fluid 

bearing for high 

precision and 

low vibration. 

across the whole 

disc. Random 

~ times came 

in at 100ms, and read 

bursts of up to 5 K/ sec 

were recorded . 

Recording data onto 

the drive is not a fast 

process, though . 

Again, it may be due to this 

drive's pre-production 

status. Data was written to 

the disc at approximately 

1.2K/sec. Real-world recording 

times are on par with 2x 

speed CD-R drives, where 

650MB of data require 

about a half-hour. We used 

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DVD!, which indudes a spedal device driver 

that allows for the reading and writing to 

DVD·RAM using the Universal Disk Format 

(UDF) file system or ISO 9660, the older 

CD-ROM file system. Files are added and 

removed dynamically, like a DOS FAT-based 

DVxpress encoding chip to 

record an MPEG-2 movie 

to a hard drive, and then 

recorded it onto DVD 

RAM media (more info on 

the C-Cube board can be 

had in the preview on page 

89). We then played the 

movie back on the drive 

hooked up to Sigma 

REALmagic Designs' 

Hollywood+ decoder, and 

it played back beautifully to both the 

monitor and a television. 

The drive utilizes a unique frontloading 

tray in which the cartridge is 

inserted between two guide grooves. 

A single piece of DVD-ROM or CD 

media does not require a cartridge, 

though. It's inserted the same way 

and is guided by two slits located in 

the middle of the two guide grooves. 

HiVal's DVD-RAM kit should be available 

in all its various flavors by the 

time you read this. 

-Sean Cleveland 

PRICE $499 for drive and recording 

software; $699 for drive, software and 

DVD decoder board; $999 for drive, 

software, DVD decoder board, wireless 

WaveCom RF units 

COMPANY HiVal 

PHONE 714.953 .3000 

URL www.hival.com 

hard drive. UDF is far superior to ISO 9660 

in that it supports Unicode characters used 

by other OSes, supports long filenames, and 

eliminates directory depth limitations. UDF 

also utilizes space more efficiently and is 

convenient for random reads and for 

streaming both audio and video. 

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Illustrator 8.0 

The promise of a harmonic convergence 

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Short of making the inevitable merger 

of vector- and raster-based graphics 

apps, Adobe's latest update to the 

venerable Illustrator line promises 

~~~~~mil... another slew of tools that'll 

: make the designer's job easier 

while opening creative doors. 

Version 8.0 will catch the 

veteran app up with long-time 

competitor FreeHand (at least 

numerically). The revisions 

focus primarily on smoothing 

the program's historically steep 

learning curve, instead of ladling out 

new power tools for pro-caliber users. 

One exception is the addition of 

the new gradient mesh tool. This 

lflrl=~=~~~~ unique feature creates 

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No. This isn't a screen shot from 

Photoshop. This is the new action 

palette in Illustrator, which allows 

selective multiple undos. 

Running side-by-side, you'd be 

hard pressed to notice the 

difference between Adobe's 

graphics apps. 

pull-you anchor-point 

controls of vector-based 

drawing, Illustrator 8.0 will 

offer a new drawing tool 

that directly follows the 

cursor on-screen to create 

vector lines with no hassle. 

This pencil tool will be 

especially helpful to people 

with steady hands and/or 

tablet input devices. 

Other intuitive tools 

will include a smoother 

sition multiple colors in 

multiple directions within 

a single vector object. 

Once created, these 

blends can be fully edited 

and easily repositioned. 

With the wide variety of 

applications this effect can 

be applied to, this tool 

promises the most impact 

of the new features. 

Other improvements 

to the program's blending 

capabilities will include 

the ability to automatically 

whip up blends along any 

path. The ensuing "live" 

blends can then be fully 

edited, including adding 

or removing anchor points 

and changing colors. 

For those daunted by 

the traditional push-methat 

takes the kinks 

out of those shaky 

lines created by the 

pencil tool. Also 

included is an eraser 

for obliterating parts 

of a path or the 

whole damn thing, 

if you really screw it 

up. If you're in the 

ballpark with your new lines, try 

the Free Transform tool, which will 

bring scaling, skewing, rotation, 

and reflecting into a single pass. 

The new Scatter Brush sprays 

selected art elements (such as leaves, 

snowflakes, or human entrails) along 

a path to create quick fills. The 

program will come with libraries of 

typical elements (sorry, no entrails 

are currently planned). This feature 

is reminiscent of classic graphics apps 

such as SuperPaint, but this new 

version is on some serious steroids, 

with control over size, spacing, and 

relative dispersion. 

The new version of Illustrator continues to add texthandling 

tools, such as a dropper that samples text 

styling to apply elsewhere. 

Illustrator S.O's 

new gradient 

mesh tool 

makes entirely 

new forms of art 

possible with 

the app. 

The bulk of additional 

changes can be grouped 

under the convergence of 

all Adobe products. While 

most of this transition 

falls under the interface 

banner, one of Illustrator 

8.0's most impressive new 

features looks to be the 

ability to export files into 

Photoshop-with layers intact. This 

major breakthrough could change the 

workflow of many designers . 

Other integrations with the Adobe 

product line include adopted elements 

such as the Actions, Brushes, Links, 

and Navigator palettes. The Pathfinder 

commands have also migrated to a 

palette in the new world order. The 

Eyedropper and Paint Bucket tools 

treat colors as designers have come 

to expect in Photoshop. 

While Adobe assures us that its 

customers don't want a product that 

merges the Photoshop and Illustrator 

realms (are those the same customers 

who didn't want Image Ready's functionality 

in Photoshop?), the two 

seminal graphics apps share so many 

interface elements, tools, and file 

formats that the overhead of such 

a merger is approaching nil. 

-Brad Dosland 

Available Sept 1998 

Price $375 

Company Adobe 

Phone 800.492.3623 

URL www.adobe.com

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Testing Policy 

Our product evaluation process is built on 

down-and-dirty, hands-on testing. All hardware 

benchmarking is conducted in the 

Maximum PC lab by Maximum PC editors, 

Real-World Benchmarking 

Our benchmarking charts are simple: 

The farther right the bar reaches, the 

better the hardware performed. Here's 

the deal on specific benchmarks. 

~ CPU/MOTHERBOARD Based on 

Symantec's System Information benchmark, 

the bootMark tests the CPU, its 

bus interface, memory, memory cache, 

and core-logic chipset. The final benchmark 

score is based on an arbitrary performance 

range. 

~ WINDOWS APPS BAPCO's 

SYSmark32 uses task scripts in 13 

popular productivity and content cre 

ation apps to test real-world performance. 

The benchmark also puts major 

stress on the videocard and driver, 

forcing it to draw complex screens in 

rapid succession. The final benchmark 

score is based on an arbitrary performance 

range. 

~ HARD DRIVE HD Tach measures 

multi-threaded hard drive performance. 

We publish the average read score in 

megabytes per second . 

~ CD-ROM 

CD Tach measures 

CD-ROM read times 

and CPU utilization. 

We publish the 

drive's cumulative 

speed rating 

(e.g., 24x). 

~ 3D RENDERING We use Newtek 

lnspire3D to gauge how fast the 

machine can complete a complex raytraced 

rendering-a grueling test of the 

CPU's floating-point power. Final score 

is in total seconds from start to finish. 

~ DESKTOP PUBLISHING In a 

scripted Adobe Photoshop test, we 

record how long it takes to apply 

various filters to a control image. A 

brutal test of the CPU, memory subsystem, 

and hard drive. Final score is in 

total seconds from start to finish . 

~ DIRECT3D Forsaken is a space 

shooter rich in colored lighting, and 

alpha-blending. Tests the 3D accelerator 

(and Direct3D drivers), and the CPU 's 

floating-point. Final score is in average 

frames per second at 800x600. 

The lowest score possible. 

Any lower, and the performance 

(or lack thereof) doesn't even 

register on our radar. 

and, whenever possible, we use real-world 

applications to gauge performance. Our final 

verdicts are based on benchmark results and a 

subjective appraisal of product features. 

~ OPENGL Quake II is a first-person 

shooter rich in complex polygons and all 

those nifty OpenGL special effects. 

Tests the 3D accelerator (along with its 

OpenGL drivers) and the CPU's floating-point. 

Final score is in average 

frames per second at 800x600 . 

~ RAM SPEED Stream for DOS 2.0 

tests motherboard memory bandwidth 

in megabytes per second . 

~ AGP PERFORMANCE Final Reality 

AGP is a Direct3D benchmark that uses 

256x256, 16-bit textures to tax the 

motherboard's AGP bus . Final score is in 

average frames per second. 

~ BATTLE ZONE Another effectsintense 

Direct3D game. For videocard 

reviews, we run all three of our 3D 

gaming benchmarks at both 800x600 

and 1024x768. Final scores are in 

average frames per second. 

The mid-point 

denotes .. acceptable 

performance"--or 

what obsessive 

power-users 

consider good 

but not great. 

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The specific 

score achieved 

by the proclud. 

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score we exped to 

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... ----lilllllliiillli .... GUT SHOTS: FULL EXPOSURE, 

FULL DISCLOSURE 

All system reviews feature large open 

case shots to give you a first-hand look 

at motherboard accessibility and expansion 

opportunities. And whenever possible, 

we show you the guts of 

individual components to illustrate 

what makes them tick. 

uses 

is in 

THI IPICic A roundup 

of system requirements 

and bundled hardware and 

software. 

................. 

A quick summary for 

people who are too lazy 

to read the entire review. 

PLUSIS 

Good Stuff 

MINUS IS 

Bad Stuff 

IDII'OWI CIIOICII 

AWAIIDI 

O nly 9 and 10 verdicts 

are even eligible 

for the coveted Kick 

Ass award, the mark of 

PC excellence. 

Our final judgement, awarded on 

a ten-point scale. Often brutal, 

always fair. 

URL www.techco.com 

In this issue 

...,_ SOFTWARE 

Windows 98 .. ... . ... . . . . .... . . . . 98 

Premiere 5.0 .. . . . . . .. ...... . .... 104 

Photoshop 5.0 ...... ... . .... . . .. 114 

...,_ HARDWARE 

3D Studio Max 2.5 ... . . . . . . . . .... 110 

CTX K62 SAK300D ......... . .... . . 96 Poser3 ........ . . . . .. . . . . .. . ... 124 

Diamond Stealth II G460 .. .. ....... 102 Goldmine 4.0 . .. . . . .. .. . .. ... . .. 133 

Hercules Terminator 2x/i ........ . . . 103 Lap link 7.5 .. . ....... ... .... . . . 133 

Reai3D StarFighter PCI ......... . .. 103 Sonic Foundry's ACID ............ . 140 

Pionex 826010 ...... . ......... . . 106 Autoscore Pro 2.0 . . .... ..... . ... . 141 

Matrox Millennium G200 .. . ... .. . . . 109 

Iomega Jaz 2/Syquest SparQ .... . . .. 116 

Kenwood TrueX 40x .............. 118 ...,_ liAMINii 

AOpen CD-936E 36x . . . . . . . . .... . . 119 Unreal . .... . ...... ...... ...... 100 

Sony CDU711 32x . .... . .... . .. . . 119 Descent Freespace: The Great War .... 128 

Quantex QP6/400 SM-4X . . . . ...... 122 X-Piane ........ . .. . . . . . .... . .. 142 

Diamond Monster Sound MX200 . . ... 126 X-Files: The Game .. .... . . ...... .. 142 

Turtle Beach Monte go A3 DXstream ... 127 X-COM: Interceptor ..... . ...... . . 142 

1/0 Magic Magicwave PCI .. . . . ... . . 127 Army Men . . .. . . .. .. ........ . .. 145 

Iomega Buz ... . ...... . .. . .. . ... 129 MechCommander ..... ......... . . 145 

Tektronix Phaser 560 . . .... . .. .. ... 131 Spec Ops .. .. . . . ........ . ..... . 145 

Soyo SY-6BB . .. ... . . .... . .... . . . 134 Redneck Rampage Rides Again . . ..... 146 

HP Pavilion 8290 . ............ . . . 136 Deer Hunter . . ... ........ . .... . . 146 

Canon ZR ...... . ......... . .... . 138 Monster Truck Madness 2 . ... . . . ... 147 

miroVI DEO DV300 . . . .. . . . .. . .... 139 Tribal Rage ....... . . . . . . .. . ..... 147 

Xircom ReaiPort Modem .. . ...... . . 144 Pro Bass Fishing . . . .... .. .. ...... 147 

Hayes Optima Modem ............. 144 Final Fantasy VII ... .... ... . .... .. 148

CTH SAK3000 

K6-2 steamrolls Celeron, mostly 

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made a 

lean, mean 

lavender 

machine . 

PLUSES 

Both compos1te 

and SVGA 

outputs on the 

R1va 128 

Four open PCI 

slots 

Great Microsoft 

El1te Natural 

Keyboard and 

lnteliiMouse 

MINUSES 

Redes1gned 

M1crosoft Elite 

Natural 

Keyboard 

No more 

memory slots 

In the sub-, near-, and almost 

$1 ,000 category, systems 

based on AMD's K6-2 rule 

the world. With the CTX 

SAK300D, it's easy to see 

why. Against Intel's most 

similar CPU to date, the 

266MHz Celeron, AMD's 

K6-2 with 3DNow! whips 

butt using optimized drivers. 

By going with a cheaper CPU, 

CTX was able to put some good 

components in this white and purple 

box, such as 64MB of SDRAM and 

Microsoft's lntelliMouse and Elite 

Natural Keyboard, which this time 

around is something both to praise 

and hock a lugey on . Microsoft kept 

the swept lines of its original ergo 

keyboard, but reduced the size of 

the cursor keys to near uselessness. 

The SAK300D's performance in our 

Photoshop test shows where the RAM 

goes. Turning in a score of 137 sec, it 

whips through the hurdles in less than 

half the time of the Pionex Celeron 

(reviewed on page 106). The scales 

were balanced, however, in the Inspire 

30 test. Although the K6-2 ticks along 

a full 34M Hz faster than the Celeron 

and has secondary cache, the AMD's 

floating-point math skills are so poor it 

must have graduated from an urban 

public high school. 

Don't let this scare you off if 

you intend to pound the SAK300D 

with business apps. It turned in an 

admirable 104 in the SYSmark 98 test, 

which runs a system through a gamut 

of leading productivity 

applications. Compare 

that to the HP Pavilion 

on page 136, a 

400MHz Pentium II 

that could only crank 

out 132 in SYSmark 98 . 

But let's be real. 

People will buy this 

chip for its fancy 3D 

footwork. The K6-2 

hammers out impressive 

numbers when 

3DNow! is used. 

Although we had to 

disable sound to get 

the Direct3D performance 

test, Forsaken, to work properly, 

it whipped out a respectable 

40.3fps at 800x600. With the optimized 

Riva 128 drivers, the score 

jumped to 54.4fps. Even with sound 

disabled, it's still impressive when 

compared to the 58fps a 400MHz 

Pentium II with an august Voodoo 2 

card pulls down. 

The machine puked when we 

fed it Quake II, however. With the 

only optimized drivers available 

from nVidia's web site corrupt at 

the source , we had to run it in 

standard ~ mode for a weak 

19.5fps. That may be the lesson 

here for people looking for cheap 

3D gaming power: Stay on top of 

driver updates and tweaks coming 

from AMD or your videocard maker. 

The CTX itself didn't come with the 

3Dnow! drivers installed . 

Where was the CTX found 

wanting? A faster hard drive with 

more capacity would be appreciated. 

The Fujitsu 6.4GB is the bare minimum 

you'd want in a hard drive 

these days. You also give up expandability 

in RAM with both slots filled . 

And since the SAK300D doesn't 

include a monitor, you'll have to 

spend another $200 for a postagestamp-sized 

15-inch monitor. The 

software bundle is light on the productivity 

side. We would have preferred 

a full-featured office suite. 

These warts aside, the SAK300D 

is a great tweaker's machine with 

enough performance for gramps or 

a college-bound student. 

-Gordon Ung 

Price $999 

Company CTX 

Phone 800.742.5289 

00 

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Cl. 

LJ.J 

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How much money did Microsoft save 

making the cursor keys so small on the 

Elite keyboard?

EXPANSION NOTES 

For a 1 K machine, the CTX gives you four 

open PCI slots to break your bank account 

on. You'll also have room for one external 

5.25-inch bay and two 3.5-inch bays. 

And CTX wisely throws in a well-written 

motherboard manual. 

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Socket 7 Challenge 

Hidden under this cool 

blue fan is AMD's 

throw down to Intel. 

RAM unless you 

toss out one of 

the DIMMs. 

matters. It's what's inside. The CTX dances circles 

around the Intel offerings in its price range in most 

tests, but its weak math scores may send you to 

remedial school. 

nny finlers Better keep those nails 

sharp and long to reach the volume 

controls for the CD-ROM headphone 

jack. But wait, where's the headphone 

jack? 

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UPGRADING TO 

FAD2 

Initially introduced in OSR2, 

FAT32 makes more efficient 

use of larger hard drives by 

using 4K cluster sizes and 

supporting partitions larger 

than 2GB. FAT32 plays an 

important role in Wln98 when 

used in conjunction with both 

the executable alignment 

utility and the newly improved 

defrag, since Window's virtual· 

memory manager utilizes the 

4K clusters more efficiently. 

While OSR2 restricted the 

creation of FAT32 partitions 

to the FDISK utility that 

wiped all data from your 

hard drive, Win98 provides 

a handy wizard that walks 

you through a safe and sane 

upgrade process. 

After starting the wizard and 

selecting the drive, the FAT32 

converter will check for any 

incompatible programs and 

prompt for their removal if the 

incompatibility is severe 

enough. On one of our test 

systems, the FAT32 converter 

wouldn't complete the process 

because it detected System 

Commander modifications to 

the boot sector of the drive. 

The next step prompts you 

to back up the contents of 

the drive to be converted. 

which isn't a bad idea, 

since conversion to FAT32 

is a one-way process. If 

you ever decide to uninstall 

Win98 or set up a dual boot 

into NT (which doesn't read 

FAT32 drives), then an old· 

fashioned FDISK is the only 

way to switch the drive back 

to FAT16. 

..___..._c-___ 

-~~ 

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The real work of the FAT32 

converter is done by the DOS 

executable CVT.EXE that's 

called after the Wizard restarts 

the system in DOS mode. 

After CVT.EXE works its magic, 

the PC is rebooted and the 

newly converted partition is 

defragged as soon as 

Windows loads. 

Windows 98 

We waited this long for a service release? 

With no earth-shattering new 

features, the latest revision of 

Windows, Windows 98, sells itself 

merely as a spit-shined version 

of Windows 95. Beyond minor 

performance tweaks and better 

system utilities, little has been 

done in Win98 to change the way 

Win95 does things. In fact, without 

the much-hyped web integration, 

Windows 98 would otherwise be 

a minor service release that cleans 

up the code a little and adds a few 

new features. 

The underlying system architec· 

ture is the same hodge-podge of 

16· and 32-bit kernel thunks found 

in W in95, although performance tweaks to 

memory management, boot-up and shut· 

down sequences, and program launching 

address many of the OS's shortcomings. 

In Win98 some intelligence is finally applied 

to memory management, with the OS 

attempting to anticipate when memory 

needs to be swapped to your hard drive 

instead of letting it page willy-nilly, causing 

I"''''''P'I"PIII'P._'II"P.,... the notorious shuddering 

effect seen in 

performance- 

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intensive games 

and apps. Win98 

also brings a 

14.4 modem (for Internet notable decrease to its 

access) 

boot-up time by initial· 

izing devices as needed instead of all at once as the 

OS is loading, and speeds the shutdown process by 

powering down without unloading device drivers. 

Windows 98 uses two methods to reduce 

application load times. One pre-aligns executables 

so that they can be mapped directly from 

the disk cache into memory, bypassing the need 

to copy them into a separate aligned memory 

space. The second monitors how an application 

launches, recording both the order in which all 

the app's support files are loaded and their 

physical locations. It passes this information to 

Disk Defragmenter, which uses it to place the files 

in sequential order on your hard drive according 

to how the application loads them. 

While all these seem to add up to some 

pretty hefty OS modifications, you'll notice only 

modest speed improvements, as shown in Figure 

1. Without restructuring key kernel processes, 

speeding up Windows is similar to lighting a fire 

under an elephant's butt. 

The real reason most of us will upgrade to 

Windows 98 is integrated support for all the 

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The Win98 

Program Guide 

(a component of 

WebTV) takes 

watching TV on 

your PC to a new 

level, especially 

when combined 

with program 

broadcasts with 

interactive content 

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advanced hardware that 

was merely a gleam in 

some engineer's eye when 

Windows 95 was first 

launched. All the 

acronyms that populate 

the hardware lists of new 

PCs (such as AGP, .us..6.. 

DVD, and FireWire) will 

find a happy home in 

Win98's expanded driver 

library. Making its debut 

in Win98 is Microsoft's 

new Win32 Driver Model, 

which allows drivers 

(video drivers are the notable exception) written for 

NT to work in Win98. Multiple-monitor support 

finally makes it to the Windows platform, in addi· 

tion to advanced power management features so 

new that we don't have a system to test them on . 

•(time includes loading first demo) • •(skipping intra movie) 

The Win98 values were taken after running the OS for 

two weeks nonstop: applications were tuned on a weekly 

basis, and the hard drive was scanned, cleaned, and 

defragged every night. 

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brought on through 

the integration of 

Internet Explorer, and 

no you can 't separate 

it from the OS. Win98 

opens new windows 

as web pages by 

default and slaps the 

Channel Bar in the 

lil -.. _,f middle of your 

desktop when it first 

opens, but they're 

easy to turn off when 

you want to go back 

The System Configuration utility centralizes all your 

configuration files for editing and backup and gives you the 

option to modify what's run at startup. 

If you have a TV-tuner card, you 

can run Microsoft's WebTV, although 

it may be a while before your cable 

company pipes the correct data for 

WebTV's more advanced features. 

And if you haven't experienced the 

to Windows as usual. 

By far the most useful 

application of Win98's web integration 

is the browsable help system. 

Apps still crash under Win98, and 

system lockups and the blue screen 

of death still threaten the Windows 

user, but an impressive set of utilities 

wonders of the new flll .. ~ .. ~-11.!'1,!1111111!1,_111 .. ~--~-!:ill have been added to 

FAT32 file system, a .:.,~"' ;l "' ".JJ ,.. help keep everything 

new wizard makes it -!';-::"- ..J ~ ..J in line. A new Registry 

easy to upgrade. :~iii- -~-~ .-'='.l Checker scans and 

Microsoft has been ~~ -=__ -:.;;J:.::_=-_-----'.=-u backs up the Registry 

offering Internet ~ ~ - J- ~- on boot up. If it 

Explorer for free the . ·~= ..J ") J!J~ detects a corruption, 

past few years, and . • •~ ;::;;;.._ .-'='.l -~ it restores the Registry 

it's come time to start ·- from the most recent 

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paying for it, with ·--.,·- of five compressed 

Win98 serving as the The Win98 Explorer now allows backup copies. 

you to do other things while it 

vehicle that delivers 

System File Checker 

copies or moves data around. 

the Internet the 

performs the same 

Microsoft way. While 

web integration is 

Win98's most talked 

about feature, it definitely 

falls on the short 

list for those of us who 

want to maximize our 

operation for system 

files, keeping a log of 

changes and offering 

to restore originals 

when it detects a 

corruption or different 

version . As new 

The Win98 Update Wizard 

PC's performance. 

software is installed, 

connects you to Microsoft's web 

Yes, there is a general site and searches for updates, the Version Conflict 

system slowdown patches, and new drivers. Manager backs up old 

HARDWAim1'ROUIII.ESIIOO WIZARD 

Despite plug-and-play (or perhaps because of it), solving hardware conflicts always 

been a chore in Windows 95. Along with allowing better access to device information 

through tools such as the Sysb:m Information utility, Windows 98 adds a newly improved 

Hardware Troubleshooting Wizard to help guide you through the process. 

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system files that are overwritten by 

new ones . 

A beefed up Dr. Watson returns 

in Win98 to record and diagnose 

program crashes, and the new 

System Configuration utility all but 

replaces Sysedit as a convenient place 

to modify and backup your configuration 

files. These new system tools 

launch from the newly remodeled 

System Information utility, which is 

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PLUSES 

The best graphtcs 

ever for a ftrsterson 

shooter 

. . . . 

Great one-player 

ex enence 

Lots of fun new 

tncks 

Cool portal 

technology for 

mult1 Ia er 

Excellent software 

renderer 

MINUSES 

Phat sy,tem 

requirement' 

P-11 or K6 2 vnth 

3D ac(eleration 

and lot'a 

memory 

No Open GL 

or D3D 

Multi player 

mayhem IS 

unms irin 

Some animatton 

looks hokey 

God created the world in seven days. 

It took Epic MegaGames a wee-bit 

longer to complete its first-person 

shooter, Unreal. But after delays 

galore, it finally walks the earth, 

bringing with it visual perfection 

that defies description. 

There's no denying Unreal's technical 

prowess. From the moment 

you wake up inside the bowels of 

the prison ship Vortex Rikers, it 

shines. Unreal's texture-mapped 

polygon realms are visual 

stimulation taken to the 

extreme (regardless of renderer), 

with well-executed 

special effects, including 

coronas surrounding light 

sources, colored lighting, 

rotating~ . reflective 

mapping, volumetric 

fugging, and more. The 

ensuing graphical orgy will 

make the most jaded gamer 

feel funny below the belt. 

Stars peek through billowing semitransparent 

cloud cover, alien vistas 

and darkened corridors reveal themselves 

without a hint of pixelation or 

distortion. The water looks so real 

you 'll be reaching for a towel, 

thanks to algorithmic procedure 

texturing, which makes for nonrepeating 

animation (Epic also used 

this type of texturing with flame 

effects). The Unreal engine is 

capable of handling 

up to a 

whopping 

4096x4096 resolution 

texture, 

but16x16upto 

512x512-pixel 

texture maps 

will be the 

norm-much 

crispier than 

Quake If's 

64x64 maps. 

Feed this big bully a belly-full of laser 

blast... and notice the drop-dead 

gorgeous lighting effects. 

The keyframe-animated models 

average about 450 polys, although 

some of the smoothly modeled 

beasties, such as the rasta-Predatorinspired 

Skaarj, venture into the 600 

range . The ethereal soundtrack, 

accelerated via A3D, adds to the 

experience. 

The one unfortunate 

byproduct of all this visual 

excellence is you'll need 

quite the Ober-computer to 

get framerates up to snuff. 

The minimum requirements 

listed on the box are a 

joke-realistically, you 

should have 

at least a 

200M Hz 

Pentium or 233MHz 

Pentium II with a phat 

3D accelerator in tow 

(currently only 

3Dfx and 

PowerVR are 

supported; 

OpenGL and 

Direct3D are in 

the works) . 

While the software renderer is 

one of the prettiest out there, 

you won't get the full immersion 

you deserve without a 

supported accelerator sitting in 

your PCI slot. Some PowerVR/ 

PowerSGL specific special 

effects include vertex lighting, 

High-res 

textures 

make 

almost 

everything 

in Unreal a 

wonder to 

behold. 

which simulates more realistic 

lighting and shadow 

casting. Unfortunately, you 

loose some volumetric 

fogging in the 3Dfx and 

software versions. 

On the performance tip, 

you can expect smooth 

framerates in the high 40s 

on a high-end system , but 

even the mightiest dual SLI 

system bogs down when too many 

objects and textures hit the screen. 

But the character animation looks a 

Unreal's alien world is filled with a host of alien brutes 

who wanna see you dead-show 'em what ya got!

it weak, especially the human characters. And, 

the occasional clipping problem and light coronas 

shining through objects hamper the immersion. 

Unreal packs in all the programmability and 

extensibility Quake 

did, so expect tons of 

conversions, skins, 

and levels to appear 

in no time (thanks in 

large part to the 

included free level 

editor). 

As a single-player 

experience, Unreal is 

immersive, but derivative. 

Despite the 

fancy futuristic 

locales and exotic 

weaponry, gameplay 

still revolves around 

finding the switch 

and moving ever 

attack styles. Where Unreal loses its luster is 

during multiplayer. Despite all the technological 

advancements, including portal technology 

(which allows for linkable servers) and web 

Navigating the indoor/outdoor levels that make up Unreal leads 

to the occasional hot foot. 

forwards, killing almost everything in your pathwe 

say almost because some characters in the 

game actually help you. Storytelling is done via 

your universal translator's monochrome LCD 

display. It worked in System Shock, but not here. 

The much-vaunted AI is in full effect, with 

enemies circle-strafing, dodging, and even 

leading its shots, especially when you go up 

against the computer-controlled Bots. 

There are nouveaux nuances here and 

there-dashing has been incorporated into 

normal movement, and the variable-mode 

weapon attacks come in handy for mixing up 

launching, going 

toe-to-toe against a 

warm body isn't 

exciting. Even the 

ability to play dead 

during deathmatches 

couldn't 

tear death-dealing 

Maximum PC 

editors from their 

beloved Quake II. 

But new gameplay 

modes, such as the 

flashlit Dark 

Matches, are cool 

compensation. Epic 

MegaGames is busy 

getting those 

proverbial patches up to address multiplayer 

problems. 

Unreal is an awesome technology that hints 

at greater glory and, with its solid single-player 

experience, is a worthwhile indulgence. 


Price $50 

Developer Epic MegaGames 

Publisher GT Interactive 

Phone 800.469.5961 

URL www.gtinteractive.com 

OPTIMIZING YOUR 

UNREAL 

EXPE .. NCE 

Coaxing playable framerates 

out of Unreal can be vexing. 

Even if you think your system's 

pimped out to the max, Unreal 

has a habit of showing you 

how small your pixel-pumping 

muscle truly is. 

Here are some tips for getting 

Unreal as silky-smooth as 

possible. 

.,.. Adlualla• Vlluall Gallllltr 

Unreal is a memory 

Intensive application. With 

the amount of textures used 

in a given level for monsters 

and terrain, framerates 

stutter when the game starts 

to access the hard drive for 

virtual memory. The easiest 

way to keep Unreal from 

doing this is to set the 

texture resolution to low, 

which cuts the texture sizes 

used throughout the game 

in half (512x512 becomes 

256x256, etc.), cutting 

memory storage requirements 

in half, as well. To do 

this, go to the AudioNideo 

option in the main menu, 

highHght the Texture Detail 

option, and set it to low. 

In the main menu, choose 

Advanced options. This will 

open the following small 

window outside of Unreal • 

... ......... CM:IIe 

Unreal reserves a chunk of 

system memory for all its 

resources, induding sound, 

textures, and so forth. By 

default, It is set to 2MB. 

Increasing this setting 

lessens the chance of your 

OS uStng virtual memory, 

thus causing stuttering and 

slow framerates. To do this, 

go the Options menu . 

.................... 

IIIII •nd 

If your playing experience 

starts stuttering in areas 

you've already traversed, 

flushing the game's internal 

cache may help. To do this, 

pull down the console by 

pressing the tilde key(-). At 

the console, type in FLUSH 

and hit enter. 

What's the point of a game being 3D if it doesn't employ any perspective? Unreal delivers. 

For more tweaks and tricks, go 

to -.unreal.org.

The i14D's last Hurrah 

All eyes on i 

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Refresh rates 

will not get 20 

afiCionados 

exCited 

Performance 1s 

below othe1 

1740 parts 

PlUSES 

Inexpensive 

AGP 2x card 

Faster 230MHz 

RAMDAC 

Edged out G460 

1n 030 tests 

MINUSES 

Lower 20 

resolutions 

SDRAM instead 

of SGRAM 

Refresh 1 ates 

will turn off 20- 

aholics 

20 d1splay IS not 

as cnsp as other 

cards at same 

1efresh rate 

Dnver problems 

caused v1sual 

gl1tches 

PlUSES 

AGP 2x 

performance on 

the PCI bus 

Gobs of texture 

memor (16/v\B) 

Play h1gh-res 

textured games 

on older systems 

:a ~---;; D,...r~lv-e-rs-ln~c"lu-d'e- 

1 mip-map 

a: 1--:oa:-d'-iu...,s,...tm_e_n,ts __ 

Great VISUal 

quality 

MINUSES 

All that memory 

drives up price 

Not as fast as 

other PCI 

videocards 

Steep price 

In an age of dithered textures and unsightly 

seams, the i74o-2D/3D graphics chip love-child 

of Reai3D, Chips and Technologies, and lntelset 

a new level of 3D visual excellence. 

This 64-bit video processor, released earlier this 

year, comes chock-full of features, including a 32-bit 

floating-point setup engine, parallel processing of 

polygons, per-pixel mip-mapping, as well as all your 

favorite 3D visual features, such as bilinear filtering, 

and more. Direct3D is its forte, but with the proper 

drivers, i740 can do the QpenQ. fandango as well. 

i740's split-memory architecture relies exclusively 

on system memory for texture storage via AGP 2x 

with sidebands processing-any local memory on 

the videocard is locked down for 16-bit framebuffer/~ 

duties. Some critics claim i740's 

Diamond Stealth II G460 

Sporting 8MB of nonupgradable 100MHz 

SDRAM, the Diamond Stealth II G460's lowprofile 

NLX -ready PCB 

includes dual VESA 

Media Interfaces for 

easy interfacing to 

Diamond's MPEG-2 

daughterboard. 

The low price means sacrifices. Don't 

expect TV ins or outs (none of these cards 

have 'em) . Slower SDRAM and 203MHz 

RAMDAC are also signs of corner cutting 

(the StarFighter uses faster SGRAM and a 

220MHz RAMDAC). Faster RAMDAC 

means higher refresh rates and cleaner and 

crisper video signals. 

On the performance tip, the Stealth II 

G460 came up short-at 800x600 Forsaken , 

the G460 scored 32.27fps-a full 9.7 frames 

slower than the StarFighter AGP. With the proper 

ICDs in place, the G460 pushed through Quake II 

smoothly, although anything past 800x600 isn't 

recommended for speed freaks. 

reliance on system memory for texture storage and 

execution is a performance hindrance. But under 

our application-based benchmarks, we've seen the 

i740 outperform local-memory videocards. 

Make sure your system can handle a full AGP 

2x implementation, as many early Socket 7 AGP 

boards based on VIA's VP3 core-logic AGPset have 

problems with this architecture. 

Six months is a long time in the 3D accelerator 

world, and with newer, faster, feature-rich 2D/3D 

architectures from 53 (previewed on page B6), 3Dfx, 

Number Nine, and others coming out later this year, 

the i740's days of glory are short The Matrox 

MGA-G200 (reviewed on page 105) is already 

surpassing the i740 in features and performance. 


OpenGL 

lCD drivers 

for Diamond's 

Stealth II will get 

you Quake-ing in 

no time. 

Visual quality 

remains top-notch, 

with no stray pixel 

or warped texture in 

sight But there is 

some~ 

visible in the cloud 

cover. Also, there's 

no mip-map quality 

adjustment on the 

control panel. 

Price $99 

Company Diamond Multimedia 

Phone 800.468.5846 

URL www.diamondmm.com 

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Hercules Terminator :Zx/i 

The Terminator 2x/i follows the G460 closely in 

specs, with its 8MB of nonupgradable 1 OOMHz 

SDRAM, although Hercules opted for a full-sized 

AIX-compliant PCB. It also tossed in a 230MHz 

DAC for 2D and twin VESA Media Interfaces for 

hooking up an MPEG-2 daughterboard. 

Apart from the Touch controls, Hercules used 

standard i740 drivers, with no mip-mapping 

adjustment whatsoever. 

Reai3D StarFighter PCI 

With its 220MHz RAMDAC, the StarFighter PCI 

comes with a whopping 24MB of total video 

memory-dual 4MB SGRAM chips locked in as 

a dedicated buffer. Thanks to the PCI-to-AGP 

bridge controller chip located on the PCB, the 

remaining 16MB of SDRAM (split up into four 

4MB chips) tricks the i740 into thinking it's 

system memory on an AGP slot. 

Complete with mip-mapping adjustments and 

Forsaken, the 

Terminator 2x/i punched 

in a full 8fps faster than 

the Stealth II. Otherwise, 

it was neck-and-neck 

2x/i suffers from some 

weird driver issues. 

with Diamond's offerings. 

Hercules did not have OpenGL lCD drivers ready at 

press time. But, under Microsoft's Baseball 30 98 at 

1024x768, weird smeared textures appeared. And 

despite the faster RAMDAC, visual quality is fuzzy, 

even at the maximum 85Hz refresh rate. 

Hercules needs to work these driver issues out 

before we can recommend the 2x/i. 

Price $99 

Company Hercules 

Phone 510.623.6030 

URL www.hercules.com 

OpenGL lCD, the StarFighter PCI 

fought to keep up with its true 

AGP 2x cousins. And while it 

bests the Stealth II G460 

at 800x600, it faltered 

at 1 024x768. But 

Reai3D was the only 

board in this roundup to 

have OpenGL lCD. 

19.5fps at 800x600 

Quake II isn't exactly 

mind-numbing, but visual 

quality is as sharp as ever. 

The only 

board to come 

with OpenGL lCD, 

Reai3D's StarFighter PCI 

can kick down AGP 

texture storage on your 

PCI-bound system. 

The StarFighter PCI 

should may not be as fast as boards based on 

nVidia's Riva 128 chipset, but aren't a few framesper-second 

worth better visual quality? 

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Price $229 

Company Reai3D 

Phone 800.393.7730 

URL www.real3d.com 

SE I Daytona USA I Redline 

Racer I TrueSpace 3 SE I 

Reai3D demos

Premiere 5.0 

Home video 

editing gone pro 

32K 

for I< 

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PLUSES 

Enhanced aud1o 

ca abd1hes 

Redes1gned 

mon1tor wmdow 

Automat1c scroll 

and crawl 

feature 

I . 

Compat1bd1ty 

w1th realt1me 

cards 

Enhanced 

hardware (deck) 

control 

MINUSES 

Cannot v1ew 

capture v1deo 1n 

mon1tor w~ndow 

Cannot res1ze 

the mon1tor or 

lay w~ndows 

Only one proJect 

can be open at 

a t1me 

Deck control 

and batch 

recapture are 

buggy 

Two years ago, Premiere 

4.2 had some issues 

when it came to procaliber 

production . 

Premiere 5.0 leaves no 

doubt that Adobe is 

hunting the professional 

market-and loaded for bear. 

Installation (including QuickTime 

3.0) was a breeze, and Premiere 

automatically detected and set up 

our Perception professional 

videocard . 

Premiere's interface has 

morphed into the best of 

in:sync's Speed Razor 4.0 

and Avid 's Xpress 2.0, while 

keeping the best of Premiere 

4.2. You'll spend most of 

your edit time in the Monitor 

window, which resembles an Avidstyle 

editor (with the clip view and 

the timeline view side by side) . The 

monitor window easily accommodates 

three-point editing (fitting 

a clip into a hole), simple insert, 

preview, trim and control of clips, 

and the project timeline. 

Version 5.0 uses four tabbed 

palettes (similar to Photoshop): 

Commands is similar to Actions 

for repeated shortcuts; Transitions 

is an easily customized collection of 

transitions; Navigator quickly locates 

work areas of the timeline; and Info 

quickly delivers the complete goods 

on a clip. Palettes can be joined up 

or torn off and used independently. 

5.0 also features a revised set of 

editable keyboard shortcuts. 

The new Timeline window (where 

the project is displayed) simplifies the 

addition, deletion , naming, targeting, 

Premiere 5.0's Compressor/Expander filter 

lets you fine-tune your audio track's 

dynamic range. 

hiding, displaying, 

and editing of tracks. 

The timeline, which 

allows up to 99 

tracks of audio 

and 99 tracks of 

video, now displays 

tracks from the top 

down (similar to 

how After Effects 

and Photoshop handle layers). 

Adding greatly to Premiere's flexibility, 

tracks can be individually named , 

targeted, collapsed, made shy, locked, 

or excluded. Premiere's extensive set 

of video filters is accessible by simply 

Premiere's timeline 

has been revamped 

to closely mirror 

professional-level 

editors like in:sync's 

Speed Razor 4.0 and 

Avid's Xpress 2.0. 

j' 

l / 

New keyframable audio filters will have 

you mixing and matching effects into the 

wee hours of the morning. 

right-clicking on a 

clip in the timeline. 

The Project 

(formerly known 

as bins) window 

stores your audio 

and video clips . 

Individual clips 

can be displayed 

as picons (picture 

icons), thumbnails, or as a simple list. 

The amount of information displayed 

is easily customized, and bins can be 

searched and sorted any way imaginable 

. The 11 database fields and four 

user-defined fields can contain up to 

~nresoold---------l 

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The new Noise Gate filter removes much 

of the background noise during quiet 

passages of an audio clip. 

end e 

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32 le~ 

en coLI 

power 

editin 

lip-syr 

tools. 

layers 

drag-a 

Effects 

files, s 

graph 

so on 

platfo 

the aa 

If y 

audio 

check 

Pan, B 

Low P 

Notch 

more. 

which 

and so 

use th 

narrati< 

rev am~

32K of text. Obviously, this is helpful 

for long-form projects. In fact, clips 

can even be moved directly to the 

timeline en masse 

in the bin order, 

by selecting and 

dragging them. 

You can also 

move any 

number of clips 

to the "monitor" 

window, to speed 

trimming of 

several clips. 

On long-form projects, 

users can now create movies 

up to three hours long. Even 

more significant and along 

the same lines, Adobe has 

fixed the sync-timing problem 

that's plagued the application 

for years. In previous versions, 

when making broadcast 

movies using the industrystandard 

29.97fps, audio 

and video would 

drift out of sync 

after only a 

few minutes. 

This caused 

serious broadcast 

professionals 

to abandon 

Premiere and 

move to higher 

end editors such as Avid's Xpress. 

Other video improvements include 

32 levels of undo, which should 

encourage experimentation, more 

powerful titling, superior long-format 

editing capability, support for true 

lip-sync, and slip-and-slide editing 

tools. You can now import Photoshop 

layers individually, as well as simplified 

drag-and-drop capabilities with After 

Effects and Illustrator. Most Premiere 

files, such as EDLs, titles, motion 

graphics, storyboards, mattes, and 

so on , can be exchanged across 

platforms, but these don't include 

the actual digitized clips. 

If you're as serious about your 

audio as you are about your video, you should 

check out Premiere's 14 new audio filters-Auto 

Pan, Bass and Treble, Chorus, Flanger, High and 

Low Pass filters, Parametric Equalization, 

Notch/Hum, Multitap delay, Noise gate, and 

more. Our favorite is the Compressor/Expander, 

which controls the dynamic range of the loudest 

and softest sounds in an audio clip. Most pros 

use these tools to "fatten up" a voice and make 

narration more understandable. Premiere has 

revamped sound resampling during import, 

.L .. L : ' '~1 

Adobe's finally fixed the 29.97 sync issue, making this application 

suitable to broadcast editors. 

supports 48kHz audio, and still has "rubber 

band" controls for volume. 

Adobe has committed to open standards, 

which makes Premiere attractive to plug-ins 

developers for transitions, EDLs, accelerators, 

and machine controls. It does support multithreading 

and MMX processors. Premiere also 

has tighter support for the DPS capture card and 

the commitment to support cards with realtime 

effects in the near future. That move will put 

Premiere 5.0 firmly in competition with lesser 

Old time Premiere users might not like how it handles transitions now, 

but that's OK because ... 

... if you click on the arrow key to the left of the timeline window, it'll 

bring you back to how they did things in the old days. 

systems costing many times more. At a list price 

of $895, Premiere 5.0 is a bargain, with real 

potential to lower the admission price of high-end 

video post-production. 

Price $895 ($199 upgrade) 

Company Adobe 

Phone 800.492.3623 

URL www.adobe.com 

CREAnNG ROLLS 

AND CRAWLS ON 

TITLES 

One of the coolest new 

features in Premiere is the 

ability to create Rolls and 

Crawls in your title sequence. 

Begin by going to the Tltler. 

... Before you begin titling, 

right-mouse-click to bring 

up text options. From this 

menu, you can set your 

text's attributes. 

..... 

- ._ 

-flcAtwl•Dr*IN- 

-c-..... 

... After you've selected your 

font size and style, select the 

large rn and begin typing. 

Use the fT) with the four 

arrows on it in the left-hand 

side of the tiller to adjust 

your text on the page. 

... From the drop-down Titles 

box, choose the Rolling 

Title option and set your 

preferences. You can set up 

all facets, including pre-roll, 

post-roll, ramp up and 

down, direction, and speed. 

... Combine this with 

translucent drop shadows, 

textures, ramped colors, 

motion effects, text boxes, 

and shapes, and you've got 

a first -class title maker. 

r.;;:-;;_- ~F- 

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Pionex 828010 

Selling out comes with a price 

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First-gen 

Celeron is 

found 

wanting . 

PlUSES 

Nothing 

soldered onto 

motherboard, 

making 

upgrades 

ainless 

Light on the 

wallet compared 

to a top-of-theline 

Pentium II 

MINUSES 

Speakers so 

cheesy, we 

mcknamed 'em 

Cheez Wh1z 

M1croATX lim1ts 

ex ans1on 

Bargainbasement 

performance 

Celery: It's rich in vitamin C 

but never seems to satisfy 

your hunger. 

Celeron: It'll keep 

your wallet packed but 

won't quench your 

for power. 

But Intel's entrylevel 

chip is designed 

to steamroll those pesky 

Socket 7 chip makers, not pack 

your pockets with power. Pionex's 

staid Model 82601 0 fits the bill for 

those looking for the basics, not 

gaming straight out of the box. 

Cracking open the case, we were 

instantly impressed by the Celeron's 

nakedness. Intel cut production costs 

by leaving out the on board L2 cache 

and plastic case of the Pentium II. It 

still snaps into a stock Slot 1, but with 

different support brackets. 

What a difference cache makes. 

Performance was, as expected, 

ho-hum. While it motors past anything 

in the classic or MMX Pentium 

lines, the Celeron pulled bootMark 

scores far below Intel's slowest 

Pentium II with cache. A 266MHz 

Pentium II pulls in about 125 on the 

bootMark. The Celeron 's 84.1 shows 

where performance goes when you 

don't have any cache in the system. 

Pionex equips the 826010 with a 

Cirrus Logic-based AGP card . The 

videocard failed our OpenGL gaming 

benchmark and sputtered along 

with 13fps in the ForsakenMark at 

800x600. Thankfully, Pionex threw 

4MB of RAM that'll 

give you 24-bit color 

at 1 024x768. 

As shipped , the 

hard drive in the 

Pionex crawled past 

our HD Tach test with 

an average transfer 

rate of 5,983, but 

made up for the 

indiscretion by giving 

you double the 

capacity other 

manufacturers 

provide in this price 

range. Performance 

with 3D rendering 

and Photoshop functions 

also turned in 

an expected tepid performance. 

The generic 

32x Max Lite-On 

CD-ROM turned in a 

surprising 19x rating, 

about average for "32x" drives . 

We couldn't get the 826010 to 

complete SYSmark 98. On the older 

SYSmark 32 bench, the machine 

turned in a barely acceptable 180. 

A Sony PCV-150 MMX 233MHz 

Pentium scored 188 in SYSmark. 

What's up with that? Someone 

punked out here. 

The 82601 O's main strengths and 

weaknesses lie in its upgrade paths. 

While many near-$1 ,000 computers 

shave costs by integrating sound and 

video onto the motherboard, Pionex 

used add-in cards for both. Unhappy 

with the addled Cirrus Logic card? 

Slap in an AGP StarFighter or the 

latest and greatest from nVidia or 

Matrox to boost performance. Want 

3D positional sound? Throw in a 

Turtle Beach Montego or Diamond 

Monster Sound. But the 826010 

runs into a wall with its MicroATX 

formfactor and limited memory 

expansion and PCI slots. Put the 

826010 against a 300M Hz AMD 

K6-2 and you 'll go home red-faced 

and ashamed . Although it's a jewel 

to overclock, this Celeron is found 

wanting in performance at its native 

clock speed . But remember: always 

spring a few hundred bucks and slap 

in up to a 333MHz Pentium II. 

The 826010 isn't a gaming 

machine out of the box, nor is it 

a bruiser for crunching desktop 

applications. It's a good entry-level 

machine for hobbyists who want to 

get in on the ground floor with 

room to grow. 

-Gordon Ung 

URL www.pionex. com


What do you want to buy today? The 

Pionex gives you good upgrade options for 

a near·$1,000 machine. Upgrade video, 

sound, and CPU with impudence. 

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Big foot, big footprint 

While the 6.4GB is nice for 

a near-$1,000 machine, 

the loss of a full 5.25-inch 

bay isn't appreciated. 

Make that a 128MB 

DIMM, Sir You can add 

one, just one, more 

memory module and 

you're out, man. 

PCI dilemma Choose your 

upgrades carefully. With one shared 

ISA/PCI slot taken, you only have 

two PCI slots left to expand. 

Did we mention the speakers? 

We didn't know if these speakers 

were real or the mock-ups you see 

on desks at an Office Depot. They 

instantly made us pine for Lab Tees. 

", 

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Matrox Millennium G2DO 

From zero to hero 

Kung fu chopping its way back from the 

3D ghetto is Matrox, with its MGA 

G200-powered line of 2D/3D videocards. 

And the Millennium G200 is 

leading the charge back to the desktop 

with a superior combination 

of extra-tasty-crispy 

2D performance and terrific 3D that 

sets a new level of visual excellence. 

Long known for eyeball-seducing 

2D, but piss-poor 3D, Matrox has 

finally come to its senses. Powering 

this Millennium G200 is Matrox's 

proprietary dual 64-bit parallel-processing 

architecture (known as the 

128-bit DuaiBus), which is built 

specifically for high-end 2D desktop 

work, as well as megapixel pushing. 

While most boards (including 

Voodoo 2 , i740, Riva 128, and Verite 

The Millennium 

G200 (armed 

with the 

MGA-G200 

chip), makes 

up for Matrox's 

past follies. 

V2x00) are stuck at 16-bit rendering depth, the 

MGA-G200 internally renders at 32 bits (a process 

Matrox dubs Vibrant Color Quality), then dithers 

down to the application's needs. Since most 

games render out to 64,000 colors, don't expect a 

leap in visual quality. But as games push higher-res 

textures with greater color, you 'll need higher 

color depths and a higher color-depth ~ 

Without one, you'll see banding patterns. And 

with the appropriate amount of local memory 

(8MB minimum, upgradable to 16MB), doubleand 

triple-buffering can pump up performance. 

Straddling the Millennium G200's AGP 2x PCB 

is 16MB of SGRAM (8MB on board and 8MB via 

memory module), which allows this board to reach 

up to 1900x1200 resolution. And with help from a 

250MHz RAMDAC, refresh rates as high as 200Hz 

can be obtained at lower resolutions. 2D visual 

quality is crisp and clean, with no hint of fuzziness-this 

is the way all 2D should look. 

BENCHMARK MACHINE: Micron M illennia Xru wit h 300MHz 

Pentium II processor. 64MB of SDRAM, Intel Atlanta 440LX 

ATX motherboard , Windows 98 fi nal release with DirectX 6 

beta. Quake II benchmark results using demo2.dm2 and 

Matrox's GL-to-D3D w rapper. 

Does the 

Millennium G200 banish 

the 3D stigma its predecessors 

bore? Hell yeah! Texture-mapped 

polys, regardless of 

game, are rich in 

color, with excellent saturation 

and hues. Alpha blends 

and colored-lighting effects 

appear beautiful, although a 

visible mip-mapping demarcation 

is readily apparent. 

On the performance tip, 

the Millennium G200 

proved faster than a lone 

Voodoo 2 card, pumping a 

cool 64.61fps at 800x600 

Forsaken . Battlezone 

performance is also solid . 

The only game that bogged 

down the MGA-G200 was Descent: Freespace. 

At press time, Matrox's ~ lnstallable Client 

~ wasn't ready, but Matrox did have a 

D3D/OpenGL wrapper. Under Quake II , scores at 

800x600 fell short of matching a single Voodoo 2 

board , posting 27.0fps. Expect performance to 

get a shot in the arm when the real lCD is 

released this summer. While the card will be 

able to work single-cycle trilinear mip-mapping, 

multitexturing will happen in multiple passes, 

thus causing a slight performance hit for games 

based on QuakeGL technology. 

M atrox has at last shaken its "mystakes" with 

an intense product that should be at the top of 

anyone's videocard list. 


Price $228 (as tested with 16MB SGRAM; 

$149 for 8MB version) 

Company Matrox 

Phone 800.361 . 1408 

URL www.matrox.com 

MINUSES 

Still not as fast 

as dual Voodoo2 

No multltextunng 

in a s1ngle pass 

Micrografx's Picture 

8 I Simply 3D 3 I Netscape 

Communicator I PointCast I 

Imagination I 3Deep I Game 

Bundle TBA 

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Release 2.5 of Kinetix's 3D Studio Max takes a 

proven performer deeper into SGI and Unix territory. 

Max has the muscle to create amazing 

3D content, but is definitely not for the faint 

of heart, or the faint of wallet. 

Discreet Logic, brings unique enhancements 

to the desktop through two plug-ins: Paint, an 

3D Studio Max 2.5 

Basic mesh modeling, 

shading, lighting, and animation 

have been around for 

years, and Max is a pro at all 

of them. This release focuses 

on practical improvements 

in several modeling disciincluding 

NURBS lofting, 

polygon reduction, and multi-sub 

object material assignment. The operative 

word: "productivity." 

Nl.i.B.fl..S modeling animation now 

allows lofting just like its geometric 

cousin. Game developers concerned 

with minimizing polygon counts now have 

new subobjects to automate the reshaping 

of trimmed surfaces. Merely positioning the 

plane of a slice modifier gizmo (an imaginary 

form that defines the area to be 

changed) causes the object to be refined or 

split into new vertices, faces, or edges according 

to a user-defined choice. More important is that 

this feature can be animated. UV lofts, and one 

and two rail sweeps can now 

be defined at the subobject 

level. The parent objects of 

dependent subobjects can 

even be replaced at the 

user's discretion. Formerly, 

noneditable meshes couldn't 

be automatically cut and 

sliced. Now they can. Finally, 

multiple material modeling 

and assignment now uses 

simple drag-and-drop techniques. 

A task that used to be tedious and timeconsuming 

is no longer so. All these 

improvements with 6-bit names boil down to 

time saved. But Kinetix didn't stop there. 

Melding live footage with animation is 

another daunting task. Max 2.5 introduces yet 

another time-saving feature to tame this 

monster: the Camera Tracker Utility. Simply put, 

you define movement coordinates, much like ~ 

~ . and a range of pixels to track. These data 

move the "camera" just like the live camera. 

automated rotoscoping tool, and Effect, for 3D 

paint effects. 

Digimation comes through with Bones Pro, 

a suite of four utilities that take the pain of 

boning, and Shag: Fur, the digital equivalent 

of Rogaine. 

-Rick Stevens 

The ability to track 

an area over time 

typifies 3D Studio 

Max's strengths. 

A slicing modifier applied to a mesh object. 

Here, a new development 

propels an already meaty 

offering into the realm of 

the sublime. 

Max can now directly 

import~ and VRBL 

virtual-reality formats and export a scene or 

animation to version 2.0 file format. The web is 

now even more accessible to game developers. 

Maxscript has been 

updated to reflect new capabilities 

in release 2.5, and the 

Lens Effects topics have been 

revised and updated with 

new tutorials. Have a stable 

of 2.0 plug-ins? Don't fret. 

Vendors of more than 100 

plug-ins have pledged 

updated versions, most at no 

additional charge. 

Finding something not to 

like about 3D Studio Max 2.5 is difficult. If 

you're a serious 3D animator and want to push 

the envelope to save time and money, Max 2.5 

is a must-have. 

Price $3,495/Upgrade from Max 2.0 $95 

Company Kinetix 

Phone 888.890.4456 

URL www.ktx.com

no 

5 

Paint Plug-in 

Paint is a vector-based rotoscoping 

plug-in. Picture a tour bus with a 

number on top moving rapidly 

down a freeway. The bus moves 

beneath a freeway sign, which casts 

a shadow from front to back. To 

eliminate the 

number the old 

way, you 

exported a 

frame 

sequence, then 

imported it into 

a bitmapediting 

program, 

whiting 

out the number 

on each frame 

separately. If 

EHed Plug-in 

Effect uses the depth information 

written into 30 Studio Max's file to 

apply special effects to existing rendered 

animation footage. If a fickle 

client wants another light added or 

the effect is undesirable, you would 

undo, then redo it, frame by 

tedious frame. Paint changes that 

entirely. The new way is to create 

one mask on the first frame and the 

last frame of the sequence, then 

define the pixels to be tracked . In 

Paint, the mask 

tracks automatically 

throughout 

the clip. 

Paint-masking effect automatically moves with 

the bus. 

Moving a light source changes lighting in a rendered 

animation. 

Shag: Fur Plug-in 

Things can get a little hairy around 

the typical animation and specialeffects 

studio and Shag: Fur, a plugin 

for 30 Studio Max, can definitely 

smooth things out. This is a versatile 

and extremely easy-to-use subroutine 

that adds its specialized rendering 

engine to the Environment 

dialog in Max. 

There are some gotchas, though. 

The rendering must be from a camera 

viewport in order to work at all. At 

least one "hair enabled light" must be 

included in the scene, and in order to 

But the tracking 

area is still 

white under the 

shadow cast by 

the freeway 

sign . No problem 

. Paint a 

darkened area 

where the 

colors punched up at the last minute, 

there's no need for panic. Effect can 

take the full range of filters (sharpen , 

color correction, distort, stylize, etc.) 

and rendering effects such as 

shadows, shading, and reflections, 

and apply them to an existing 

animation without the 

need to re-render. 

A demo clip of two 

dancers prancing around a 

pillar and into a lighted 

chamber beyond offers a 

-~ - glimpse into Effect's potential. 

Add a light and move it 

in 3D space over time and 

all shadows, shading, and 

lighting effects follow it as if 

it were part of the original 

file. Move one dancer to the 

left, and Effect correctly 

render shadows properly, its shadow 

casting option must be on. All sample 

files had "obsolete data format" 

errors, and several were missing backgrounds. 

Once these minor matters 

were resolved, the tutorials were clear 

and informative. Finally, the authorization 

procedure is truly cloak -anddagger. 

A local routine within Max 

queries the program for the Max 

~ number, then Digimation takes 

that number and gives you a weird 

17 -character code to enter into the 

dialog to activate the plug-in. 

112 .... 

shadow should be in seven frames. 

Each of our "bitmap" marks is 

really a vector graphic that it can be 

rotated, scaled, or redrawn without 

undoing. What a timesaver. Paint 

comes with a panoply of shapes , 

including filled and outline rectangles, 

ellipses, polygons, lines 

(orthogonal and freehand), and 

effects such as noise, distort, 

sharpen, and stylize. 

Anyone familiar with Adobe 

Photoshop 4.0 or above will immediately 

feel at home . 

MAXIMUM PC VfHOICT 

Price $1,995 

Company Discreet Logic 

Phone 514.393.1616 

URL www.discreet.com 1 

places the pillar in the foreground 

when he moves behind it. Add lights 

or lighting effects to the chamber, 

and all reflections on the marble 

floor are automatically updated. 

Imagine the savings in time, frustration, 

and money. 

Both Paint and Effect are aimed 

directly at Hollywood special-effects 

houses. To sweeten the pot, Max 2.5 

adds importing support for the Kodak 

Cineon film recorder format, SGI 's 

RGB format (at 16 bits per channel) , 

and Apple's QuickTime 3.0 industrystandard 

digital-video format. 

MAKIMUM PC VfHOICT 

Price $1 ,995 

Company Discreet Logic 

Phone 514.393.1616 

URL www.discreet.com 9 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~' --~3~cm~, 

Fur applied to a cartoon character's head. Notice the 

multicolored rendering 

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Rendering of a seaworm Notice the vectors in wireframe views. 

~ 111 

Fur can be applied to any object 

or multi-subobject selection desired. 

The easiest way is to assign unique 

sub-material numbers to the desired 

faces and tell Shag: Fur which ones to 

plug. Parameters such as the length 

of strands, thickness, and density per 

face are selectable and random values 

applied to simulate reality. Color can 

be specified as specific base and tip 

color or taken from a bitmap applied 

to the object in the Material Editor. 

Natural effects such as leaning and 

bending are simulated using special 

vectors added to the Helpers toolkit 

by Shag: Fur. Total control over 

angle, randomness, and range is provided. 

Several vectors can be applied 

to the same object with differing 

weights. All these features can be 

animated, too. 

Any animator creating furry critters 

should have Shag: Fur in their 

toolbox. 

Price $295 

Company Digimation 

Phone 800.854.4498 

URL www.digimation.com 

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Bones Pro Max 

Tedious boning of complex mesh 

objects has never been a fun task. 

Bones Pro Max takes some of the 

angst out of this chore. 

Bones Pro's Max module will 

modify parameters, allow tweaking 

of a bone's influence on the mesh 

along its length in 1% increments. 

The strength of influence parameter 

adjusts the tenacity of the attraction. 

The Influence Editor Window 

paints a color-coded pictograph of 

each bone's sphere of influence. 

Visualizing where the mesh went 

astray is a snap. All parameters can 

be reset and the new settings 

viewed in this window. Editing right 

down to the vertex is supported. 

Very powerful. 

Skeleton takes a select set of 

bones generated by Max's Bones 

System, then builds boxes around 

them. Building and positioning 

boxes for hundreds of bones would 

take forever, but 

one mouse click 

does it all with 

Skeleton. 

Blend smoothes 

out sharp seams 

on Boolean objects. 

Picture a " tree" 

with a cylindrical 

trunk and angled 

cylinders joined to 

create "branches." 

Blend takes these 

sharp, unnatural 

joints and 

smoothes them 

into a curve, 

just like a tree's 

branch joint. 

Snapshot Plus is 

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great for freezing a space warp at 

a point in time. Convenient, but not 

a necessity. 

Any serious character animator 

can save valuable time by using 

Bones Pro . 

The Influence Editor Window showing area of influence of bone 

(red is highest). 

Price $495 

Company Digimation 

Phone 800.854.4498 

URL www.digimation.com 

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QUICKLY BUILD A SPACESHIP 

~ Using the Create/Geometry option, create 

a sphere. 

~ Scale down the Y dimension in the top 

viewport, then the X dimension in the front 

viewport. The result is a flattened, 

elongated disk. 

~ With the disk object selected, clone a 

copy of the disk object, move it slightly to 

the left of the original, rotate it 90 

degrees about the Z axis. 

~ Move the clone to the right and align it 

with the back of the original in the 

top viewport. 

~ Scale the clone down in the Y dimension first 

in the top viewport, then in the left viewport. 

Move it into place toward the back 

of the original disk. 

~ In Create/Objects, select Compound 

object, then Boolean 2. Wrth Union 

specified, select the disk, then Pick 

Operand B, then the done. Max joins both 

shapes into one. 

~ Place the lights: one spot front and to 

the right of the star, one in front and 

shining on the spaceship from below. 

~ Assign a slightly dull silver material to 

the spaceship. 

~ Finally, use a starfield bitmap as an 

environmental map for the background, 

and render.

• 

E 

:, 

HEY! YOU GOT JD 

IN MY :ZD! 

A nifty feature of Photoshop 

5.0 is the new 3D Transform 

command that maps your 

2D image selection onto a 

3D frame, similar to the way 

3D polygon games such as 

Quake map texture maps 

onto their polygon worlds. 

The process is simple and 

surprisingly effective. 

.,.. First, select the 3D 

Transform command from 

the Render section of the 

Filter menu. 

.,.. Then, choose which best 

suits your subject (in 

general, the effect works 

best with the cube), and 

drag out a rough cube. 

... Now, use the open arrow to 

line up the corners of the 3D 

overlay onto the vertices of 

the 2D shape you want to 

map. This can be tricky since 

only the front points on the 

bottom and the center front 

point on top are adjustable, 

so you you'll probably need 

to adjust your field of view 

in the slider to the right. 

.,.. Finally, go to the camera 

pan and trackball tools to 

rotate your newly rendered 

object in 3D space. Options 

in the tools allow you to 

block out the background 

and set the image res and 

degree of anti-aliasing. 

Photoshop 5.0 

The Godzilla of 

graphics apps is back 

Anyone disappointed by the babysteps 

that Photoshop took between versions 

3 and 4 will be relieved to discover 

that the leap to version 5 is quantum, 

replete with new features and significant 

improvements to existing ones. 

While Adobe stills seems reluctant to 

migrate its cash cow into the online era, this 

latest iteration still represents a major stride by 

the dominant digital graphics app. 

The Layers palette that anchored the last revision 

of Photoshop has been injected with some 

serious steroids this time out. New canned effects 

include a one-stop layer effects that add 3D-style 

bevels, embossing, inner- and outer-glows, and 

the oh-so-popular soft drop shadow that streamlines 

a designer's workflow exponentially. And 

powerful user-controlled options allow all 

shadows and bevels in a document to share the 

same light source , for far more natural effects 

with far less labor. 

Other labor-saving devices include a slew of 

powerful new tools, such as " magnetic" versions 

of the traditional pen and lasso selection tools. 

These crafty gadgets make selecting contrasting 

areas a snap, as your crude circumvention automatically 

snaps to the object's edges as you draw, 

with user-designated precision. The pen version 

of the tool creates an editable bezier path similar 

to the product of another of Photoshop 5.0's new 

tools, the freeform pen . Vector-based Illustration 

programs have long featured a simple way to 

draw directly with the mouse, avoiding all the 

point setting and handle tweaking that lent those 

programs their step learning curve . Now, the new 

version of Photoshop has the same convenience. 

Another feature designers expect of their ill us- 

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The e!Jhanced info box now links into the new measure 

tool to make your image rotations not so arbitrary. The 

measured angle is even automatically transposed into the 

Rotate Canvas dialogue for level horizons in a snap. 

tration software is 

complete control over 

all the typography. 

Unfortunately, 

Photoshop users 

could never match 

the complete character-level 

control that 

their vector-based 

counterparts enjoyed . 

And the inability to 

go back and edit 

copy content or style 

was the bane of 

Using this new 

version of 

Photoshop's 

magnetic lasso 

tool, selecting the 

screen from this 

tres Jetsonian 

Compaq system 

is so easy, even 

Elroy could do it. 

designers working in past versions of the program. 

Until now. 

Version 5.0 adds both of these features, along 

with a live preview. And believe us, the upgrade 

will pay for itself the first time you have to go 

back and change one word in a picture and 

watch all the subsequent effects applied to the 

type reapplied to the new edit. 

Another seemingly simple feature long overdue 

for Photoshop owners is multiple undo. Every 

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Photoshop 5.0's powerful new History 

palette delivers the multiple undo capabilities 

that designers have demanded since 

the program's inception. 

PlUSES 

powerful 

mult1ple undo 

alette 

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select1on tools 

ed1table t e 

powerful d1g1tal 

re ress tools 

cool Layers 

palette effects 

110 

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other graphics app under the sun has 

had this ability, except Photoshop. 

Now the premiere image editor has 

multiple levels of undo ... with a 

vengeance. A new History palette 

tracks your every command, down 

to details such as object dragging, 

and a single click in the tracking list 

takes you back to any given step. 

Specific steps can even be selected 

and applied to the image, anywhere 

in its history. And snapshots can be 

taken of a project in any stage of 

development to allow branching variations 

for more creative possibilities. 

While casual home digital photo 

buffs or web designers may not need 

the new depth added to Photoshop 

5.0, hardcore digital pre-press pros 

will love the incredible new color 

controls for press, including support 

for phat 48- and 64-bit color 

palettes, dot gain curves, and spotcolor 

channels for adding those fancy 

fifth colors, metallics, varnishes, and 

other specialty effects to print jobs. 

And when you 're not sending the 

image to print, or to the monitor, 

special optimized color spaces are 

now available that leverage the 

gamut of broadcast standards such 

as NTSC, PAL, and HDTV. 

Some early criticism has 

arisen concerning Adobe's 

choice for a default RGB 

color space . The gamut is 

optimized for monitor calibration 

and limits the possible 

color range. Ultimately, CD-ROM Drive 

80MB Har?-"D"' ri,... ve,.__ -t 

the success or failure of that 

choice depends on which is a higher 

priority for demanding designers: 

broad color gamut or more accurate 

monitor representation. 

Despite this, ultimately Photoshop 

5. D's refusal to enter the online age 

(all those features were left out and 

sell under the name Image Ready) is 

the only thing keeping this Godzilla of 

graphics from getting a perfect score. 

-Brad Dos/and 

MAKIMUM PC VERDICT 

Price $650 ($200 Upgrade) 

Company Adobe 

Phone 800.492.3623 

URL www.adobe.com 9 

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NOT IMAGEREADY FOR PRIMIITIME 

The most regrettable thing about the latest 

update to the proud Photoshop legacy is the 

exclusion of long-anticipated tools for web 

designers. Most other major graphics apps 

have already adopted features such as 

animated GIF support, Image map creation, 

and web image previewing. Unfortunately 

Adobe has dragged their programming feet 

and not included these modern features in 

version 5.0. They have, coincidentally, included 

just this in a stand-alone package called 

lmageReady. For an additional $199, web 

designers get to swap between the two 

programs in order to do the same thing other 

graphics apps do under one roof. Adobe needs 

to include these features in the next major 

revision of Photoshop. Right ... and they'll 

include Dimensons in the next Illustrator. 

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SCSI-2 50-pin to 50-pin 

cable I 1 Jaz 2GB disc 

I SCSI 50-pin to 25-pin 

converter I Extra software 

PlUSIS 

Full backward 

com at1b1hty 

Portable highspeed 

SCSI 

mterface 

AutomatiC SCSI 

termmat1on 

Excellent 

software bundle 

Excellent read 

performance 

w1th 2GB med 1a 

MINUSIS 

Very ex ens1ve 

Performance 

degradation 

w1th older 

med1a 

D1sks often fail, 

reqUinng 

re lacement 

Jaz Jet SCSI card 

not included 

Lackluster wnte 

performance 

Iomega Jaz 2 

The rebirth of cool 

Iomega has thrown down the 

gauntlet, doubling its disc size to 

2GB. And it's done so while including 

backward compatibility with 

its older 1GB cartridges. 

The new 2GB cartridge 

uses two 3 .5-inch platters 

and is housed in the same 

size case as its 1GB cousin. 

The difference is that the 

areal head density of a Jaz 

2GB disk is twice that of the 

1GB, meaning that more 

data is crammed into a tighter 

space. When 2GB cartridges are 

used , the drive shines. Problem is, 

it takes longer to erase and record 

data to older 1GB disks because the 

Jaz 2GB heads are smaller. 

And it shows in the 

benchmarks. The copy 

test on an older 1GB 

disc was dramatically 

slower on the 2GB 

drive; it took 

almost twice as long 

as copying a 1GB disc 

on a 1GB Jaz drive. 

The read speed of 

older 1GB media is on 

par with older 1GB 

drives, though. 2GB 

media delivers excellent 

data throughput 

times, with Jaz being 

the clear winner here 

when compared with 

The Jaz 2 

GB 

external drive 

utilizes a fast 

SCSI-2 interface 

and is easily 

portable, if a 

SCSI card is 

installed on the 

its lower-priced target machine . 

competitor, 

SyQuest's SparQ. 

The Jaz drive and 2GB cartridges 

both offer portability, are 

SYQUEST INTERNAL 1GB SPARQ 

based on high-speed SCSI 

technology, and are much 

sturdier than the SparQ . 

The Jaz drive's biggest 

downside is its price, 

even with 2GB cartridges 

costing only $25 more 

than 1GB cartridges. Jaz 

is ubiquitous due to its 

large installed base, which 

seems the only reason it outsells 

SyQuest's SyJet 1.5GB, which outperforms 

it and is cheaper . 

But Jaz technology sometimes 

fails. Discs often degrade over time, 

and drives can become erratic, 

requiring replacement. We've found 

that Iomega is good about replacing 

both drives and media, though. 

It takes more than ubiquity to 

be the best. Lower prices and faster 

write speeds would make Jaz the 

undisputed champion. If only. 


MAXIMUM PC VERDICT 

Price $499 (additional 

cartridges $125, 3/ $300) 

Company Iomega 

Phone 800.697.8833 

URL www.iomega.com 1 

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The internal SparQ 

uses an IDE ATAPI 

interface, sacrificing 

portability for 

performance. 

The SyQuest SparQ 

comes in two flavors: a 

portable parallel port version and an 

internal &fl. version. Both use a single 

3.5-inch platter housed in flimsy plastic. 

After much prodding, we succumbed and 

benchmarked the internal version. 

The tape mechanism is on the 

shoddy side, and one of our 

cartridges repeatedly got stuck, 

requiring intervention with a 

screwdriver. Hence, its low price. 

But unlike Jaz media, we've never 

witnessed a SparQ cartridge fail. In fact, 

throughput, both read and written, was 

admirable and reached record times. The 

included utilities did not properly recognize 

the drive and were basically worthless. 

Don't make one of these a secondary 

device to an Ultra DMA hard drive 

or you'll experience throughput 

drawback, of course, 

nonportability. If 

SyQuest manufactured SCSI-based 

SparQ drives at the same price, 

they'd truly rival the Jaz regime. 


Price $200 (additional 

cartridges $40, 3/$1 00) 

Company SyQuest 

Phone 510.226.4000 

URL www.syquest.com

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE 

ADVERTISEMENT 

How to make your car invisible 

to radar and laser 

Rocky Mountain Radar introduces a device guaranteed to make your 

car electronically "invisible" to speed traps-if you get a ticket while 

using the product, the manufacturer will pay your fine! 

by Phil Jones 

( c 

/,SPEEDING 

TICKET 

SPAYS 

If your heart doesn't skip a 

beat when you drive past a 

speed trap--even if you aren't 

speeding-don't bother reading 

this. I can't tell you how 

many times that has happened 

to me. Driving down 

• ThePhazerwi/1 the interstate with my 

em· both radar cruise control set at eight 

7 

and laser guns, miles over the limit, I catch 

preventing police a glimpse of a pohce car 

from measuring parked on the s1de of the 

road. My heart skips a 

yourspee d · beat and for some reason 

I look at my speedometer. After I 

have passed the trap, my eyes stay 

glued to my rear view mirror, praying 

the police officer will pass me 

up for a "bigger fish." 

It seems that as speed-detection 

technology has gotten more 

and more advanced, speeding 

tickets have become virtually 

unavoidable. And although devices 

exist that enable motorists 

to detect these speed traps, they 

are outlawed in many states ... 

including mine. 

The solution. Today, Rocky Mountain Radar 

offers drivers like me a perfect solution-the 

Phazer. Combining a passive radar scrambler 

with an active laser scrambler, the Phazer makes 

your automobile electronically "invisible" to 

police speed-detecting equipment. 

The radar component works by mixing an X, 

K or Ka radar signal with an FM "chirp" and 

bouncing it back at the squad car by way of a 

Special infrared beam with '"noise" • 

waveguide antenna, effectively confusing the 

computer inside the radar gun. The laser component 

transmits an infrared beam that has the 

same effect on laser Lidar units. 

Perfectly legal. Some radar devices have been 

outlawed because they transmit scrambling 

radar beams back to the waiting law enforcement 

vehicle. The Phazer, however, reflects a 

portion of the signal plus an added FM signal 

back to the police car. This, in effect, gives the 

waiting radar unit an electronic "lobotomy." 

Best of all, unless you are a resident 

of Minnesota, Oklahoma or Washington, 

D.C., using the Phazer is 

completely within your legal rights. 

Police laser • 

HQW TO MAKE YOUR CAR DISAPPEAR 

Radar and laser scramblers are devices 

that foil speed traps by making vehicles 

electronically "invisible" to police 

radar. Radar scramblers mix a portion of 

the radar signal with background clutter 

and reflect it back to the squad car. This 

technique, pioneered by Rocky Mountain 

Radar, creates an unreadable signal that 

confuses the computer inside the radar gun. 

The laser scrambler in the Phazer 

works in a similar manner. It transmits a 

special infrared beam with information 

designed to scramble the laser signal. The 

result? Readouts on police radar and laser 

guns remain blank. As far as the police 

officer is concerned, your vehicle is not 

even on the road. 

• The 

Phazer 

makes your car 

invisible to police 

radar and lasers or 

the manufacturer will 

pay your speeding ticket! 

How it scrambles radar. 

Police radar takes five to 10 measurements of a 

vehicle's speed in about one second. The Phazer 

sends one signal that tells the radar the car is 

going 15 m.p.h. and another signal that the car is 

going 312 m.p.h. Because police radar can't verify 

the speed, it displays no speed at all. 

Works with laser, too! The Phazer also protects 

your vehicle from Lidar guns that use the 

change in distance over time to detect a vehicle's 

speed. The Phazer uses light-emitting diodes 

(LEOs) to fire invisible infrared pulses through 

the windshield. Laser guns interpret those pulses 

as a false indication of the car's distance, blocking 

measurement of your speed. 

Range up to three miles. The Phazer begins 

to scramble both radar and laser signals 

as far as three miles away 

from the speed trap. Its range 

of effectiveness extends to 

almost 100 feet away from the 

police car, at which point you 

should be able to make visual 

contact and reduce your 

speed accordingly. 

Encourage responsible 

driving. While the Phazer 

is designed to help you (and 

me) avoid speed traps, it is not 

intended to condone excessive 

speeding. For that reason, within the 

first year, the manufacturer will pay 

tickets where the speed limit was not 

exceeded by more than 30%, or 15 miles 

per hour, whichever is less. 

Double protection from speed traps. If 

the Phazer sounds good, but you prefer to be 

notified when you are in range of a police 

radar, the Phantom is for you. The Phantom 

combines the Phazer (including the Ticket 

Rebate Program) with a 

radar detector. It's legal 

in every state except 

Minnesota, Oklahoma, 

Virginia and Washington, 

D.C. Ask 

your representative 

for more details! 

Risk-free. Speed traps don't make my heart 

skip a beat anymore. The Phazer and Phantom 

are both backed by our risk-free trial and threeyear 

manufacturer's warranty. Try them, and if 

you're not satisfied, return your purchase within 

90 days for a "No Questions Asked" refund. 

The Phazer: 

Three credit-card payments of $66.50 $14 S&H 

The Phantom: 


Please mention promotional code 2546-13831. 

For fastest service, call toll-free 24 hours a day 

800-399-7863 iiicm::l[ll]~ 

comtrad 

industries 

2820 Waterford Lake Dr., Suite 102 

Midlothian, Virginia 23113

Hyper-Speed CD-ROM Drives 

The next generation 

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111 disc 

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MINUSES 

No mult1read 

su urt 

Low random 

access t1rne 

PLUSES 

Audio Play/Skip 

button 

Multiread 

support 

MINUSES 

Atrocious realworld 

copy 

_rerformance 

Slugg1sh fullstroke 

access 

times 

MINUSES 

Perf01med 

overall as a 31 x 

dnve 1nstead of 

32x 

The current crop of high-speed CD-ROM drives 

aren't plagued by the problems of the past. Recent 

technological developments have mitigated the 

chief bugaboo-poorly constructed spindle 

motors that vibrated when improperly balanced 

discs were spun at high speeds, forcing the drive 

to reduce the speed to compensate. These new 

drives bring with them not only improved technology, 

but also some downright brilliant 

Kenwood TrueX 40x 

Kenwood has 

dropped the 

equivalent of a 

nuclear bomb 

on the CD-ROM 

industry with it's 

first offering, 

on Zen Research's 

patented TrueX technology. 

Zen's approach splits a laser beam 

that would normally read only a single 

track at a time into seven beams, spaced 

evenly to read seven tracks in parallel. Focus 

and tracking are accomplished by the center 

beam, while three beams on either side read the 

multiple tracks. The data is then processed 

through a custom, single-chip ASK that 

accomplishes parallel processing and error 

correction via an integrated signal processor. 

approaches to existing limitations. If anything, 

they illustrate other deficiencies that afflict new 

hyper-speed CD-ROM drives, such as the effect 

of slow random access times on throughput, and 

the benefit of high interface burst speeds. We 

threw Plextor's UltraPieX, the reigning champion, 

up against three new offerings and came away 

with some interesting results. 


The TrueX is for the 

high-res video off this 

drive and never saw a 

dropped frame-imagine 

the possibilities. 

The two areas where 

The head itself is split in two to hardcore user who it didn't dominate were 

reduce weight on the movable demands a fat, burst speeds, due to its 

: ll!!tt!IillJCJI. portion, in turn consistent data- CLV nature, and random 

lowering access 

access times. These two 

LU-UII~ni ra1 Audio CD Extra 

TEXT I CD-ROM (Mode 

1) I CD-ROM XA (Mode 2 

Form 1 and Form 2) I CD-I * 

(Mode 2 Form 1 and Form 

CD-I Ready I CD-Bridge I 

Photo CD (single and multisession) 

I Video CD I CO 

Recordable (CD-R) and CD 

ReWritable (CD-RW) 

ture, which ensures 

a constant data rate 

across a whole disc. 

By varying the speed 

the disc spins, Zen 

milks close to 7MB 

of data throughout 

the entire disc. This means the disc doesn't need 

to be full to realize the drive's full speed potential. 

And Zen doesn't need to worry about the spindle 

vibration problems other drives suffer because the 

discs spin at only 3,000RPM, roughly the speed of 

a 6x to 1 Ox drive. It actually turns out that Zen 

labeled its drive conservatively. 

We tested two drives that each delivered a 

drive rating above a whopping 45x. We streamed 

times. 

The real 

beauty of this 

technology is its 

ill architec- 

stream. Make no 

mistake, there is no a piece of data can be 

faster CD-ROM found and how fast it 

drive available. 

areas define how quickly 

can be pushed out 

sequentially, and it shows 

in the benchmarks. It took almost as long as the 

Sony drive to copy the Maximum CD. Zen will be 

releasing a SCSI version of the technology later this 

year that should address these shortcomings, as 

well as the drive's inability to read CD-RW media. 

Of course, we're hoping this technology 

makes its way into the DVD market, and soon . 

Kenwood's TrueX is currently available only 

through HiVal, so get them while they last. 

Price $199 

Company HiVal 

Phone 714.953.3000 


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"Perfonns a full benchmark assault on CD-ROM drives. • •converts CD Audio to a WAV fi le. • • "Time it takes to copy Maximum CD to hard 

drive TEST SYSTEM: Quantex QP6/400 SM-4x 400MHz Pentium II with 64MB RAM. 

CD-9J6E J6x 

newest contribution to the high-speed 

shows that incredible spin speeds are not the 

most important factor. Low access times, even 

while reaching the advertised 36x speed , were 

enough to cripple this drive. With a drive rating of 

25.5x, we thought it was sure to rule the mountain, 

but it lost steam quickly when faced with real-world 

performance benchmarks, delivering a copy time 

five times slower than the competition. 

AOpen's architecture is based on both 

Constant Angular Velocity ~ and CLV 

technologies, giving it a higher transfer rate on 

the inner and middle tracks by using CLV-based 

technology, and a higher throughput potential by 

using CAV-based technology on the outer tracks. 

Sony CDU711 J:ZX 

Sony has consistently addressed the 

shortcomings of technology with 

innovative solutions. With its 24x 

CD-ROM drive (CDU611), Sony fixed 

the spindle-vibration problem by using 

migrating ball bearings to help counteract 

unbalanced discs. But that drive 

couldn't reach the coveted 24x speed 

that was the threshold of the day. And although 

Sony didn't quite reach the 32x mark with its 

latest offering, delivering scores at the 31 x speed, 

it did manage to release a remarkably sturdy and 

speedy drive that dominated in other areas. 

Sony captured new records for the best fullstroke 

access time, random access time, CPU utilization, 

and interface burst speeds. These scores, 

evident in the chart with regards to the real-world 

copy test, are crucial for delivering content. Based 

on the CAV architecture, the CDU711 doesn 't 

Of course, the coupling of these 

two technologies may be what 

ultimately slowed it during the copy 

process. Burst rates were excellent, 

though, and digital audio 

extraction was handled 

adequately. It's a shame the 

drive couldn't deliver when 

removed from the CD Tach 

arena, for it would surely have 

been a contender. 

Price $89 

CompanJ HiVal 

Phone 714.953.3000 


reach it's full potential until well 

into a disc and delivers data on 

the inside tracks at a 17x speed . 

Although the drive didn't 

meet spec, it shined in too 

many other areas, including price, to 

be denied a Kick Ass designation. If an 

inexpensive upgrade is in 

your future, then look no 

further than Sony's latest 

offering. It delivers all the 

CD media support you'll 

need with performance 

that's top-notch. 

URL www.ita.sel.sony.com 

may seem like a 

contender with its 

beefy throughput, but Its 

weakness is Its slow uppercut. 

Spend ten bucks more and get 

Sony's CDU711. 

The CDU711 is a 

true underdog. Its 

performance sets 

new benchmarks and 

proves that quality 

can be had at half 

the price. This drive 

is worth every penny. 

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An untuned fighting machine 

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QP6/400 SM-4x 

is a damn fine 

gaming machine 

that deserves your 

attention. A few 

modifications are 

all that prevents it 

from kicking some 

serious ass. 

PlUSES 

Ultra W1de SCSI 

hard dnve 

Voodoo 

madness 

PCI soundcard 

Competent AGP 

hardware 

MINUSES 

No TV-out 

No Z1 dnve 

No gammg 

controller 

Dnves not 

conf1gured 

Quantex enters the 400MHz 

battle with its sights set on 

the high-end gaming market. 

And what a machine this 

could be, with a slew of 

minor revisions. Using Intel's 

latest 440BX chipset, this 

hellion delivers at a 1 OOMHz 

system-bus throughput. Real 

3D's Kick-Ass StarFighter i740 

videocard delivers full AGP 2x 

compliance with sidebanding, 

although it has only 4MB of 

onboard memory. So Quantex 

includes the Diamond Monster 

3D II, a second-generation 

Voodoo 2 part. And for the truly 

hardcore, Quantex will happily 

include an additional Monster 

3D II for $199 for SLI (scan-line 

interleave), doubling performance 

and raising the resolution ceiling. 

2D is handled well and looks best 

at 1024x768 at a 24-bit color depth . 

Currently, higher resolutions look 

strained on the included 19-inch 

monitor, but a firmware revision for 

the StarFighter board and new drivers 

will address this. 

But video isn't everything, so 

Quantex included Adaptec's 2940UW 

Ultra Wide SCSI host adapter connecting 

Western Digital's WDE 9100 

9.1 GB hard drive. This drive not only 

delivers at 13MB/sec, it also has a 

random-access seek of 8.5ms . 

The SCSI board was configured 

improperly. The maximum transfer 

rate was set to only 20MB instead of 

40MB. Changing it 

increased the burst from 

15MB to 24MB, but 

reduced the seek to 

12ms. We could only 

attribute this to the 

hard drive. DMA wasn't 

enabled on the Toshiba 

32x CD-ROM drive 

either. Enabling it 

increased the drive 

rating to 20.9x and 

increased throughput 

on the outer tracks by 

a whopping 1 ,500K, or 

1 Ox. It also reduced the 

CPU utilization by 70%, 

even at higher speeds . 

Quantex dissed the 

substandard Crystal 

CS4236B sound on the 

Intel SE440BX motherboard 

for Ensoniq's 

AudioPCI board. 

Though we consider 

this a step in the right 

direction, it still falls 

short. We would rather 

have seen a board that supports 

A3D and doesn 't require the CPU 

for DirectSound3D acceleration. 

We don't understand why 

Quantex included only 64MB RAM. 

With today's prices, it should have 

been a no-brainer to pack in 128MB 

to pad any hard drive file swapping. 

Overall, this is a solid machine 

and would be an excellent gaming 

system with some changes. Quantex 

is proving it's sensitive to consumer 

needs and promises even more. Go 

A3D, add another Voodoo 2 , 4MB on 

the StarFighter, and another 64MB 

of memory, and then you'll be set for 

at least the next six months. 


Price $2,999 

($2,799 without monitor) 

Company Quantex 

Phone 800.760.9001 

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Pumpin' Kilowatts Altec Lansing's 

ACS-490 satellites deliver excellent 

sparkle and midrange capabilities. The 

monotone sounding ACS-190 subwoofer 

has presence but lacks very deep lows.


Quantex's choice of an Intel motherboard 

leaves little opportunity for expansion. 

Only one additional PCI slot is free with 

this configuration. 

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the ultra-cool heatsink and fan. 

Don't let the heatsink's smaller 

size fool you. The CPU itself is 

only about that big inside its 

black case, and there's more 

than enough chillin' goin on. 

Room to Grow This spadous 

case offers mucho expando 

growth potential giving you the 

ability to add three additional 

hard drives, a DVD drive, CD·R, 

and even a sorely needed 

removable backup device. 

Smart Bus Choices An Ultra Wide 

SCSI card and hard drive, and fast 

Toshiba 32x IDE CD-ROM drive 

guarantee that data won't have to wait 

for a free bus. All the gaming data you 

require will be at your call with nary a 

drop in framerate. 

What Is thls7 A fan 

housing sans the fan? 

Good airflow is a panacea, 

espedally when a hot 

burning Voodoo2 card is 

present An additional five 

bucks would've solved this. 

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Poser 3 

It does a body good 

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PlUSIS 

Enhanced 

models 

Speed1er model 

redraw 

New, fullyarticulated 

hands 

Improved 

keyframe 

an1mat1on 

ca abillt1es 

Real1st1c textures 

MINUSIS 

Dlff1cult to 

create 

111dlv1dualized 

models 

Easy to break IK 

cha1n 

No nght mouse 

button shortcuts 

A redesigned GUI, enhanced 

and more realistic modeling/ 

animation features, 

and motion-control capabilities 

are among the 

numerous enhancements 

built into Poser 3, an 

application that provides posable 3D 

human figures that can be saved as 

2D illustrations, animated movies, and 

3D characters to use in other 

applications. 

Cosmetically, Poser 3 is 

completely redesigned. The 

Kai-like user interface, which 

we've seen in products such 

as MetaCreations' Bryce and Goo, 

looks intuitive, but takes a while to 

get comfortable with. But we found 

the new set up of palettes and 

pullout drawers practical and useful. 

And you can now grab libraries, 

palettes, or windows, move them 

wherever you like, then save the 

setup as a new default. 

Poser 3's eight new models are 

more realistic and anatomically 

detailed than those of Poser 2 (which 

are also included). You get a 

Caucasian male, female, and child. 

Poser 3 also has a human skeleton 

and adds models for a dog, cat, 

horse, dolphin, and, get this, a 

Velociraptor. The SREE renderer 

shows models with Bryce-like photorealism. 

Other rendering styles 

include wire frame, silhouette, 

outline, and sketch. The new models 

also have higher polygon counts. For 

example, the male adult has 17,000 

._ After you've chosen a modelllld 

imparted him/her with hair llld a fadal 

expression, import a mQtion capture file, 

found on tfle Poser CD In tfle Cool Stuff 

In Here folder. Poser automatic:ally adds 

the frames required for the motion file. 

polys, 7,000 more 

than version 2. 

But this enhancement 

doesn't come 

without a performance 

hit. Using a 

233MHz P-11 with 

32MB RAM, we 

timed the default 

model from each 

version at two resolutions, 

with anti- 

alias, shadows, and bump and texture 

maps turned on. At 1 024x691, Poser 

2 rendered one frame in 22 seconds, 

while Poser 3 took 29. At 720x486 it 

took 14 seconds, while Poser 3 took 

16. Animating a movie still takes 

anywhere from minutes to hours, 

depending on the resolution and the 

number of frames in your animation . 

.- Some dance motions wiD the 

model wen outside of the normal 

camera view By switching to the 

Posing camera. you can choose a 

view that stays on the model as it 

moves. 

Poser's revamped 

interface puts all 

your tools within 

reach. The "handles" 

at the bottom and 

right of the screen 

give you access to 

your Animation and 

Library palettes. 

However, you can 

preview your work in 

realtime using the 

wireframe view. 

After you've 

selected a figure (or 

figures) for your 

scene, you can 

double-dick a preset 

in the library of poses 

to have it snap into 

place, or do it yourself 

by clicking and dragging the 

body part you want to adjust. You 

can bend limbs, twist the waist or 

spine, tilt the head, spin the whole 

body, and raise it off the ground. 

Move the whole body up, down or 

side to side, or rotate it to any angle. 

You can also click on any body part 

to extend, turn, or expand it. 

~ .. 

Movement is realistic. For 

example, if you drag out a 

hand, the forearm, shoulder, 

and eventually entire 

torso move along with it. 

Tip: Perfectionists who 

tweak and re-tweak a 

character's pose can end 

up breaking the inverse 

kinematics (IK) chain. To 

fix this, select the area of 

the body that's been 

destroyed and hit Controi 

E repeatedly to slowly 

transform the ruined 

section to its original state. 

You're not limited to 

the look of the provided 

models: you can reshape 

individual body parts, 

resize the whole figure or 

change its proportions, 

change the colors, and add 

textures. But we found it 

difficult to customize a 

pre-built figure. For 

example, to make two 

women in one scene have 

individualized weight, 

height, body shape, and 

facial characteristics was a 

painstaking task of individual part selection and 

numerical-entry modal dialog boxes. Pull-down 

settings, a dialog box, or some other series of 

presets should handle this. 

While you're better off exporting Poser figures 

to a more robust 3D program to create complicated 

scenes, you can make simple arrangements. 

To add realism and drama to your project, you can 

Poser's new cartoon-drawing rendering style can produce 

instant comic book illustrations and movies with a handdrawn 

look. 

The Kai-like interface is easy on the eyes, but it takes 

some getting used to. 

Thanks to the improved rendering engine, character 

updates redraw in seconds. 

models into other 3D 

applications, but you 

will lose your textures. 

When you're ready 

to animate, you'll 

be happy to know 

you don't have to 

tediously move each 

body part on a frameby-frame 

basis. Poser 

3's keyframe animation 

utility is easier to 

use than version 2 's. 

All you need to do is 

set a few key poses, 

and the software fills 

in the blanks. For 

example, you can sit a 

figure in a chair, set a 

key frame, stand the 

figure up, then set a 

second key frame, and 

Poser will animate all 

the frames in between. 

Other new 

features include 

redesigned hands 

with 18 movable 

joints, the ability to 

import and assign 

prerecorded motion 

files to your models, adjustable eyes, brows, and 

lips, a mouth you can animate to lip-sync to 

WAV files, and sound with phonemes for realistic 

speech. Finally, the whole thing works remarkably 

fast: screen refreshes of a figure that took 

upwards of seven seconds in Poser 2, redraw 

instantaneously now. 

The only limitations we found in Poser are 

that renders cannot exceed 4090x4090, and the 

application failed to implement any type of rightbutton 

mouse shortcuts. However, these limitations 

can be easily overlooked because the 

application is just so much fun to play with. 

If you're really into making custom models, 

MetaCreations provides plug-ins and a downloadable 

manual for using its own Ray Dream 5 to do 

so. Poser's supplied texture maps for the figures 

are excellent, and templates are included for 

making your own textures in a paint program. 

Rarely do apps deliver pro-caliber capabilities 

and customizable controls along with an interface 

anyone can understand. We give MetaCreations 

high marks for developing a creative application 

that's both powerful and inexpensive. 

-Paul Worthington 

WALK LIKE A MAN 

... The Walk Designer lets you 

quickly create character walk 

patterns. Go to the Figure 

menu and selecting Create 

Walk Path. Grab the guideline 

on the floor in front of 

your character to adjust its 

direction and speed. 

... Next, From the Window 

menu, select Walk Designer. 

This brings up a box that 

lets you tweak your 

character's walk. 

... When you have your 

character's walk just right, 

hit apply, bringing up the 

Walk Apply dialog box. 

Choose 220 frames and 

leave everything else at its 

default. From the Animation 

menu, select Animation 

Setup and leave everything 

at its default 

-- ._ 

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... To composite your animation 

in an editing app such as 

Premiere, change your 

character's background to 

blue and get rid of the 

motion path guidelines. 

... Next, under the Animation 

menu, select Make Movie, 

and name your flick. Select 

compression type. When 

the animation's finished 

rendering, a media player 

will pop up showing you the 

finished animation. 

choose from a relatively small assortment of 19 

objects (glasses, furniture, and such), adjust three 

provided light sources, and move up to 10 

cameras. Poser can can also import models in standard 

3D formats such as DXF, OBJ , and 3DMFwith 

textures, if available. You can export Poser 

Price $199/Upgrade $199 

Company MetaCreations 

Phone 800.846.0111 

URL www.metacreations.com 

I 

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Soundcard Revolution 

Now hear this! 

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PLUSES 

Roland MIDI 

Sample quivers 

our ears 

Quad-speaker 

su ort in A3D 

Tray-applet 

options for days 

MINUSES 

No real-mode 

DOS su ort 

No NT or DLS 

support yet 

The ISA bus is dead, it just doesn't 

know it yet 

The thousands of PC owners 

who will soon be !SA bus-less 

should look no further than their 

PCI bus to plug in next-generation 

soundcards. Offering ten times the 

throughput, bus mastering, and 

better plug-and-play support, a PC! 

Diamond Monster 

Sound MX::ZOO 

Even in junior high school 

you could spot the kid 

who would go places. 

The Diamond MX200 is 

that kid . 

The third in the 

Monster Sound series, 

the MX200 finally knocks the 

ball out of the park with such features 

as a 4MB Roland MIDI patch 

in ROM, 64-voice hardware 

wavetable, and quad-speaker 

support in A3D . 

Diamond still conservatively covers 

its bets by emphasizing that the 

MX200 does not offer real-mode 

DOS support. To handle that task, 

Diamond recommends that you plug 

the supplied Monster Cable to your 

legacy Sound Blaster card for full DOS 

support. We say, who cares? It's time 

to shed those moldy old DOS games. 

Plug that beautiful gold-plated 

Monster Cable from your TV tuner 

to your Monster Sound input and 

install only Diamond's DOS drivers if 

you want to pretend President Bush 

is still in office. But be advised, the 

Monster's Sound Blaster support 

eats a total of three IRQs. It sheds 

two of those IRQs if run without 

the support. 

Sound processing is 

left up to an Analog 

Devices 2181 DSP 

(a 40 MIPS DSP) . 

Although the A3D 

algorithms are designed 

to support two speakers, 

Diamond tweaked 

the A3D drivers to add 

the quad support, so 

the sweet spot opens 

soundcard plays silver Corvette to 

an !SA-based Gremlin . 

Now three PCI cards leap forward 

to battle for your ears. While 

Aureai3D (AlQ) support was exotic 

when the clock rolled on 1998, it's 

almost a feature checkpoint 

these days. The trend of 

more for less continues 

up in a quad 

configuration. In Unreal 

and Jedi Knight, 

objects are easily dis- The third 

cernable from front 

to rear as they 

bounce around you . 

Be advised, however, 

that while the quad 

support makes you 

salivate, it's at the 

expense of elevation . 

The card will also 

process DirectSound 

and DirectSound3D. 

The MX200's 

main weaknesses are 

Diamond's inability 

to support the two 

Thrustmaster digital 

sticks and not providing 

enough input 

time's the 

charm for the 

Monster Sound. 

Offering quadspeaker 

support 

with top-notch 

Roland MIDI 

patches in ROM, 

the MX200 is a 

tough card to 

beat if you're 

finally willing to 

lose those old 

DOS games. 

headers on the card for multiple 

peripherals. The MX200 also sports 

dual speaker outs and two inputs, 

as well as a joystick/MIDI connector 

on the bracket. The 1 /8-inch plugs 

detect when a speaker is plugged in, 

~!m!J:!J:~~ilt:· 

and a tray applet lets 

users select either quad 

or speaker and headphone 

configurations. 

The MX200 

doesn't have ru 

support yet because 

nothing uses it yet, 

Diamond says. A DLScompliant 

software 

as all the cards feature hardware 

wavetable, PCI 2.1, and DirectSound 

and DirectSound3D support. 

-Gordon Ung 

wavetable will be added 

only if developers support 

it. NT support didn't come 

in the bo x, but Diamond 

promises drivers shortly . 

The excellent Roland 4MB 

patch is upgradable and 

turned in the best MIDI of 

this roundup. Inside it has 

connectors for CD-ROM, 

aux. and modem , but no 

S/PDIF. Diamond skimped 

on hard copy, preferring 

to leave docs in HTML 

format on the CD . 

Although it may offer the steepest 

price of the bunch, the MX200 

offers the best bundle, along with 

the 64-voice hardware wavetable 

and eargasmic Roland MIDI 

samples in ROM. 

Now all grown up, this kid kicks 

butt and takes names too. 


Price $149 

Company Diamond 

Multimedia 

Phone 468.584.6334 

URL www.diamondmm.com 9

Montego A3DXstream 

It's junior high again and 

Aureai3D sound support is the 

equivalent of brown corduroy 

slacks. Wear them or feel out 

of place . Then you realize 

you 're just like everyone else. 

To be different, you part your 

hair to the left. 

Turtle Beach has taken the 

time to primp the Montego just 

enough to make it stand out in 

a crowd of Vortex-chip Me Too's, 

but it didn't go overboard and pierce 

its nose. Sure it has A3D, and 

DirectSound and DirectSound3D 

acceleration like all the others, but 

Turtle Beach included a S/ PDIF 

header for digital in and out, and a 

Waveblaster-compatible header. 

Lining the bracket are color-coded , 

1 /8-inch jacks for speaker or headphone 

outputs, stereo and microphone 

inputs, and the MIDI/joystick 

connector. The PCB has connectors 

for a CD-ROM, a modem, and an 

auxiliary input for items such as a CD 

burner or TV tuner. 

The Sigmatel9701 codec's 18-bit 

AQC and ~ promise crystal-dear 

MagicWave PCI 

We're still wearing those brown 

corduroys, but we've slicked the hair 

back, and we're chewing on a toothpick. 

1/0 Magic's PCI Vortex-based 

card takes a different tack. 

Sure, it has DirectSound, Direct 

Sound3D, and A3D support pumping 

from the same 8820 Vortex (a 300 

audio MIPS DSP) . But 1/0 Magic 

went a different way with Analog 

Devices' AD1819 CODEC and had 

to live with a 16-bit DAC and ADC , 

and a worse sound -to-noise ratio. 

While the MagicWave doesn't 

have a S/PDIF or 

Offering 

a dedicated 

headphone output, 

the MagicWave will get 

you into the worlds of 

the Cl bus and 30 

positional sound on a 

small budget. 

represents the 

pinnacle of 

Vortex-based 

cards so far. 

With features 

such as digital 

inputs and a 

wavetable 

header, the 

Montego doesn't 

mess around. 

sound . Even 

though Turtle Beach 

put a digital interface 

header on it, this card 

will really appeal to 

gamers. It knocked down 

two of three digital joysticks, 

failing to detect only the 

Thrustmaster Rage3D. 

The 4MB MIDI patch resides in 

RAM and voices good neutral instruments, 

albeit with horns on the synthetic 

side. The Montego pumps out 

64 voices, with 32 handled by the 

hardware wavetable. An applet 

common to Aureal-based cards lets 

users switch between 32 , 64, and 

game or pro modes. 

The only real problems with the 

card relate to the Vortex chip itself, 

such as an inability to vary the size 

of the MIDI patch. All the Vortex 

cards we've seen so far wake you up 

by making a loud popping noise 

wavetable header, it is 

connector heaven. 

Adding to the standard 

speaker-out, mike-in, 

and MIDI/joystick 

ports, the MagicWave 

has a second nonamplified 

line-out for headphones. 

Internally, 1/0 

Magic has headers for 

two CD-ROMs, video, 

aux, and a telephone connector. A 

jumper is included for different joystick 

types, but it couldn 't get the 

Thrustmaster Rage3D to work. 1/0 

Magic confirmed that the problem 

lies with the Vortex itself. 

To bolster the stock 

4MB MIDI patch, 

1/0 Magic threw in 

Yamaha's S-YXG50 

and S-YG20 SoftSynth 

software. It ups the 

voices another 128 by 

offloading to the host 

CPU. With the Yamaha 

SoftSynth cranked to 128, MIDI 

experienced a mild improvement, 

but you'll take a 

performance hit. 

Both real-mode and 

Drivers for Windows 3.1 I 

9X, NT 4.0 and 5.0 I 

Voyetra Software Suite I 

OEM version of Battlezone 

when booted up. The final hitch, 

which also affected both Vortex cards 

here, was a slight distortion heard 

during a particularly heavy battle in 

Forsaken Mark. 

Although the card didn't sweat 

through most of our tests, it did 

exhibit the highest CPU utilization 

when we tossed 24 wave files at it. 

The score could be a result of the 

inaccuracy of System Monitor. 

While the price is steep, the 

Montego distinguishes itself enough 

to satisfy your aural needs. 

Price $129 

Company Turtle Beach 

Phone 800.233.9377 

URL www.tbeach.com 

Drivers for i 

9X, NT 4.0 and 5.0; 

Audio Station; Dark Forces 

II : Ambush at 5 Demo 

annoying popcrackle-fizzle 

on 

boot-up was also 

present. And installation 

was the fuzziest 

of the three cards 

here, although the 

printed docs were 

excellent and informative. 

Our main beefs relate to the 

Vortex and the sparse MIDI and 

sound applications. And although 

1/0 Magic pushes the feature of 

simultaneous speaker and headphone 

support, you still have to 

open the tray applet to switch 3D 

algorithms between headphones 

and speakers. 

While the card won't be as quiet as 

the Montego, trading the S/PDIF and 

wavetable header to save about $50 

lifts the MagicWave into popularity. 

UM PC VERDICT 

Price $79 

Company 1/ 0 Magic 

Phone 714.727.7466 

URL www.iomagic.com 8 

MINUSIS 

Not enough 

1nput connecto1 s 

Good 

documentlon 

MINUSIS 

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CAPITAL SHIP 

COMBAT 101 

When the orders come 

down to take out some 

lumbering destroyer, there's 

a sweet science to adding 

one of these bad boys to 

your kill list. 

Descentfreespace: 

The Great War 

Down and out in outerspace 

.. 

• 

E 

~ 

.,.. Expect a heavy fighter escort 

when facing any capital 

ship. When you warp into a 

combat situation, quickly 

assess how many enemy 

fighters are present by 

cycling through available 

targets (pressing m 

repeatedly). Lock onto a 

group, then command a 

wing to attack. 

... Never go after a capital ship 

alone-it's suicide. Once 

you've taken out the initial 

fighter cover, target one of 

the cap ships, then press [SJ 

to target individual parts of 

the ship-go for the turrets 

to strip a cap ship of its 

defenses and target the 

engines to stop it in its 

tracks. 

.,.. As you make your attack 

run, the cap ship will defend 

itself. Instead of flying in a 

straight line, jinx about and 

avoid their fire. If you've 

obtained a clean lock (look 

for a red square in your 

HUD), fire off a missile to 

make short work of the 

defenses. Once a couple of 

turrets are down, call in your 

posse to attack the target. 

... Always be on the lookout 

for incoming enemy fighter 

reinforcements. Your 

wingmen will scream 

something like • Head's up, 

we've got company!" If 

your wingmen are kneedeep 

in the cap ship attack, 

break off your own attack 

and take care of the enemy 

fighters personally. If you 

don't, your wingmen will be 

cut to ribbons. 

The only things that made the 

jump from Interplay's tunneldwelling 

original to its awe-inspiring 

sequel, Descent Freespace: 

The Great War, are the devious 

6J. and nauseating freedom of 

movement. In fact, this explosive 

person space-combat sim more 

resembles Origin's Wing Commander series. 

Once again, three races fight an epic interstellar 

war, and you, as a lowly Galactic 

Terran Alliance fighter pilot, are called in to 

work your space-combat skills against an 

enemy flying equally deadly starfighters. 

If you thought WCP's visuals made your 

hardware sweat, Freespace's intense firefights 

knock you around and set your 3D accelerator 

on fire. Limited to 640x480, Freespace will 

frustrate hardcore D3D/Giide owners who 

yearn for a higher res, but the results are still 

audacious. Space combat explodes across 

your screen in rich 16-bit color; today's burliest 

systems deliver locked-in 30fps+ with the 

appropriate 3D accelerator. 

l"'''tor.~~• With obligatory lens-flaring, 

Excellent v1sual 

effects w1th 

mass1ve cap1tal 

sh1 s 

Intense 

ame lay 

Real-t1me vo1ce 

over multiplayer 

MINUSIS 

No resolut1ons 

ast 640x480 

Some cut-scenes 

kmda hokey 

excellent sprite-based 

explosions, semitransparent 

shield 

effects, and 

alpha-blended 

engine glows, 

special effects 

galore adorn 

Freespace. 

Turning-and 

burning in space, you 

notice the attention to 

detail: point-specific 

damage, sparks 

spewing from damaged 

craft, slow-spinning wreckage, 

motion-blurs on turns, the 

tremble of the cockpit (and 

the wiggle of a compliant 

force-feedback stick) when 

you kick the afterburner. 

The ships are the stars 

here. Each craft's been meticulously 

detailed and texturemapped, 

with nary a repetitive 

texture among them. 

Freespace's intricately detailed 

capital ships are so huge, it lit- 

In Descent 

Freespace, this 

Terran carrier is a 

behemoth. 

Capital ships are 

tough to take 

down, but not 

impossible. 

erally takes minutes to 

cruise across the biggest 

ones. And it will take the 

combined efforts of you 

and your wingmen to take 

these leviathans down. But 

when they do go down, 

you're treated to a painful 

capital ship death worthy 

of a Babylon 5 season 

finale-something WCP 

failed to do. 

Rich sound effects and an action-dependent 

soundtrack set off an enemy AI (optimized from the 

original Descent) that bobs and weaves just enough 

to keep you on your toes, 

while capital ship hunting 

requires skillful dodging and 

attacking. Plus, the multithreaded 

nature of each 

mission means each combat 

run is totally different. If 

enemy freighters sneak past 

your ambush and manage 

An enemy fighter's about to get a to warn their friends, 

taste of your twin lasers. expect a fierce firefight. 

Destroy them, and the mission's complete. Also, not 

everything needs to be destroyed; new technologies 

await those who capture enemy fighters. 

Descent Freespace is the absolute best spacecombat 

sim to date. 


Price $50 

Developer Volition/Parallax 

Publisher Interplay 

Phone 800.1NTERPLAY 

URL www.interplay.com

Iomega Buz 

DV for the masses 

Iomega's Buz Multimedia Producer is 

an easy-to-use video capture/playback 

solution that's perfect for novice users. 

Without a sophisticated software 

editor and the ability to crank the data 

rates beyond 3MB/sec, savvy producers 

may thumb their noses at Buz, 

but first timers will relish being able 

to learn the system and create their 

first project in less than an hour. 

Despite being eminently userfriendly 

and affordable, Buz has its 

problems. The video-capture and 

out-put quality is barely passable, and 

severe installation problems plague 

the system . What Buz has going for it 

is that it's cheap. 

In addition to an Ultra SCSI port 

built into the card for capturing video 

to an external hard drive, Buz comes 

with a breakout box with composite 

and S-Video input/output, and 

audio pass-through jacks for quickly 

hooking up your video devices. Buz 

actually uses your computer's soundcard 

to capture audio. The package 

contains RCA A/V cables, but not an 

S-Video or SCSI cable. 

10 nPS POR BETTER 

DIGITAL VIDEO 

CAPI'URE 

.,. A high-quality source (such as a Hi-8 

camera) results in better captures. Avoid 

duped tapes. 

.,. Use a SCSI drive that's been specially 

optimized for video. 

.,. Run Scan Disk and Disk Defragmenter 

before installing the software. 

... Disable crash recovery, anti-virus shields, 

screen savers, and anything else running 

in the background. 

.,. If you're on a network, disconnect. 

.,. UseS-Video over composite, if your 

video player/recorder supports it. 

.,. If you're using 32MB RAM or less, 

upgrade to at least 64MB. 

.,. In Control Panel folder, go under System 

Properties/Performance/File System and 

change read-ahead optimization to 

"none." 

.,. While still in the File System property 

box, check the Troubleshooting tab and 

disable write-behind caching. 

.,. Under System PerformanceNirtual 

Memory, Disable virtual memory. 

Also included is 

MGI's Video Wave SE, 

mediocre video-editing 

software for chopping 

and gluing your clips 

together. VideoWave 

has just enough features 

to whet a budding producer's 

appetite, but 

after only a few 

minutes, we found ourselves 

yearning for 

something meatier, such 

as Ulead's Media Studio 

Pro or Adobe's Premiere. 

The buz's 

funky break-out 

box allows you 

to attach both 

composite and 

s-video sources 

to your PC and 

play junior 

movie mogul. 

We tested Buz on a variety of 

systems from Compaq, Micron, and 

Dell, with varying degrees of success. 

Sometimes it worked, sometimes we 

got the blue screen of death. Iomega 

tech support blamed the problem on 

Phillips' touchy btD9801V1 chip. If 

your Buz board has this chip on it, 

call Iomega for an exchange. Also, 

there are compatibility issues 

with BIOSes that 

don't support 

PCI-to-PCI bridge 

chips as outlined in 

the PCI 2.1 specs 

(such as Packard Bell's 

\ Many of the first Buz works for consumers 

who want to 

SCSI/video-capture 

boards provided with buz 

are plagued with a faulty dabble in digital video 

chip that leads to random without shelling out 

crashes. Contact Iomega serious dough. If highquality 

output to video- 

for a replacement if 

you're a victim. 

860CD, Compaq's 

Desktop 6150, 

Gateway's 2000 P5- 

100, HP's Vedra XA, 

and IBM's Aptiva built 

before 8/1 /97). We 

finally got Buz 

working in an NEC 

Direction PCL 333 

with 32MB RAM and 

a 9GB Seagate Cheetah (capable 

of sustaining 16MB/sec). 

Buz captures video at resolutions 

ranging from an Internetfriendly 

176x120 and TV-output 

720x480 at 30fps. Audio can be 

set between 11kHz 8-bit mono 

(AM radio quality) and 44.1 kHz 

16-bit stereo (CD quality). 

At the highest setting (100K 

per frame), we 

dropped frames. 

When we dropped 

to 90K, we 

dropped fewer 

frames, but the 

picture started to 

strobe about two minutes 

into the clip. Sliding the 

quality bar down to 50K 

improved it, but introduced significant 

artifacts. Overall, we wouldn't entrust 

Buz to capture video clips longer than 

three minutes. After that, Buz peters 

out, resulting in jittery clip playback. 

You don't need a Fast SCSI drive to 

use Buz. Your internal IDE hard drive 

will work, but it won't capture the 

data rates that a good SCSI card will. 

And when you're talking video quality, 

the higher the data rate, the higher 

the picture quality. It should also be 

noted that digital video is a space 

monger. When Buz is humming 

at its best, it's munching 

roughly 2.6MB/sec. Our 

three-and-a-half 

minute clip at the 

80K-quality setting 

created a 490MB file. 

tape is what you 're after, 

save your money and buy Pinnacle 

System 's miroDC30 Plus . 

MAKIMUM PC VERDICT 

Price $199 

Company Iomega 

Phone 800.697.8833 

URL www.iomega.com 

-Rick Popko 

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lnex en~ive 

Output~ 

Glplurcd vidPo 

to telcvr;ion 

Includes 

thorough 

tutorials 

wefi4,~igncdbreakout 

box 

-Built-in SCSI 

card 

MINUSES 

Requires 

separate 

soundcard for 

audio ca ture 

Capture tops 

out at 3MB/sec 

Does not 

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or SCSI cablino 

Medrocre 

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Tektronix Phaser 580 

Makes a colorful impression 

If you're willing to drop more than a few 

thousand dollars on printer, chances are you're 

either (a) loaded to the gills with bills for thrills, 

or (b) looking for something with quality. If it's 

quality you're after, nothing beats a good laser, 

and the Phaser 560 doesn't disappoint. 

With a 33MHz AMD RISC controller delivering 

genuine Adobe PostScript processing, 

Tektronix claims print speeds of up to 5ppm for 

color and 14ppm for black and white. We didn't 

get anywhere near those speeds ourselves, but 

then our tests were designed to tax the printernot 

give it an easy workout. Nonetheless, the 

Phaser 560 produced some darn good 

results in the process. 

Output quality, especially with text 

and grayscale images, was impressive. 

Edges were sharp and crisp, with the 

text smooth and with nice, thick black 

lines. Photographic reproduction was 

also good: colors were bright and brilliant 

and fully saturated, with only 

minor dithering apparent in both our 

600dpi and 1200dpi tests. Banding 

was almost nonexistent, even when 

printed on transparencies or glossy 

stock. We did have to adjust the color 

calibrations slightly (magenta levels 

were too high for our liking), but you can also 

modify the settings to perform customized color 

matching or simulate standard Pantones. You can 

even adjust the toner density. 

Looks aren't everything, mind you, but inside 

the Phaser 560 is just as impressive. Automatic 

color correction, job pipelining, toner supply "gas 

gauges" that let you check the toner supply from 

either the front panel or from your web browser, 

and four separate paper trays for a variety of 

paper sizes and stocks are a few of the Phaser 

560's features. 

Don't let the 

$5,000 price tag 

scare you off. The 

nonextended 

version (maximum 

600dpi, 8MB 

RAM, less fonts,) 

costs $1,000 less, 

and you can still 

upgrade later-but 

at a price penalty. 

Installation is a breeze. Slide in 

the four starter toner cartridges, 

install the fuser and imaging unit, 

and attach the cables. And with a 

toner capacity twice that of standard 

laser printers, the cartridges 

won't have to be replaced until 

you've printed approximately 

10,000 color pages or 12,000 

monochrome. So, depending on 

your printing regimens, you may not have to buy 

replacement cartridges ($109 black; $299 color) 

for a while. 

If it's a laser you 're after, consider the Phaser 

560. It's a colorful contender. 

-Bryan Del Rizzo 

PlUSES 

Above-average 

out ut ua!Jt 

Easy as p1e 

mstallat1on 

Increased toner 

capac1ty 

Parallel port, SCSI, 

Ethernet (EtherTalk, Novell 

NetWare, TCP/IP), Token 

Ring (Novell NetWare, 

TokenTalk, TCP/IP), Serial 

and LocaJTalk 

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Print Time: 0:29 Print Time: 4:27 Print Time: 2:35 

Text can't look much better than this. 

If we'd printed these in color, they would've 

been good enough to open up a Swiss bank 

account with! 

A sweet, not sour, reproduction

1 

Goldmine 4.0 

Everything but 

the prosped's 

kitchen sink 

Not all contact managers are created 

equal. With Goldmine 4.0 , you can 

manage your contacts, automate sales 

activity processes, and even create 

telemarketing scripts. Much of its 

power, however, is most fully realized 

in a networked environment, and 

you'll have to climb a steep learning 

curve to make the most of it. 

Goldmine resembles most contact 

managers: a contact 

screen (importing 

records is a snap), 

calendar, and 

reminders. It's easy 

to sort contacts, 

gather them into 

groups, and search. 

The calendar has a 

strong networked 

presence , with an 

in/out pegboard 

Laplink 1.5 

and the ability to view 

several schedules. 

With its sales-specific 

features, Goldmine stands 

out. In addition to scheduling 

appointments, phone 

calls, and so forth, You can 

LapLink 7.5 exchanges information 

between computers-once you 

manage to get them connected. 

LapLink links via cable, wireless, 

modem, network, or dial-up. We had 

a heck of a time hooking our laptop 

and desktop computers, until we 

learned our U.S. Robotics modems 

don't get along well with LapLink. 

LapLink offers file transfer (it's set 

up like the Windows 95 Explorer), 

remote control, and a si m pie text chat. 

The excellent remote control offers full 

access. You can control the host computer 

remotely at full-screen on the 

guest computer or 

within a window. 

LapLink's security, 

unfortunately, 

needs improvement. 

Though it's 

easy to set up 

users for a log-in 

forecast sales (complete 

with probability percentage) 

and express these and other 

completed tasks in graphs. 

Goldmine can you script 

processes that initiate normal 

actions in a sales cyclesending 

a "thank you" 

letter, requesting referrals, 

surveying customers. 

Goldmine also has a solid 

list, when you add 

or edit a user, the 

password isn't 

shielded by asterisks 

and is clearly visible. 

Users can be given 

restricted access to 

the remote computer, 

limited only 

to chat, file transfer, 

remote control, or 

any combination. 

LapLink also offers 

logging of several 

interactions, including 

connections, file 

transfers, and callback numbers. 

Unfortunately, details about 

file transfer are made available 

only on the "guest" 

machine that downloads 

the files, and not the host 

machine. 

Goldmine offers 

a variety of sales 

tools, including a 

telemarketing 

script organizer. 

e-mail. Incoming e 

mail can be linked 

to contact records. 

Telemarketing 

scripts, the ability 

to change sales territories, 

and other 

sales-type extras 

fill in this program . 

But it'll take you a 

while to get your 

bearings with all 

the icons and 

screens. Sometimes 

a fortuitous rightclick 

or tap on the 

space bar will get 

you where a menu 

perusal couldn 't. 

And this manager 

is so network-oriented that using it 

solo may seem a strange. But you 'll 

find that there's a lot of power inside 

this initially overwhelming interface. 

-Tara Calishain 


Price $295 

Company Gold mine 

Phone 310.454.6800 

URL www.goldminesw.com 8 

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Soyo SY-888 AT 

Anemic 440BX Iovin• 

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PLUSES 

Clock settings 

accessible via 

BIOS 

Several systembus 

settings for 

overclocking 

erformer 

AT formfactor 

MINUSES 

Only three 

PCI slots 

Only three 

DIMM sockets 

No USB brackets 

packaged w1th 

board 

Odd pos1t1on1ng 

of EIDE header 

connectors 

With Intel finally busting loose 

the the mighty 1 OOMHz 

system bus, everyone's 

working that 440BX 

core-logic AGPset 

like it's going out of 

style. Soyotek is no exception; 

attacking on the AT formfactor 

front is the company's SY-6BB 

Baby AT board. 

A jumperless Award BIOS allows 

cranking the CPU speed setting 

adjustments without cracking your 

case open. In fact, the only jumpers 

waiting to be jumped on the PCB 

are the CMOS reset and 1/0 configurations. 

And with the latest 

BIOS revs, you can bump those 

system-bus speeds from 66MHz, 

:J~~=~~-~~~ 1 OOMHz, 103MHz, 

113MHz, and a burly 

133MHz-tres bon! 

Support for the Celeron 

and all flavors of Pentium II 

(from 233MHz through 

400MHz) is also present and 

accounted for. 

The SY-6BB will only run 

All the usual suspect ports are present and 

accounted for on Soya's SY-688 AT 

motherboard, but don't get hot and 

bothered for USB. 

world starved 

for a good 

440BX AT 

with your 

unbuffered168-pin 

DIMMs, but the designers 

at Soyotek must have 

been asleep at the switch, 

plopping in a measly 

three DIMM slots! What's 

up with that? 

And to add insult to 

injury, the SY-6BB only 

comes with three PCI 

slots, for a total expansion 

limitation of six slots. 

Hmmm, AT's standard 

layout calls for a hearty 

eight expansion slots. 

Soyotek could have easily 

slapped in the two more 

PCI slots this board desmotherboard, 

why couldn't 

Soyo slap in 

just a few 

more sockets, 

slots, and 

ports for us? 

perately needs. We understand the 

need to keep some slots free for PS/2 

and USB connectors, but come on! 

The EIDE header connectors are 

also in a closer-than-comfortable 

position, straddling either side of 

the AGP expansion slot. The lack of 

any USB ports hurts as well-would 

it have hurt to include the 

TESTING PARAMETERS: CPU: 400MHz Pentium II, RAM: 128MB of 100MHz SDRAM w/SPD 

(single DIMM), 0/S: Windows 98 Final, AGP card: Reai3D Starfighter 8MB AGP (Intel i740) 

Each test was ran five times and the average was used. RAM Speed score was taken using STREAM for 

DOS v2.0, with the resulting five scores averaged and converted into MB/s. STREAM measures 1MB 

as 1 ()()()()()() bytes, so adjustments were made in the final score. EIDE speed was taken using HDTach 98 

on an IBM Deskstar 14GB UDMA hard drive. The Intel i740 uses system memory for texture memory 

storage exclusively. Test was conducted using a 20.3MB texture setting 

necessary connector? 

The accompanying 

CD-ROM contains all the 

Soyo manuals in PDF 

format, which may save 

paper, but makes them a 

pain to read if your only 

system is in pieces . 

Performance wise, 

the SY-6BB is rock solid, 

and with the jumperless 

design, overclockers will have a 

field day bumping and nudging the 

mainboard into higher performances, 

thanks to no less than three other 

system-bus speeds. 350MHz CPU 

owners will be able to bump this rig 

up to 360MHz (103MHz x 3.5) or 

395MHz (113MHz x 3.5), but as 

always system stability may be 

compromised at the higher speeds. 

Slap more PCI slots, DIMM 

sockets, USB ports in the SY-6BB, 

and it might achieve Kick-Ass 

status. As it is, as one of only two 

440BX AT motherboards making 

the rounds today (Tyan's Thunder 

100 being the other), it will find a 

home in someone's older case . The 

SY-6BB performs superbly, and it is 

easy to overclock. 


URL www.soyo.com.tw 

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Despite 

some good 

components, 

this Pavilion 

proved 

sluggish in 

the stretch . 

PlUSIS 

400MHz 

Pent1um II 

DVD-ROM 

12GB hard dnve 

MINUSES 

Sub-par 

erformance 

Onboard v1deo 

Lousy DVD 

performance 

No portable 

storage 

HP Pavilion 8290 

Life in the slow lane 

The Pavilion 8290 is billed 

as the "machine that can 

take computer enthusiasts 

anywhere they want 

to go." If you're looking 

for a leisurely Sunday 

drive maybe. But if 

you're looking to go offroad 

and get mud on the 

tires, be forewarned: the 

Pavilion 8290 is like Kia 's Sportage 

4x4. You'll eventually get stuck in 

the mud without sufficient horsepower 

to pull yourself out. 

With a 400MHz Pentium II 

processor, an Asus P2B98-XV motherboard, 

Intel's 440BX AGPset, and a 

honking huge 12GB hard drive, the 

8290 seems primed to deliver. And 

with an Ensoniq AudioPCI soundcard, 

DVD-ROM drive, and AGP 2x 

graphics under the hood, it would 

appear that Hewlett-Packard is at 

least intent on giving you the cuttingedge 

technologies Maximum PC 

readers demand. But the benchmark 

results, prove the 8290's at the back 

of the pack in the 400MHz race . 

So what makes this potential 

screamer a dreamer? Well, how about 

the "I 'm soldered to the motherboard 

so there's no way in hell you can 

upgrade me" ATI 3D Rage Pro? You 

may save a few bucks using an OEM 

motherboard and going without an 

AGP slot, but those cost savings disappear 

the minute you want to upgrade. 

And since you can't, you 'll be forced 

to (a) buy a new motherboard, or (b) 

shell out for a new 

system . Either way, 

you'll be out of pocket 

and out of luck. 

And besides, the 3D 

Rage Pro is looking 

anemic these days. 

Although its TV-output 

is still stellar-both 

S-Video and analog 

outputs are includedthis 

chip is in desperate 

need of a 3D overhaul. 

Polished OpenGL 

drivers would be a 

useful accessory too. 

DVD is a nice touch, 

but the bundled Zoran/ 

CompCore soft-DVD 

solution provides video 

quality on par with a 

25-cent peep show. 

Banding, ghosting, and 

severe dithering are 

readily apparent, with 

the resulting out-of-sync chaos dropping 

frames and lurching more than a 

Dodge Viper on low-octane juice. 

Worse, whenever you hook up a TV, 

the screen resolution defaults to an 

off-kilter 848x480-fine for TV, but 

letter-boxed on the monitor. 

The case is roomy inside, though, 

with seating available for three 

5.25-inch and two 3.5-inch drive 

bays. Three PCI slots provide ample 

expansion, but we were disappointed 

that a removable storage option 

(such as a Zip drive) wasn't included . 

Three 5.25-inch, two 3.5-inch 

Two USB, two serial, one parallel, one 

gameport, video-out, S-Video-out, two 

PS/2 audio in/ out 

ATI 3D Rage Pro AGP 2x 

with 4MB SGRAM 

----+H;.:.:. ewlett Packard M70 17-inch with 

~-:--=0_.2Bmm dot pit""'ch~-- ---~-- 

1280x1 024@70Hz 

Despite its 440BX pedigree, the 

8290 doesn't burn rubber. In fact, 

it's the overall slowest 400MHz 

system we've seen to date. However, 

hardware MPEG decoding, a better 

monitor (the included 17-inch, 

1280x1024 is a major letdown), and 

a beefed up video subsystem would 

turn the 8290 into a road warrior. 

00 

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"' 

Pump Up The Volume The keyboard is 

a multimedia delight, with controls for CD 

action and system volume nicely positioned 

above the QWERTY keys.

Isn't this ironic? There's lots of expansion 

space inside the case, but the only thing 

you can't upgrade is the onboard videoone 

of the few PC subsystems you'd 

definitely want to improve sometime in 

the future. 

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Playing Chicken 

With the Sun A dedicated 

fan and heatsink 

keep the Pentium II 

inside mighty cool. 

Uncouth, Uncool This is so 

sad ... a spot on the motherboard 

for an AGP slot, but alas. The 

Rage Pro is soldered smack dab 

on the motherboard. The only 

way to get rid of it is to buy a 

whole new motherboard or PC. 

Drive-In Express Check out all 

of the free spacel The 8290's case 

design is clear and clutter free. 

Cables don't obstruct any of the 

free slots or drive bays, but. .. 

Hatchback To Nowhere .. . to gain 

access to those extra drive bays, 

you'll have to pop off this annoying 

front panel. Make it a sliding door, or 

get rid of it entirely. 

V> 

m 

~ 

00 "'

Final Fantasy VII 

Living in a materia world 

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The archetypal RPG on the Sony 

PlayStation has finally made the jump 

to the PC, bringing with it enhanced 

graphics that 32-bit console owners 

can only dream about. 

FF VII combines pre-rendered, 

stylized backgrounds with realtime 

gouraud-shaded texture-mapped 

polygons. Action takes place in a skillful 

weave of Alone In The Dark-esque 

camera angles and an active, 

cinematic camera-tracking 

system for its quasi-turnbased 

combat system. At 

640x480/16-bit and using all 

those cool visual niceties 

Direct3D PC users are accustomed 

to, such as bilinear 

filtering, alpha-blending, and 

more, FF VII roars. Unfortunately, 

the developers opted not 

to re-render the gorgeous 320x240 

PlayStation background artwork, 

resulting in pixelation. Also, the FMV 

suffers from massive artifacting. 

As monsters are summoned and 

weapons discharged, the camera 

tracks to capture the action. Framerates 

on a pimped-out machine remain 

smooth and fast. But check carefully 

which D3D cards are supported, as 

Riva 128 owners are crying foul over 

FF VII's lack of hardware support. 

Prepare to invest major time in FF 

VII. This four-CD brute contains 

much adventuring-while 

the 

main plot is linear, 

there are side 

quests aplenty 

(mainly for extra 

party members or 

super-secret 

weaponry and 

magic). The extra- 

ordinary combat system verges on 

the extreme, but it's the only way to 

pump up those characters and get 

them strong enough for the final 

confrontation. 

Some folks may be turned off 

by the gameplay mechanics and 

big-headed anime character designothers 

will be offended by the game's 

My, what a big sword 

you have! Final Fantasy 

VII's pseudo realtime 

combat takes some 

getting used to, but the 

spell effects are well 

worth it. 

adult situations 

and blatant stereotyping. 

But RPG 

lunatics lusting for 

a long adventure 

until the next 

Ultima, Wizardry, 

or Fallout should 

look no further 

than Final Fantasy 

VII-the cure for the common RPG. 


Price $50 

Developer Squaresoft 

Publisher Eidos Interactive 

Phone 415.547.1200 

URL www.eidosinteractive.com

...,. Tech Terms Revealed 

aperture grille itself is a collection A3D see Aureai3D at startup, configures devices, 

of fine metal strips that stretch 

and then boots the OS. Because 

ATX A motherboard formfactor 

Accelerated Graphics Port vertically from the top of the 

the BIOS is so integral to getting 

that's smaller than AT, it's a stan- 

AGP is an expansion bus devel- screen to the bottom. The 

your computer started, it's stored 

dard configuration definition for 

oped by Intel specifically for the monitor's electron beam is shot 

on a separate ROM chip, not 

most modern full-size desktop 

videocard subsystem. It operates through the grille, which posiand 

tower PCs. Subsets of this 

your hard drive, to isolate it from 

independent of the PCI bus and tions the beam so that it corinclude 

NLX, LPX, and MicroATX. 

crashes. 

normally runs at 66MHz (i.e., rectly excites the red, green, and 

There are numerous differences blue screen of death Slang to 

1x). Whenever you see multipli- blue phosphor dots that ultibetween 

the older Baby AT form- describe the Fatal Exception Error 

ers attached to AGP, such as 2x mately comprise the picture you 

factor and ATX, including reloca- screen that appears after a fullor 

4x, they are referring to how see on the screen . Because an 

tion of the CPU to an area closer blown system crash. 

much faster the bus will run-2x aperture grille allows more electo 

the power supply fan and 

means 66MHz x 2, or 133MHz. trons to pass through than a 

browser-centric world A futurconcentration 

of 1/0 ports in one 

ADC Analog Digital Converter. shadow mask, it tends to foster a 

istic paradigm in which everyone 

rectangular cluster. How do you 

See DAC. 

more brilliant image. Currently, 

accesses shared applications and 

know which one you have? 

Sony and Mitsubishi manufacture 

information through browser 

ADSL Asymmetric Digital 

Generally, an ATX-type machine 

all the aperture-grille CRTs used 

software. 

Subscriber Line. A protocol for 

will turn itself off after selecting 

by the world's many monitor 

high-bandwidth data transmis- shut down in Windows 95 or NT. brushes 2D sprite-based elecompanies. 

ments integrated with transparsion 

. Uses regular, old copper 

Aureai3D A proprietary API for 

API see Application Program 

ent margins in a 3D engine. 

telephone lines to support down- 

handling 3D positional sounds 

stream throughput from 1.5 to Interface 

and Doppler effects. Using algo- bump mapping A technique 

9Mbps. Application Program Interface rithms developed for NASA, A3D for simulating textured surfaces 

AGP see Accelerated Graphics A set of programming protocols. is able to simulate 3D positional by varying the way in which 

Port 

Instead of a programmer creating sounds on two speakers. A3D objects reflect light. 

custom codes to talk to an oper- will support four or more speak- bus A data channel connecting 

AGPset Any core logic chipset 

ating system directly, he or she ers, but is optimized for two. two or more parts of a computer. 

that supports the AGP bus. See 

can write an application to an 

The expansion bus, for example, 

core-logic chipset. 

API specification, and the instruc- 

is the conduit through which PCI 

AI see Artificial Intelligence tions will be passed on to the cards share data with the CPU 

alpha-blend The ability to give 

operating sytem . 

banding Extraneous lines in a and system memory. 

a pixel a value that will render it Application Specific lnte- printed page or displayed image. 

bus-mastering drivers A 

solid, invisible, or partially trans- grated Circuit A silicon chip On a monitor, banding occurs 

feature that enables a controller 

parent. The process is often used hard-coded to run a specific when the color depth of the 

connected to the bus to commuin 

games to depict special application. video signal isn't rich enough 

nicate directly with other devices 

effects, such as explosions and 

to display a continuous color 

artifact Graphical flaw caused 

on the bus without going 

weapon discharge. When 

gradient. 

by the shortcomings of a com- 

through the CPU . Most modern 

mapped onto polygons, alphapression 

technology. Often mani- bezier path In drawing applica- bus architectures, including PCI , 

blending can simulate semi - tested as blotchiness in what tions, a curved line defined by at support bus mastering because it 

transparent objects, such as should be a solid color. least three adjustable points. The improves performance. 

water and glass. 

shape of the curve can be altered 

Artificial Intelligence The 

bytecode Java programs are 

algorithmic procedure textur- 

by tweaking the handles extendcompiled 

to produce bytecode. 

"brains" of a computer-con- 

ing A formulaic method of ren- 

ing from each point. 

trolled game character. AI deter- 

Because Java is designed to be 

dering imagery capable of mines how the computer reacts bilinear filtering Bilinear inter- machine agnostic, the bytecode 

generating potentially unlimited to human decisions, and in polation. An algorithm that can is again compiled on the 

detail. theory should "learn" human be used to apply textures to 3D machine that executes it by a 

Amiga The first true multimedia strategy as the game progresses. objects. An example would be to Just-In-Time compiler. 

computer. Anyone who is cool 

apply a texture of bricks over a 

ASIC pronounced "a-sick. " See 

either worked on an Amiga, 

sphere, making it look as if it 

Application Specific Integrated 

owned an Amiga, or claims to 

were composed of bricks. 

Vl 

Circuit. 

m 

have been on the periphery of BIOS Basic Input/Output cache A dedicated or reserved "-i 

ATAPI ATA Packet Interface. 

\1) 

the Amiga's design. 

System. Software that contains bank of memory that is used to 00 

Defines a set of commands supyour 

computer's most rudimen- improve your computer's per- 

aperture grille A CRT technol- ported through the ATA-2 interogy 

that fosters a bright display 

tary instructions on how the formance. It provides a tempoface 

for peripherals other than 

(compared to the competing 

operating system communicates rary storage area for instructions 

hard drives, such as CD-ROM, 

shadow mask technology). The 

with hardware. Your BIOS runs and data that acts as a fast swap 

DVD-ROM, and tape drives. 

I

hen I started working as Microsoft's game 

evangelist, I paid my first visit to id Software 

to meet a guy named john Carmack. My 

mission: learn what Windows needed to 

become a great gaming OS. 

asked if we should buy id Software. 

Afterward, Bill Gates sent me e-mail 

asking if I thought id would ever become a 

competitive threat to Microsoft, then he 

I wish I still had the mail I sent Bill, but I remember saying 

something to the effect that the potential for virtual worlds to 

become platforms was tremendous in the game industry, but that 

it wasn't clear to me that id had fully realized that yet. 

I said it would take time for the then-DOS-bound community 

of game developers to wake up and migrate from making 

dedicated single-player disposable applications, to persistent 

multiplayer game universes ... and then to develop the business 

model to turn them into platforms such as Windows. 

I think I used that mail as an opportunity to point out that 

simply making better multimedia drivers to migrate DOS game 

developers to Windows would not provide Microsoft any security 

or significant advantage when the developers finally started 

making successful game platforms. 

Today, I think id may actually be aggressively discovering the 

power of being a platform. john Carmack is the first and only 

person I've ever met in the game industry whom I believe might 

applications for which it was never 

intended. id has carefully modularized 

the engine to support extensibility 

and component replacement. 

john has an IQ lock on the 

technology that makes that kind 

of realtime world possible. Sure, 

other people make pretty good 3D 

shooters, but id has created a 

network infrastructure, it has OEMs 

who license the technology, and of 

course everyone buys the client 

software. john is making a completely 

new kind of OS for the PC, 

one based on the delivery of 3D 

content via the Internet. In many 

less-than-obvious ways, Quake II is 

already well beyond any other 3D engine currently on the 

market. The game he puts on his engine, Quake III, for example, 

is just his best content offering, just as Office is Microsoft's best 

content offering for its own platform. 

john has also started flexing serious platform muscle. 

He's telling Microsoft where to stick its 3D strategy, which by 

itself means nothing. But he's also using his emerging platform 

power to shove Microsoft around for a change. 

As an OS, Quake is already powerful enough to demand 

Quake: Windows' Biggest Threat 

THE ULTIMATE 3D GAME HAS THE BEST SHOT AT FRAGGIN ' MICROSOFT 

actually have the potential to grow up to be the next Bill Gates. 

To date, Microsoft is the only company that has actually 

mastered platform power and refined it to an art. But Microsoft 

is blind to the game industry, and id's technology is increasingly 

showing the hallmarks of a developing platform. 

A platform is more than a set of tools that a community 

of applications are 

dependent on. There 

is a spark of magic in 

the idea behind a 

platform, and the 

process by which it 

is created, adopted, 

and evolved. 

support for its own driver model from the entire 3D hardware 

community. He's also told Apple that he'll only port Quake 

to Rhapsody. It reminds me of the first moves Bill made to 

subjugate IBM .. . right up to the day he told them he would 

decide what OS they'd use from then on. 

I'm sure Carmack wouldn't necessarily find the characterization 

John Carmack is the first and only person I've ever met in the 

game industry I believe might adually have the potential 

to grow up to be the next Bill Gates. 

Sun, Novell, IBM, Lotus, and Adobe have all tried to contrive 

a platform. Adobe succeeded with PostScript and then lost its 

leverage. Netscape had one, but didn't know how to use it, and 

so succumbed to Microsoft, as well. java, of course, is a rapidly 

decaying attempt to create another one. 

Ah, but Quake .... id is the best at something everyone 

wants now, and something everyone will soon need. Quake is 

the best 3D solution for the Internet. It has a huge community 

of content developers, and it's being used for content and 

of being a budding Gates complimentary, but in my opinion, he's 

the only kind of competitor that has a chance against the Empire. 

There are still many hurdles id has to leap to get there, and it 

isn't completely clear that john wants to take them. Supporting 

thousands of screaming developers and OEMs just doesn't seem 

like John's bag. But it's a necessary step for an evolving platform. 

If id doesn't take it, somebody else eventually will. I predict that 

very shortly a number of 3D engines designed to be platforms 

will appear in the market, and id may have a different kind of 

competition cut out for it. •

•• 

• 512KB Integrated L2 Cache 

• 10GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive (9ms) 

• 1000LS 17" (15.9" vis) Monitor 

• NEW ATI XPERT 98D 8MB 3D 2X AGP 

Video Card 

• 2X DVD-RDM Drive and Decoder Card 

• Turtle Beach Montego A3D Sound Card 

• Altec Lansing ACS-90 Speakers 

• 56K Capable" U.S.R. x2 Win Modem 

• Microsoft'" Home Essentials 98 with 

IIJIIII'II!~!II!I!--.~'""'!".,-..::-' Money 98 

• NEW MS'" Windows• 98 

• Dell'" OuietKey'" Keyboard 

• MS lntelliMouse• 

• 3-Year Limited Warrantyt 

• 1-Year On-site• Service 

*Upgrade to the NEW STB nVidia lX 

8MB 30 2X AGP Video Card. add $29. 

*Upgrade to A/tee Lansing ACS-295 

Speakers with Subwoofer. add $50. 

Personal Lease' : $86/Mo .. 36 Mos. 

Order Code #500809 

Yeah, we're talking to you. The one who likes to be on the edge. Correction: Make that 

over the edge. Which is exactly where the Dell Dimension'" XPS R400 is going to take you, 

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us a call and we'll build you one of these monsters today. Then strap 

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MPC 1998 01-web

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