Reviews and Previews (of Hardware)

We test, preview, and drool over the latest hardware.

3Dfx Voodoo2 based 3D accelerators

Intel Pentium II 350, 400, and 440BX Motherboard

Voodoo2- What we all have been waiting for

It was less than 2 years ago that the 3D accelerator hype started, and it was only a while after that when a previously unknown company called 3Dfx brought out its Voodoo chipset. It revelutionised the way that games looked and played. Cards with this chipset were always the fastest 3D cards available, until a few months ago, but now, 3Dfx have refreshed the market with their Voodoo2 chipset.

A lot of people thought that the chipset would suffer from the classic 'sequels always fail' scenario, but it has actually performed better than most expectations. Some features of this new card is the ability to display fullscreen 3D acceleration with z-buffering at 800x600 resolution. It also supports fogging, and if you know what it means, alpha transparency, bi/trilinear filtering, linear mipmapping, and a whole host of other features.

Many reviews of the card have showed that if placed in a 430TX motherboard, it performs only around 70% faster than the original Voodoo, but if placed in a 440BX motherboard with a Pentium II CPU, it performs at an average of 300% faster. To be fair though, a few features of the Voodoo2 do perform up to 300% faster on an average board.

One of the most powerful features of the Voodoo2 is the ability to have dual cards with this chipset in the same machine for extra performance. This is called 'SLI mode', and allows full screen 3D acceleration with z-buffering in 1024x768 resolution. This feature would allow great upgrade potential, and just imagine having two of these things driving your PC!!!

At the moment the fastest card based on the Voodoo2 is the Diamond Monster 3D II, but Creative also have released a 3D Blaster Voodoo2, but Orchid have also announced thier card based on it as well.

The Voodoo2 is certainly on of the best developments fo gamers lately, but if you want something a little cheaper, you could wait to see how the new Intel i740 3D accelerator performs. We recommend buying a Voodoo2 card if you have not got a 3D accelerator already, or are considering buying a Pentium II, but if you have a 3Dfx already and have a 430TX, 430VX, or 430HX motherboard, then it is an option only for the compulsive 'power user', or someone who has a bit of money to play with, but believe me, I've got one on my shopping list already.

The next Generation of POWER

This is just a quick review of the latest hardware offerings from Intel. It's next generation of processor, the Pentium II, has had it's speeds upped to 350MHz, and 400MHz.

These two new processors support the new 440BX chipset, which the only basic difference from the 440LX motherboard is its use of a 100Mhz Bus speed. These CPUs can only run on this new type of motherboard. The 100MHz Bus speed doesn't only speed up the processors, but also the whole system. This Bus speed is so fast that even normal SDRAM memory cannot be put into the board, you will need a special type if memory that runs at 100MHz speed, a bit of a nuisance if you are upgrading and want to use your old memory. You can use older Pentium IIs on a 440BX motherboard, but not vice-versa.

The 350MHz Pentium II is not a great speed increase over the former P2 333MHz CPU, but the 400MHz one totally blitzes any other x86 processor on the market. Soon to be released is a 450MHz version.

All these new hardware developments are part of Intel's great plan, and soon (probably in 1999), they will be releasing a totally new CPU, a 64-bit job with an entirely new architecture, but you will hear more news about this as we get it.