Novosti - Srpanj 2002.

Evo nešto i za korisnike Mac računala. Iz NVidia-e je došla vijest da će Apple uskoro ponuditi nadogradnju grafičke kartice na GeForce 4 Ti za
sva računala koje imaju ploče s AGP 4X utorom. Lijepo je vidjeti da se Apple
neda i da hrabro stupa naprijed.

Za sve one koji još uvijek koriste Voodoo kartice, evo napokon prave vijesti. Izašao novi Voodoo Tools. Podržava Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo
Velocity 100, Voodoo Velociti 200, Voodoo3 1000, Voodoo3 2000, Voodoo3 3000,
Voodoo3 3500, Voodoo4 4500, Voodoo5 5500 i Voodoo5 6000. Radi na Windowsima
95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. Uživajte.

Stigla ni manje ni više nego tri press releasea od ATi-a. Evo prvoga:

“ATI launches RADEON(tm) 9700, establishing a new foundation for the
future of graphics

RADEON 9700 delivers double the performance of any product currently
on the market

MARKHAM, ON/ Munich, Germany July 18, 2002 – ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:
ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) today introduced the RADEON(tm) 9700 Visual Processing
Unit (VPU). ATI’s groundbreaking new chip boasts many industry firsts and
revolutionizes the graphics industry with features including eight parallel
rendering pipelines, complete Microsoft® DirectX® 9 support, AGP 8X support
and a fully programmable floating point architecture, leading the industry
into a new era of cinematic-quality real time graphics.

“The RADEON 9700, with its full floating point architecture, represents the
most radical change in computer graphics since the industry adoption of
textures in 1990,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie Research,
the leading analyst firm in graphics and multimedia. “The RADEON 9700 has
the unique ability to run the equations of physics that accurately represent
the visual experience rather than having to approximate them with techniques
like multi-texturing. Beginning with the RADEON 9700, cinematic-quality
rendering moves from the off-line software emulation environment into the
real time world of the visual processor.”

“Any company that wants to compete in the high end will have to follow in
our footsteps,” said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, Marketing and
General Manager, Desktop, ATI Technologies Inc. “The RADEON 9700
revolutionizes the visual experience and establishes a foundation for the
future. It is the only choice for users craving the ultimate gaming
experience this holiday season.”

“ATI’s RADEON 9700 takes the next step in graphics technology, bringing us
one step closer to realizing real time movie quality graphics in games,”
said Michael Heilemann, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Fox
Interactive. “With hardware support for version 2.0 pixel and vertex
shaders, it allows us much more freedom to create graphical effects with
unparalleled performance.”

Winning architecture for unheard-of performance
The RADEON 9700 has a completely revolutionary architecture focusing on
performance, precision and programmability. Its eight parallel rendering
pipelines provide the brute force to process over 2.5 billion pixels per
second. Four parallel geometry engines process greater than 300 million
transformed and lit polygons per second. The performance of this new
architecture is staggering, doubling the performance of anything on the
market today. In addition, HYPER Z(tm) III reduces overdraw by detecting
and discarding hidden pixels and reduces memory bandwidth consumption by
over 50 per cent. The RADEON 9700 incorporates a new high-performance
256-bit DDR memory interface, providing over 20 GB/second of graphics memory
bandwidth.

The RADEON 9700 is the first to fully support the AGP 8X specification,
allowing increased volumes of texture and vertex data to be transferred
quickly. The AGP 8X interface was designed to double the graphics
processing bandwidth over today’s current AGP 4X and the RADEON 9700 has
been selected as the validation platform for many motherboard chipset
manufacturers. ATI’s commitment to AGP 8X ensures that the RADEON 9700 is
at the forefront of the latest advancements in chipset technology.

The RADEON 9700 is the first architecture developed by ATI’s west coast
development team, which includes the former ArtX team, known for developing
the graphics for the NINTENDO GAMECUBE(tm).

Cinematic effects and incredible photo-realism
The RADEON 9700 brings users a movie-quality experience on their computer.
With SMARTSHADER(tm) 2.0 and floating point precision, the RADEON 9700 is
the first graphics architecture to fully support Microsoft’s DirectX 9. The
implementation supports up to 16 textures per rendering pass with Pixel
Shaders 2.0 and vertex programs of up to 1,024 instructions with flow
control. This architecture enables users to run complex cinematic-quality
shader programs in real time for truly realistic effects.
SMOOTHVISION(tm) 2.0 incorporates a new, state-of-the-art, full-scene
anti-aliasing implementation for unprecedented performance at even the
highest quality anti-aliasing modes. Also included in SMOOTHVISION 2.0 is
ATI’s popular advanced anisotropic filtering technology, supporting up to 16
bilinear or trilinear samples per pixel at a variety of modes. These
technologies substantially improve the visual quality, without degrading
performance.

Seamless integration of shaders and video
The RADEON 9700’s new VIDEOSHADER(tm) technology is the first architecture
to use programmable pixel shaders to accelerate video streaming.
Programmable pixel shaders can also be used to enhance the quality and
scalability of TV and DVD playback. On captured video, VIDEOSHADER can apply
real-time noise filtering to produce clean video. Image filtering such as
blurring, embossing and outlining can also be applied to video streams in
real time.

FULLSTREAM(tm), another innovative technology in the RADEON 9700, uses pixel
shaders to remove blocky artifacts from streaming video and provides sharper
image quality and greater scalability.

RADEON 9700 supports in hardware both MPEG-2 encode and decode, enabling
high-quality accelerated video capture and playback.

Flexible display features
The RADEON 9700 VPU features dual integrated display controllers, dual
integrated 400MHz DACs, an integrated TMDS transmitter, and integrated
TV-out and HDTV-out support, which enable a variety of display
configurations.

Pricing and availability
ATI and its board partners will have RADEON 9700 series products available
in August. ATI’s retail product will ship with 128 MB DDR memory, DVI-I, VGA
and TV-out display connectors with a suggested retail price of USD$399.”

Tko bi to sve preveo!? (a ima još!) Mi pak sve prenjeli jer probavamo užicat 9700 sample. Moramo malo se ulizat njihovom PR-u, što naravno ne znači da nam recenzija iste neće biti kako treba, a bome ni da ćemo dobiti test primjerak…

Uz očekivani Radeon 9700, ATi je još na tržište pustio dva GPU-a – Radeon 9000 i 9000 Pro. Oba su dostupna već na tržištu (samo kojem?) za razliku od 9700 koji će se pojaviti u opticaju u 8-9. mjesecu.

Kao što naslov kaže, i opet novi driveri za Matrox Parheliu. Driveri su za Win200 i WinXP platforme, izašli su 17. ovog mjeseca i nose
brojku 1.00.03.230. To je samo dokaz da se u Matroxu mnogo radi na
dotjerivanju drivera i da ima još mnogo posla. Za sada Matrox još nije
odlučio dali će izraditi drivere za Win98/ME, ali zato obećaju da će
napraviti drivere za WinNT4.0 i Linux. Jedva čekam da se dočepam jedne
Parhelie.

AOpen je izbacio na tržište novu USB 2.0 pržilicu EHW-4048U. Prži CD-R do 40x, CD-RW do 12x, a čita CDove 48x. Srednje vrijeme pristupa je
120ms, što je odličan podatak i za vugaris CDove. Ima podršku za JustLink,
tako da nema straha od podtrčavanja buffera, a za svaki slučaj je tu i 2MB
Data Buffera. Naravno, slijedi standarde USBa, pa se može koristiti i preko,
sada već starih, USB 1.0 i 1.1 kontrolera. Iznad svega, moram priznati da
izgleda odlično, bolje od ostalih USB pržilica.

Hitachi je počeo s prodajom svog prenosnika baziranog na mobilnom P4 procesoru snage 1.8GHz. Vijest nije zanimljiva? Varate se. Riječ je o
prijenosnom računalu u kojem se chipovi (i procesor) hlade vodom. Rezervoar
s vodom se nalazi (pazi sad) iza LCD monitora i (pazi sad ovo) proziran je.
Spekulira se zašto dizajneri nisu u rezervoar stavili nekoliko plstičnih
ribica.

Ovdje možete naći testove Radeona 9000 ili 9000 Pro:

• Anandtech
• Hard OCP
• Tom’s
  Hardware
• Firing
  Squad

Radeon 9000/9000 Pro je entry level kartica u rangu GF4 MX460, dakle sporija
od starijeg Radeona 8500. Zato je cijena primamljivih $129.

Ovdje možete naći testove Radeona 9700 (R300):

• Anandtech
• Hard OCP
• Tom’s
  Hardware

Radeon 9700 je DirectX9 kartica, dakle ima sve najnovije mogućnosti. Driveri
su OK, što inače nije karakteristika ATi-a prilikom lansiranja, ali su potpuno
novi (toliko o najavljivanim unificiranim driverima). 9700 je po svemu
sudeći dosta brža od Ti4600, no "oduševljava" činjenica da prave rezultate
testova nećete naći u recenzijama, već indekse brzine. Što je potpuna glupost.
Prvo zato kaj nam takvi brojevi ništa ne govore, a kao drugo da se uz trud da
izračunati koliki bi stvari brojevi bili (tj. nabave komponente koje su korištene
u test stroju, zbencha se Ti4600 i onda množi do mile volje da se dobiju
rezultati Radeona). Zato stranica i stranica o arhitekturi i ostalim defaktno
nebitnim stvarima… ZZzZZZZzzzz…. Parhelia je bar imala par stvarno cool
stvari (igranje na tri monitora, itd.).

Izašla je nova verzija Debian GNU/Linuxa. Kako je Debian GNU/Linux prvenstveno namijenjen radu na sreverima (i odgovarajućim UNIX/Linux
guruima), tako postoje verzije za sve moguće platforme i procesore. Mnogi će
se začuditi što unutar njega nema zadnjih verzija (KDE je 2.2, XFree 4.1, a
kerneli 2.2 i 2.4, itd.), ali Debian GNU/Linux je prije svega stabilan i
funkcionalan serverski hevidjuti OS. Inače, ovo je valjda jedini OS koji
nosi (ili bi barem trebao nositi) oznaku “Don’t try this at home”. Samo za
znalce poput Dobrice (TM).