3d Blaster PCI

when is this suppose to be out?I have a diamond stealth 2 meg card would i just take that out and pop this one in since it has 4 megs of video memory?Thanks in advance

it is basically just hat easy! pop of the case and take out the Stealth and pop in The 3D!!

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>Subject: Re: 3d Blaster PCI >Date: Tue, 08 Oct 1996 01:03:43 GMT >>when is this suppose to be out?I have a diamond stealth 2 meg card would >>i just take that out and pop this one in since it has 4 megs of video >>memory?Thanks in advance > It is supposed to be out some time at this end of Oct. >Mike

You can order it direct from them after Oct 14th.

It is supposed to be out some time at this end of Oct. Mike

That's for Intergraph's card, the Reactor3D. I don't think Creative Labs has announced anything about their card's availability as of yet (besides the press release on Oct. 1st). -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

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>That's for Intergraph's card, the Reactor3D. I don't think Creative Labs >has announced anything about their card's availability as of yet (besides >the press release on Oct. 1st). >-- >Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences >Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ >> You can order it direct from them after Oct 14th.

Trust me, the end of October. Mike

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>Subject: Re: 3d Blaster PCI >Date: Tue, 08 Oct 1996 21:31:18 GMT >>That's for Intergraph's card, the Reactor3D. I don't think Creative Labs >>has announced anything about their card's availability as of yet (besides >>the press release on Oct. 1st). >>-- >>Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences >>Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ >>> You can order it direct from them after Oct 14th. > Trust me, the end of October. >Mike

My bad, I was referring to the Intergraph board, that is the one that I am getting since it comes with ICR 2 Rendition ready and it comes out the soonest. All three Rendition boards are identical except for the software bundled with them.

From what I've heard, the 3D Blaster PCI should be out sometime after October 15th. The Intergraph Reactor3D will be available directly from Intergraph beginning October 14... Check-out their web site at http://www.intergraph.com/ics/reactor The software bundle with the Intergraph Reactor3D contains the Rendition-Ready version of IndyCar II.

Has anyone heard what the 3D Blaster will be bundled with, if anything? Hope it at least matches the Intergraph offer.

All three ? I thought creative labs and integraph's reactor were the only two. What is the third one ? Thanks

It will ship with hardware accelerated versions of Quake (also a patch for owners of the full version), Battle Arena Toshinden, Flight Unlimited, and Rebel Moon. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

Sierra's Screamin'3D. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

>> My bad, I was referring to the Intergraph board, that is the one that I am >> getting since it comes with ICR 2 Rendition ready and it comes out the soonest. >> All three Rendition boards are identical except for the software bundled with >> them. >All three ? I thought creative labs and integraph's reactor were >the only two. >What is the third one ? >Thanks Sierra Online, which will bundle ICR2 with some other Sierra titles. Dave (davids) Sparks Late Night League http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/latenite.html

ICR2 will be bundled with both Intergraph's Reactor and Sierra's Screamin'3D. Since all three of the Verite cards will be out before Nascar2 is released, it will not be among the bundled titles. When released it will be 'Rendition Ready', meaning it has been written to fully take advantage of the hardware acceleration offered by these cards. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ offer?

So, nothing very good, huh? Where is the Indy offer, or a Nascar 2 offer? > It will ship with hardware accelerated versions of Quake (also a patch for > owners of the full version), Battle Arena Toshinden, Flight Unlimited, and

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> Rebel Moon. > -- > Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences > Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ > > Has anyone heard what the 3D Blaster will be bundled with, if anything? > > Hope it at least matches the Intergraph offer.

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>Subject: Re: 3d Blaster PCI >Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 01:04:57 -0400 >> My bad, I was referring to the Intergraph board, that is the one that I am >> getting since it comes with ICR 2 Rendition ready and it comes out the soonest. >> All three Rendition boards are identical except for the software bundled with >> them. >All three ? I thought creative labs and integraph's reactor were >the only two. >What is the third one ? >Thanks

Sierra is also coming out with a Rendition board.

: Sierra's Screamin'3D. Well Eric, you have become r.a.s.' resident 3d expert. I've been following the posts here and in the c.s.i.p.h.video newsgroup. However, I seem to have missed one thing. With the rendition chip, who is going to be responsible for maintaining and updating the Windows drivers? Will we have to rely on Creative Labs, Sierra, and Intergraph? Or will these be provided by the chip designer? -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

It's a thankless job, but someone got to keep you guys from wasting your money =) To be honest, I'm not sure about the drivers. Obviously you will get DirectX updates (Version 3 was just released a week or so ago) from Microsoft, but I don't know about more intermediate driver tune-ups. I seem to remember seeing that 3Dfx is doing the drivers for all the Voodoo cards, so perhaps Rendition will be doing the same. With all of the cards being pretty much identical hardware-wise, I don't see why this wouldn't be the case. Again, I really don't know though. I'll try and found out for sure and keep everyone informed of what I find. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

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> >Subject: Re: 3d Blaster PCI > >Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 01:04:57 -0400 > >> My bad, I was referring to the Intergraph board, that is the one that I am > >> getting since it comes with ICR 2 Rendition ready and it comes out the soonest. > >> All three Rendition boards are identical except for the software bundled with > >> them. > >All three ? I thought creative labs and integraph's reactor were > >the only two. > >What is the third one ? > >Thanks > Sierra is also coming out with a Rendition board.

Sierra's board is made by a Japanese company Canapus(sp?) and should be available later this month. Intergraph has started selling their board (Reactor) by 800 number (800) 692-8069 for overnight delivery.

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> : Sierra's Screamin'3D. > Well Eric, you have become r.a.s.' resident 3d expert. I've been > following the posts here and in the c.s.i.p.h.video newsgroup. However, > I seem to have missed one thing. With the rendition chip, who is going > to be responsible for maintaining and updating the Windows drivers? > Will we have to rely on Creative Labs, Sierra, and Intergraph? Or will > these be provided by the chip designer? > -- > **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* > Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- <

]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Creative and Intergraph are doing their own driver support. Don't know about Sierra. Their board comes from Canopus (sp?) a Japanese board builder.

I recently was in contact with Peter Karnazes of Intergraph (Executive Director, Consumer Products Division) about this. Intergraph apparently will be producing its own driver support starting around December. He said that there is currently a project underway to improve the Winmark performance to a minimum of 30M on a P166. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

Eric, Since all of the boards are identical, I would suspect that we could use ANY driver from the three vendors. l8r, Todd

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>Subject: Re: 3d Blaster PCI >Date: 12 Oct 1996 16:55:13 GMT >I recently was in contact with Peter Karnazes of Intergraph (Executive >Director, Consumer Products Division) about this. Intergraph apparently >will be producing its own driver support starting around December. He said >that there is currently a project underway to improve the Winmark >performance to a minimum of 30M on a P166. >-- >Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences >Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ >> Well Eric, you have become r.a.s.' resident 3d expert. I've been >> following the posts here and in the c.s.i.p.h.video newsgroup. However, >> I seem to have missed one thing. With the rendition chip, who is going >> to be responsible for maintaining and updating the Windows drivers? >> Will we have to rely on Creative Labs, Sierra, and Intergraph? Or will >> these be provided by the chip designer?

You might think so, but the S3 Virge cards don't work this way. I've heard that Diamond made it so it's drivers only worked on Diamond boards. It remains to be seen if any of the companies using the Verite chips will do the same. Perhaps Creative Labs will do so to ensure compatibility with CGL. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

Eric, According to Intergraph the boards are physically identical, so why would the drivers not work?

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>Subject: Re: 3d Blaster PCI >Date: 13 Oct 1996 16:56:11 GMT >You might think so, but the S3 Virge cards don't work this way. I've heard >that Diamond made it so it's drivers only worked on Diamond boards. It >remains to be seen if any of the companies using the Verite chips will do >the same. Perhaps Creative Labs will do so to ensure compatibility with >CGL. >-- >Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences >Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ >> Since all of the boards are identical, I would suspect that we could use >ANY >> driver from the three vendors.

This is from an e-mail I received from Peter A. Karnazes of Intergraph: "To the best of our knowledge, all three cards are exactly Rendition's reference design with identical performance. Rendition has, at times, been mysterious about their dealings with Creative, so until we actually purchase a 3DB and look it over we won't know. The 3DB card that was at a Microsoft compatibility gathering looked identical to ours. During our certification process we have had to add decoupling capacitors and do some other minor tweaks for the rendering quality to meet our standards. As far as drivers are concerned, the drivers for the first versions of the boards should work on all three. After that, I expect everyone to put an ID mechanism on their board to prevent unauthorized use. 3DB's CGL works only on their board which they control through the BIOS." -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

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>: Sierra's Screamin'3D. >Well Eric, you have become r.a.s.' resident 3d expert. I've been >following the posts here and in the c.s.i.p.h.video newsgroup. However, >I seem to have missed one thing. With the rendition chip, who is going >to be responsible for maintaining and updating the Windows drivers? >Will we have to rely on Creative Labs, Sierra, and Intergraph? Or will >these be provided by the chip designer? >-- >**************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* > Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Typically the chip manufacturer provides the base level drivers. The board manufacturer may do some additional customization. Dave (davids) Sparks Late Night League http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/latenite.html

All of the Rendition based cards will retail for under $200US. The PowerVR looks to be an impressive chip, but it has one major flaw: it lacks support for bilinear filtering. This is a huge setback, as it will do nothing to reduce pixelization of texture maps. To see an example of the benefits of bilinear filtering look at: http://www.rendition.com/techdef2.html Interestingly enough, NEC is using a 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics card in its new PowerPlayer PCs, not the PowerVR. As for the Rendition cards, they are all basically identical. Each manufacturer will, however, be producing it's own driver updates. Based on Intergraph's reputation in the high-end 3D workstation environment, I find it hard to go with any other card. A bundled full-version of ICR2 doesn't hurt either. Additionally it is the first available card (direct orders will arrive tomorrow). Realistically though, I don't think any of the cards will stand out from its 'brothers'. Make your choice on what company you feel will give you the best support and has bundled software you actually want (for me that's Intergraph). -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

:You might think so, but the S3 Virge cards don't work this way. I've heard :that Diamond made it so it's drivers only worked on Diamond boards. It :remains to be seen if any of the companies using the Verite chips will do :the same. Perhaps Creative Labs will do so to ensure compatibility with :CGL. : All the drivers for the ET6000 based cards are compatiable.. take care Julian Data IVGA Member #0004 Director of Information Technology ACE Beta Tester and Driver of IVGA Channel Operator of #ivga on IRC (Undernet) Powered by IVGA Pro Gamer System P6-200 oc 233, 96MB EDO

Eric, That is why I went with Intergraph, same board, good support, first to market, and ICR2 Rendition Ready. l8r, Todd

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>Subject: Re: 3d Blaster PCI >Date: 14 Oct 1996 22:21:48 GMT >All of the Rendition based cards will retail for under $200US. The PowerVR >looks to be an impressive chip, but it has one major flaw: it lacks support >for bilinear filtering. This is a huge setback, as it will do nothing to >reduce pixelization of texture maps. To see an example of the benefits of >bilinear filtering look at: http://www.rendition.com/techdef2.html >Interestingly enough, NEC is using a 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics card in its new >PowerPlayer PCs, not the PowerVR. >As for the Rendition cards, they are all basically identical. Each >manufacturer will, however, be producing it's own driver updates. Based on >Intergraph's reputation in the high-end 3D workstation environment, I find >it hard to go with any other card. A bundled full-version of ICR2 doesn't >hurt either. Additionally it is the first available card (direct orders >will arrive tomorrow). Realistically though, I don't think any of the >cards will stand out from its 'brothers'. >Make your choice on what company you feel will give you the best support >and has bundled software you actually want (for me that's Intergraph). >-- >Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences >Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ >> How much is the 3D Blaster supposed to cost and what about Videologics >> Power VR isnt that supposed to be as good if not better than the >> rendition chip and also has the backing of NEC. Also which card out >> of the three rendition cards available would you buy not just for >> games but for driver support and additional customization

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>>: Sierra's Screamin'3D. >>Well Eric, you have become r.a.s.' resident 3d expert. I've been >>following the posts here and in the c.s.i.p.h.video newsgroup. However, >>I seem to have missed one thing. With the rendition chip, who is going >>to be responsible for maintaining and updating the Windows drivers? >>Will we have to rely on Creative Labs, Sierra, and Intergraph? Or will >>these be provided by the chip designer? >>-- >>**************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* >> Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. >>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= >Typically the chip manufacturer provides the base level drivers. The board >manufacturer may do some additional customization. >Dave (davids) Sparks >Late Night League >http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/latenite.html

How much is the 3D Blaster supposed to cost and what about Videologics Power VR isnt that supposed to be as good if not better than the rendition chip and also has the backing of NEC. Also which card out of the three rendition cards available would you buy not just for games but for driver support and additional customization

Do the Creative Labs and Intergraph boards both have 4 MB of RAM standard? Also, could someone post a total list of bundled software for both boards? Thanx!! Jim Potteiger Lt. Jim Potteiger Hawaii: JimP Balto., MD

No problem. I posted a full review of the Intergraph card under the heading "Intergraph Reactor Review!!!". Perhaps your news server hasn't received it yet, keep a look out. Well, right now the Intergraph is available for next day delivery for about $220 (depending on how much shipping to your house is). I haven't seen the Creative Labs board yet, but it is expected in stores any day now. Sierra's board probably will not be out until early November. It seems to be about on par with my old ATI Mach64 in regular DOS. However in VESA 2.0 modes, it is about 30% faster (approximately 21fps vs. 16fps in Quake at 400x300). I don't think so, but the full version will be. If it's anything like ICR2 that came with my Reactor card, we're in for quite a treat. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

Thanks for your excellent information! So, now that I have decided to buy one of these animals, when and where is the best place to get one? And how much better/worse will they be in DOS/NASCAR1 than my current Diamond Viper PCI? Is the NASCAR2 beta "Rendition Ready"? -- Best Wishes!!! Robert Huggins Raleigh, NC

Yes both come standard with 4megs of EDO RAM. Creative Labs- Quake, Flight Unlimited, Rebel Moon, Battle Arena Toshindon Intergraph- Monster Truck Madness, Hellbender, Quake, Indycar2 -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ boards?

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> Yes both come standard with 4megs of EDO RAM. > Creative Labs- Quake, Flight Unlimited, Rebel Moon, Battle Arena Toshindon > Intergraph- Monster Truck Madness, Hellbender, Quake, Indycar2 > -- > Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences > Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ > ? > > Also, could someone post a total list of bundled software for both > boards?

Since I already purchased ICR 2 about two months ago, Dos version, is this version Rendition ready ? If not do you think Sierra will offer a trade-in ? The reason is I'd rather not order the intergraph board since I already bought ICR2, I might as well buy CL's board. If not, I'll wind up with two copies of ICR2. It seems like a waste. Guy Brosseau

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>>ICR2 will be bundled with both Intergraph's Reactor and Sierra's >>Screamin'3D. Since all three of the Verite cards will be out before >>Nascar2 is released, it will not be among the bundled titles. When >>released it will be 'Rendition Ready', meaning it has been written to fully >>take advantage of the hardware acceleration offered by these cards. >Thanks for your excellent information! >So, now that I have decided to buy one of these animals, when and >where is the best place to get one? >And how much better/worse will they be in DOS/NASCAR1 than my current >Diamond Viper PCI? >Is the NASCAR2 beta "Rendition Ready"? >-- >Best Wishes!!! >Robert Huggins >Raleigh, NC

The Intergraph order desk is 800-692-8069. As of Tuesday morning, they had product in stock, the board is US $200 and they will ship it next day air 4PM for US$ 7.50 (US-only, I'm sure). Mine should arrive at 4PM tomorrow. :) Dave (davids) Sparks Late Night League http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/latenite.html

Monster Truck Madness? and Hellbender? are only the "TRIAL" versions. Here is a quote from the Q&A off of Intergraph's web page at: http://www.intergraph.com/ics/reactor Q. What games are bundled with Reactor? A. The full Rendition Ready? version of IndyCar 2, Rendition Ready shareware version of Quake?, and trial versions of Microsofts Monster Truck Madness? and Hellbender?. -- Best Wishes!!! Robert Huggins Raleigh, NC