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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BillyG who wrote (37129)	11/6/1998 1:33:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Appropriately named after a dinosaur... Proside Trinosaur PRS-MP6000.(Evaluation) 12/01/98 PC Magazine Page 271(1) COPYRIGHT 1998 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company Copyright 1998 Information Access Company. All rights reserved. Chromatic Research Mpact-2; 8MB; 1,600 x 1,200 (85 Hz). AGP or PCI, $200 street. Somerset, NJ; 732-271-7395; www.proside.com The now-defunct Mpact2 chip on the Proside Trinosaur PRS-MP6000 is outclassed by all the other offerings we tested in 3-D and 2-D performance, and the built-in MPEG and Dolby Digital support for DVD playback still doesn't justify this product's steep price. The Trinosaur bristles with connectors, including outputs for Dolby Digital sound, S-Video, MPEG -2 video, and VGA. You also get cables for redirecting CD audio through the card. The only bundled software is Chromatic Research's MediaWare, including drivers for installing a DVD player and utilities for setting parameters and the like. The Trinosaur made a less-than-impressive showing on our 3-D benchmark tests, posting a 3D WinMark score of 84; by contrast, the top-performing Diamond Monster Fusion scored 497. The Trinosaur also showed weaknesses on our 3-D quality tests, failing many of them. The unit lacks support for many standard 3-D fogging features, and it was unable to pass our anti-aliasing test and most of our MIP-mapping tests. Results were more acceptable on our 2-D tests yet still below average. Note, too, that the top resolution at true color is 1,024-by-768, so large-screen users will want to look elsewhere. Unfortunately, there's little to recommend in the Trinosaur. If you want DVD capabilities, you're better off with a card such as the Matrox Millennium G200 ($130 street) with an $80 DVD daughtercard.

To: BillyG who wrote (37129)	11/6/1998 1:34:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Creative Labs Graphics Blaster Riva TNT.(Hardware Review)(Brief Article)(Evaluation) 12/01/98 PC Magazine Page 251(1) COPYRIGHT 1998 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company Copyright 1998 Information Access Company. All rights reserved. nVidia RIVA TNT; 16MB; 1,920 x 1,200 (75 Hz). AGP or PCI, $170 street. Milpitas, CA; 800-998-5227, 408-428 6600; www.creativelabs.com The Graphics Blaster Riva TNT will warm the hearts of both general business users and gamers. Its 2-D and 3-D benchmark test scores put it in the top tier of graphics accelerators, and it should win favor for its reasonable software bundle and simple, well-integrated installation procedure. It's our Editors' Choice for 3-D enthusiasts. The Graphics Blaster comes with Creative Labs SoftMPEG MPEG-1 player and Forsaken, a D3D game. But two bundled utilities from Sonnetech stand out: Colorific is a monitor-calibration utility that you can use to match screen colors with printer output, and 3Deep is a 3-D-specific utility that automatically adjusts your monitor's gamma value to match the intent of 3-D game developers; you'll appreciate the way 3Deep keeps the mood while improving visibility. Performance was similar to other RIVA TNT boards in this roundup, translating to excellent results on the whole. The Graphics Blaster's results were in the top tier, just shy of the top-scoring boards from Diamond Multimedia and ELSA. 3-D scene quality was fine, with only minor problems similar to those of other top-scoring boards: a few minor MIP-mapping errors, and a lack of many fogging and some geometry rasterization capabilities. In sum, if you're looking for a mid-priced board that's ready for use in both business and gaming, the Graphics Blaster should be on your short list.