Author Archives: Ron

Trident sell Graphics Chip division to SiS

Posted on June 13, 2003 by Ron

Yesterday Trident Microsystems, Inc. announced that it has pulled out of the graphics chips market after less than a year and will focus on its digital TV & set-top-box business. The graphics division was sold to SIS and will be … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics Hardware | Leave a comment

Further NVIDIA optimizations…

Posted on June 12, 2003 by Ron

This story get keeps getting more interesting. On June 2nd FutureMark retreated a bit from earlier claims, stating that they’d run across some optimizations and not cheats when testing the latest drivers from NVIDIA.. The latest twist involves further evidence … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics Hardware, Too Weird | Leave a comment

Endgame for 3DO

Posted on June 1, 2003 by Ron

In a sad conclusion to one of the more interesting companies in the game business, 3DO files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, and will try to sell off … Continue reading →

Posted in Game Industry | Leave a comment

NVIDIA’s Dawn – corporate avatar collects tainted reputation

Posted on June 1, 2003 by Ron

No doubt you’ve all seen the fantastic NVIDIA Dawn demo – each year at GDC, E3, Siggraph, etc. we see better and better graphics card demos. If you noticed in the last few years we’ve gone from cool looking 3D … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics Hardware, OpenGL | Leave a comment

And the driver cheat mudslinging continues…

Posted on May 27, 2003 by Ron

Yeah, it’s starting to look a little funkier. Without getting into too much detail (which you can read here, here, and here), it’s looking less like a bug and more like an “optimization”. Futuremark put out a report titled “Alleged … Continue reading →

Posted in Game Industry, Graphics Hardware | Leave a comment

UT2003 to come with a software renderer

Posted on May 27, 2003 by Ron

When fetching a graphics device from DirectX, it’s possible to request a software renderer, though until recently no such thing existed. If you didn’t know, graphics god Mike Abrash left Microsoft and had been quietly working on a software renderer … Continue reading →

Posted in DirectX, Game Industry, Graphics, Hardware | Leave a comment

Fun and Games at E3

Posted on May 27, 2003 by Ron

It’s come to my attention that not only did NVIDIA have the band Smashmouth at their E3 party, they had porn star “Catalina” there as well. (view the party pix here…) which has apparently upset some shareholders on the Yahoo … Continue reading →

Posted in Conferences, Game Industry, Graphics Hardware, Too Weird | Leave a comment

DirectX 9.0a SDK is available

Posted on May 17, 2003 by Ron

There are some performance tweaks, support for anti-aliased render targets, some DirectPlay fixes, and a Managed DirectX security fix. For developers there’s some new D3DX functionality, otherwise it looks pretty much the same. If you’re not a developer and you … Continue reading →

Posted in DirectX | Leave a comment