G-Web News - October 1998

Saturday, 31st October 1998

Updated the Sound Blaster Live! driver link on the Creative Labs page. This now gets you driver update Revision 2, which adds support for Live!Surround and 32 DirectSound 3D Streams.
Added GameSpy 2.04, for registered users only (2.04 came out about three weeks ago ... not sure how I missed this one). Shareware users still run with 2.02.
Updated XGEdit95 to 2.61. The Help file (in PDF format) has also been updated.
Updated the USRobotics/3Com page with the latest V.90 upgrades.

Tuesday, 27th October 1998

Added the final Matrox 4.26 drivers for the G200 series. Also updated the Which Windows 95 Driver ? table to show what Matrox say they should be loaded on. According to Matrox, these drivers 'Include DirectX6 and Flat Panel support and optimizations for Unreal and Final Reality'.
Updated the Unreal benchmarks for the G200 and the m3D to show the effect of the final 4.26 drivers on the G200's performance. In summary, there's an average increase of about 0.1 frames-per-second in each of the modes tested.

Monday, 26th October 1998

Added the Unreal 2.18 beta patch. This version should greatly improve Internet play for modem connections (but the server must be running 2.18 too); alpha-test Direct3D support is also included, and gives slightly better performance than the previous beta G200 Direct3D patch (although this could well be down to the fact that it's running on the later version of Unreal). Note that the game will still show 2.17 as the version on the opening screen ... if your installation is the same as mine.
Now that Unreal supports both PowerVR and Direct3D from the same engine, I've tested the m3D against the Millennium G200, head-to-head. The results are up on the Unreal page, if you're interested. (Actually, they're there whether you're interested or not. Um.) In summary, I'm going to keep running Unreal on the m3D ... I'll update the test results as new drivers and/or patches become available.
Archived September's News.

Friday, 23rd October 1998

Updated WinZip 7.0 to Service Release 1. This addresses a couple of problems in WinZip 7.0 - check the WinZip page for more information.

Tuesday, 20th October 1998

Updated idGamma to version 2.0. This is a major update to the utility, so check the Info link for details before replacing the current version.

Sunday, 18th October 1998

Added a SiSoft Sandra page to the System Tools section of G-Web. This is one fantastic system analysis tool - grab it.
Changed the support for the Sound Blaster Live! on the Creative Labs page. Most of these newer Creative drivers are accessed via a registered download page, which describes the available drivers quite well, so I'm linking to that instead of the individual files. The Date next to the page link will reflect the date of the latest addition to the SBLive! drivers. Let me know if this is going to be a problem.
Added a Matrox - Useful Links section to the Matrox page. If you've never saved an image of your Matrox card's BIOS, check out the MatroX Files BIOS Page - it could save you a hell of a lot of hassle if things go pear shaped during a BIOS upgrade.

Friday, 16th October 1998

Updated the unified Matrox BIOS to version 3.44. Only G200 and PCI G100 cards are affected by this release, the BIOS for all other cards is the same as 3.43.
Updated the McAfee VirusScan DAT files to the October '98 release.

Tuesday, 13th October 1998

Added the new Matrox 4.12 drivers on the Matrox page. These appear to be the 4.11 drivers with Microsoft WHQL certification - I've updated the Which Windows 95 Driver ? table to show what Matrox say they should be loaded on.

Wednesday, 7th October 1998

Saturday, 3rd October 1998

Oops ... as John Lennon once said, it's clean-up time. Smack my wrist for being a lazy git this week, Here Is The News...
Added the Matrox G200 beta drivers (4.26, release 2) and certified drivers (4.10). The driver situation from Matrox is getting a little confusing again, so I've put together a Which Windows 95 Driver ? table with all drivers for all Matrox cards.
Added the G200 Unreal Direct3D driver (version 2) for the Matrox Millennium and Mystique G200 cards.
Updated the NEC/Videologic generic PowerVR drivers on the PowerVR page (to version 4.1.2). I've also added a Registry patch in the Matrox m3D section to enable the Advanced... button with these drivers.
Updated the Creative Labs page with a link to the SoundBlaster PCI64 Driver Update for Windows 95/98, Revision 1. This is a registration-page link - the file doesn't appear on their FTP server (yet ?).
Updated the Matrox page with the new G200 Direct3D wrapper (version 3) for Quake and QuakeII-based games.
Updated the Creative Labs page with the SB16/32/AWE Driver Update for Windows 95/98, Revision 15.
Added the beta 217 patch for Unreal. This version fixes a few of the problems with the 216 beta; multiplayer problems are also addressed.
Archived August's News.