Hi all,

Early this week, dEX was the first to report that Sega has chosen to use NEC's PowerVR chipset in their next system. The choice comes as no real surprise as it would make better sense to build the system using parts made in Japan. Here are the specs for the current PowerVR chipset out, the PCX2:

Power:
 *Rated at 9 billion operations/sec
 *Processes up to 1.2 million polygons/sec
 *Pixel fill rates up to 66 million pixels/sec
Features:
 *Bilinear texture filtering
 *Perspective-correct anti-aliased texture mapping
 *Pixel perfect hidden surface removal
 *Light volumes
 *Real time shadows
 *True logarithmic colored fog, translucency, and smooth shading -- all in true 
 color and real time. 

While some of the abilities of the chip are dependent on other factors such as memory and CPU power, the chip should be able to handle modern games with quality that may approach that of Model 3 games. It is also probable that Sega will use the 3rd or maybe even 4th generation of NEC's PowerVR chipset which will be much more powerful than the PCX2.

The system itself is expected to use the 64-bit Hitachi SH-4 chip as the CPU. "The two-way superscalar core is expected to hit 200 MHz and it includes a variety of specialized instructions for floating-point matrix operations that are at the heart of many multimedia functions...The SH-4 should offer 3D graphics performance unmatched by any other embedded processor." Source: Microprocessor Report v10, #14.

Konami has also begun development in Saturn versions of Suikoden, Vandal Hearts, and Castlevania X. The titles are expected to arrive sometime late 1997 in Japan. Lets hope that Konami of US will bring these games to the states.

Yet again, Albert Odyssey has been delayed, it is now expected to arrive at stores on July 24th. Maybe this time SoA will quit delaying. This week at dEX I've also added a WSB '98 review. Also release in the US is Lucasart's adventure game Herc's Adventure. In Japan a shooter Bulk Slash was released as was Dokyusei 2 (Classmates 2).

I also updated or added a dozen or so programs to the software area as I promised last week. That's all for now, see ya!

-Greg