3D GRAPHIC BOARDS ROUNDUP
VIPER V330
| MANAFACTURER | DIAMOND MULTIMEDIA |
| RATING | 8.5/10-highly recommended |
| VIDEO RAM | 4mb 100mhz SGRAM /non upgradable |
| CHIPSET | nVidia RIVA 128 |
| Direct X:Direct Draw 1 and 2 support | Yes |
| Direct X:Direct3D support | Yes |
| OpenGL support | Yes(only at 16bit colour) |
| Maximum resolution | 1600 x 1200 at 16bit colour |
| Maximum colour depth | 32bit |
| TV output | Yes-640 x 480 /32 bit colour |
| Simultaneous PC and TV output | No |
| Upgradable to DVD | Yes |
| AGP version | Yes |
| MPEG/AVI playback | Yes |
| Bandwith | 1.6 gb per second |
| Texture mapping | Yes |
| Z-Buffering | Yes |
| Alpha Blending | Yes |
| Mip mapping | Yes |
| Anti aliasing | Yes |
| Fogging | Yes |
| Perspective correction | Yes |
| Bilenear filtering | Yes |
Diamond's Viper V330 arrived in India only months after its US release .It knocked out all competition in our 3D card round-up
with great 3D/2D ,good video playback and outstanding performance . Built for Direct3D it is especially recommended for those with
166 under systems who are concerned with performance and those who want a top of the line 2D/3D combo.The AGP version offers a
considerable performance boost over PCI of about 20% with a 66mhz bus.
nVidia's OpenGL drivers were recently released and can be downloaded from the Diamond web site. They are needed to
run 3D accelerated versions of games such as Quake and Quake 2 and are available at Dimension128 and RIVAZONE.
The Viper supports all major 3d functions mentioned above . It delivers a TV output at 640 x 480 /32 bit colour but does
not support TV and PC output at the same time.
One dissapointing fact is that the Viper cannot be upgraded from 4mb sgram and you will have to stick with that.The image
quality could have been improved and too much time was spent on the performance.But that doesnt stop it the Viper from being
our top choice.
PERFORMANCE :9/10
IMAGE QUALITY :7/10
UPGRADABILITY:8/10
The difference with a 3D accelerator is much more than what can be shown through these pics.
BENCHMARKS AND PERFORMANCE RESULTS
3D WINBENCH 98(800 x 600 /16bpp/75hz.Measured in 3D Winmarks)
DIAMOND VIPER V330 -485
STB VELOCITY 128 -437
MATROX MILLENIUM II -84.2
2D WINBENCH 98(1024 x768 /16bpp/75hz.Measured in 3D Winmarks)
DIAMOND VIPER V330 -137
MATROX MILLENIUM II -132
STB VELOCITY 128 -109
WINDOWS NT 4.0 BUSINESS GRAPHICS BENCHMARK 97 - 2D
DIAMOND VIPER V330 -128
MATROX MILLENIUM II -117
MATROX MYSTIQUE -113
STB VELOCITY 128 -82.8
QUAKE 2(OpenGL) performance
A test was taken on 14 popular PCI or AGP cards and here are the results-
DIAMOND VIPER V330 AGP -rated 1st-40.3
DIAMOND VIPER V330 PCI -rated 7th-33.5
DIAMOND STEALTH II PCI -rated 13th-21.4
DIAMOND MONSTER 3D PCI -rated 5th
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All products were tested in WindowsTM 95 using the IntelTM AL 440LX chipset on an Intel
PentiumTM II 266MHz CPU, with 512K cache, 64MB SDRAM, and a 1.6GB hard drive. Tests done
using Ziff Davis' 3D WinBenchTM 98 version 1.0 at 800x600x16bpp at 75Hz and 2D WinBench 98
version 1.0 at1024x768x16bpp at 75Hz. All products were shipping versions, tested in their
default settings and were available to the general public at the time they were tested.
Products tested in Windows 95 (2D and 3D) were configured as follows: Diamond Viper V330
(Driver version/date: 4.10.01.0015/11-7-97, BIOS: 1.49, memory: 4MB SGRAM), Matrox
Millennium II (4.03.00.3700 / 8-4-97 (their latest driver), 1.0, 4MB WRAM), STB Velocity
128 (1.10.01.0121/10-20-97 (the only driver on their website that passed the benchmark
tests, test 19 "Stations3A2,NMN" unable to run), 1.6, 4MB SGRAM). Tests
performed without independent verification by Ziff-Davis and Ziff-Davis makes no
representations or warranties as to results. 3D WinBench and WinMark are trademarks of
Ziff-Davis Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Windows is a registered trademark of
Microsoft Corporation. Pentium is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. All other
brands and names are property of their respective owners.
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A WORD ON OTHER CARDS
Other decent cards are the Diamond Monster 3D ,3D labs Peremedia 2 and the Diamond Stealth II . I could'nt find out whether the
Voodoo based Monster 3D is available in India but it's very good,second only to the Viper as Voodoo cards are known for their superior
image quality. ATI cards are decent especially the Rage
Pro 3D(more decent).The ATI Xpert@Work and Xpert@play
are OK(just about)
but one thing all
these ATI cards lack is OpenGL support . That means no Quake/Quake2 or any other
OpenGl game!They're good buys if you
don't care
about this. Apparantly , a lot of companies are distributing the S3
Trio 64 with their PC's(Compaq,Zenith etc).Once upon a time
,these
cards were good ,but they're nothing now.So do not buy the Trio 64 for home computing
,gaming etc.unless you plan to include another 3d
card as an add-on.It does not support any form of 3D,has very average 2d and quite poor video playback . It may just about do if you intend
to use your machine for business purposes only . If you plan to purchase a high end computer then any version of the S3 Trio 64 will ruin your
machine's performance.
