EXTREME Overclocking
Home | Reviews | Forums | Downloads | $ EXTREME Deals $ | RealTime Pricing | Free Magazines | Gear | Folding Stats Newsletter | Contact Us

Diamond Viper II

Company: S3 / Diamond
Product:
Viper II Z200
Street Price: ~$130 + S&H
Date Reviewed: September 4, 2000
Reviewed By: TySoft
Reviewer's Specs: Abit KA7 / Tbird 700 @ 1ghz / WinMe & Win2k

Installation

I was overjoyed when I received my new Viper II in a FedEx box. It sports S3's Savage 2000 Z200 chipset. The first thing I did, of course, was remove my 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 from my AGP slot. I proceed to set the AGP 4x jumpers and slap the card in. I turn my machine on. No post. Beep codes say it is not detecting my video card. Not good. However, before I received the card for review I found a BIOS update for the card itself that fixes bugs with the VIA KX133 and KT133 chipset. I am very happy I have another non KX133/KT133 system here, so I swap the card into that machine. It boots fine, I immediately flash the card's BIOS to the latest version. I then proceed to put the Viper II back in my Abit KA7 machine. Turn it on, the big moment… It posted! It boots into WinMe fine, and prompts me for the drivers. I then proceeded to install the drivers from S3's website. The ones included on the CD are known to be… well, garbage.

 

Configuration

The first thing I check out is the display properties options of this card. The major thing that was interesting is the fact that when you run any 3d application or game, it will allow you to create a separate profile for that game. In my screenshot to the left you can see that I have Half-Life selected. It has a toggle to enable T&L (Transform and Lighting) on and off. However, turning this option on creates graphical artifacts. The press papers say it supports FSAA (Full Scene Anti Aliasing.) However, the current drivers, in fact, do not support this option. It also lists this on the box which can be misleading. The Viper II's software also supports gamma adjustment for any game individually. You can see the gamma adjustment in the screen shot to the right. One thing that I noticed on my test machine - the drivers do not support DirectX 8 Beta, they constantly lock up in the display properties options and do not allow you to play any games without a lockup.

 

Visual Quality

2D performance was very crisp and sharp in all resolutions. However, the 2D seemed a little laggy in certain applications, mainly FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and Excel. The 2D in Age of Empires II and Starcraft ran flawlessly. 3D quality is simply amazing in Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.

Quake 3 utilizes S3TC. S3TC is S3's Texture Compression which results in a very high quality 3D image. Included on the Viper II CD is a special set of Quake 3 levels that are optimized for the Viper II. Although it may be hard to get a game going online with these levels, with all the eye candy cranked up the graphics are incredible.

Unreal Tournament makes use of S3TC as well, by way of the second CD. UT also utilizes S3's own API, MeTaL. This combination provides unreal game play and graphics. I cannot stress enough how enjoyable it is to play Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament with the Viper II. Any true hardware fans should experience this first hand for themselves. It's that amazing.

 

Benchmarks

A 1.7fps increase isn't anything super. Yet AGP 4x does make a little difference.

 

There wasn't much of any change here on UTBench. These were done at 800x600x32.

 

 

Conclusion:

Pros: Good price, Geforce SDR performance. S3TC looks really nice.

Cons: Patchy driver support, requires a BIOS update for some VIA chipsets.

Overall: I feel that this card is a very good deal for the price. If you have a KX/KT133 board you will require access to another machine to flash it and get it stable and/or boot. If your on a budget and looking for a decent card, consider the Diamond Viper II.

Rating: 8/10.

 

Back to the main page!

 

EXTREME Overclocking Newsletter
Thousands of PC enthusiasts are already subscribed to the EXTREME Overclocking Newsletter, have you signed up yet?
Your Email Address:
Sponsored Links
Most Downloaded Files
Recently Added Files
CPU-Z 1.4912/12/08
Compare Prices On Top Brands!
Search:
For:

Intel Processors
Core i7 - Nehalem
965 Extreme  940  920

Core 2 Extreme - Yorkfield XE
QX9775  QX9770  QX9650

Core 2 Quad - Yorkfield
Q9650  Q9550  Q9400  Q9300  Q8300  Q8200

Core 2 Duo - Wolfdale
E8600  E8500  E8400  E8200  E7300  E7200

AMD Processors
Phenom II X4
965 Black  955 Black  945  940 Black  920

Phenom X4
9950 Black  9850 Black  9750  9650

Phenom X3
8750  8650  8450

Athlon X2
7750 Black  6000+  5600+  5400+  5200+  5000+  5050e  4850e

Video Cards
nVidia GeForce GTX 200 Series
GTX 295  GTX 285  GTX 280  GTX 260

nVidia GeForce 9 Series
9800 GX2  9800 GTX+  9800 GTX  9800 GT  9600 GT  9600 GSO

ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series
4870 X2  4870  4850  4830  4670  4650

Search By Brand
ASUS  BFG  Diamond  eVGA  Gigabyte  HIS  MSI  Palit  PowerColor  PNY  Sapphire  Visiontek  XFX

PC Memory
DDR3  DDR2  DDR

Motherboards
ASUS  Biostar  DFI  ECS  eVGA  Foxconn  Gigabyte  Intel  MSI  Shuttle  Supermicro  Tyan  XFX

Hard Drives
Seagate  Maxtor  Samsung  Fujitsu  Western Digital

  Technology Magazines FREE to Qualified Professionals.
eWeek MagazineeWeek is the essential technology information source for builders of e-business. Focuses on e-commerce, communications and Internet-based architecture. Oracle MagazineOracle Magazine contains technology-strategy articles, sample code, tips, Oracle and partner news, how-to articles for developers and DBAs, and more. Dr. Dobb's JournalDr. Dobb's Journal enables programmers to write the most efficient and sophisticated programs and help in daily programming quandaries. InformationWeekInformationWeek is the only newsweekly you'll need to stay on top of the latest developments in information technology.
  Other Popular Titles: PC Magazine, BusinessWeek, Baseline, Business Solutions, Software Magazine, InfoStor, Security Source , TelevisionWeek, more...
  EXTREME Deal Of The Day | More EXTREME Deals
Dell Small Business - Dell Vostro 1520 Laptop with Core 2 Duo, 4GB of Memory, 320GB Hard Drive, Webcam, 9 Cell Battery and Windows 7 Home Premium 64 for Only $559
Dell Vostro 1520 LaptopThanks to a huge $471 instant savings, you can now pick up this fully loaded Vostro 1520 for just $559! This laptop features a 15.4" WXGA LED dispplay, a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with VT processor, 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM memory, 320GB SATA 7200 RPM hard drive, DVD+/-RW drive, Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth 2.0 Vista, Intel WiFi Link 5100 802.11 a/g/n/ Draft, a sweet 9 cell battery and Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit! It looks like they did drop the A860 laptop before this weekend so check back with us on Monday as it may come back then. DELL VOSTRO 1520 LAPTOP DELL LAPTOP DEALS
HP Home & Home Office Store - HP Pavilion dv6t QUAD Intel Core i7-720QM 15.6" Notebook PC - $899.99 Shipped Free!
HP PAVILION DV6T QUAD LAPTOP PC DEAL HP's $200 stackable coupon gets you the new Pavilion dv6t QUAD notebook PC for a great price. It has the latest and greatest Intel i7 Core. Simply configure a HP Pavilion dv6t QUAD to $1,299+.
  • Intel Core i7-720QM Processor (1.6GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB)
  • 15.6" diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Widescreen Display (1366x768)
  • 4GB DDR3 RAM
  • 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 230M
  • LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW
  • Webcam
  • Intel Wireless-N Mini-card with Bluetooth
  • Integrated 56K Modem
  • Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
This HP Pavilion dv6t QUAD is a great setup with some of the best components. The Intel Core i7-720QM, the 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, and the 4GB DDR3 RAM are a great combination for a fast system. Don't be fooled by the 1.6Ghz base processor speed. In turbo mode, the i7-720QM goes up to 2.8Ghz! HP PAVILION DV6T QUAD LAPTOP PC DEAL

Use coupon code: NBTY349821 for the discount. Expires after 2,250 uses or on 11/26/2009.
Copyright © 2000-2009 EXTREME Overclocking. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer of Liability - Privacy Policy