Great Card, when I got it to work.
Written: Apr 06 '00 (Updated Apr 07 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great card, if you get one that works the first time.
Cons: Tech Support and Customer Service numbers are long distance, no toll free numbers. You have to pay the shipping costs to send the bad card back to Diamond, they don't provide you with a prepaid shipping label to return those items. The techs were pretty g
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| phereless's Full Review: S3 Diamond Viper Ultra 770 |
I had a 16 meg Viper 550 and decided to go ahead and step up to the 32 meg card. I ordered it online for about a hundred dollars, which was a really good deal. After it arrived I with through the procedures of removing the old drivers and card and installing the new one. I booted the computer up and installed the new drivers and software for it with no problems.
Then I had to reboot. Well, once the computer shut down, it would not start back up with that video card in it. I had to put the old card back in it, go through the whole mess with the drivers and everything again. I called diamond's support who ran me through a couple of different procedures to check it, and they determined that the card was bad. They encouraged me to return it to the company I bought it from because that would be quicker, but since I had done it online, I told the tech I wanted Diamond to take care of it. They told me I would be contacted in a few days by a Customer Service Rep. from Diamond to arrange the new card being shipped to me, and the whole process would take about 7-10 days.
Well, over 2 weeks later when I still had not heard anything I called them back and spoke to one of the CSRs. She told me that they were backed up with a huge amount of cards that were having to be sent out as replacements, and that she would overnight me the new card. I did get the card the next day as she said, so I went through the whole process again of putting the new card and software on my computer.
The EXACT same thing happened. Card installed, but the computer would not reboot back up with it. So of course now, I'm thinking it's MY fault, or my board that is causing this. I put my old card back in it, and prepared to ship the v770 card back to Diamond, and I didn't know what I was going to do with the card that I had purchased. Well, 2 days later, the original card from Diamond that I was supposed to be sent arrived, apparently the original replacement was just lost in the mail system and arrived late. I didn't even open the box for a couple of days, I was going to just send it back to them. But then I thought, why should I send them back their card, not even opened? I figured I'd go ahead and see if the 3rd time was the charm...and it was!
The THIRD card worked just like it was supposed to and I've never had any problems with it. Runs great, graphics look great, and I really like it. I just didn't care for all the stuff I had to go through to get it working.
If you're going to get something like this, I would suggest you buy it locally so if you run into problems like I did, you can just take it to the store and exchange it, instead of the whole process taking a month, like it did for me.
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Update:
I've had the video card for about 2 months now.
Performance of the card has been great, I've had no problems with it since the above review was written. Every game I've played looks great, and I can certainly see the difference between the 16 meg card and the 32 meg. I'm sure there are other video cards with the same chipset that are just as good though and again, my suggestion is to purchase this sort of thing locally for quick exchanges in case of bum cards. I went ahead and upgraded my opinion of it as well because the card has performed great since the initial fiasco, but the hassle of all that still leaves a bad taste in my mouth and my next card will most likely be another brand because of that.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
phereless
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Member: Ray
Location: Texas
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 2 members
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