The grand-daddy of 3D accelerator cards can still speed along!
Written: Nov 25 '01 (Updated Nov 26 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good 3D-performance for older games, 32 MB RAM, easy installation, overclockable.
Cons: Outdated technology, small heat sink with noisy fan, causes hardware conflicts, sketchy drivers, inadequate manual.
The Bottom Line: This is a great Graphics Accelerator card for someone with an older system wishing to have better 3D performance.
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| toast822's Full Review: S3 Diamond Viper Ultra 770 |
Why this card?
The Diamond Viper 770 Ultra was among the fastest and highest rated 3D accelerator cards in late 1999. Its core is the nVidia TNT2 Ultra/Pro chipset supported by a then whopping 32 MB of RAM. By today’s standards these stats are average, and many mid-rage computers come with 3D accelerators equipped with the TNT2 chipset. The advantage of this card is the slightly superior Ultra configuration of the TNT2 chip. According to (now defunct) Diamond, it provides a 10 – 15 % performance increase over the TNT chipset.
When I bought the card in 1999, I was in the midst of a major upgrade of my 150 mHz Pentium system to a 500 mHz AMD K6-2, whose new motherboard (a PC-Chips/Alton MB-577; it was junk) sported an AGP port. I bought the 770 Ultra on the basis of several articles I had read.
Installation
The installation of the card is quite simple: You uninstall your existing video driver and install a generic VGA driver as a base line. Then power down the system, pull out the old card, and install the new one, skip the Windows auto-detect screen, run the included CD, and it will install the driver. The driver that came with my Viper 770 was a little buggy, so it is a good idea to download the newest “Detonator” driver from Nvidia, which supports the newer versions of DirectX and is generally less buggy. Since I installed the new driver, the card has never failed or frozen my system.
Since my original installation, I have installed this card into an eMachines eMonster 600 and a Gateway GP6-400 (upgraded to a 600 mHz P III), and it has worked perfectly in all of those systems.
Any conflicts?
I did have a conflict with an I/O Magic V2 sound card. It was manifested mostly when playing MS Flight Simulator 2000: The game would freeze during any change in view or perspective. I tracked the problem down to the sound card, and replaced it with a Diamond Monster MX300, which solved the problem entirely. In my infinite wisdom, I ended up selling the MX300 sound card on ebay after I dismantled the AMD system I initially bought the Viper 770 for! Oh well…
How does the Viper 770 Ultra perform?
This card supports the Open GL Api, which is widely accepted, except for 1st generation 3D games, which only seem to support 3dFX
I ran 3Dmark2001 from madonion.com on the Gateway (running a P III 600 with 384 MB RAM), and the system scored 1161 (compared to 3000 for a 1.8 gHz P4 with a GeForce 3 64 MB accelerator). The frame rates were between 8 and 24 fps on the testing screens. Considering that this software was designed to test the newest of the new cards of 2001 and the age of the card, these results are respectable, but not stellar.
On the other hand, for older games, like Homeword, Flight Simulator 2000, BattleZone (1 and 2), MechWarrior (2, 3 and 4), Quake 2, Star Wars: Rouge Squadron and Force Commander or anything released before mid 2000, this card is amazing. These are the tasks the card was designed for, and it truly shows it colors and acceleration capabilities.
Other Considerations
The Diamond Viper 770 Ultra comes with a heat sink/fan glued to the TNT processor core. In order for the card to fit into the slot and accommodate PCI cards, the heat sink/fan apparatus must be very narrow. Thus, the fan is situated inside the heat sink, reducing the total area of the heat sink fins. The fan is also very noisy. In fact, I replaced the installed fan on my Viper 770 with a modified Pentium chip fan. I removed the original mounting frame of the fan assembly and used a small amount of epoxy to glue the fan onto the heat sink, and it has been much quieter since.
Supposedly, the processor core is overclockable, but I have ventured into doing that. Its RAMDAC (i.e., the heart of the video processing) runs at 183 mHz, and can be clocked up to 200 mHz. I have read articles by people of have overclocked the chip fully, but had to remove the stock heat sink, and replace it with a huge Pentium heatsink/fan assembly. I love 3D gaming, but that’s too much effort for me. Also, doing this will take up at least one (if not 2) of the adjacent PCI slots in a typical PC.
The manual covers a bare minimum: How to install the card, how to set the jumpers for a 4x AGP port and how to install the included software package. The only really useful software included is the DVD decoder; the rest (other than the drivers) is either outdated (like the included MS IE 4 or Adobe Acrobat 3) or just not very useful. The retail packaged card did come bundled with some games: a Need for Speed demo and Full Metal Country (which I never figured out), but neither of these games are very entertaining.
In conclusion: Good card for older computers and games
Because this card is rather old in terms of modern 3D acceleration, it is not ideal for hardcore gamers. However, if you have an older computer (say 900 mHz or less) whose Video Adapter has less than 32 MB of RAM, this is a cheap and good upgrade to consider. You can pick them up at ebay for less than $75, and it’s well worth the money. Make sure you get the “Ultra” version of this card, though, because it is a bit faster and the non-Ultra version.
Happy Gaming!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 249
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Epinions.com ID:
toast822
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Location: Arlington, VA
Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
I'm just a regular guy who loves toys. BTW, that's me on the left!
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