Please don't waste your money
Written: May 07 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to follow instructions, Easy to install drivers
Cons: Will not work as advertised. Performs at the same level as much lower-end graphics accelerators
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| valentino's Full Review: Rio Diamond Stealth III S540, (32 MB) AGP Video Ca... |
Diamond makes great modems, sound cards, and networking cards. I use all three between office and home PCs and would recommend them to anyone. I was always very happy with their products until I needed to upgrade my video card. Because of my past success with diamond, I was sure that the S540 was exactly what I needed. I couldn't have been more wrong! This card will not perform as advertised. I was upgrading an onboard, 8MB, built-in AGP adapter that used "shared memory architecture" that was robbing my system of RAM and slowing down graphics intensive applications.
I carefully read the installation procedures and all readme files then installed the card following the manufacturer's instructions. Windows loaded fine, updated as necessary, and looked fine. I immediately jumped into some MS office applications - not very graphics intensive - & the card performed fine. The system wasn't noticeably faster or slower. Then I loaded up Falcon 4.0 (a flight/combat simulation) to give the card a "workout" to see how well it would perform. I changed all the graphics/detail settings to their highest values, assuming a brand new, 32mb video card could surely handle it (especially considering my system at least DOUBLES all the recommended requirements from the game manufacturer). It loaded fine, but then ran very choppy and slow. OK, that's too much for it I thought, so I backed everything down to the levels I used with my old graphics adapter. Still choppy & slow. Tried other similar applications...same thing. Then I bought Gunship! (an attack helicopter combat/simulation). It loaded fine & looked great until actual gameplay began. Then 1/2 of the screen was "grayed out". I called Microprose tech support 1st (because they are really good & I was having problems w/ 2 of their games). The rep went through all my system settings & configurations with me & determined (after an hour) that the video card was definitely the culprit. She then referred me to Diamond's website to ensure I had the latest drivers and then to Diamond's Tech support. I downloaded the drivers & installed them per the instructions on their website. After the reboot, the system was completely frozen. Several attempts & the same thing. I reinstalled the original drivers & windows was fine. I then called Diamond's tech support. Their rep insisted the driver on the website worked fine & they had no complaints from other users. So he walked me through the entire process of uninstalling, downloading, and installing again. I was on the phone (long distance, of course) over two hours with him going over every possible configuration/setting in Windows, BIOS, and the games. Nothing. He then determined my card was malfunctioning & they would replace it. That sounds reasonable, so I UPS it to Diamond and about 10 days later receive a brand new S540 - free of charge minus shipping both ways. Reinstalled everything & got the exact same problems. Downloaded the updated drivers & got the exact same problems. Tried the card in my other computer - totally different motherboard, chipset, & CPU. Same problems.
After all that, I called Diamond's tech support again & talked with a different rep. He again assured me that he had not heard of any similar complaints about that card & insisted I was doing "something" wrong. Another 2 hours & still no fix.
I finally bought an nVIDIA RIVA TNT2 32mb AGP card. I installed it, fired the system up, & everything runs fine. I've since installed the most graphics intensive games I could find & ran them at their highest detail settings with nothing but great video & smoothness.
Well Diamond (S3), I guess 3 outta 4 ain't too bad.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
valentino
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Location: Hendersonville, TN
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 2 members
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