You get what you pay for, baby!
Written: May 16 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap, 32MB video RAM, decent video performance
Cons: Awful drivers, lockups
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| sleepy_g's Full Review: Rio Diamond Stealth III S540, (32 MB) AGP Video Ca... |
I bought my StealthIII from www.pcprogress.com for less than $75. I felt this was a good deal and made since for me since all I have ever had before was an 8MB Matrox Millennium II PCI card which has no real 3D ability.
I picked this card because it would lend minimal 3D capability at low cost. Most reviews point out the card's tendency to quickly drop it's frame rate at any resolution above 800x600 - I saw this happen on Quake II and Half Life. But at 800x600 and below, the games run great.
A couple of warnings:
This card comes with drivers that are pretty much terrible! I had to download a Beta version of the StealthIII drivers from the S3 website to even get the card working on Quake III. Under other games, the default driver severely limits the graphics details. Once I installed the drivers, however, the graphics were great and pretty smooth. I am a little puzzled in trying to figure out why Savage is selling this decent hardware with awful drivers - this doesn't make much business sense to me.
Another problem I still have is that this card causes random system lock-ups only when I am playing a game that uses the 3D engine. Running Windows is fine, but when I am playing a game like Quake II, the system will periodically lock up (hard lock) without warning. I have yet to find any correlation between the lockups and graphics activity, but I am sure there is an explanation. This "feature" does not increase the game experience, but it does not happen too often.
Like I said you get what you pay for. This is a cheap 32MB AGP card, and is not renown for it's 3D horsepower. But if you are looking for a jump from a lousy PCI or old AGP card, I would recommend this card if you can't afford much. Looking back, I would have spent the extra 50 or 100 bucks and gotten a Diamond Viper 770D or some similar card with a LOT more power.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
sleepy_g
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Member: Bill Guerra
Location: Austin, TX
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 5 members
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