Don't make the same mistake
Written: Dec 17 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap, speedy
Cons: bad drivers
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| taciturn6097's Full Review: Rio Diamond Viper II, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
I admit it. I bought into the hype. Flash back a couple years: nVidia's Geforce256 had just been announced and was going to be the Next Big Thing, with its revolutionary hardware transform and lighting engine. Then the Savage 2000 chipset from S3 is announced, with a comparable featureset, and a bargain price. It even has hardware T&L! I usually shop for low-price items, and this time I really got what I deserved.
Diamond's Viper II Z200 is the only Savage2000-based graphics card on the market. I have all the respect in the world for Diamond, but not for S3. It all comes down to driver quality. I had of course read a few reviews of this card before purchasing, and more than one mentioned sloppy drivers. I figured that it couldn't be that bad, nothing I couldn't live with, so I bought it anyway. Big mistake. The drivers at that time were massively flawed in more than one way. The much-vaunted hardware T&L was of course not implemented at all. Several of my games didn't work or had graphical glitches(Homeworld, Force Commander, Unreal, X-Wing Alliance, and Half-Life to name a few). Of course it turns out that S3 is achingly slow with driver updates for its graphics boards. Coming back to the present, the drivers are better, and T&L is implemented, but they are far from perfect. The hardware transform and lighting, meant originally to be competitive with the GeForce256, gives no speed increase, and sometimes a speed decrease when activated. Not to mention the graphical glitches it causes. Most of the problems caused with my games have died down, but some newer things like realMyst don't work at all. Whenever I download a new demo or install a new game I have to pray that it will work with my graphics card. And of course you can forget about linux support. Rudimentary 2D support is in place in Xfree86 3.3.6 but has not yet been ported to 4.0.1, and nVidia is the only major chipset vendor with fast, stable OpenGL support through Xfree4's DRI interface.
But if linux isn't your concern, and you only play fairly old games, then this card really isn't all bad. The speed is definitely there, just don't expect anything phenomenal. It certainly was a quantum leap from my Voodoo2. As far as 2D functions and quality go it's not bad at all. When 3D applications don't have driver-caused glitches, the image quality is truly excellent. And of course the price can't be beat.
I might recommend the Diamond Viper II Z200 as possibly an upgrade to an old computer to give it decent 3D graphics support. It can hold its own against anything under GeForce256 class. Just don't expect it to work with everything as a rule. Check around on the internet for compatibility lists and other reviews. To sum up: If you know exactly what you're buying when you buy this card, you'll like it.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
taciturn6097
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Member: Andrew Lusk
Location: Downers Grove, IL
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 1 member
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