Great card but has its problems
Written: Nov 18 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great value, acceptable performance for any hardcore gamer and great performance for average gamers seeking great value and performance. Has S3TC lighting effects and great hardware DVD support plus cheap TV-OUT compatibility.
Cons: Drivers out of date, S3TC is not hardware but software accelerated! Slow results on Expendable (game) and very low-end performance with TV OUT.
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| nxs4ever's Full Review: Rio Diamond Viper II, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
First off, read the other reviews from hardcore gamers, I am not a hardcore gamer. Read on if you're a frequent but not a gaming /OC freak...
Last night, I bought the S3 Viper II card at outpost.com with free overnight shipping so it came this morning at 12:00. It has a $20 rebate so after the rebate, it's $60-$20=$40.
This video card has 32mb of Video RAM, Z-Buffer, Bilinear and single-pass quad texture gfx engine. It's also got a core clock of 120Mhz and a S3 Savage 2000 graphics controller. It has TV OUT and 'unsurpassed DVD playback compatibility.' I think the DVD feature is surpassed because the ATI Radeon 32MB has truly, the best DVD playback. However, what the best feature of this card is its price, one that Radeon, Geforce and no other can match, at around $60, no other high-end gaming card comes close.
It should be excellent for overclocking, achieving 150Mhz core speed should be no problem. Running QIII at 8x6.4 at 32bits is perfect and it can higher but I'm not a reso-freak. I ran Tomb Raider II at 1158x800 and at 32 bits color - no problems. This card can really take 1st and 3rd generation games to its max.
However, unlike Geforce, the drivers are the problems for this card. The last update was in June, five months ago. Nvidia updates its drivers every 2 months (at most) and the detonator drivers accelerate the cards/chipsets 50% faster. You do get what you pay for and the Geforce2 MX cards start at $100. VIPER II IS HALF THAT PRICE but it's PERFORMANCE ISN'T HALF AT ALL. It comes bundled with 3 CDs, one driver+install, one TrickStyle, a full version game that's in the X-treme game/snowboarding genre. It also comes with demos such as SlaveZero and JetBoat, instructions, 4x/2x AGP jumper (Set to 2x default) and a registration card.
If you have a DVD drive and a TV close to your computer, play computer games such as Half Life, CounterStrike, Quake III: Arena, Unreal Tourney and others, this card is worth its value but definitely look into Nvidia's GeForce family if you have over $100 to spend.
Whatever you choose, be sure to compare Benchmark results! Good luck!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
nxs4ever
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Reviews written: 31
Trusted by: 12 members
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