Diamond
The card was a AGP Bulk-version
without Video Out in Revision A. It came with 16MBSDRAM, dispersed on 8 Chips from Hyundai
(8ns - LTC-8). The graphics chip is hidden by a large heat sink. The card is a bit smaller
than the Erazor II. It is well manufactured. I had no problems installing it. Besides the
monitor connector there is room for a video out connector. The upper part has a 13 pin
(VESA??) connector, the same which the Erazor (Riva128) had. The Bios Version is 1.93E.
Diamond Viper V550 (click to enlarge)
Drivers
I used the lastest drivers from Diamond:
v4.10.01.0220. The drivers are installed by an installation program. The Desktop
Enhancement "InControl Tools 98" is optional. In contrast to the Reference
Drivers there are no possibilities to change 3D-settings, only gamma, antialiasing and
VSync can be switched on and off. For the 'normal' user that's probably OK, but I would
have wanted some more options.
 |
|
|
| Screenshots Drivers settings (click to enlarge) |
Results
The drivers ran fast and stable, I had no
crashes. They are fast under Direct 3D, even if they cannot beat the Erazor II. I had
problems in the XDemo, there were some graphical faults. These problems influenced the
results negatively. It is surprising that with Quake 1 the Diamond drivers were
approximately 10fps under the Reference Drivers. With Quake 2, however, the values were
almost identical. With Quake 1 there were also problems with the time-refresh test. With
both cards it ran very slowly on all drivers. Nevertheless, this had no effect on the game
graphics and speed. Except for Incoming , the Viper was usually a 'bit' slower than the
Erazor II on D3D. In contrast, Viper was always a 'bit' faster on OpenGL. By 'bit' I mean
0.5 to 2 fps, i.e., no noticeable results. Still, with Turok Benchmark under 640x480,
Viper was almost 10fps slower than Erazor II. More on this phenomenon at the end of the
test report.
Supported screen resolutions:
Resolution |
Colors |
60 |
72 |
75 |
85 |
100 |
120 |
170 |
200 |
640x480 |
256/65k/16,7M |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
800x600 |
256/65k/16,7M |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1024x768 |
256/65k/16,7M |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- |
1152x864 |
256/65k/16,7M |
|
|
|
|
|
|
- |
- |
1280x1024 |
256/65k/16,7M |
|
|
|
|
|
|
- |
- |
1600x1200 |
256/65k/16,7M |
|
|
|
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
| 1920x1080 |
256/65k |
|
|
|
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
| 1920x1080 |
16,7M |
|
|
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
| 1920x1080 |
256/65k |
|
|
|
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
| 1920x1200 |
16,7M |
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Modells of the Diamond Viper V550:
Retail (in the Box; no games sticker):
16 MB SDRAM AGP, no Video functions
16 MB SDRAM AGP with TV out
16 MB SDRAM PCI with TV out
Retail XL (in the box, with sticker):
16 MB SDRAM AGP with TV out
Software that comes with the Retail XL Version:
Software DVD decoder (Region 2)
Gremlins Motorhead
Diamond GamesCD (with gamespatches, Workthrough‘s,
Cheat Codes...)
MGI Photosuite SE
Freemont SE
Bulk (no colored box ):
16 MB SDRAM AGP no video functions
16 MB SDRAM AGP with TV out
16 MB SDRAM PCI with TV out
5 Years warranty |
