Diamond Viper V770 Ultra Graphics Accelerator

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Title : Diamond Viper V770 Ultra Graphics Accelerator
Author : SONICblue
Release Date :
Binding : Electronics
Regular Price : $
Amazon.com Price : $ ( %)
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Editorial Reviews :
Based on the NVIDIA RIVA TNT Ultra chip set, Diamond's Viper V770 Ultra steals the show with phenomenal frame rates, a 183 MHz memory clock, and 32-bit rendering. Rivaling the power and performance of the 3dfx Voodoo cards, Diamond's Viper V770 Ultra is a serious contender in the battle of the 3-D accelerators.

Stocking all the 3-D necessities, the Viper V770 Ultra's feature set includes alpha blending, anti-aliasing, bilinear filtering, bump mapping, environment mapping, fogging, gouraud shading, MIP mapping, stencil buffer, subpixel precision, texture mapping, transparency, trilinear filtering, and z-buffering. The card also supports hardware-assisted playback of DVD (MPEG-2) video, and ships with a nice selection of software.

As the only chip currently on the market that supports 32-bit rendering, the RIVA TNT Ultra has a leg up on the competition. Its easy installation, stunning graphics, and impressive frame rates in our testing impressed us.

We put the Viper V770 Ultra to work on a 333 MHz Celeron system running Windows 95 and DirectX 6.1 using the Quake II time-demo test. With optimized 32-bit color at a resolution of 800 x 600, the Viper managed 42.4 frames per second, and at 1024 x 768, the frames per second dropped to 36.2. With 16-bit color at 800 x 600, frames per second came in at 43.1, and at 1024 x 768, the Viper managed 40.7 frames per second. These figures are nowhere near Diamond's lofty claims of 100 frames per second; however, with our limited CPU speed, we took these numbers with a grain of salt. Also, our 14-inch monitor maxed out at 1024 x 768, and it's important to note that the Viper V770 Ultra can go far beyond that to resolutions of 2,048 x 1,536 with a 24-inch monitor.

For Quake III, which will support 32-bit rendering, and a number of other games that are beginning to use more sophisticated graphics, you may want to check out a card like the Viper V770 Ultra. This card has everything the hard-core gamer needs for the most intense, lifelike 3-D experience.

Pros:

* Only card to support 32-bit rendering
* High-resolution support
* Easy to install
* Supports most games
* 32 MB memory increases performance

Cons:

* Sacrifice in performance for increased resolutions

Buyer Reviews :
When I was finally getting my new computer, I knew that this card was a vital component to my system. I read all the reviews, good and bad for it when I first got it back in September. Let me tell you, it's so worth getting. I basically drooled all over my keyboard at the graphics, the game play, the smooth animation, when I loaded up games for this system with the card. Quake 3...I don't think I would ever play it on any system that does not have a TNT2 Ultra chipset card in it.

It is true that this card doesn't support Glide, but why does that matter? When you think about it, look at the reviews of games, and read the gaming requirements on the boxes of games...it doesn't mention too much about Glide, but it always mentions something about OpenGL.

However, I've decided to get a Voodoo 2 card add-on in SLI mode for my system anyway, since it won't take place of my main video card. The TNT2 Ultra card isn't just for gaming grahically. It's great for those business applications that you need to render graphs, flow charts, and those presentations too. This card is not just a great gaming card, but also a great all-around card.

I've used faster systems with the Voodoo 3 card, it's a decent card, but my Diamond TNT2 Ultra card definitely blew it up in comparision. If I were anyone trying to decide, I'd really have to look at the options of either card and choose wisely.

(by Forrest Wu)

Features/Technical Specs :
* Based on NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 chip set
* Complete 3-D feature set
* 32 MB SDRAM and 300 MHz RAMDAC
* Resolution support up to 2,048 x 1,536
* 150 MHz engine clock, 183 MHz memory clock

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