Test System

• Abit BH-6 Motherboard
• Intel PII 400
• 128 Megs of 100 MHz SDRAM
• Diamond Viper V550 16 Meg SDRAM
• 2 12 Meg Diamond Monster 3D II's running in SLI
• Western Digital 6.4 UDMA and Western Digital 3.1 GIG HD's.
• ViewSonic 21" G810 .25 mm, refresh rates from 160-75 MHz at max 1600-1200 res.
• Sound Blaster AWE-64
• Creative 24X CDROM
• Thrustmaster F-22 PRO
• Thrustmaster F-16 TQS

It wasn't too long ago that the only name in town for 3D was "Voodoo". After 3DFX inserted themselves in the 3D market and promptly took it over, it was a great day for all gamers because it was 3DFX who really introduced 3D "acceleration".

While 3DFX is still King in many minds, the gap is closing quickly. New chips are on the way, which offer some new and superior features not found on Voodoo cards. One of those new chipsets is from NVIDIA, which has greatly improved upon their previous products, offering the Riva TNT chipset.

THE SCOOP

What's so special about TNT is that it offers single-pass multitexturing just like the Voodoo2 cards. So instead of forcing the card to make two passes to draw complicated textures, the TNT only has to make one. Diamond offers the Viper V550 in AGP or PCI versions with the AGP version being fully 2X compliant. The card comes equipped with 16 Megabytes of Sync Dynamic Random Access Memory (SDRAM). The card itself runs at 90 MHz and is a testament to fantastic 2D speed that is often neglected in reviews.

NVIDIA actually surpasses 3DFX in a few areas. Visual quality of the Viper V550 is going to be superior than your Voodoo2 on most games. One reason is because the Viper V550 supports 32 bit (16.7 million colors) whereas the Voodoo2 is tapped out after hitting 16 bit (65,000 colors).

Another area of virtuosity for the Viper V550 is its ability to support higher resolutions than Voodoo2. This has REALLY opened my eyes to the Viper V550 and made it my personal card of choice. Where my 2 12 Meg Voodoo2 cards are locked at 1024*768 in most games, I can turn my Viper V550 card up to 1600*1200 and run it in 32 bit color on my 21" monitor! Amazing!

What has been perhaps most surprising is the speed at which the Viper V550 operates. Sporting a 250MHz RAMDAC and supporting D3D and OpenGL, this Viper card has eaten my Voodoo2 cards away. One of the first tests I ran on my personal PC was to see how the Viper V550 ran Falcon 4 with the latest BETA build I received. What I found was absolutely shocking.

I decided for my first test to increase the resolution of my Viper V550 to 1600*1200 and see what kind of FPS this card could pump out. The beta version of Falcon 4 I have received does not supporte SLI (YET!) and thus I have been forced to run GLIDE while choosing between my 2 Voodoo2 cards. This has limited me to resolutions of 640*480 and 800*600.

However, when I changed my driver to the Viper V550 and D3D, my resolution choices jumped all the way to 1600*1200. Needless to say, my heart was pounding to see Falcon 4 in such a resolution. I figured if I got 5 FPS, I would be lucky. WRONG!

TNT. Click for 1600x1200.

After I selected my options, and began my new campaign, I was intently listening to my HD thrash around loading the game, when heaven shined upon my screen. HOLY COW!!!! Not only was the game looking absolutely fabulous but my FPS were holding between 17 and 20 FPS. Yes, that was NOT a typo, 17 and 20 FPS at 1600*1200 with DirectX6. D3D acceleration has indeed arrived with blazing glory!

Now, Microprose has made it clear that resolutions this high may not be in the final version of the game and they have reserved the right to decide if they are to be included or not. My vote is a solid YES. (Even if this means they don't give us the fixed and clickable cockpits beyond 1024x768. After all, these can always be added in a later upgrade rather than delay the release).

Click to continue . . .

This outstanding performance is a HUGE testament to the speed of the Diamond Viper V550 and to the programming job done by Microprose on Falcon 4. Once SLI is included in my build of Falcon 4, I may well switch back to GLIDE but at this point my card of choice with Falcon 4 is by FAR the Diamond Viper V550.

I was further curious to see how much my 2D speed would increase while running the card in my daily applications. For a good measure of it's 2D speed, I loaded up my beta copy of Close Combat III and was again shocked to find that the game would run at 1600*1200! I can get used to all this memory real quick. This is AWESOME!

Running Close Combat III is what sold me on the V550's 2D speed. Previously, I had been running my computer with a Creative 4 MEG Blaster card and was surprised to see that Close Combat III (which is looking excellent BTW) ran at least 2 times faster at 1600*1200 on my Viper V550 than it did on my old Creative card at 640*480.

One of my initial concerns was that the Viper V550 card might not be able to keep up with the refresh rates that my monitor supports. Well, lay your fears to rest, the Viper V550 powers through at 200Hz at 800*600, 170Hz at 1024*768 and 85Hz at an amazing 1920*1200!!

F4 under TNT.

Conclusion

This is one kick bootie 2D/3D card and widely argued as one of the best, if not THE best card on the market. While I am going to keep my 2 12 Meg Monster cards in my computer for some time still, I will undoubtedly feel that now when I buy a game, I have two choices for 3D and will test them both to determine which card I prefer to run. If you want to know what to buy for future games that support D3D and OpenGL, you would be nuts not to consider purchasing a Diamond Viper V550. And don't forget, this is with FULL AGP 2x support, a feature completely lacking on Voodoo2.

If you are looking for the complete package card the Diamond Viper V550 is my personal choice as the best 2D/3D card right now. Best yet, the holidays are almost here!

Rating:

• 3D acceleration: 98% (Fastest D3D card on the market)
• 2D acceleration: 99% (True 128 bit. Can 2D speed get faster?)
• Card Features: 98% (like I said, it's a TOTAL card)
• Color quality: 99% (1st real use of 32 bit color at amazing resolutions)
• Overall Performance: 99% (Nothing is perfect but this card comes VERY CLOSE)

Minimum Specs

• Intel Pentium® 90Mhz or compatible CPU
• One available PCI 2.1 compliant slot
• Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3
• 16 MB Memory
• CD-Rom drive

Recommended Specs

• Intel Pentium® 200Mhz or Compatible CPU
• One available AGP (2X preferable) or PCI 2.1 compliant slot
• Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3
• 32 MB Memory
• CD-Rom drive